Diplomatic cables leaked, uncensored and complete

[Lord Zentei]

I think one of the rights waived in signing enlistment papers is the right to a speedy trial, but I could be wrong.

I understand that there is a philosophy of "speedy trial" in military courts too, but that it (along with military law in general) differs from the civilian version. Perhaps the American members of the Mess can fill us in on that.

[loomer]

Not to ruin the argument, but has anyone actually seen this 'cables.csv'? I haven't, and I move in a few conspiracy and freedom of information circles, which typically have this sort of thing the second it gets out, and no one's seen the fucking thing except some journalists. Either people are passing it between offices on a DVD - possible, I'll admit - or they've got better security than wikileaks itself at this point, or there's something else going on.

Mind you, it's a little like the old question of "Do you know anybody from Bielefeld? Have you ever been to Bielefeld? Do you know anybody who has ever been to Bielefeld? Then how do you know Bielefeld exists?" and I'll happily admit I may have absorbed a little too much paranoia in my excursions into the conspiracy subculture.

[Thanas]

German news media report that indeed a Guardian journalist is to blame as he inadvertently revealed the password in a book about Wikileaks.

Of course, the Guardian now claimes otherwise and it is turning into a he-said-she-said game.

[Zaune]

How in the name of hell do you "inadvertently" reveal a password in a book? If he'd written it on a Post-It note and stuck it to his monitor and some intern got at his computer on his day off and uploaded the file to Bittorrent that'd be your standard PEBKAC Error Code 1: User is as dumb as a bag of hammers. But in a book? What did he do, include a screenshot of the instant messenger window where he received the file?

[Thanas]

He named the password in his book because he was told/believed it would only be a temporary file.

[Lord Zentei]

How in the name of hell do you "inadvertently" reveal a password in a book?

Took the words right out of my mouth.

He named the password in his book because he was told/believed it would only be a temporary file.

So he's either an idiot or he's full of shit.

[K. A. Pital]

He's both an idiot and now full of shit since he's trying to cover his idiot ass.

[Alyeska]

Wikileaks blames Guardian for leaking the password. Guardian reminds Wikileaks that the password was supposed to temporary and expire in under a day.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... -fault.ars

[Stark]

I hear publishing people's passwords is totally ok if you think they've changed now.

Lets hope publishing it was as part of some meaningful or informative piece of writing, and not just tacked on the end in Appendix A: Wikileaks Passwords.

[Alyeska]

Two wrongs really. Guardian should never have published the password. Wikileaks should have enacted better security. Neither had malice, just stupidity.

[Stark]

I think publishing passwords - even passwords you think aren't currently being used - is pretty much a Captain Dick move.

What if someone published every password everyone on SDN has ever changed? That'd make you a bit of a fuckstick, and to mitigate that you'd need there to be some serious validity to your reason (maybe, 'look at these guys always incrementing their password by one, hehehe but I didn't publish the CURRENT one so I didn't reveal any CURRENT passwords directly no sir I'm innocent').

If the password was 'published' because a book says soemthing like

... in the dim basements of WikiLeaks central, the plotters consider their security greater than that of the foolish Americans. The password BU5H5UCK5 is not just an element of security - it's a political statement in itself. While talking with a man in a beret and a prostitute...

it's just the writer being a giant tryhard, trying to add authority or cachet to his book deal by essentially name-dropping.

[Thanas]

Spiegel has a pretty comprehensive review of what happened in what order up.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 78,00.html


EDIT: Greenwald with a bit more of context and perspective.

[Lord Zentei]

WikiLeaks has published it's archives and thrown open its doors to all and sundry, drawing criticism from its former partners, including Der Spiegel and The Guardian:

London (CNN) -- WikiLeaks threw open the doors Friday to its archive of more than a quarter million secret U.S. diplomatic cables, unfiltered and unedited, exposing and possibly endangering confidential diplomatic sources.

The website made the controversial decision after losing control of the documents in a series of blunders.

WikiLeaks supporters posted the entire encrypted archive on the internet late last year. Separately, David Leigh, the investigative editor of the Guardian newspaper, formerly one of Wikileaks media partners, published the password to unlock the archive in his book "Inside WikiLeaks: Julian Assange's War on Secrecy".

