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by psynapz » Tue Dec 21, 2010 2:06 pm
nathan28 wrote:DEAR NUTJOBS: THIS LEAK PORTRAYS ISRAEL IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT.WikiLeaks: Israel Suspected of Assassinating Syrian Official in 2008
by yossarian » Tue Dec 21, 2010 3:44 pm
psynapz wrote:nathan28 wrote:DEAR NUTJOBS: THIS LEAK PORTRAYS ISRAEL IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT.WikiLeaks: Israel Suspected of Assassinating Syrian Official in 2008
Well... it does strike fear into the hearts of their enemies...
(that's me ducking from you, not them ducking from Israel)
...From these three pieces of information, they had to decide whether or not each individual's statements were inconsistent. There were strong differences in these evaluations, with subjects much more likely to interpret statements by the candidate they opposed as contradictory.
by vanlose kid » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:54 pm
nathan28 wrote:I can't find this cable under those listed as originating from the Damascus office, and don't have any text to search for--does anyone have a link or know where it's reported? On edit I'm browsing 213.251.145.96 .
DEAR NUTJOBS: THIS LEAK PORTRAYS ISRAEL IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT.WikiLeaks: Israel Suspected of Assassinating Syrian Official in 2008
A third leaked cable reveals that the U.S. embassy in Damascus suspected that Israel was behind the 2008 assassination of a top security aide to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. General Muhammad Suleiman was shot dead by a sniper in the Syrian city of Tartous on August 1, 2008. At the time, Suleiman was special presidential adviser for arms procurement and strategic weapons.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/21/headlines
by Plutonia » Tue Dec 21, 2010 5:35 pm
Czech version of Wikileaks will turn to The Pirate Bay for help
By Matthew Lasar | Last updated about 22 hours ago
It appears that the Czech Pirate Party's attempt to set up its own Wikileaks site isn't going as smoothly as the group hoped. The CPP (Ceska piratska strana) announced the inauguration of its "PirateLeaks" information service earlier this month, to be officially launched on Tuesday. But now the organization says that there will be some delays due to security issues.
"We could host content immediately; that's straightforward," Jakub Michálek, editor-in-chief of PirateLeaks explained to the Czech Position news service. "But what isn't straightforward is insuring 100 percent anonymity for the informers."
A way to influence politics
The Czech Pirate Party is similar to the Swedish Pirate Party, which advocates for the rights of citizens to share files and publish or access information. The CPP registered as a political entity in June of 2009, and about a year later garnered 0.8 percent of the vote in the Czech Republic's Chamber of Deputies Parliamentary election.
The group has been a big supporter of Wikileaks for quite a while. In May it launched a "pirate copy" of the site—not just a redirect, "but an exact copy, which will be regularly updated," according to a translation of the announcement.
As for establishing its own version of Wikileaks, the CPP describes the project as a "great way to influence regional politics." PirateLeaks will faithfully operate along the Wikileaks methodology—soliciting documents from institutional insiders and getting help from news media in verifying their authenticity.
Dead end wanted
The big problem, as Michálek sees it, is how to create a portal that protects the identity of sources. And so the party says it will turn to a hosting company owned by the founders of torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij's PeRiQuito (PRQ).
No kidding around, PRQ boasts on its English page :
Refugee hosting
Our boundless commitment to free speech has been tested and proven over and over again. If it is legal in Sweden, we will host it, and will keep it up regardless of any pressure to take it down.
Confidentiality
We defend your integrity to the end. With our discreet customer relations policy we don't even have to know who you are, and if we do[,] we will keep that knowledge strictly confidential.
This is obviously what PirateLeaks wants to hear. The hope is that is any telco or government agency that tries to probe into the site "will reach a dead end" at PRQ, Michálek explained.
The CPP became a bit more nervous about this project after prominent Czech Republic Christian Democrat Cyril Svoboda declared that PirateLeaks supporters "belong behind bars." In response, CPP activists say they'll petition the government to rename Svoboda (which means "freedom" in Czech) "Cyril Censor."
