US diplomatic cables released

[Phantasee]

I saw that on CNN a few minutes ago. I imagine it's that "insurance" torrent that's been floating around for a while.

[Moby Halcyon]

Christ, I posted that a quarter of the way up the page.

[Broomstick]

That's some sophisticated commentary, there. Do you even have a link?

Broadcast TV. I'll see what I can do about a link.

I saw that on CNN a few minutes ago. I imagine it's that "insurance" torrent that's been floating around for a while.

Yep, that sounds like what they were talking about.

[Broomstick]

Ah, here we go:

Daily Mail
New York Post
Fox News

[hongi]

Now I'm really curious about what the contents might be. Curse Assange!

[weemadando]

Obama's Kenyan Birth Cert that lists Ronald Reagan as his father.

BAM.

[thejester]

Interesting how in the space of a news cycle it's gone from 'holy shit check out all this damaging stuff about the US' to 'the story of Julian Assange, wikileaker.'

[Phantasee]

Isn't that what spin is?

[Skgoa]

I forgot, but hasn't the insurance file been around since "collateral murder"? Wasn't it on the fucking WikiLeaks frontpage? How could the media find out just now?

[loomer]

I believe the 'new' part of it is the direct threat that it will be opened if Assange is touched - which was previously only if action was taken against WL as a whole, IIRC.

[Skgoa]

... its not that much of a leap to get from WL to Assange.

[Manus Celer Dei]

It's been around ages but no-one knew what it was actually for until the whole "poison pill" threat. It's encrypted so it's not like anyone could tell what the hell it was and Wikileaks hadn't made any statements beyond labeling it insurance. A lot of people assumed it was in case of wikileaks being pulled or something.

[Skgoa]

Oh come on, what else could it have been for?

[Coyote]

Oh, it's alright-- I thought you knew. Yeah, my Federal civilian employment is dependent on a security clearance as is my Army Reserve position.

Somewhat off-topic, but all this talk about security clearances makes my eyebrows raise. Do you hold a position of responsability/work with sensitive data or is it an universal requirement of some kind to get to work in the USA government?

Basically, they're just jerks. I'm not in a position where it'd be a big deal, but it would give someone ammo to use if they decided they didn't like me at some point in the future. It's not that I saw the WL documents, it would be that I went there against instructions ( ). I think it's stupid, since obviously people are going to be talking about it, and it is a major topic of discussion, but we're not allowed to get any cursory data on the subject. Case in point --me!

[Xisiqomelir]

I forgot, but hasn't the insurance file been around since "collateral murder"? Wasn't it on the fucking WikiLeaks frontpage? How could the media find out just now?

In order: yes, yes, actual journalism is considered "old-fashioned" and "too difficult" these days.

[mr friendly guy]

Ah, here we go:

Daily Mail
New York Post
Fox News

Interesting. From the nypost article

Nigel Smart, professor of cryptology at Bristol University, said even powerful military computers would be unable to crack the encryption. He said: “This isn’t something that can be broken with a modern computer. You need the key to open it.”

I am not sure how powerful military computers are meant to be, but they generally don't advertise how powerful they are (ie they aren't ranked in the list of fastest computers). Presumably this must be too difficult for even the most powerful civillian computers to break.

[Keevan_Colton]

To be honest I'd take the word of someone who is a professor of cryptology on this, I've met a few and generally they're the ones that the intelligence services call in to deal with this stuff.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Wikileaks is now being mirrored by the vice-president of Bolivia. Surreal. Paypal have also admitted they cut off Wikileaks on request from the US government.

It seems the bunch of scriptkiddies from the Scientology nonsense have also started DDoSing Mastercard and Postfinance. Buggered if I know why they think this is achieve anything.

[Mr Bean]

Wikileaks is now being mirrored by the vice-president of Bolivia. Surreal. Paypal have also admitted they cut off Wikileaks on request from the US government.

It seems the bunch of scriptkiddies from the Scientology nonsense have also started DDoSing Mastercard and Postfinance. Buggered if I know why they think this is achieve anything.

Positive PR? Anonymous is a bunch of 4channers who do things that are negative to negative operations? Further by it's nature Anonymous contains both scriptkiddies and actual virus/hacking experts. Saying it's Anonymous is kind of like say "It's some guys on the Internet" because by it's nature you become part of Anonymous by claiming to be part of Anonymous.

OAN

I am not sure how powerful military computers are meant to be, but they generally don't advertise how powerful they are (ie they aren't ranked in the list of fastest computers). Presumably this must be too difficult for even the most powerful civillian computers to break.

