Questioning WikiLeaks Thread

[Montag]

Joe Wilson is not someone I want to politically align myself with. His company's business strategy involves provoking tribal war in Darfur. And I would be very reticent to trust CIA/State Department officials public opinions regarding the sacrosanctity of State Department secrets. That might include Larry Johnson as well.

I guess it's possible Zbig, Johnson and Wilson could all be trying to do the same thing (getting the same talking points/cheat sheets). There's so much coming at us right now, it reminds us why we shouldn't be blinding following a questionable "transparency" organization. Lead by a man who professionally lurks in the shadows (not by his choosing I'll admit, basing that on the official narrative of course, lol).

[Plutonia]

Oh look! A competing, more transparent, transparency operation!

The Internet Cannot Be Stopped: WikiLeaks Defectors About To Launch OpenLeaks
As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stews in a British jail, with a U.S. indictment reportedly imminent on top of the alleged Swedish sex crimes he was arrested for in the first place, some of his former staffers are already preparing to launch a competing site for whistleblowers called OpenLeaks. The new site will be headed up by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Assange’s former right-hand man who left last September, after bristling under Assange’s autocratic ways.

OpenLeaks will be structured a bit differently than WikiLeaks. It will be designed to accept leaks in a secure and anonymous manner, but won’t publish them itself. Instead, OpenLeaks will work with other publishers, including newspapers and websites around the world, which will asses the newsworthiness of any leaked documents, and edit and redact them as appropriate before releasing them.

In this way, OpenLeaks hopes to address one of the biggest early criticisms against WikiLeaks: that it publishes sensitive documents indiscriminately without regard for the safety of people who may be mentioned in those documents. This was certainly the case with the Afghanistan war documents, and is one of the main reason why the WikiLeaks defectors set up OpenLeaks. In an online chat at the time, in reference to the way Assange handled the first leak of Afghanistan war documents, Domscheit-Berg accused him of behaving “like some kind of emperor or slave trader.”

Although the same charge of recklessness is being slung at WikiLeaks over the current Cablegate documents, it seems to have learned from its first mistake. All the Cablegate documents so far have been released piecemeal in partnership with newspapers around the world, whose editorial staff vets and redacts names from them as appropriate.

More than anything, what the existence of OpenLeaks shows is that even if WikiLeaks gets shut down, other services are waiting in the sidelines to pop up to and take its place. Thanks to the Internet, the leakers cannot be stopped.

Get the t-shirt here!

[AlicetheKurious]

Cyber guerrillas can help US
by Evgeny Morozov

December 3, 2010
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15 ... z17wUC5xbD

Montag, this article is incredible. As far as I'm concerned, it goes to the very heart of what Wikileaks is and two possible directions where this all could be going. The writer is acknowledging, if you read between the lines, that from the American imperial point of view, Wikileaks' hype is much worse than its bite:

Alternatively, WikiLeaks could continue moving in the more sensible direction that, in some ways, it is already on: collaborating with traditional media, redacting sensitive files, and offering those in a position to know about potential victims of releases the chance to vet the data. It is a choice between WikiLeaks becoming a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International. And forcing Mr Assange to go down the former route would have far more disastrous implications for American interests than anything revealed by the current dump of diplomatic cables.

Mentioning the Red Brigades was a nice touch.

On page 8 of this thread, JackRiddler wrote:

And the practical upshot of that is what? Should we all join in the condemnation of Assange? You see, even if the unknowns are as you wish to have them, the big leap forward toward suppressing the Internet that you posit is going to be conducted by the means of taking away Assange's rights to disseminate information, and generalizing that to take away the rights of the rest of us to do so.

Very clever if they've set it up that way, but what's your slogan for action? "JAIL JULIAN ASSANGE"?

I didn't answer because though I knew in my heart what I hoped to see happen, I wasn't able to formulate it coherently. Morozov, in the short essay that Montag posted, does it for me. If, as I firmly believe, the Wikileaks/Assange thing is a psyop by world's "leading authority" on Game Theory and false flag, misdirection and deception, I hope the whole operation slips out of "their" hands and that in their hubris, they've unleashed forces that they can't ever get back under control. I hope that, in one of those wonderful ironies that sometimes occur, Wikileaks actually becomes what it now only pretends to be.