There is no sure date yet for the launch of PirateLeaks, according to Czech Position.
by The Hacktivist » Tue Dec 21, 2010 5:49 pm
Eric Holder: "The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens -- raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born," he said.
by Plutonia » Tue Dec 21, 2010 5:50 pm
Video: The Time Julian Assange Hacked the Pentagon Kim Zetter December 20, 2010
The nearly 500,000 U.S. Army documents published by WikiLeaks this year didn’t mark the first time founder Julian Assange thumbed his nose at the Pentagon. A new documentary about the secret-spilling site captures Assange in a rare moment of reminiscence as he reflects on his hacking of a Defense Department network in the 1990s, where he evidently kept a backdoor in place for some two years.
The documentary WikiRebels, produced by Sveriges Television in Sweden, was recently posted on the web in four parts. It provides an overview of Assange and WikiLeaks from the time the site published a classified Army video last April showing an Apache gunship attack in Iraq, to the latest release of U.S. State Department cables.
It also includes interviews with several current and former WikiLeaks activists, including former spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Icelandic volunteer Herbert Snorrason, who discuss the internal conflict at WikiLeaks that led them to resign.
It’s a compelling documentary, even if it provides little new information. In one segment (above, at 3:53), Assange reflects on his work as a black hat hacker in the early 1990s, recalling wistfully how he and others hacked into the Pentagon’s Security Coordination Center. The SCC was a Chantilly, Virginia, office that handled computer security issues for MilNet — later NIPRNet — the U.S. military’s portion of the public internet.
“We had a backdoor in the U.S. military Security Coordination Center –- this is the peak security for controlling the security of MilNet … U.S. military internet. We had total control over this for two years,” he tells the interviewer.
A backdoor refers to a malicious tool that hackers place on a network, once they’ve gained entry, to provide them with easy and continued surreptitious access to the network, allowing them to come and go at will.
The Defense Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the decades-old hack. The statute of limitations, it should be noted, has long since expired.
The intrusion was previously mentioned in an early version of Assange’s bio published by WikiLeaks when the site launched in 2006, which reads in part: “As a teenager he became Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker. After referrals from the United States government his phone was tapped in 1991, and he spent six years in court. He hacked thousand of systems, including the Pentagon and the U.S. military Security Coordination Center.”
Assange, who used the handles “Proff” and “Mendax” during his black hat years, teamed up with two other hackers who called themselves the International Subversives. The group broke into networks in Europe and the U.S., including networks belonging to NASA, the Defense Department and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Assange continued the activity until he was 21, when he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and other related activities and ultimately pleaded guilty to 25 charges.
Currently, U.S. authorities are reportedly trying to build a conspiracy case against Assange for his WikiLeaks work that would likely revolve around the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the federal anti-hacking legislation.
Alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, who is suspected of leaking the Iraq video and war documents to Assange, has been charged under the CFAA and the Espionage Act. The CFAA makes it illegal to gain unauthorized access on a computer network or to exceed authorized access, as Manning is accused of doing.
If U.S. authorities can show that Assange encouraged or advised Manning on how to obtain the classified documents or how to cover his tracks after downloading them, they could charge Assange with conspiracy in Manning’s unauthorized computer activity.
by hanshan » Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:57 pm
psynapz wrote:nathan28 wrote:XCKD or whatever the guy's name is clearly can't understand that "diplomatic" secrecy is a different animal from personal privacy because both involve keeping things from public awareness.
[...]
Same thing with the nonsense about "diplomacy". I'm not sure how sealing bank documents about terrorist funding inside diplomatic pouches constitutes "diplomacy," especially for 9/11 Truthtards who would be interested in why the US State Dep't (with a special appearance by the CIA) would be aiding a document destruction campaign that might be rather embarrassing, but, well, that's why I'm not a Truthtard.
Not sure how to contextualize this one from XKCD for you then, nathan, so I think I'll leave it ironically decontextualized:
I personally hate it almost as bad as that insipid and trollish NWO Family Circus drawing bastard. Yet I love about 40% of the rest of the XKCD comics. He's a pure math geek, and arrogantly so; IMHO, he should probably stick to that end of the philosophical spectrum.
Sticks and circles may break our memes but games will never stop us.
by AlicetheKurious » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:29 pm
AlicetheKurious wrote:tazmic wrote:So let me see if I understand...
No, you didn't.
I don't know why you guys are making such a big deal of this. All I know is a) al-Haqiqa is not a reputable or trustworthy source; and b) it is the ONLY source for the allegation. More than that, I can't say.