Bloated over-run military budgets do not run to huge massive self aware supercomputers. All current super computers are made up of hundreds or thousands of off the shelf processors hooked up to custom OS's and custom motherboard/chassis. The processors are all off the shelf, what they can do is know to the public, thus the Professor can say with some certainty that no military

Note a 256 key is 10^154 possible combinations which is 10 followed by 154 zeros assuming it's a hexadecimal only code which means over a (looks up name for large number) a duotrigintillion which is 10^99 of possible combinations. Meaning if the hypothetical super computer could try 1 quadrillion attempts per second it would only take it 3.1^131 years to try all possible combinations or far more than a trillion years.

*Edit math errors (I'm sure I'm still wrong but it's close enough)
*Edit changed from trillion attempts per second to quadrillion because we do have as of 2010 petaflop super computers, the top 500 super computers put together get us just 30 odd petaflops a second per Wiki.

[Thanas]

Paypal have also admitted they cut off Wikileaks on request from the US government.

Smart play here by the USA - you do not do things directly, you let friendly corporations do the work for you. It also avoids you being slammed in lawsuits.

[Thanas]

BTW:

The reality is the exact opposite -- literally -- of what Gitlin told TNR readers. WikiLeaks has posted to its website only 960 of the 251,297 diplomatic cables it has. Almost every one of these cables was first published by one of its newspaper partners which are disclosing them (The Guardian, the NYT, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Speigel, etc.). Moreover, the cables posted by WikiLeaks were not only first published by these newspapers, but contain the redactions applied by those papers to protect innocent people and otherwise minimize harm. Here is an AP article from yesterday detailing this process:

[T]he group is releasing only a trickle of documents at a time from a trove of a quarter-million, and only after considering advice from five news organizations with which it chose to share all of the material.

"They are releasing the documents we selected," Le Monde's managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann, said in an interview at the newspaper's Paris headquarters. . . .

"The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a question-and-answer session on The Guardian's website Friday.

Just as they did prior to releasing the Afghanistan war documents, WikiLeaks -- according to AP -- "appealed to the U.S. ambassador in London, asking the U.S. government to confidentially help him determine what needed to be redacted from the cables before they were publicly released." Although the U.S. -- again -- refused to give such guidance, WikiLeaks worked closely with these media outlets to ensure that any material which has no valid public interest value and could harm innocent people was withheld. And Assange's frequent commitments to engage in "harm minimization" when releasing documents gives the lie to Gitlin's assertion that he is "fighting for a world of total transparency."

I understand that the media has repeated over and over the false claim that WikiLeaks "dumped" all 250,000 diplomatic cables on the Internet -- which is presumably how this falsehood made its way into Gitlin's brain and then into his column -- but that's no excuse for him and TNR editors failing to undertake the most minimal due diligence (such as, say, checking WikiLeaks' website) before publishing this claim. I've emailed Gitlin and TNR Editor-in-Chief Franklin Foer early this morning and advised them of the need for a correction, but have heard nothing. I will post any reply I get. They're entitled to condemn WikiLeaks all they want, but not to propagate this factual falsehood.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html


This should put the stuff about wikileaks publishing stuff indiscriminately to rest.

[Thanas]

And now the comedy option: Source.

[Broomstick]

I am not sure how powerful military computers are meant to be, but they generally don't advertise how powerful they are (ie they aren't ranked in the list of fastest computers). Presumably this must be too difficult for even the most powerful civillian computers to break.

Military computers don't always go for speed, sometimes durability is more important. I've also heard that radiation-hardened computers and those able to resist EMP pulses are actually on the slow side, their chief virtue being able to withstand electronic assaults other computers can't. Of course, I expect the military has access to fast computers as well, my point is that "speed", "power" and other characteristics valued in the civilian world may not be what the military values most.

I'd expect the FBI and the CIA to have superior code-cracking abilities, but I'm no authority on the subject so I, too, am inclined to take the word of professionals over my wild ass guessing.

[Broomstick]

Paypal have also admitted they cut off Wikileaks on request from the US government.

Smart play here by the USA - you do not do things directly, you let friendly corporations do the work for you. It also avoids you being slammed in lawsuits.

Yep - the "friendly corporations" get hit by the lawsuit instead. This is why I've never been enthused when my employer announces "we're bidding on a government contract!". Dealing with the US government is a good way to get screwed, fucked, and/or assraped.

What? You didn't think we trusted our government either, did you?

[loomer]

It's just crossed my mind - remember how Wikileaks was on a big donation drive a while ago, asking for an amount that seemed entirely unreasonable? Well, it could be they'd anticipated the trouble with funding and hosting and were setting themselves up with the finances to continue releasing the cables even with the shitstorm.