

List of facilities 'vital to US security' leaked - pacemkr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11923766

======
dsplittgerber
I'm having a hard time reconciling people's viewpoints over here. Most people
are intellectually inconsistent over Wikileaks.

If a leak fits with people's opinion on wars or something similar, it's
supposedly alright to leak; if it doesn't fit with one's opinion, it's bad and
irresponsible? I think this goes to show that most people just view leaks on
certain topics as means to an end on that specific policy subject.

It's not like that. Only leaking "politically correct" material is not going
to happen. Either you stick up for the unmitigated leaks or you don't.

If you think a middleman (newspaper, whatever) has to assess whether or not a
leak is potentially damaging or "not worth" leaking, then I think you haven't
come to terms with what leaking is also about: exposing the truth and not
relying on whatever authority to establish what is alright for the general
populace to see and what is not.

P.S.: If this is so important for the US government, why is it only
SECRET/NOFORN? Also, according to Michael Chertoff, this list was/is used by
US government agencies to prepare themselves for disruption.

~~~
sparky
I must be one of those intellectually inconsistent folks, so take this for
what it's worth.

This particular piece of information doesn't bother me so much. As somebody
else mentioned, it seems to my layman mind that, to a first order, those with
sufficient resources and determination to do damage to these targets also have
the resources and determination to think hard for a little while about what
things might be important to a nation, and figure out where those things are
made. This might save them some time, but I'm skeptical that this leak will
create an army of only-mildly-interested attackers who otherwise wouldn't have
bothered to find any of these places.

That said, I disagree that "either you stick up for [the] unmitigated leaks or
you don't." Sure it's an opinion, but I think it's OK to think that the world
is best off with some information out in the open, and some information
private. I agree that governments should default to the former rather than the
latter, but everything in moderation.

If you stand for this leak, do you also have to stand for the leak of all Visa
card numbers and account holder information? Do you have to stand for leaking
Google's search history logs, or Tor entry node access logs, or a hospital's
medical records? That's not so clear-cut to me.

Also, your last sentence leaves out the reality that you will never get rid of
the middleman. Today, with Wikileaks, the middlemen who "establish what is
alright for the general populace to see and what is not" are:

1) The set of all disgruntled employees and personnel, and other
whistleblowers. Often their motives are pure, but sometimes not.

2) The cabal that runs Wikileaks. They may well have a better sense of what
should be public than the average person, but we're still talking about a
small set of humans, and we all have our motivations, agendas, needs, and
wants to some extent.

You can certainly argue that this is a better situation than 15 layers of
government bureaucrats, or a few layers of journalists, but again, I don't
think it's unilaterally better in all circumstances.

P.S.: There is a heaping helping of intellectual inconsistency flying around
concerning Wikileaks; I just think that there is room for reasonable concern
in there too.

------
ghshephard
I read through the Canadian "Critical Foreign Dependencies" List, and what
struck me, is how difficult it would be to really damage any of the elements
on the list, unless you were a state power.

Canada James Bay Power Project, Hydro Quebec, Part of the St. Lawrence Power
Project, between Barnhart Island, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario Seven Mile
Dam, Canada Chalk River Nuclear Facility - big industrial targets that would
require a lot of effort to really do damage to. Also, there were a lot of
obvious targets that are already well known "Border Crossing", "Atlantic Cable
Landing".

Pretty much every one of the Canadian items (and many, many, many more) are
discussed fairly openly in Canadian Newspapers in terms of how attractive they
might be to terrorists, so nothing particularly interesting there. If
anything, I was disappointed, significantly, at how _little_ is considered a
Critical Foreign dependency.

The Alberta Tar Sands aren't considered a Critical Foreign Dependency?

------
poet
I'm finding a hard time seeing how this leak is a positive thing. At least
leaks related to violations of human rights and international law have legs to
stand on.

~~~
civilian
The real leaked material is that the US embassy have the opinion/analysis that
X factories & mines are vital to the U.S.

