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Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

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Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#61

Any article that ends with a yes/no question is always answered with "no". This one is no exception. Print classified info out at work on work printers from a monitored work computer you are logged into and said info ends up with reporters days later? Reporters you communicated with over gmail ?! This person isn't exactly an infosec genius. Which, I mean, isn't a sin or anything, but when you know the organization yo…

Unless you are a whistleblower and feel that the public legitimately needs to know about something, because afterall this election affects our daily lives. We deserve to to know the truth about threats to democracy, especially when Presidential candidates are still claiming that voter data was rigged. Didn't Trump blame Hillary for him losing the popular vote, saying that it was her fault for hacking the election?

What are you replying to? It can't be my comment.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#62

Any article that ends with a yes/no question is always answered with "no". This one is no exception. Print classified info out at work on work printers from a monitored work computer you are logged into and said info ends up with reporters days later? Reporters you communicated with over gmail ?! This person isn't exactly an infosec genius. Which, I mean, isn't a sin or anything, but when you know the organization yo…

Unless you are a whistleblower and feel that the public legitimately needs to know about something, because afterall this election affects our daily lives. We deserve to to know the truth about threats to democracy, especially when Presidential candidates are still claiming that voter data was rigged. Didn't Trump blame Hillary for him losing the popular vote, saying that it was her fault for hacking the election?

[deleted]

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#63
post #8

It's getting complicated managing 25 year olds at work these days. Lot of mistrust and entitlement issues I have never seen before. If you are a manager any suggestions about how to handle this stuff?

What do you have to gain by changing the subject, and why the green account? Create an "Ask HN" with your other (established) account.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#64
post #44
post #8

It's getting complicated managing 25 year olds at work these days. Lot of mistrust and entitlement issues I have never seen before. If you are a manager any suggestions about how to handle this stuff?

I like to check on the kind of social circle they maintain. Loners generally don't get what it takes for a group to come to consensus about the grey stuff.

user: pine56

created: 15 minutes ago

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#65
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The question then becomes: did The Intercept not follow best practices here? > If removing well-known, uniquely identifying printer microdots isn't a best practice, it should be. Very true; where is the evidence that they did not do so?

https://twitter.com/flashman/status/871896475902631936

Thanks.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#66
post #26
post #14

Check their very public social media profiles[0], Reality Winners reads like she escaped a psych ward so how she was ever given clearance should be an issue in itself. [0] http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=56840

Says the person linking to "informationliberation dot com". Pot, meet kettle. Sure her twitter profile is highly politically charged and should likely have made her unfit for clearance, but citing that as evidence that she should be institutionalized is ridiculous. She'd likely say the same about you given your proclivity for "informationliberation". Where does that leave us for discourse?

Have either of you been thru clearance? I have. They're really excited to know if you can be bribed with drugs or sex or simple money. If you have the politics of a typical college professor they're not terribly interested. The clearance process was mostly CYA, was this candidate dumb enough to say he'd sell secrets to the soviets for weed or cash to pay loansharks or kinky sex?

I've read this woman's weird social media profiles. What a nutcase. The systemic failure was in her direct superior not discussing some red flags that would be noteworthy at any other organization with HR and/or the police. Her boss is supposed to be having an awkward conversation with HR beginning with "So I've got this direct report, and in public she hates the CEO. And she's intensely racist, everything with her is all about race race race, and btw she bitterly hates the CEO's race, although she likes some other races. So she hates the race of some coworkers including the big guy, and she likes the race of other coworkers, and says this all in public which must be very intimidating to her coworkers. And she hates a couple entire countries include some that we have coworkers from which must be very awkward in the office. And she tweets out parodies making fun of the CEO, in public. And she denies and parodies the CEOs policies, and denies the CEO is the legitimate leader of the company, which makes me think shes not going to react rationally at all, if the CEO or anyone else in the chain of command disciplines or fires her, we're going to need security if not cops present. And she identifies her own race as being terrorists, which in an era of workplace violence frankly scares me, and she does this in public so her coworkers see her identify herself as terrorism race or whatever violent idiocy, and we're making an incredibly hostile workplace for every coworker who's not suicidal or martyr complex. She believes she's about to die from climate change or some nonsense, the specifics don't matter, which is super terrifying in the context of self identifying as being a terrorist, making me scared she's going to strike first perhaps. So, HR person, do we wait for her to go postal and shoot the entire office, or is there some kind of employee assistance plan for mental illness I mean if this can all be fixed with some pills she seems otherwise OK, or can we call security and fire her WRT the whole workplace violence thing combined with her bitter racism toward coworkers or the ethnic thing where she hates certain countries that we have coworkers in/from or ..."