21 December 2010
Daniel Domscheit-Berg Denies Rumor of Assange-Israeli Deals
Daniel Domscheit-Berg writes [with permission to publish]:
21 December 2010
I have been notified about the general rumour a few weeks ago, and shortly after about the appearance of me as involved in those allegations. I have never spoken to anyone at syriatruth or that reporter that is making these claims, nor do I know anything about any deals JA has allegedly made with Israelis.
Given what is appearing in the Scandinavian area with the involvement of Shamir and Wahlstrom I wouldn't actually expect that to happen either. In any case, this latter statement is just my personal judgement.
I once received a test mail from a nizar.nayouf@syriatruth.net, and then a followup regarding OpenLeaks questions. A contact request to him after hearing of the allegations was not replied to.
In the last week or so I have been contacted by Israeli TV about this, as well as French Le Point today. Those are the only media outfits so far that seem to have taken interest. Other than that it seems to be mainly spreading via weird Russian and religious forums, at least from as much as I am aware of.
As I read somewhere that this alleged reporter I allegedly talked to works for Hareetz, I have asked the folks from Israeli TV if they could help find out who that is, and how to contact her. They replied that there doesn't seem to be anyone by that name. So obviously, which was my gut feeling also, that person does not exist. Why that rumour is circulated, I dont know. I have my feelings about that and think we should give it some more time to uncover itself. Link
by wintler2 » Tue Dec 21, 2010 8:44 pm
by Plutonia » Tue Dec 21, 2010 9:12 pm
Prospect of WikiLeaks Dump Poses Problems for Regulators
Tuesday, 21 Dec 2010; Andrew Ross Sorkin; The New York Times
“Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings.”
That was according to Forbes magazine, which interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, last month. The excerpt sparked a global cacophony of speculation that a bank — perhaps Bank of America — may be the next target of the inscrutable “high-tech terrorist.” (Such was Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s description of Mr. Assange over the weekend.)
And just Monday, Mr. Assange told a reporter from The Times of London that he had enough material to make bosses of a major bank resign.
You’d think that bank executives would be quaking in their Gucci loafers.
But guess who may be even more nervous about the possible data dump?
Regulators in Washington.
It seems the prospect of gigabytes of e-mail and other documents from financial institutions can be viewed one of two ways: as a treasure trove for regulators to scrutinize — or as an embarrassment for the United States government, which has spent millions of dollars investigating Wall Street in the last two years without a scalp to show for it.
Inside the Securities and Exchange Commission, the organization is bracing for a public outcry, according to people who have recently spoken with some high-ranking officials about the prospect of a WikiLeaks release of bank documents.
“The S.E.C. could be on the horns of a dilemma,” said Mark C. Zauderer, a veteran corporate litigator at Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer.
A spokesman for the S.E.C. declined to comment.
Of course, no one knows what information Mr. Assange actually has or how damaging it could be to any financial firm. In truth, it is hard to believe any e-mails could be that shocking. The scuttlebutt is that WikiLeaks will reveal documents in which bankers discussed how they duped a client, how they dressed up their numbers or even how they tried to pull one over on regulators. Sadly, perhaps cynically, that’s almost to be expected.
The big surprise would be that such chicanery was documented, in black and white, and that regulators hadn’t found it yet — or worse, they had found it and did nothing about it.
Indeed, legal experts say that if evidence emerged of shady dealings, the biggest problem regulators may face would be explaining to the public why they had not brought charges against a bank.
“The public will often look at the information out of context and not understand,” said Robert A. Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at McCarter & English.
Another difficult issue for regulators will be what to do if damning information is released. Can the S.E.C. or the Justice Department use WikiLeaks as a source to build a case?
Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, has said his department is investigating WikiLeaks’s earlier release of classified cables from the State Department as a potential criminal act.
“To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, who put at risk the assets and the people I have described, they will be held responsible; they will be held accountable,” Mr. Holder said at a news conference.
Legally, the government is allowed to use any publicly available information — as long as the government wasn’t involved in illegally obtaining the information itself. So prosecutors could potentially use any WikiLeaks information to subpoena bank documents and build a case around them.
