I've purposefully avoided taking a position on the "Wikileaks - threat or menace" debate. Here, Rattle does:

I completely agree with Gen. Hayden's comments in this article. Wikileaks has been completely irresponsible. I don't see any positive side to the release of these documents.

Hayden's essay sure throws down a gauntlet at the hacker scene:

And all of this because of some corrupted view of the inherent evils of the modern state, a pseudo-romantic attachment to the absolute value of transparency, a casual indifference to inevitable consequences and a neurotic attachment to one individual's self importance. Rarely have we seen such a dangerous combination of arrogance and incompetence.

This isn't just a challenge to Wikileak's disclosure of this particular set of documents. This is a challenge to the idea of transparency itself. In this regard, Stratfor is wrong. The Wikileaks event isn't really about the war in Afghanistan - its about the Internet.

Apparently, this leak wasn't all that valuable to the general public. The event certainly has focused the public's attention on facts that insiders already know about the war, and the importance of the focus of the public's attention should not be underestimated. However, given that there is no great secret here that insiders were unaware of - this event represents an opportunity to debate the subject of freedom of information in a context where there is nothing to loose from siding with the establishment.

The results of this debate, in terms of public opinion, as well as the resulting legal framework within which the state can respond to public disclosures of this sort, will impact future situations in which the leak does matter to the general public, because it does reveal a secret that insiders weren't aware of.

In the world of the eternity service, ultimately, some things are going to be posted there that you'd rather not have out in the open. If you believe that there should be information resources that are beyond the reach of the state, you have to accept that. If you can't accept it, its all a matter of where and how to draw the line - the events of the past few weeks have circled around that very question.

So it doesn't really matter whether or not Wikileaks was irresponsible. It is inevitable that Wikileaks or someone like them is going to do something irresponsible, or at least something that a lot of people think is irresponsible. The important question is what ought to be done about it.

If you stop at simply deciding that you think Wikileaks was irresponsible, you avoid the opportunity to address the more important question being debated, and you concede the matter to a particular side by association.

The leaders of the Republican party have made their case - they would draw the line in such a manner that the military can use any and all capabilities at its disposal... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

It is sufficient to say "I think what they did was irresponsible but I'll defend their right to do it" but if thats what you think, you have to say it, because the later part is what is important at this moment, and not the earlier part.

At this moment I find my convictions regarding the later part are being challenged, and so I cannot express my views on the earlier matter.

I think that is the point of the whole incident.

I'm in about the same place you are. This isn't the Pentagon Papers. The "vital public interest" part of the equation is missing.

In the case of the Afghanistan documents, the damage has far outweighed the good. Nothing about the Afghanistan documents contributes to the enlightened citizenry we require to be the restraint on executive policy. It's more about gloating over a security breech than contributing to a public dialog.

In the case of the Apache attack video, there is more room for debate. Not much more mind you... There is an argument that it was in the public interest, as it could have exposed a cover-up of some type (even though it didn't).

What worries me is the diplomatic cables Manning spoke of.. And the matter of the "insurance file"... There is reason to believe that Wikileaks is still holding onto some unreleased information that has the potential to be seriously damaging. Every release of the information leaked by Manning appears to be more serious than the last.

What truly infuriates me about Wikileak's actions is how this seriously hurts the FOI community. Wikileaks is pretty much daring DoD to find a way to exercise prior restraint on them. Our speech freedoms come with responsibility. They are betraying us all by their irresponsible actions.

As for Manning, I hope he rots in jail for the next 50+ years. I do not see his actions as noble. It's not like he leaked a thing here or there to expose some evils... He leaked vast amounts of information with little regard. He betrayed the entire intelligence and military community, both ours and our allies. The chat logs with Lamo didn't show higher reasoning.. I see only a fucked up child who never should have had the access he did.

All that being said, DoD really screwed the pooch here too. They pushed SIPRNet out to a base with junior analysts and had weak ass security controls in place. Manning was able to take writable media in and out of secured areas. Usage wasn't being audited. Total IA fail.