Together, both pieces of information, unlocked the full trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, accessible to anyone on the web.

But WikiLeaks' decision to open its archive is likely to bring the cables to a much wider audience -- and has already sparked criticism that it will put people at risk.

A brief search through the cables shows that documents have not been redacted in any way. The names and other details of confidential diplomatic sources are on full display, despite being labelled with the instruction "strictly protect", including cables classified as "secret" or "confidential."

The Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel and El Pais, four of WikiLeaks' former media partners, condemned the release.

In a joint statement they said: "We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.

"Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough editing and clearance process.

"We will continue to defend our collaborative publishing endeavour. We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data -- indeed, we are united in condemning it. Today's decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone."

Reporters Without Borders announced late Thursday it was suspending a WikiLeaks "mirror site" because of concerns over potential risks to sources.

In an editorial, it wrote that on launching the mirror site late last year, Reporters Without Borders "said it defended 'the free flow of information online and the principle of the protection of sources, without which investigative journalism cannot exist.'

"As the protection of sources is now in question, Reporters Without Borders has decided to suspend the site pending further clarification."

WikiLeaks posted Friday on Twitter: "Shining a light on 45 years of U.S. 'diplomacy', it is time to open the archives forever." The organization also gave full instructions on how to download all 251,287 cables.

WikiLeaks appealed for members of the public to "crowdsource" the cables and publish their findings on Twitter under the hashtag #wlfind. Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks to an undefined, large group through an public call -- in this case to publish parts of the cables.

The reason, according to a statement posted by WikiLeaks on Twitter: "The entire world press does not have enough resources and there are substantial biases."

U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told CNN Thursday: "WikiLeaks did advise us of the impending release of information and of its intention to continue to release classified documents.

"We have made clear our views and concerns about illegally disclosed classified information and the continuing risk to individuals and national security that such releases cause.

"WikiLeaks has, however, ignored our requests not to release or disseminate any U.S. documents it may possess and has continued its well-established pattern of irresponsible, reckless, and frankly dangerous actions. We are not cooperating with them."

[Thanas]

WikiLeaks has published it's archives and thrown open its doors to all and sundry, drawing criticism from its former partners, including Der Spiegel and The Guardian.

Read the articles I linked to.

[Lord Zentei]

WikiLeaks has published it's archives and thrown open its doors to all and sundry, drawing criticism from its former partners, including Der Spiegel and The Guardian.

Read the articles I linked to.

I did. What's your point?

The article I linked to says that WikiLeaks threw open the doors to their archive after losing control of the documents. Their former partners criticized them for it (including The Guardian, who was partly to blame for the documents becoming public). Your links don't exactly refute that, they provide more information on how it went down. They don't say that WikiLeaks subsequently opened their own archives in response.

[Thanas]

My point is (and sorry if it wasn't clear) that Wikileaks pretty much had its hand forced here thanks to those idiots Leigh and Domscheit-Berg, who both, in an ideal world, would be sitting in jail right now.

[Lord Zentei]

In that case fair enough. But I'm not sure that I agree with WikiLeak's decision though, regardless of that fact. The cables were already out, opening their archives couldn't have changed things, could they? This only draws more criticism to themselves.

[Alyeska]

Unbiased media my ass. The media didn't even bother pick up the story until after Wikileaks released the cables, even though they had been in the open for a while now.

[Thanas]

In that case fair enough. But I'm not sure that I agree with WikiLeak's decision though, regardless of that fact. The cables were already out, opening their archives couldn't have changed things, could they? This only draws more criticism to themselves.

Yeah, I am not sure that I agree with it either.


My guess is that they did it just to make sure there was no chance of manipulation. Domscheit-Berg is quite the shady character (he was publicly excluded from the Organization of German Hackers etc. just for doing a lot of shady stuff) and my guess is that they did not trust him to not release spoiled databases or so. Comparing the various databases floating around is impossible, so they might have decided to at least put real versions out there.

That being said, there is no doubt IMO that this release will cause a lot of damage.