I think that a small team of economists could have figured out what plants are
vital to national security. It's not like this data is secret- it's just the
embassy's thoughts that are secret. (So... thank god Jihadists don't know
economics! Let's hope Julian doesn't leak any textbooks.)

~~~
natrius
I agree that the data isn't particularly secret, but I also agree that there
doesn't seem to be any possible public good served by leaking this
information.

~~~
civilian
This leak Does serve the public good, if the public surrounding these vital
targets learn that these locations are vital. Instead of being ignorant
bystanders who think it's "just a factory"; they'll know that it is a Vital
factory, and that suspicious activity around it should be reported.

Whenever I'm in a train station I hear about how important I am, as a
civilian, to security and that I should report suspicious bags. Couldn't the
government take that attitude to the next level?

~~~
natrius
You're assuming that the benefit from the public knowing about the facilities
is greater than the detriment. That isn't necessarily the case, and it's
unlikely to be the case in my opinion.

The train station analogy is flawed. Train stations are targets _because
they're train stations_. Security through obscurity isn't possible.

If this leak is somehow beneficial, how would you feel about a leak of the
identities of all covert agents? The public would know who they're paying to
do certain kinds of work, but I'm sure we can agree that it would have a
negative effect overall. I think this situation is similar, although the
information is easier to deduce.

------
geedee77
This is massively irresponsible and smacks of the Wikileaks team trying to
'get at' the US government for reasons unknown. This is really the sort of
information that could put lives in danger. Whatever good Wikileaks attempts
to do is immediately overshadowed by such a stupid and naive leak such as
this.

I hope the people responsible are brought to full justice when an innocent
person dies because they work at a facility that has just become a target for
terror.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. This crosses the line and becomes a terrorist act in itself.

During WWII it was treason to reveal the activities and movements of troops,
operations and shipments of factories and transport critical to the war
effort. (And everything was critical to the war effort.)

Any possible sympathy for the good that Wikileaks is doing, has been undone.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
So how do you define a "terrorist act"? Is it any action that is contrary to
the interests of the United States or is it just releasing information that
terrorists could conceivably find useful? In which case, Google is, by far,
the biggest, baddest, terrorist on the planet. Back in the day, a terrorist
act involved doing shit that terrorized people.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
So its not terrifying to be put on a public list of people who, if killed,
will damage critical American supply chains?

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
It's not a list of "people who, if killed".

------
etherael
I saw this this morning and it seemed like the first example of something that
should severely not be leaked. I wanted to contact them privately and directly
and bring their attention to it but there turns out being no discernable
channel to do that.

These especially struck me as dangerous;

[http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09DOHA214&hl=%3...](http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09DOHA214&hl=%3Anewest)

Specifically;

 _2\. (C) There are three main industrial facilities of interest that if
destroyed, or if their production is disrupted, could have an immediate effect
on U.S. national economic security. In order of priority, these are Ras Laffan
Industrial City (RLIC), Mesaieed Industrial City (MIC) and port complex, and
Dukhan Industrial City. All three industrial centers are under the control and
supervision of Qatar Petroleum (QP), a semi-autonomous government organization
whose Chairman, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, is also the Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister of Energy and Industry. Natural gas production is
primarily centered around the coast and offshore areas in the northeast of
Qatar, in and round Ras Laffan; while, oil production is concentrated on the
western coast near Dukhan as well as offshore platforms._

In both the #startups and #wikileaks channels on freenode people variously
assured me that they had already considered it or I was just being a troll. I
suppose it really is naive to expect unmitigated good to come of this episode,
but I really wish they would not hand ammunition to the opposition in this
fashion.

I wish there was a way to privately contact them to ask them to reconsider a
particular release without drawing attention to it in a public fashion.

P.S. I will happily edit this message to omit the sensitive information
directly in the event that anyone can tell me how to bring the necessary
attention to it in a more private way.

~~~
lionhearted
Who is downvoting this? What's wrong with people?