“It’s the theory of the fruit of the poisonous tree,” said Jay Fahy, a former federal prosecutor who now specializes in white-collar crime at the law firm Fahy Choi.
Mr. Assange, too, faces his own legal risk, one that so far has gone unspoken: bank confidentiality laws. In many cases, it is a crime to disclose the private account information of individuals, said Mr. Fahy.
“That’s a violation,” Mr. Fahy said.
Still, the optics of how the government reacts to whatever WikiLeaks releases will pose a challenge.
“It puts them in a terrible bind,” said Mr. Mintz. No matter how the government reacts, “there would be an appearance of a profound inconsistency. It’s less of a legal matter than it is an appearance issue.”
by vanlose kid » Tue Dec 21, 2010 11:39 pm
by vanlose kid » Wed Dec 22, 2010 12:06 am
by hanshan » Wed Dec 22, 2010 8:25 am
vanlose kid wrote:Obama Prepares Executive Order For Indefinite Detention
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/21/2010 19:15 -0500
First president Obama becomes Bush in all but name with respect to his predecessor's economic policies, and now he follows by espousing Bush's interpretation of "civil rights" as well. According to Pro Publica, the White House is preparing an Executive Order for indefinite detention. And while the premise behind a comparable draft has been circulating around for 18 months, the uptake was seen as problematic. The "humanitarian" premise behind the order is that it will "provide for the periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay... and allow for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances change." That's the theory. The "practice" is that the Order will, as the name implies, afford the administration the option of "indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial." In other words all those, and we assume that the Order is not merely targeting those involved in September 11, and is wider in its scope, who are perceived by the administration as "high value detainees" will be denied due process, and will be held in captivity essentially indefinitely with no legal recourse, for as long as the "review process" so deems fit. As for the "theory" aspect, Politico summarizes just how much of a bold lie Obama's promise two years ago to close Guantanamo has become: "Nearly two years after Obama's pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected." In other words, Obama has one upped Dubya not only when it comes to Republican economic policy, but has in fact surpassed his abrogation of basic human rights. And seeing how in the aftermath of the Assange arrest (speaking of which, Julian better run following this announcement), it is only a matter of time before that whole 'Internet free speech' premise is perceived to be a form of treason, by the likes of Biden, Palin and Lieberman, potentially punishable if not by death, then certainly indefinite, lifelong detention.
More from Pro Publica:
After taking office, the Obama administration reviewed the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay and chose 48 prisoners for indefinite detention. Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that number will likely increase in coming months as some detainees are moved from a transfer category to a continued detention category.
If signed by President Obama, the new order will provide added review for detainees designated for long-term detention. The order, which is being drafted jointly by White House staff in the National Security council and the White House counsel, will offer detainees in this category a minimal review every six months and then a more lengthy annual review. Detainees will have access to an attorney, to some evidence against them and the ability to challenge their continued detention.
Prisoners who have been deemed "high-value detainees," including the alleged conspirators of the 2001 attacks, have been designated for prosecution in civilian or military courts.
In 2008, Guantanamo detainees won the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in court. The executive order aims to create an executive branch review which would occur separately from the court review and would weigh the necessity of the detention, rather than its lawfulness, officials said.
"Perhaps the dangerousness of the detainee's country of origin could change, or the group that the detainee is affiliated with could cease to exist," one official explained.
Sorry to interject, but the humor factor of the possibility that someone would be released from Guantanamo after the CIA lowers the threat level of i.e., Yemen from burgndy to mauve, is just as powerful as that of someone stating that Bernanke will ever stop printing monetary ones and zeroes.
At the end of the day, this is merely another example of what happens when Congress refuses to play ball:
Weeks later, administration officials said the White House had decided to work with Congress on indefinite detention, rather than through Executive Order. But by the end of 2009, the White House had said it would not support legislation.
Then, in 2010, a government task force on Guantanamo completed a year-long review that placed 48 detainees in long-term detention. In its report, task force members said those detainees would be "subject to periodic Executive Branch review."
..
Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Association, agreed that "more review is better." But he said that an executive order would only "normalize and institutionalize indefinite detention and other policies," that were set in place by the Bush administration.
