
Snowden’s Box – The human network behind the leak - seagullz
http://harpers.org/archive/2017/05/snowdens-box/?single=1
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jugbee
I pity Dale when NSA reads the article. Telling everyone that you have the
whole snowden material? Mate, that's irresposible and stupid

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zeroer
You're right.

"We brought the material down. Now it’s hidden somewhere else — off Dale’s
property in a location known only to him."

Good lord.

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wheelerwj
"Yet we hang on to such items."

Jesus, as if its some sort of folksy thing you're going to pull out and show
your grand kids one day.

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scribu
You scoff, but I'd wager that a USB stick _would_ count as folksy in 50 years.

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wheelerwj
well in 50 years they can speak about it that way.

besides, im talking about the content.

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panarky

      The institutions and endeavors we regard as ironclad — from
      parenting to politics — are actually held together with chewing
      gum and duct tape. Nothing truly works, at least not for long,
      or not in the way it’s supposed to. This reality is terrifying,
      because it exposes the precariousness of the existing order.
      But it’s also liberating, because it encourages the individual
      to act, to defy the ominous mythology of competence and control.

~~~
cyphunk
It's called the "social contract". It would be more concerning if it wasn't
this way.

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rdl
I don't understand why the files didn't get encrypted and then massively
uploaded, like the wikileaks insurance files.

That turns it into a problem of securely archiving a 256bit string and
escrowing it or doing some k of n thing such that it gets released if
Poitras/Snowden/etc. go missing, ensuring they don't go missing. That's a much
simpler problem than dealing with 8GB+ of data.

(And it only really works if you either publicize this or let NSA and any
other potential adversary know about it; and you then end up with the "anyone
who wants to cause trouble for NSA knocks off enough people to trigger the
insurance file" problem if it's public...)

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zeroer
Maybe if your fear is that the NSA tapped the entire Internet, you might think
they can trace the origin location of such a large upload.

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mirimir
I'm gobsmacked by that choice of return address. From "B Manning"? Only one
digit off from his real address?

Maybe it was a test. Let's say that he in fact mailed the package anonymously.
So interception would arguably have told him that he was under observation.
But still, using "B Manning" seems like a confounder, even if a small one.

I'm guessing that he used different return addresses for the other two boxes.
Controls for the test, as it were.

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queeerkopf
For those who'd rather have the article displayed as a single page:
[http://harpers.org/archive/2017/05/snowdens-
box/?single=1](http://harpers.org/archive/2017/05/snowdens-box/?single=1)