You can't see how listing the facilities that the United States thinks are
vital to national security in Qatar could possibly be a bad idea?

It's like once people pick their teams, they can't reconsider. They have to
find rationalizations "oh, this isn't so bad" or "well now we know what the
government is working on" - guess what? There's random unhappy people in Qatar
who don't have the resources or skill to do their own recon and intelligence
work. Wikileaks just delivered America's own intel/recon to them. This makes
the world less safe. This is a bad thing.

I don't care what team you're on. This one is a bad thing. Shame on everyone
who downvotes etherael for pointing out a really valid point. Stop the blind
allegiance to the cause and think this one through critically. This is a bad
thing.

~~~
barrkel
The cable states that they are vital to US economic interests in Qatar, not
that they are vital to Qatar's national security.

I can think of lots of other things that are vital to US economic interests. I
don't think they're particularly hard to find.

Of course, thinking that terrorists want to target these things is a mistake;
terrorists are not an existential threat to any state, not unless they have
the sympathy of the general public and are fighting an unpopular government.
As such, military targets are some ways down the priority list. Terrorists
want targets that generate a disproportionate reactionary effect on the
population. A pipeline in the middle of nowhere may affect energy prices
indirectly, but lacks the immediacy that makes the public demand an
overreaction.

Al Qaeda and the likes are more interested in regime change in Saudi Arabia
than anything else. Making the US out to be the Great Satan plays into that
dialog, and therefore making the US overreact, vilify Muslims, and polarize
the population is their goal.

~~~
krschultz
Certainly the World Trade Center was a 'soft' target, but I wouldn't describe
the Pentagon as anything other than a military target.

Also don't forget the biggest terrorist attack prior to 9/11 against the US
was not the previous (mostly failed) WTC attack, it was the two embassies in
Africa (somewhat militarized considering every embassy has a wall and a
detachment of marines) and prior to that the USS Cole. And a ways back we had
the marine barracks in Beirut. Terrorists are not afraid of military targets.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bomb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bombings)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing>

~~~
OpieCunningham
I'd certainly describe the Pentagon as a symbolic target in exactly the same
way as the WTC was a symbolic target.

I don't fully disagree with the remainder of your comment, but I would also
say that it's not a trivial factor that the targets you listed also have
something else in common: they're all U.S. targets that are local or
relatively easy to get to locations. Another consideration is that those are
all older attacks. More recent attacks around the globe to Western facilities
have focused on non-military targets. Based upon the result of 9/11 (U.S.
engaging full force), the non-military target has demonstrated to be more
productive for them.

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civilian
This is weird to me. I just get the feeling that... a lot of these
miscellaneous commercial facilities are replaceable- not only that, but the
market forces acting after an attack would encourage new facilities to be
built or new locations of the resource to be discovered (in the case of
cobalt).

I also feel that the ideologies might not line up really well with this. "We
are going to destroy the American infidels... by destroying a Danish insulin
factory!" The symbolism gets kinda lost.

~~~
cma
But it is the kind of security planning information that most people (in the
US) wouldn't want leaked, and would actually support secrecy for (as opposed
to things that "endanger" us by embarrassing us, things that receive
classification because they document our moral failings (like take, say, the
helicopter video)).

~~~
varjag
Terrorist don't give a damn about ports and cable stations, they go after
office workers and schoolchildren.

The government's and terrorist's idea of vulnerable is fundamentally
different. In Russia they were securing gas pipes, nuclear stations, cabbage
sorting plants and whatnot, but terrorist hit apartment buildings, theaters,
hospitals and schools.

~~~
regularfry
Traditionally, yes. With al Qaeda (inasmuch as there is a single body with
unified aims), not so much. One of bin Laden's videos spelt it out: their aim
is to economically cripple the US and the West by forcing them to spend a
vastly disproportionate amount of money on security measures through
performing relatively cheap acts of violence.

