Tag Archives: Julian Assange

  

The Great Wikileaks-Military Secrets Heist

Wired has posted some of the relevant chat logs between ex-hacker Adrian Lamo and Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old suspect in the Wikileaks-leak case. Reading it makes you a little ill at what passes for top-secret security in the institution that defends our country:

(01:54:42 PM) Manning: i would come in with music on a CD-RW
(01:55:21 PM) Manning: labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file
(01:55:46 PM) Manning: no-one suspected a thing
(01:55:48 PM) Manning: =L kind of sad
(01:56:04 PM) Lamo: and odds are, they never will
(01:56:07 PM) Manning: i didnt even have to hide anything
(01:56:36 PM) Lamo: from a professional perspective, i’m curious how the server they were on was insecure
(01:57:19 PM) Manning: you had people working 14 hours a day… every single day… no weekends… no recreation…
(01:57:27 PM) Manning: people stopped caring after 3 weeks
(01:57:44 PM) Lamo: i mean, technically speaking
(01:57:51 PM) Lamo: or was it physical
(01:57:52 PM) Manning: >nod< (01:58:16 PM) Manning: there was no physical security
(01:58:18 PM) Lamo: it was physical access, wasn’t it
(01:58:20 PM) Lamo: hah
(01:58:33 PM) Manning: it was there, but not really
(01:58:51 PM) Manning: 5 digit cipher lock… but you could knock and the door…
(01:58:55 PM) Manning: *on
(01:59:15 PM) Manning: weapons, but everyone has weapons
(02:00:12 PM) Manning: everyone just sat at their workstations… watching music videos / car chases / buildings exploding… and writing more stuff to CD/DVD… the culture fed opportunities

So this is the security blocking secrets so sensitive to our national security and diplomacy? It’s not hard to sympathize with the militia-types who don’t want to even hand over their last names to a welfare agency. What do the low-level domestic grunts watch while “securing” that data, the Lifetime Channel?

Also, an excerpt in which Manning describes what made him turn against his country (hint: something to do with detainee treatment; kind of amazing how that is becoming an endless source of misery for both detainee and detainers):

(02:31:02 PM) Manning: i think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything
(02:35:46 PM) Manning: was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…
(02:36:27 PM) Manning: everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently

Also, Manning divulges details about his preferential treatment by Assange, which would explain Assange’s reported efforts to mount a legal defense of Manning…or at least advise him not to spill anymore of the Wikileaks operational secrets.

  

Wikileak’s Julian Assange cancels IRE appearance amid manhunt; Did he lie on Twitter?

(Updates:

– As it turns out, Assange did not appear at the IRE showcase panel in any form, except as mugshot image on the Daily Beast story on a projector screen. He and Wikileaks did dominate the discussion, with most of the panelists agreeing that Wikileaks was, in theory, a good idea, but not comfortable with the vetting process and agenda of the operation. Valerie Plame said, to the laughter of the reporters in attendance, that sometimes secrecy is good.

With respect to the esteemed members of the panel who did show up (James Risen of the NYT also was a no-show on the advice of his lawyer), I think everyone was a little letdown with Assange’s absence. I don’t think there was any new ground covered in terms of the “risks and rewards” of anonymous sources…but hearing reps. from the traditional media debate Assange over Wikileaks’ motives and methods would’ve been very illuminating.

I misspelled Horvit’s name because I trusted but didn’t verify Daily Beast’s spelling. Also, maybe the tweet was not a flat-out lie. Just a very sly truth. Still, having to second guess what really is the “truth” still undermines Wikileaks’ ideal for transparency. Also, I think that if Assange’s arrest is an inevitability…there would’ve been no better place to get it over with than at a conference full of the most righteous journalists)

Bummer…I can’t be the only one who thought that despite the other luminaries on IRE’s showcase panel on anonymous sources, most of the interest would be the super-secretive Wikileaks founder.

According to the Daily Beast, IRE executive director Mark Horvik Horvit said Assange canceled “within the last several days as a result of unspecificed ‘security concerns.'” The Beast also points out that last week, at a New York panel, Assange only appeared via Skype from Australia, citing his lawyer’s recommendation that he not go back to the U.S.

So did Assange ever intend to show up at IRE? When did IRE know, and if they knew beforehand and were asked about it, were they obliged to tell the truth as soon as they knew it or feign ignorance for Assange (it’s possible this is old news for the other IRE attendees, but I hadn’t heard it until reading it on the Daily Beast)?

Apparently, the Twitter Wikileaks account, on the morning of Assange’s scheduled IRE appearance, tweeted “Super panel tonight in Vegas with Julian Assange, Valerie Plame & Scott Risen | IRE10“. So, if Horvit is to be believed, the wikileaks account is either not connected to Assange at all, or is being used as tool for deliberate misinformation.

I understand Assange’s need to cover his tracks, but it strikes me as very bad precedent for Wikileaks, which purports itself to be the brave dispenser of unfiltered truth, to use its official channel of communication to tell a flat-out lie (on second thought, maybe it’s not a lie. It’s still a “super panel”, and maybe Assange will show up via skype?). Many governments tell lies based on such justifications of self-preservation.

And besides, what’s the point of sullying your reputation, even if only in a tweet? Does he really think the military manhunters would be so easily thrown off the trail, as if their only investigative tools were looking at someone’s twitter account? Oh wait, this is the same military that let a 22-year-old download hundreds of thousands of top-secret files because he bypassed their security measures by lip-syncing to Lady Gaga.

(*piteous cry*)

Wired had an interesting folo today, about suspect Bradley Manning’s crisis of conscience. According to his chat logs with ex-hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning claimed that Assange offered him a position at Wikileaks…which would go against several tweets and statements by Wikileaks and Assange.

But Wired’s lead reporter on this case, felon ex-hacker Kevin Poulsen, should not be trusted, according to Wikileaks. But Wikileaks, as far as we know at this point, is not always telling the (whole) truth in its tweets…