
3.3 million e-mails between the most powerful men are about to be released. - sathishmanohar
http://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/nsvfc/33_million_emails_between_some_of_the_most/
======
DevX101
900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is
critical of this action.

To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori
evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It
would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were
getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well,
regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.

I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its
important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the
ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.

~~~
danilocampos
Hmm.

You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense.

At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."

And this, for me, is one of them.

Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of
privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions.
Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of
citizenship.

If that's the case, if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?

This, I guess.

There are lot of communications in this bundle that are probably pretty
mundane, sent and received by people who show up for jury duty and take
traffic school when they run a red light. And it sucks that they've lost their
privacy on this.

On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission, you can be almost certain
that a handful of messages will reveal information where disclosing it is
emphatically a public good. Will we find wrongdoing? Downright illegality? I'm
not sure.

But I am pretty sure that actions like this are the last reasonably potent
check on power we have left.

~~~
earbitscom
So funny, I feel the same way about things like TPB, and yet I bet you think
shutting them down without a trial is immoral.

~~~
danilocampos
> So funny, I feel the same way about things like TPB, and yet I bet you think
> shutting them down without a trial is immoral.

You feel as though "things like the Pirate Bay" are run by people who are so
wealthy and powerful that they've completely subverted criminal justice and
international law?

I had no idea Dick Cheney was running torrent sites. The bit where he sent
those stooges to sit in a Swedish court was a nice touch, I guess.

~~~
earbitscom
No, I feel "They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions,"
and, "if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?"

~~~
libraryatnight
They enjoy protections provided by operating in a country where their site is
legal. They're not operating outside due process.

------
akamaka
I subscribed to Stratfor for a while and I thought I'd explain what the site
is for anyone who's wondering. (And yes, my info was part of the leak,
unfortunately)

It's basically a subscription news site ($100/year) that delivers focused
international news. They usually stay away from trendy topics and party
politics, which is pretty nice.

Despite their claims of having sources around the world, it's quite obvious
that most of their information comes from other newspapers and just Googling
around. It's infrequent that they would mention getting information from a
source, and when they did, it was never anything more than an aside or a
rumor. Certainly nothing of value.

That's why I seriously doubt that anything explosive will come from this email
leak. People who have access to sensitive information leak it for two reasons:
to spread their message to a wide audience (think Watergate and the Washington
Post, or Bradley Manning and Wikileaks), or to swap it with other insider
groups, in exchange for other information. Stratfor, with its small audience
and utter lack of people on the ground, has neither.

Finally, I probably sound kind of negative about Stratfor, and while I no
longer subscribe, they did have some really great, unique articles that you
wouldn't find in any newspaper. Here's one example:
<http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645>

------
russellallen
Well done, Anonymous. You've hacked into an independent online news service,
destroyed their business, probably permanently shut them down, stole money
from their readers and will now release all their correspondence with their
sources. Fuck you. I was a subscriber - I suppose I should now go back to
getting all my news from Murdoch.

This is a blow against the freedom of the press and a blow against a free and
open society. There is a reason why we should as a society respect journalists
and their sources. I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted and jailed.

------
forensic
Stratfor is not much more than a small news organization. Why would a news
company have secret intelligence from the "world's most powerful men"?

They are in the business of publishing everything they know -- that's how they
get paid! Their info is not secret. Anyone who emails them is trying to get
info RELEASED, not hide it!

They certainly have secret informants, but why do you want to compromise
informants who are willing to work with the press? What does that solve?

Dick Cheney does not send emails to Stratfor. He's not stupid!

This whole operation is just another demonstration that Anonymous only targets
low hanging fruit. They tried hacking the NYT but their security was too good.
They tried hacking the Pentagon but hopelessly failed. So they decided to hack
a small (high-quality) news company with 70 employees, that reports
exclusively on global affairs.

Now they are going to reveal Stratfor's sources and get people killed, just
like they did in the Mexico affair.

This isn't an achievement, it's just showing off. I doubt they are going to
find much and the victims of this release are not going to be anyone in
powerful positions. Rather it will be informants like Gaddafi's Butler who
will have their lives ruined.

For the record, I would support Anonymous if they actually bothered to hack
the government and release those files. I would even support them if they
hacked known bad guys like Halliburton or known propaganda networks like FOX.

But Anonymous is just picking low-hanging fruit and hyping it up to make
themselves look good. The "top secret client list" is nothing more than a
marketing strategy by Stratfor. Their client list is: people interested in
global politics.

------
asdfurtedfgs
I have higher hopes for hacker news. There is more to this than the morality
of publishing emails.

<http://pastebin.com/8yrwyNkt>

Specifically, of interest (at least to me), as the post claims that Stratfor
themselves said this (I haven't actually checked/found external verification,
please post URL if you do): "In the past month Stratfor has drawn attention to
a carefully assembled open-source report that asserted that last month's
attack on Iraq wasn't intended just to punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off
U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly
available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor
analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a
failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs
released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's
lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the
army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed.
Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong."

Is everyone here happy with the claim that Anonymous hacked in and copied
emails; is it too hard to imagine that it's a false flag op? Neither side can
prove themselves, that is true, but there should be more trepidation before
making claims or assuming we are being handed the truth.

Also, take a look at <http://anonanalytics.com/> if you haven't, the PDF they
published recently is a pretty good read. That's a faction of Anon that I have
high hopes for.