The cynical and hypocritical Mr. Morozov proposes two possible scenarios:

America is yet to realise, however, that it is in its own interest to be nice to Mr Assange. If harmed, he would become a martyr. WikiLeaks could be transformed from a handful of volunteers to a global movement of politicised geeks clamouring for revenge. Today’s WikiLeaks talks the language of transparency, but it could quickly develop a new code of explicit anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism and anti-globalisation.

Mr Assange is more of a college sophomore still undecided about his major, than a man with a plan. There are two paths his creation could now take. One would see a radical global network systematically challenging those in power – governments and companies alike – just for the sake of undermining “the system”. Its current quest for transparency, however sloppily executed, could soon become an exercise in anger, one leak at a time.

Alternatively, WikiLeaks could continue moving in the more sensible direction that, in some ways, it is already on: collaborating with traditional media, redacting sensitive files, and offering those in a position to know about potential victims of releases the chance to vet the data. It is a choice between WikiLeaks becoming a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International. And forcing Mr Assange to go down the former route would have far more disastrous implications for American interests than anything revealed by the current dump of diplomatic cables.

Given the nightmare that has been steadily unfolding over the last 10 years or so, I would hate to see what may be the last real hope for change for a long time to come, hinge on whether Mr. Assange is made a "martyr" or is encouraged to "continue moving in the more sensible direction that...[he] is already on." There's no moral or rational reason to leave the ball in the imperialists' court. Looking at Plutonia's latest post gives me some hope that it soon will be too late, or even that it already is.

[Plutonia]

One would see a radical global network systematically challenging those in power – governments and companies alike...

Wikileaks is bigger than Julian Assange: Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of the hacker magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and organizer of the HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference tells Amy Goodman that Wikileaks is a global network of hackers:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/27/wikileaks_is_not_one_personwe_are

There's no moral or rational reason to leave the ball in the imperialists' court. Looking at Plutonia's latest post gives me some hope that it soon will be too late, or even that it already is.

Alice I can't figure out what you are saying here. Hope that it's too late for what?

[AlicetheKurious]

Alice I can't figure out what you are saying here. Hope that it's too late for what?

Too late to put the genie back in the bottle, regardless of how Mr. Assange or the imperialists decide to play this.

[Montag]

Montag, this article is incredible. As far as I'm concerned, it goes to the very heart of what Wikileaks is and two possible directions where this all could be going. The writer is acknowledging, if you read between the lines, that from the American imperial point of view, Wikileaks' hype is much worse than its bite:

Alternatively, WikiLeaks could continue moving in the more sensible direction that, in some ways, it is already on: collaborating with traditional media, redacting sensitive files, and offering those in a position to know about potential victims of releases the chance to vet the data. It is a choice between WikiLeaks becoming a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International. And forcing Mr Assange to go down the former route would have far more disastrous implications for American interests than anything revealed by the current dump of diplomatic cables.

Alice,
What I found interesting in that article is a comparison to Human Rights Watch. That is a Soros groups that has been used to demonize Venezuela/Chavez. Ngos and imperialism have a longstanding relationship. A lot of things kind of start out "rogue" or "revolutionary" and then get swallowed up by the system.

Human Rights Watch Report Under Fire
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45200

Everything we are hearing about Assange is that he is "left-wing" he received education at the Australian National University in mathematics where he is said to have objected to many of his fellow students going to work for the U.S. Defense Department. This article says he is a libertarian, just like the TSA protestors were. Of course, that may be nothing, but that is the first that I've heard that.

[Montag]

I don't think Soros controls the world -- like Glenn Beck, lol. But his tentacles are everywhere, the guy who wrote the FT article works with the New American foundation of which on their leadership council is the president of Soros fund management.

[vanlose kid]

Digging Deeper in Years into Wikileaks’ Treasure Chest- Part I
by Sibel Edmonds

December 3, 2010
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/12 ... st-part-i/

A Fairly Short List of Goodies for Wikileaks Santa

I have been waiting. I have been searching and reading. I have been waiting impatiently while searching and reading the initial pile of recently released Wikileaks’ documents, specifically those pertaining to Turkey. I have received many e-mails asking me impatiently to comment and provide my analyses on this latest international exposé. I am being impatiently patient in doing so, and here is a brief explanation as to why:

There’s so much I don’t know. I don’t know how real this entire deal actually is. If truly ‘real,’ I don’t know how far and deep the involved documents actually go. Many of my trusted friends tell me it is indeed real. A few trusted friends and advisors are ringing cautionary bells. I am truly pro transparency, and considering the abusive nature and use of secrecy and classification, I am mostly pro leak when the information in question involves criminal deeds and intentions.

