

Ex-Hacker Calls on Wikileaks Head to Step Down Following [...] Identity Breach - tptacek
http://www.dailytech.com/ExHacker+Calls+on+Wikileaks+Head+to+Step+Down+Following+Second+Third+Source+Identity+Breach/article18853.htm

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tbrownaw
_Lamo tells us he sent the logs to Wikileaks "To see if they'd be true to
their ethos, and publish something, even if it incriminated a source, or if
they'd cover it up. I wanted to pose a catch-22._

Um, yeah...

 _We have since established contact with Nadim Kobeissi, a hacker whose
conversations with Adrian Lamo were also leaked._

These are being presented as Wikileaks choosing to identify people who send
data to them. While it's a bit difficult to parts what exactly happened, it
sounds more like it was really that Wikileaks got hold of some of Lamo's IM
sessions and published those. Which seems quite reasonable, given that he's
apparently selling people out and spinning inconsistent stories about why.

~~~
tptacek
Nadim alleges that he's the one who provided Assange with the IM transcripts,
and that Assange outed him along with the transcripts.

~~~
tbrownaw
So, you provide a private chat transcript to someone who is in the business of
making things public... and then complain that by making that transcript
public, they have identified who sent it to them.

Please tell me that's not accurate, because it's completely retarded.

~~~
tptacek
I like this logic. "Anything you tell Julian Assange is fair game". Why,
Manning could rightly have expected to be outed directly!

~~~
tbrownaw
No, it's the difference between "someone sent me this file" (should always be
expected) and "so-and-so sent me this file" (should not be expected). If the
file you sent is something that by its intended contents (as opposed to hidden
metadata etc) could only have come from you, then WTF are you doing sending it
in for publication if you don't want people to put two and two together?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
I don't think he intended for it to be published. He may have made this
insufficiently clear, though...

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tptacek
Look, more drama. You know what's something that "ideal wikileaks" wouldn't
have that "real wikileaks" clearly does have? This much drama.

~~~
jgg
You seem to really dislike Wikileaks. What is it about them that bothers you
so much?

~~~
tptacek
I think, in order of importance to their mission, they are:

* A publicity vehicle for their founders.

* A left-wing political cause (note: I say this as a left-liberal).

* A "fuck-you" to the mainstream media.

* An honest broker of leaked information.

I think when you hang up your sign offering to handle the most sensitive
information people have to offer, it's incumbent on you to be above reproach.
Clearly, Assange doesn't believe that: he's editorialized their most
publicized disclosure to date, throwing their bias and handling of everything
they do from this point forward into question.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Sadly, I have to agree. They have, nonetheless, done some good and interesting
things; but with Iceland's new "Wikileaks" law, I'd be perfectly happy to see
some "competitors" spring up...

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rbanffy
Horrible style. They repeat a good couple times how Wikileaks compromised
sources not once but twice and go on rambling how no wikileaks source is
secure. More like confused ramblings than anything else. It's impressive what
passes for journalism these days.

Surprise: you are not secure. You never were and you'll never be. If you
really want to leak confidential info anonymously, you have to hide your
identity yourself and trust nobody else to do it.

~~~
tptacek
This is a misleading summary of the story. The allegation isn't that Wikileaks
has poor operational security; it's that Assange was given documents that
later leaked, and that are alleged to only have been leakable by him. This
article alleges that Assange _deliberately_ broke opsec.

~~~
rbanffy
I am curious. If Alice and Bob have a private conversation and Bob knows he
leaked this conversation to Adrian and then the conversation is made public,
how can Bob be absolutely sure Adrian, but not Alice, leaked the conversation?

It's a tangled mess right now. Anyway, if you are a spook leaking info, you
should, at least, cover your steps. During my life I have many times been in
possession of secret datasets (not government-lock-me-in-jail-secret, but very
secret anyway) and I am quite sure they were tainted in ways they would be
traced directly back to me if they ever leaked. It's very easy to watermark
files.

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korch
This whole farce is a blatant and indirect DoD psyops attack on Wikileaks and
Assange. So it's okay and even expected now for the US military to attack
journalists and the grey-information-area of their domain? I thought only
nations like "Communist" China did that. And here we all thought our civil
liberties were worse off under Bush...

Remember the WL leaked secret DoD document containing the Pentagon's own plan
to counter WL? Their plan was to cause a big enough PR incident to scare any
future whistle-blowers into silence by creating the public perception that no
matter who you are, if you leak extra-ordinary, critical national security
information, then it's 100% guaranteed that you will be publically outed as a
whistle-blower.

Isn't it remarkably convenient that the Pentagon's plan is _exactly_ what is
now occurring with Lamo's bizarrely out of place participation in this whole
fiasco? There sure are a lot of false and scary headlines attacking the
credibility of WL! I realize the other logical possibility is that the
Pentagon plan to attack WL is itself a fake, and Lamo is doing all of this on
purpose to stage an "attack on WL", so that WL can turn around and say "see!
the Pentagon is attacking us!" You can't get better PR than that if it really
blew up.

But when your lead source is also your lead witness, you have a serious
credibility issue and have to assume the entire story is fiction. We may never
know the truth.

And much like when you owe Don Corleone a "favor", after you get arrested for
the kinds of crimes they did, and then the Feds hook you up with a sweetheart
deal with the prosecution, it's pretty obvious who is the master and who is
the puppet. Also consider the history of Lamo and Poulsen, and especially go
back to Poulsen's self-promoting NYTimes hit pieces on Mitnick in the 90's.
Then ask "who is the most probable liar, these guys or WL?"

It's only a bonus that they can also create a media smokescreen around
themselves to muddle an already subjective matter. From reading their writings
and interviews over the past few years, they both come off as self-promoting
fame whore types focused on selling an image of "hackers." Like drunken
Hollywood starlets stumbling around a crowd of TMZ paps, their inserting of
themselves into whatever issue they are "reporting" makes it impossible to
take them seriously as journalists. (Only Hunter S. Thompson can be allowed to
get away with that.)

I bet this makes them even _more_ valuable as Federal snitches, since everyone
will assume the reason Lamo and Poulsen even have anything to do with this
incident is because they're promoting themselves. It's a fantastic cover that
prevents the spot light from casting shadows off the puppet strings.