~~~
jonhendry
So a false flag hack was undertaken to, what, punish Stratfor over something
they published about seven/eight years ago?

As opposed to a bunch of misguided, ignorant script kiddies thinking Stratfor
is something it isn't?

------
peterwwillis
Ugh.

Why does the title say 3.3 million e-mails? The pastebin claims 2.7 million.

Why did they feel the need to announce this _before_ the wiki had all the
data? Barrett just had to get extra PR time?

Why do all these releases sound like they're written by kids in tree forts
with bed sheet capes on? Then again all self-righteous announcements kind of
read the same way to me.

What's with their wiki? What is this shit?
<http://echelon2.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges>

This whole thing is a big Anonymous waste of fucking time. Please flag this.

------
rufibarbatus
I've been in the financial consulting business for a while and I'm still
sometimes stunned by the kinds of things clients will send me as unencrypted
email.

What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail
mail"?

My point being: wouldn't it actually be _better_ in terms of fostering
awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore _no presumed privacy
whatsoever?_

 _Then,_ say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need
to update their internal processes in order to comply.

EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the
alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if
it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel
takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.

~~~
gwern
> What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like
> snail mail"?

If only. That would be an improvement. As matters stand, they're much more
poorly protected: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_privacy>

> After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected
> communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become
> just another database record.[6] This means that a subpoena instead of a
> warrant is all that's needed for a government agency to force email
> providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[6] Other countries may
> even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all
> over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this
> ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even
> applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.

------
officemonkey
Not to be a pedant, but it should be "among", not "between."

~~~
imurray
That _is_ pedantic, and not in a particularly well justified way:
<http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html#between>

~~~
officemonkey
Usage of "between" in this particular headline causes confusion because
between implies there are only two men.

If the line read "3.3 million e-mails between many of the most powerful men
are about to be released." I would have grimaced and kept my piece.

~~~
officemonkey
peace* <\- Muphry's Law strikes.

------
mike-cardwell
They should have used
[https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...](https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email)

~~~
mschonfeld
Haha if stratfor bothered to encrypt anything, I trust that they would keep
the encryption keys in their home folder in a file called "ENCRYPTION
KEY.PRIVATE"

~~~
mike-cardwell
Ideally you'd generate a new keypair for each employee. Move their private key
onto an OpenPGP smart card, and give them that. Then encrypt all of their
incoming email with their public key on the server as it comes in.

In case they lose their smartcard or you need to recover their email for any
other reason, keep a second copy of their key, password protected, offline, in
a safe. Or alternatively encrypt all incoming email with a second master key,
whos private key is offline, password protected, in a safe.

------
jonhendry
Yeah, nobody messes with Doctors Without Borders.

In any case, I expect the emails to be a lot of subscriber list maintenance,
back issues, UNSUBSCRIBE messages, maybe PDFs of scans of material that was
either public at the time or became public since, that were sent in by
contacts or sources.

------
hessenwolf
I wonder how many marriages will be in tatters...

------
thisismyname
When are these getting released?

------
donky_cong
Where is WikiLeaks when its needed

~~~
mschonfeld
Military prison, European jail, fleeing and hiding in south America, etc...

