Wikileaks to release a huge stash today.

dlofnep

According to Wikileak's Facebook page, they are to release 35,000 US diplomatic cables today. Quite a substantial stash. It will be interesting to see what unfolds. I imagine the reason they are releasing such a huge stash is to regain some exposure, as the incremental releases have been losing attention.

twistedsoul

^^^^ sounds very interesting indeed !

nesf

I know they need to feed it out drip by drip to stay relevant but I think I have Wikileaks fatigue and it'll take a very big announcement to make me sit up and notice.

dlofnep

nesf wrote: »

I know they need to feed it out drip by drip to stay relevant but I think I have Wikileaks fatigue and it'll take a very big announcement to make me sit up and notice.

I think that's their intent. They know that they can't maintain media coverage by small releases, so a large release will give them media presence again. If anything of note has been released in the last few months, I haven't noticed it. There are just far too many cables released.

nesf

dlofnep wrote: »

I think that's their intent. They know that they can't maintain media coverage by small releases, so a large release will give them media presence again. If anything of note has been released in the last few months, I haven't noticed it. There are just far too many cables released.

Yeah they're definitely working off some PR plan. "Hopefully" there'll be some crackers in the latest release.

dlofnep

Well, what I can make from it - according to their facebook page:

• 4000 cables from Israel. (Interesting timing considering the pending UN vote on Palestinian statehood)
• 3004 cables from China. (Will be worth a look for sure)
• 349 from Libya.
• 2170 from Taiwan.

Also - It seems that 3,000 unreleased cables were stolen by a former Wikileaks high-ranking member. The cables apparently had the following information.

• a copy of the entire US no-fly list
• five gigabytes from the Bank of America
• Apparently, this data or parts of it was published by Anonymous some months ago.
• US intercept arrangements for over a hundred internet companies
• internals of around 20 neo-Nazi organizations
• more than 60,000 emails from the NPD

Intercept arrangements and no-fly list might have been interesting.

edanto

Wikileaks Facebook 5 minutes ago wrote:

We are currently under a sustained DOS attack and have regressed to backup servers. We are fighting to bring up more new servers.

Must be those damn Chinese cyberwarriors that are attacking Wikileaks. They hate our freedoms don't ya know.

dlofnep

A number of Dublin-origin cables released today: http://wikileaks.org/origin/133_0.html

Just having a glance over them now. Most of the cables released today in general don't seem to be of high importance, but they are still uploading more.

Dirk Gently

looks like we did our best to give china a bum steer. :pac:

The Irish were left with the
impression that Wen and his entourage were modern, pragmatic
and eager-to-learn how the Chinese dragon could emulate the
economic wonders of the Irish "Celtic tiger." However, while
ready to take on board Irish economic and education ideas,
the Chinese were not ready to embrace the modern political
practices that were the sine qua non of Ireland's success.

She described a businesslike and
open atmosphere for dialogue encouraged by the Chinese who
clearly came "to learn how Ireland succeeded."

The Chinese were told that the Irish economy took
off in the 1990's because economic support structures were in
place, such as liberalized banking rules

Nevertheless, the Irish note that the Chinese dragon still
ignores the elephant in the room, that is, the need for
political reform

anymore

Quote:Nevertheless, the Irish note that the Chinese dragon still
ignores the elephant in the room, that is, the need for
political reform

Is this something to do with abolishing the Seanad ??
Why would the Chinese care about that ?

edanto

I think it translates as "the Irish observed that no progress has been made towards political reform in China, and no intention of reform is noted"

I mean why would the Chinese bother reforming? The people at the top control an authoritarian capitalist state (it bugs me when people call it communist just because that's what it says on the tin) and those people are doing very well thank you very much. Political reform could lead to all kinds of nasty complications.

I would like to see some wikileaks from China though... I wonder if anything will get through?

anymore

edanto wrote: »

I think it translates as "the Irish observed that no progress has been made towards political reform in China, and no intention of reform is noted"

I mean why would the Chinese bother reforming? The people at the top control an authoritarian capitalist state (it bugs me when people call it communist just because that's what it says on the tin) and those people are doing very well thank you very much. Political reform could lead to all kinds of nasty complications.

I would like to see some wikileaks from China though... I wonder if anything will get through?

Whilst General Motors was losing a fortune in it s operations in the US over the years of the recession, its operations in China were very profitable - those Chinese certainly have a funny kind of Communism' !:)

IrishMark

anymore wrote: »

Whilst General Motors was losing a fortune in it s operations in the US over the years of the recession, its operations in China were very profitable - those Chinese certainly have a funny kind of Communism' !:)

The Chinese don't spell Communism like that. They spell it: CAPITALISM.