It just so happens that attacks involving large numbers of civilians are
particularly effective for this, because the political pressure to protect the
public is high. In the case of targets on this list, there is a similar
pressure to protect them, but _in general_ they won't be as expensive to guard
because their nature makes it easier to restrict access.

If I were on the Chinese politburo, though, this leak would read like a
_literal_ shopping list.

~~~
varjag
Well, it does not happen like that accidentally. The whole point of terrorist
attack is terrorizing the population to achieve one's political objectives. To
terrorize population you hit where it hurts the people.

People are less emotional about shut down plants than they are about dead
children.

> If I were on the Chinese politburo, though, this leak would read like a
> literal shopping list.

You bring a point here. This list makes sense (and is obvious) if you have a
strategic bomber command in your disposal. Otherwise a few of those isolated
attacks will fail to shatter the economy. Remember how many bombs were
unleashed on German industry in WW2 before it started showing any effect.

Attacking population on the other hand is accessible and effective, that's the
whole idea behind the terror. So a proper, realistic list should be "dense
urban areas of the United States". Of course it's not what the embassies were
assigned to find out, so they really did an honest, if mostly useless, job.

~~~
regularfry
Possibly you misunderstand me. I don't mean that the Chinese (for instance)
might want to bomb what's on the list (although that would certainly be one
approach). I mean that they might literally wish to (and be capable of)
_buying_ what's on the list. We all know they've been cornering African
mineral exploitation for the last decade or so, I'm sure they wouldn't object
to another cobalt mine or two on their acquisition list, even if they had to
pay an absurd premium.

~~~
varjag
Oh, I see.

Either way, the list could be just as easily compiled by Chinese self as it
was by the U.S. missions, most of it is based on public knowledge and open
sources.

It's not that I suggest leaking it made any practical sense, but IMO the
dangers of it are greatly exaggerated.

------
scrrr
Perhaps not all information should be released, however, in the end perhaps
it's only whistleblowers that can uncover certain things and force decision
makers take back certain laws.

(Fictional?) example with body scanners: The company making those has a real
interest in the terror threat never going away. The shareholders expect that.
The politicians get elected with money from security companies. Thus: The
terror threat will never go away. UNLESS a whistleblower shows the truth and
the population gets upset.

Whistleblowers are important for democracy.

------
epo
This is ill judged and shows Wikileaks to be immature as the motivation could
only have been some form of juvenile revenge, this has probably damaged their
credibility beyond repair.

Little or no public good comes from this, any more than disseminating pictures
of the keys to _your_ front door or publishing your bank account details would
somehow be justified "in the interests of openness".

Comments about this being OK because "security through obscurity" is a bad
thing merely show the commenter to incompetent at thinking, preferring instead
to spout cliched slogans, rather like the book waving Maoists of old.

~~~
epo
Ooh! downvoting, there's a compelling counterargument.

~~~
jokermatt999
You do have a very valid point, but your tone is rather harsh. I'm guessing
the downvotes are more about how you're saying it rather than what you're
saying.

~~~
epo
A mindless defence of a mindless act deserves nothing but contempt. Harsh? not
as harsh as the reaction to wikileaks will be. To quote Stan Lee "with great
power comes great responsibility" ("Spiderman"). Wikileaks has power, they
have not exercised responsibility, this will cost them (and indirectly, the
rest of us) dearly.

------
dqh
I wish Wikileaks would stick to exposing corruption / human rights violations
/ warcrimes etc. This release seems only to increase the vulnerability of the
USA (not to mention the civillians simply working at these targets) to
unsophisticated attackers.

------
kmfrk
I'd be interested to see how Assange responds to this. It's going to determine
my opinion about him, and put a lot of doubts to rest for better or worse. I'm
sure other people feel the same.

------
kostko
This article actually makes a lot of sense to me: <http://www.infowars.com/is-
the-internet-911-under-way/>

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DjDarkman
And I should believe that the location of "the most critical gas facility in
the world" has been a secret all along. :D