During the previous release (Afghan Files), in my gut I was a bit bothered by the direction of some of these released documents – pointing towards Iran – which was generously milked by the US mainstream media. But then again, that was only based on some gut feeling, and I didn’t want to pour out analyses and opinion solely based on ‘some gut feeling.’ So far, some of the first cache of the recently released documents is strongly pointing towards Iran, and that too is bothering the heck out of me. But again, in my gut, and that alone is not sufficient to make me sit and analyze and interpret. So this is why I’ve been impatiently patient, waiting for more. Meanwhile, while I am restraining myself and being uncharacteristically patient, I am going to go on record and tell you what I expect to see if this whole deal proves to be completely genuine, and if the obtained files go as far as they say they go.

I prepared a long list of items (documented diplomatic correspondence) I know to be included in diplomatic communications which took place between the mid 90s and early 2000s. I know I have a fairly large credit due with Santa since I’ve never made a wish list for him; ever. He owes me. He knows it and I know it. While that justifies my very long list (now you know I am old!!) I am going to exercise a little bit of fairness and present my list in manageable quantities and intervals. I hope my Wikileaks Santa has ‘word/phrase search’ technology at his disposal, because that would make his task of sorting and finding my requested items a far easier task. Okay, here it goes Wikileaks Santa, my first list for you, may your immensely large goodies bag contain these items highly beneficial for not only me but many others here and abroad:

1- 1994-1996: Communication pertaining to joint US-Turkey operations against former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev, including at least one ‘mock’ assassination attempt in Azerbaijan.

2- 1994-1997: Communication between the US State Department, US Embassy in Ankara, and Turkish Prime Minister’s office pertaining to using the Azerbaijan president’s family members’ (including his son Ilham Aliyev) casino debts accumulated in Turkey as means to blackmail on the Pipeline project and Russia’s pending proposal.

3- 1994-1995: Communication pertaining to US-Turkey coordination on transferring several groups of Mujahideen from Pakistan-Afghanistan-Saudi Arabia to Bosnia via Turkey using Turkish special military planes into Turkey, and after granting Mujahideen Turkish passports, via NATO planes from Turkey to several Balkan countries, including Romania.

4- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US involvement in Turkish casino expansions in Azerbaijan and free-ownership (partnership) being granted to key Azeri political figures and their family members for future ‘leverage’.

5- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US ‘off the book’ money transfers to Turkish paramilitary members and the president of Kazakhstan using several accounts in Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank.

6- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US ‘off the book’ wire transfers through Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank to two Chechen leaders with Turkish citizenship for prearranged arm procurement deals via front dealers in Dubai.

7- 1995-1997: Communication pertaining to US negotiation with two top Turkish casino owners for casino projects to be established in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan with Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank acting as the primary banking conduit; the bank’s primary role: conduit for payments obtained for US weapons’ shipment transfer to ‘black-listed’ recipients via False End User Certificates

8- 1995: Communications pertaining to special requests by the US Embassy in Ankara for the immediate release of Yasar OZ, who was detained by DEA in New Jersey on heroin importing and distribution charges. Per US State Department order Yasar OZ was immediately released and his file became classified.

9- 1996-1997: Communication pertaining to ‘evacuating’ (pulling out) then US Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman, due to a ‘secret’ warrant by the Susurluk commission seeking his testimony on involvement with illegal Turkish paramilitary operations targeting the Caucasus and Central Asia.

10- 1997-1998: Communication pertaining to a ‘special request’ for urgently granting US residency to Turkish paramilitary director Mehmet Eymur, who directed several criminal operations, including assassination plots against foreign leaders, as part of joint US- ‘Special’ NATO operations in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Report: Most of the WikiLeaks cables date from 2004

Posted : Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:27:00 GMT
Category : US (World)
News Alerts by Email ( click here )
US World News | Home

Washington/Berlin - The first details of the illicit publication of US classified diplomatic cables and documents were leaking Saturday on the internet.

The US State Department was bracing for the publication by WikiLeaks of millions of confidential messages and reports sometime in the coming days. Germany's Der Spiegel, London's Guardian and the US New York Times were expected to simultaneously release their stories and links to the documents in the coming day or so.

The documents are expected to contain classified and embarrassing details or communications about other countries. They will represent the third batch of secret US documents posted by the upstart WikiLeaks organization.