What truly infuriates me about Wikileak's actions is how this seriously hurts the FOI community. Wikileaks is pretty much daring DoD to find a way to exercise prior restraint on them. Our speech freedoms come with responsibility. They are betraying us all by their irresponsible actions.

There is a possibility that this is the whole point. Someone is paying a lot of money for wikileaks. Is everything about this situation exactly what it appears to be on the surface? I'm sure JYA would say that it is almost certainly not...

Never should have had the access he did.

All that being said, DoD really screwed the pooch here too... Total IA fail.

None of the media is focused on this as a part of the issue. If the NYT profile is accurate this person should not have had Top Secret clearance.

I'm not convinced that the focus should be on Wikileaks.

Is this information available to the Taliban and to other intelligence orgs because of Wikileaks, or is it available because the security sucked? If Wikileaks got it, can we really assume there have been no other breaches and that the information is otherwise unavailable to foreign intel? Are Julian Assange and his hacker friends really better at turning sources than professional intelligence organizations who specialize at this and have been at it for generations?

I don't like blaming the victim but this is the DOD we're talking about - this is battlefield intelligence! These people ought to be prepared to handle hard core adversaries and they got pwned by a bunch of post adolescent anarchists. There are a lot of people in the hacker scene who think they know their shit but at the end of the day they are not professionals. There ought to be some hard questions asked about how this was even possible, and a certain amount of assumption of responsibility, as opposed to finger pointing and saber rattling, would be a more mature response from the DOD.

I don't like blaming the victim but this is the DOD we're talking about - this is battlefield intelligence! These people ought to be prepared to handle hard core adversaries and they got pwned by a bunch of post adolescent anarchists. There are a lot of people in the hacker scene who think they know their shit but at the end of the day they are not professionals. There ought to be some hard questions asked about how this was even possible, and a certain amount of assumption of responsibility, as opposed to finger pointing and saber rattling, would be a more mature response from the DOD.

I have no qualms with laying blame on DoD. They fucked up, large. They screwed up the basic tenets of operational security surrounding SIPRNet. Heads should be rolling at DoD, NSA, DISA, and most likely several contractors. The fact this was able to occur at all indicates serious problems exist and are wide spread. It should be getting attention.

Based on what was in the chat logs with Lamo and what's been said in various articles it sounds pretty clear cut what happened. The decision was made to make as much information as possible available to analysts at forward operating bases (not a bad decision), equipment and network access was rolled out, but the accompanying protocols and procedures that ensure operational security in regards to the usage of the deployed assets were not implemented. In short, classic straightforward high consequence fucking up.

There was a chain of failures that all had to happen in series for this to happen. Manning should have had his TS/SCI clearance suspended when he was fucking up. Security controls should have forbidden him from taking writable media in and out of a secured area. Security controls should have stopped him from being able to use said media on secure machines. An audit trail should have existed for all actions on these forward deployed SIPRNet networks. There are both strictly technological and strictly meat-space controls that could have prevented this.

For all I know it's already happening... But I think Senate Select Intel should do a full investigation of the failures here.

Rattle wrote:

First of all, let's look at the "up" side of this release. These documents "prove" that war is grittier when viewed by an infantryman than by a policymaker; that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, is a difficult partner; that in war innocent civilians sometimes die; and that the Taliban has been growing in strength over the past several years. Not quite "stop the presses" kind of revelations.

Now the downsides. According to multiple press accounts, despite WikiLeaks' claim that it had redacted source-identifying information from the military's intelligence reports, it apparently did a half-baked job and real names of real people are being exposed.

Beyond that, even when you effectively mask source-identifying data, the enemy knows who did or who did not know about the historic operation or meeting or rendezvous now being made public in a leaked American document.

I can already see the Taliban or al Qaeda dialogue: "Brother, in whose house did we hold that meeting in 2007?"

Finally, I can only imagine what adversary intelligence services worldwide are doing with these documents. If I were the chief of Russia's FSB or China's PLA-2, I would be gathering all of my English-speaking officers and directing them to read all 75,000 documents to learn where the Americans are strong, weak, vulnerable, formidable, to be avoided and to be challenged.