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#67

Nah. Only 6 people have printed the doc and of those only one could be found in phone call metadata making a call to a press related contact. I don't know what the leaker was thinking. And in the end even this leak doesn't contain any evidence of anything that would even tie it to Russia, let alone GRU. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. So she will get 10 years in the slammer for nothing.

The Intercept scanned the document and posted high quality versions of them online. They were of such quality that the embedded dots modern printers add to each page were readily available: http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-realit... It pointed to the exact printer being used and the exact time and date the document was printed. They didn't need her email to figure out it was her, but I'm sure tha…

Pretty sure she sent the document which means she made the mistake of sending high resolution scans.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#68
post #66
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says the person linking to "informationliberation dot com". Pot, meet kettle. Sure her twitter profile is highly politically charged and should likely have made her unfit for clearance, but citing that as evidence that she should be institutionalized is ridiculous. She'd likely say the same about you given your proclivity for "informationliberation". Where does that leave us for discourse?

Have either of you been thru clearance? I have. They're really excited to know if you can be bribed with drugs or sex or simple money. If you have the politics of a typical college professor they're not terribly interested. The clearance process was mostly CYA, was this candidate dumb enough to say he'd sell secrets to the soviets for weed or cash to pay loansharks or kinky sex? I've read this woman's weird social me…

>So I've got this direct report, and in public she hates the CEO

In today's society, it's socially more acceptable to hate the President than to merely like the President.

> And she identifies her own race as being terrorists

If she was making these statements on any race other than 'white', I guarantee you she would have been dealt with immediately.

What do we call these people? Radical, self-loathing white TrumpIsHitlers? Are they the final form of the SJW?

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#69

Nah. Only 6 people have printed the doc and of those only one could be found in phone call metadata making a call to a press related contact. I don't know what the leaker was thinking. And in the end even this leak doesn't contain any evidence of anything that would even tie it to Russia, let alone GRU. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. So she will get 10 years in the slammer for nothing.

The Intercept scanned the document and posted high quality versions of them online. They were of such quality that the embedded dots modern printers add to each page were readily available: http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-realit... It pointed to the exact printer being used and the exact time and date the document was printed. They didn't need her email to figure out it was her, but I'm sure tha…

In the vast majority of cases, the watermark data wouldn't point anywhere interesting. Maybe the serial number would point to a public library or a warehouse where the printer was stored prior to sale. Certainly The Intercept had no way of knowing that the serial number would correspond to an office printer at the NSA or one of their contractors.

I don't think we should expect news outlets to scour every printed document for these watermarks and remove them. Most aren't that technically savvy and this solidly seems like the responsibility of the person doing the leaking.

Leaking is dangerous and risky. I don't know the leaker personally but I could understand someone feeling that documents need to be released to the public and, at the same time, feeling like they can't evade the NSA's investigation. At that point any counter-measures probably seem pointless, especially for those who are not technical and can't imagine any bounds to the NSA investigative powers.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno how we can quantify "Americans being benefited" in light of what these leaks are revealing in the global context, but I sure don't like it, living as I do, under either a velvet glove, or an iron one, depending on which side of the wall I happen to decide to visit. But, I do think that these leaks are good for everyone, not just Americans, and that is why they need to happen.

But practically, what would you do given the information divulged. Hackers gonna hack, that's known. Does knowing Russian agents attempted a hack cast them in worse light? No; we already know Russia isn't a close political ally of the US. What details of the hack do is tip off the Russians to burn their channels and methods and complicate the NSA's work in protecting American digital assets from further attack (as we…

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