The German website netzpolitik.org reported Saturday on a brief posting on Der Spiegel online that hinted at some details of the WikiLeaks documents. Der Spiegel took the posting down after only a brief appearance online.

According to the link to the now-disappeared article, the documents will include 250,000 diplomatic cables sent by US representatives all over the world to the State Department in Washington.

Most of the documents were transmitted since 2004, only one document dates back to 1966, netzpolitik.org reported.

More than 9,000 documents stem from the first two months this year. Spiegel Online did not comment to The German Press Agency dpa on the veracity of netzpolitik's report or on whether the summary was posted in error.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has reached out to Germany and a handful of other countries to contain the diplomatic fallout ahead of the WikiLeaks publication, the State Department said Saturday.

Only a small portion of the documents are classified as secret, that is, with the second highest secrecy level. An estimated 4,330 documents were so confidential that they were not to have been made accessible to foreigners.

None of the documents that WikiLeaks obtained were classified as "top secret," according to the alleged Spiegel report.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news ... -2004.html

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WikiLeaks embassy cables: download the key data and see how it breaks down
The WikiLeaks embassy cables release has produced a lot of stories but does it produce any useful data? We explain what it includes and how it breaks down - plus you can download the key data for every cable
• Get the data
• Wikileaks cables: the interactive guide to what we've published



• Remember this is the date, time, sender and tags for each cable - NOT the text of the cable itself

WikiLeaks embassy cables revelations cover a huge dataset of official documents: 251,287 dispatches, from more than 250 worldwide US embassies and consulates. It's a unique picture of US diplomatic language - including over 50,000 documents covering the current Obama administration. But what does the data include?

Wikileaks cables: word count of the stories so far. Graphic: Mark McCormick The cables themselves come via the huge Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet. SIPRNet is the worldwide US military internet system, kept separate from the ordinary civilian internet and run by the Department of Defense in Washington. Since the attacks of September 2001, there has been a move in the US to link up archives of government information, in the hope that key intelligence no longer gets trapped in information silos or "stovepipes". An increasing number of US embassies have become linked to SIPRNet over the past decade, so that military and diplomatic information can be shared. By 2002, 125 embassies were on SIPRNet: by 2005, the number had risen to 180, and by now the vast majority of US missions worldwide are linked to the system - which is why the bulk of these cables are from 2008 and 2009.

An embassy dispatch marked SIPDIS is automatically downloaded on to its embassy classified website. From there, it can be accessed not only by anyone in the state department, but also by anyone in the US military who has a security clearance up to the 'Secret' level, a password, and a computer connected to SIPRNet - which astonishingly covers over 3m people. There are several layers of data in here - ranging up to the "SECRET NOFORN" level, which means that they are designed never be shown to non-US citizens. Instead, they are supposed to be read by officials in Washington up to the level of current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The cables are normally drafted by the local ambassador or subordinates. The "Top Secret" and above foreign intelligence documents cannot be accessed from SIPRNet.

Google fusion table storyline of cables sent in the weeks around 9/11 - click on a cable to find out the tags. Get the fullscreen version here or click here to download the data We've broken down the data for you - and you can download the basic details of every cable (without the actual content) below. Each cable is essentially very structured data. This is what's included:

• A source, ie the embassy or body which sent it
• There is a list of recipients - normally cables were sent to a number of other embassies and bodies
• There is a subject field - basically a summary of the cable
• Tags - each cable was tagged with a number of keyword abbreviations. We've put together a downloadable Google glossary spreadsheet of most of the important ones here
• Body text - the cable itself. We have opted not to publish these in full for obvious security reasons

Thanks to Guardian developer Daithi Ó Crualaoich we've performed some analysis of the data - which you can download for yourself below. The key points are:

• 251,287 dispatches
• The state department sent the most cables in this set, followed by Ankara in Turkey, then Baghdad and Tokyo
• 97,070 of the documents were classified as 'Confidential'
• 28,760 of them were given the tag 'PTER' which stands for prevention of terrorism
• The earliest of the cables is from 1966 - with most, 56,813, from 2009

What can you do with the data?