While we hope we are wrong, we have this very nagging feeling that the timing and sudden reappearance of this order on the docket is in advance of one or more charges of espionage about to be lobbed at Wikileaks... And to think, all Julian Assange threatened to do was to take down Bank of America, something that should have happened over two years ago if that whole 'free market', risk/return thing was even remotely close to what it is taught to be at various ivy draped business schools.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/obama- ... -detention
*
by hanshan » Wed Dec 22, 2010 8:43 am
Plutonia wrote:We just wont understand! ...Prospect of WikiLeaks Dump Poses Problems for Regulators
Tuesday, 21 Dec 2010; Andrew Ross Sorkin; The New York Times
“Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings.”
That was according to Forbes magazine, which interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, last month. The excerpt sparked a global cacophony of speculation that a bank — perhaps Bank of America — may be the next target of the inscrutable “high-tech terrorist.” (Such was Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s description of Mr. Assange over the weekend.)
And just Monday, Mr. Assange told a reporter from The Times of London that he had enough material to make bosses of a major bank resign.
You’d think that bank executives would be quaking in their Gucci loafers.
But guess who may be even more nervous about the possible data dump?
Regulators in Washington.
It seems the prospect of gigabytes of e-mail and other documents from financial institutions can be viewed one of two ways: as a treasure trove for regulators to scrutinize — or as an embarrassment for the United States government, which has spent millions of dollars investigating Wall Street in the last two years without a scalp to show for it.
Inside the Securities and Exchange Commission, the organization is bracing for a public outcry, according to people who have recently spoken with some high-ranking officials about the prospect of a WikiLeaks release of bank documents.
“The S.E.C. could be on the horns of a dilemma,” said Mark C. Zauderer, a veteran corporate litigator at Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer.
A spokesman for the S.E.C. declined to comment.
Of course, no one knows what information Mr. Assange actually has or how damaging it could be to any financial firm. In truth, it is hard to believe any e-mails could be that shocking. The scuttlebutt is that WikiLeaks will reveal documents in which bankers discussed how they duped a client, how they dressed up their numbers or even how they tried to pull one over on regulators. Sadly, perhaps cynically, that’s almost to be expected.
The big surprise would be that such chicanery was documented, in black and white, and that regulators hadn’t found it yet — or worse, they had found it and did nothing about it.
Indeed, legal experts say that if evidence emerged of shady dealings, the biggest problem regulators may face would be explaining to the public why they had not brought charges against a bank.
“The public will often look at the information out of context and not understand,” said Robert A. Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at McCarter & English.
Another difficult issue for regulators will be what to do if damning information is released. Can the S.E.C. or the Justice Department use WikiLeaks as a source to build a case?
Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, has said his department is investigating WikiLeaks’s earlier release of classified cables from the State Department as a potential criminal act.
“To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, who put at risk the assets and the people I have described, they will be held responsible; they will be held accountable,” Mr. Holder said at a news conference.
Legally, the government is allowed to use any publicly available information — as long as the government wasn’t involved in illegally obtaining the information itself. So prosecutors could potentially use any WikiLeaks information to subpoena bank documents and build a case around them.
“It’s the theory of the fruit of the poisonous tree,” said Jay Fahy, a former federal prosecutor who now specializes in white-collar crime at the law firm Fahy Choi.
Mr. Assange, too, faces his own legal risk, one that so far has gone unspoken: bank confidentiality laws. In many cases, it is a crime to disclose the private account information of individuals, said Mr. Fahy.
“That’s a violation,” Mr. Fahy said.
Still, the optics of how the government reacts to whatever WikiLeaks releases will pose a challenge.
“It puts them in a terrible bind,” said Mr. Mintz. No matter how the government reacts, “there would be an appearance of a profound inconsistency. It’s less of a legal matter than it is an appearance issue.”
Plutonia wrote:We just wont understand! ...No - we won't“It’s the theory of the fruit of the poisonous tree,” ...
“That’s a violation,” Mr. Fahy said.
Still, the optics of how the government reacts to whatever WikiLeaks releases will pose a challenge.
“It puts them in a terrible bind,” said Mr. Mintz. No matter how the government reacts, “there would be an appearance of a profound inconsistency. It’s less of a legal matter than it is an appearance issue.”
Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general, has said his department is investigating WikiLeaks’s earlier release of classified cables from the State Department as a potential criminal act.
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