I completely agree with Gen. Hayden's comments in this article. Wikileaks has been completely irresponsible. I don't see any positive side to the release of these documents.

Am I the only one who thinnks its funny as hell that General Hayden quoted an Alicia Silverstone movie?

Acidus wrote:
Am I the only one who thinnks its funny as hell that General Hayden quoted an Alicia Silverstone movie?

So like, right now for example. The Haitians need to come to America. But some people are all, "What about the strain on our resources?" Well it's like when I had this garden party for my father's birthday, right? I put R.S.V.P. 'cause it was a sit-down dinner. But some people came that like did not R.S.V.P. I was like totally buggin'. I had to haul ass to the kitchen, redistribute the food, and squish in extra place settings. But by the end of the day it was, like, the more the merrier. And so if the government could just get to the kitchen, rearrange some things, we could certainly party with the Haitians. And in conclusion may I please remind you it does not say R.S.V.P. on the Statue of Liberty. Thank you very much.

Acidus wrote:
Am I the only one who thinnks its funny as hell that General Hayden quoted an Alicia Silverstone movie?

On the other hand - maybe an unusual movie reference is a subtle message. The following is the plot from Excess Baggage:

Emily Hope (Alicia Silverstone) stages her own kidnapping to get the attention of her father. She puts herself into the trunk of her own car (a BMW 850i), tapes her legs and mouth, handcuffs her hands and calls the police so they can come “rescue” her. But then, unexpectedly, a car thief named Vincent Roche (Benicio del Toro) steals the car with her in it. Suddenly Emily finds herself actually kidnapped, only the kidnapper doesn’t know what to do with her.

You put some crappy intel out on a server somewhere hoping the enemy will find it and think its a real scoop, but then some idiot finds it, falls for it, and posts it on the Internet?

Shrug.

Decius wrote

I've purposefully avoided taking a position on the "Wikileaks - threat or menace" debate. Here, Rattle does:

I completely agree with Gen. Hayden's comments in this article. Wikileaks has been completely irresponsible. I don't see any positive side to the release of these documents.

Hayden's essay sure throws down a gauntlet at the hacker scene:

And all of this because of some corrupted view of the inherent evils of the modern state, a pseudo-romantic attachment to the absolute value of transparency, a casual indifference to inevitable consequences and a neurotic attachment to one individual's self importance. Rarely have we seen such a dangerous combination of arrogance and incompetence.

This isn't just a challenge to Wikileak's disclosure of this particular set of documents. This is a challenge to the idea of transparency itself. In this regard, Stratfor is wrong. The Wikileaks event isn't really about the war in Afghanistan - its about the Internet.

Apparently, this leak wasn't all that valuable to the general public. The event certainly has focused the public's attention on facts that insiders already know about the war, and the importance of the focus of the public's attention should not be underestimated. However, given that there is no great secret here that insiders were unaware of - this event represents an opportunity to debate the subject of freedom of information in a context where there is nothing to loose from siding with the establishment.

The results of this debate, in terms of public opinion, as well as the resulting legal framework within which the state can respond to public disclosures of this sort, will impact future situations in which the leak does matter to the general public, because it does reveal a secret that insiders weren't aware of.

In the world of the eternity service, ultimately, some things are going to be posted there that you'd rather not have out in the open. If you believe that there should be information resources that are beyond the reach of the state, you have to accept that. If you can't accept it, its all a matter of where and how to draw the line - the events of the past few weeks have circled around that very question.

So it doesn't really matter whether or not Wikileaks was irresponsible. It is inevitable that Wikileaks or someone like them is going to do something irresponsible, or at least something that a lot of people think is irresponsible. The important question is what ought to be done about it.

If you stop at simply deciding that you think Wikileaks was irresponsible, you avoid the opportunity to address the more important question being debated, and you concede the matter to a particular side by association.

The leaders of the Republican party have made their case - they would draw the line in such a manner that the military can use any and a... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]