Download the data

• DATA: every cable with date, time and tags, EXCLUDING BODY TEXT (via Google fusion tables, subject to heavy traffic)
• DATA: every cable with date, time and tags, EXCLUDING BODY TEXT (Zipped CSV file, 3.1MB)
• DATA: our analysis of the cable by location and tag
• DATA: glossary of keywords and tags

World government data
• Search the world's government with our gateway

Development and aid data
• Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?
• Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group
• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory
• Follow us on Twitter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... ables-data

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[psynapz]

This system will work only with a .p2p TLD, other TLDs will be passed through to be handled by the default DNS server. This is stated in the project’s goal as:

Create an application that runs as a service and hooks into the host’s DNS system to catch all requests to the .p2p TLD while passing all other requests cleanly through. Requests for the .p2p TLD will be redirected to a locally hosted DNS database.

No idea what that means.

I'll translate... let me know if this makes sense:

TLD = "Top Level Domain", e.g. .com, .net, .uk, etc. -- when you register a domain for a web site (say, plutonia.com), you are actually requesting the delegation of control of a subdomain off of one of these root domains (in this case, .com.), which are each managed by some institution or another.

The master list of which domains point to which web servers is decentralized across several root servers operated by various organizations all over the globe for redundancy and load-sharing purposes, but in any case, some corporation controls the domains that get added to that list for any given TLD, and that's why they charge you for it -- somebody charges them.

Your ISP regularly caches at least the popular portions of the master list from the nearest root DNS server and handles all your DNS requests (made when you type in an address or click on a link or open Skype or whatever) based on its local cache. When you (or your WiFi router) connects to your ISP, it receives a short list of DNS servers operated by the ISP, and all your Internet-capable programs (like your web browser) perform DNS lookups using those servers, which means you're leaving it up to your ISP to tell your browser where to find google.com's nearest servers.

What they're saying above is that they're creating an alternative infrastructure to all this which would have no heriarchial delegation as I've described, but instead p2p, hence deciding they'll name their TLD .p2p. They could register with ICANN to become the operator for .p2p on the regular DNS, and sell registrations for like US$6-10/year as they do with .com addresses, but instead they want to use their own distributed system for managing these name-to-address lookup tables, which they can't and wouldn't want to involve ICANN in, so they need some outside way of re-routing those DNS requests to the p2p system, which is comprised 100% of client programs running on end users' systems to begin with, so the most sensible thing to do would be for that client program to watch your computer for DNS lookup requests being made for .p2p addresses and interceding before your ISP is queried (and returns a non-existant-domain error) so that the p2p DNS network is queried instead. This would be operating-system-specific software (or WiFi router firmware, which would be nice) to perform this interception and alternative lookup at the networking level so no matter what type of program is asking for it (browsers, IM/chat/videoconf, FTP, etc.), the .p2p addresses are handled separately but transparently from the rest of the DNS requests.

Did that make sense?

[Plutonia]

Alice I can't figure out what you are saying here. Hope that it's too late for what?

Too late to put the genie back in the bottle, regardless of how Mr. Assange or the imperialists decide to play this.

The genie being that Wikileaks/Assange is Mossad?

I'm curious, Alice, what are the tells that signal Israeli involvement to you?

[Plutonia]

Ergh!

Double posted.

[Plutonia]

Did that make sense?

Yes it did, thanks for taking the time Psy.

So this would be a way to "route around" a block in the system and, if I may speculate about systems theory for a moment, this would be understood to be a temporary rather than institutional measure because the operational model is hydrological ie: more like water flowing through a landscape than a highway- would that be right?

[barracuda]

What I found interesting in that article is a comparison to Human Rights Watch. That is a Soros groups that has been used to demonize Venezuela/Chavez.

Human Rights Watch is not a Soros organization. Yes, he's a big donor, but he's certainly not the only one. And HRW doesn't do donor-advised funds, fercrissakes. HRW has been reliably deplored as anti-semitic by The New Republic and other neo-con outlets for deploring the Palestinian right of return and fairly depicting Israel's conduct in a harsher light than Lebanon's due to the fact that it is actually far worse in full light of reality.

Besides, you'd be hard pressed to view Soros as some sort of cheerleader for Israel, at least based upon his publicly available statements.

On Israel, America and AIPAC

[justdrew]

Did that make sense?

Yes it did, thanks for taking the time Psy.

So this would be a way to "route around" a block in the system and, if I may speculate about systems theory for a moment, this would be understood to be a temporary rather than institutional measure because the operational model is hydrological ie: more like water flowing through a landscape than a highway- would that be right?

I almost started writing an explanation of DNS, but caught myself...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System

the "p2p DNS" new system will be based on this tech...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table