Spacedog

FYI All dublin embassy cables here:

http://wikileaks.org/origin/139_0.html

Jonny7

All of the publishing papers getting very ticked off with Wikileaks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14765837

dlofnep

Why does the official site only list 143k as being released?

Einhard

Jonny7 wrote: »

All of the publishing papers getting very ticked off with Wikileaks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14765837

And well they should be. This really is a truly shocking act of irresponsibility on the part of Wikileaks, and shows Assange up as concerned more about keeping himself in the spotlight, than in about exposing abuses and corruption in the world. The man is an arch-egoist, willing to place innocent people at risk in order to stoke the flames of his own notoriety.

nacho libre

It's strange how he can casually dismiss doing so on the basis that informants deserve what they get. I assume he was doing this without a trace of irony. It wouldn't surprise me if the guy is a psychopath. He seems to have many of the traits...

edanto

Jonny7 wrote: »

All of the publishing papers getting very ticked off with Wikileaks

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14765837

Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick!!

Sure it was the Guardian journalists that wrote the book that contained the encryption key that allowed the freely available file of cables to be opened! Sure why would ya publish an encryption key without checking if it was ok? duh. Think it's great what wikileaks is doing - the more the better. Like for example, I wish that some brave Irish people would release important Irish documents on it.

Matt Holck

who is wikileaks?
are why do I care?

books4sale

Yo..

Anyone seen the Panorama special on Wikileaks earlier this year?

You wanna know what it's all about?

Check it.

Jonny7

edanto wrote: »

Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick!!

Sure it was the Guardian journalists that wrote the book that contained the encryption key that allowed the freely available file of cables to be opened! Sure why would ya publish an encryption key without checking if it was ok? duh. Think it's great what wikileaks is doing - the more the better. Like for example, I wish that some brave Irish people would release important Irish documents on it.

And Wikileaks are suing the Guardian over this, however their case seems fairly weak in fairness.

I've always supported Wikileaks, but my mind has changed on Assange and the crew behind it.

Diplomats and human rights groups have condemned the August release because in previous releases names had been omitted. I'm all for truth, but why include names and put people in direct danger?

Kadongy

bleh Why bother publishing cables like this one?

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/03/05DUBLIN261.html

SUBJECT: CHILD MARRIAGE IN IRELAND

REF: STATE 36341

Post salutes the efforts of Congress and the International
Center for Research on Women (ICRW) to investigate the
adverse affects of Child Marriage on world societies. Below
answers are keyed to reftel questions:

¶A. Per reftel, the legal marriage age for males and females
in Ireland is 18 years. Marriage below the age of 18
requires a Court Exemption Order.

¶B. Underage marriage is not a significant problem in Ireland.

¶C. There are no current U.S.-funded initiatives in Ireland
that aim to reduce the incidence or address the negative
affects of child marriage.
KENNY

edanto

Jonny7 wrote: »

Diplomats and human rights groups have condemned the August release because in previous releases names had been omitted. I'm all for truth, but why include names and put people in direct danger?

Wikileaks weren't the first to release the names of these people.

The guardian guys released the encryption password, then other sites (some big media) began to release un-redacted cables showing the names of informants. That is not what Wikileaks wanted. But when it happened, they chose to release the full stash of unredacted cables so that

(a) informants could review the cables and see if they were named and if they needed to take action for their own safety and

(b) informants and others would have an authoritive source of the cables - there have been plenty of faked cables around the world, but none of those faked ones were ever on Wikileaks.

Jonny7

Didn't Wikileaks already lose control of the cables which have been circulating on the internet for quite some time?

The unredacted info? The Times, Guardian, El Pais and Der Speigel (spelling) have all universally criticised Wikileaks for this.

edanto

There is a fairly neutral (to my mind) account on Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.html in English which explains how the blame for this c0ck up is shared between Wikileaks and The Guardian journalists. They are blaming each other, we can assume the absolute truth is that they are both at fault.

The main thing is that the Wikileaks source is protected and anonymous.

However US informants that were named in the cables are now out in open. That's not good.

Personally, I would be interested now in leaks about global finance, China, the land grab in Africa and the IMF/World Bank.

Hell, even if someone conscientous in NAMA could reveal to what extent it is a feeding trough for our elite, that would be a good day in the information wars.

Arfan

Here's a long and dry message on the state of the muslim community in Ireland. I thought it was quite informative considering that, outside the occaisional arab wearing a hijab the community is invisible.

Integration can't happen if we don't know they're there.

Hayte

Interesting article here about the technical aspects of data security and encryption.

The bottom line:

...cryptographically, WikiLeaks is in the right and Guardian is in the wrong.

The whole point of encryption is that it doesn't matter how visible and available the encrypted files are because its all useless junk data without the encryption keys.

Its astonishing that a Guardian journalist actually published the encryption key in his book. His argument is that he thought it was only a temporary key which is irrelevant. If even one person has access to the locked safe plus the key to that safe for even a few seconds, they can open it, and then move the contents into another safe with a different lock or no lock at all.

The fact that this journalist also wrote down the salt (which you are specifically not supposed to do, let alone write it down in a book that anyone and everyone can read) is even more staggering.

Manic Moran

Hayte wrote: »

The whole point of encryption is that it doesn't matter how visible and available the encrypted files are because its all useless junk data without the encryption keys.

It's such a blind-faith reliance on the security of encryption that led to the Japanese losing at Midway or the Germans getting hammered in North Africa. Encryption is the backup system when regular security measures fail, the information intercepted and control lost. Such a reliance is foolish, to say the least.

The fact that this journalist also wrote down the salt (which you are specifically not supposed to do, let alone write it down in a book that anyone and everyone can read) is even more staggering.

The fact that Assange wrote down the thing for a journalist is even more staggering. Wikileaks had already lost control of the datafile. Losing control of the password just rendered the backup system of the encryption useless.

NTM

edanto

Wikileaks purposefully made distributed and redundant copies of the files as result of the cyber warfare against them.

Given that they had to share the data with third parties over which they had no control (relatively), it seems like Wikileaks chose a suitably secure method.

On a related note, I hope the brave Bradley Manning is doing OK these days. If indeed he was the person that shared the Collateral Murder video of the Apache unit butchering people, its great to see one soldier act on conscience.

Hayte

Manic Moran wrote: »

It's such a blind-faith reliance on the security of encryption that led to the Japanese losing at Midway or the Germans getting hammered in North Africa. Encryption is the backup system when regular security measures fail, the information intercepted and control lost. Such a reliance is foolish, to say the least.

Proper encryption is literally impossible to crack, at least within any time frame that matters (i.e. the predicted end of the universe). See insurance.aes256. Human error is always the reason encryption fails.

The fact that Assange wrote down the thing for a journalist is even more staggering. Wikileaks had already lost control of the datafile. Losing control of the password just rendered the backup system of the encryption useless.

He wrote down the key but not the salt so even if the encryption key got leaked it would still be useless. Not saying he did everything right but come on. Giving away the encryption key and then the salt (after being specifically told not to).

Duke Leonal Felmet

Jonny7 wrote: »

Didn't Wikileaks already lose control of the cables which have been circulating on the internet for quite some time?

The unredacted info? The Times, Guardian, El Pais and Der Speigel (spelling) have all universally criticised Wikileaks for this.

You really must respect the opinions of journalists...

Duke Leonal Felmet

books4sale wrote: »

Yo..

Anyone seen the Panorama special on Wikileaks earlier this year?

You wanna know what it's all about?

Check it.

I also believe everything I see on TV.

humanji

Can someone sort soemthing out for me, because even though I've read a few articles explaining what happened, I seem to be picking up things wrong.

The timeline that I thought happened was:

1) Assange put the file on the server.
2) The Guardian reporter got the file and the password.
3) Assange didn't delete the file off the server.
4) The server contents (including the file) were released into the wilds of cyberspace.
5) The Guardian reporter, assuming the file had been deleted, published a book with the password in it.

Is that the order, or were the files released into the public before Assange met the reporter?

Manic Moran

Proper encryption is literally impossible to crack, at least within any time frame that matters

Cryptographers of every single 'unbreakable' code throughout history have been saying the same thing. And people looking at pure brute-force attacks are missing the fact that a large portion of the data is already out in the public domain which can be used to assist in the de-encryption: If you know what it's supposed to contain to begin with, it's a lot easier to figure out if you're on the right track with the code-breaking.

There are several ways for the contents of the file to become public, trying to crack from 0 is only one of them, and is the least likely.

NTM

WIZE

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09DUBLIN477.html

was this released before of the ex guantanimo detainees name and where they lived ?