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Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#111

Post by cryoshon »

mythrwy wrote: post #102
hdolt wrote: 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?

Don't handle them. Regardless of age. Pick out the worst and get rid of them. You may find the troubles with the others diminish. Being fired once or twice in life is a character building experience. It often makes you re-assess your worth and take work more seriously. And later, as a person becomes (potentially) a manager, they realize the ego crush that is being fired and treat with respect, unlike "kid" managers w…

>to understand the underlying nature of commerce and human interaction

that we can't treat people as anything other than a means to make money under capitalism?

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#112

Post by wyldfire »

cproctor wrote: post #96

I wonder whether NSA uses syntactic watermarking[1], imperceptible changes to word order or sentence form, keyed to the user accessing a document. This, or other techniques of embedding a fingerprint in the text itself, would allow a leaker to be identified from just a transcription of the document. What is the right amount of fuzzing for a news organization to perform on leaked documents, to protect a source while p…

> What is the right amount of fuzzing for a news organization to perform on leaked documents, to protect a source while providing credible evidence to support a claim?

Maybe paraphrasing the key points or claims of the document would be the only safe way.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#113

Post by throwaway-1209 »

hsod wrote: post #103
throwaway-1209 wrote: post #24

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.

In your second paragraph, are you referring to the redactions? The document contains quotes like this: "Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions." which seem to directly tie it to GRU.

That's a statement. Statements are not evidence. I can make it seem like it's GRU (or "the Chinese") from right where I am in the US, with no way for anyone to say it ain't so. And I'm not even a pro.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#114

Post by tptacek »

tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Have we learned nothing about the NSA's tactics? The Intercept publishes reporting that they would rather not have been printed, and the very day the DOJ unseals charges where they try to say they learned about the leak from a paper crease from what can be reasonably inferred to be The Intercept. Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept (in contradiction with their recomm…

And so the top comment on this HN thread is more or less a content-free distilled expression of rooting interest. NSA bad, Intercept good, what more do you need to know?

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#115

Post by rocky1138 »

VLM wrote: post #101
ForRealsies wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 TrumpIsH…

Well, I guess what I'm getting at is a clearance is top down CYA, like say I sold 72 M-60 machine guns to MS13 to pay off my gambling debt, and a journalist discovers in 5 minutes that I posted that to twitter before I got my job of working at the armory, and the journalist is going to ask the Commanding General of the post why no one noticed that before I got the job and did exactly what I said I'd do. So thats very…

> I suspect it'll never be acceptable in any workplace to ever say in public "I hate (some level of manager) because he's a (insert race here)"

Germany, 1933. But that's not to discredit your main point. I agree.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#116

Post by throwaway-1209 »

braderhart wrote: post #91
throwaway-1209 wrote: post #24

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.

Nah. I think she was careless on purpose. Imagine if she transferred it using encryption and Russia got ahold of it, and then claimed she gave it to them. I think she wanted people to know so that she could claim that she was doing the right thing.

That would be unbelievably stupid. It's not like in DOJ anyone cares if she "did the right thing", they'll put her in the slammer all the same. Not even Hillary Clinton would get off scot free after something like this.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#117

Post by elefanten »

lubesGordi wrote: post #86

I'm not clear on what the motivation for this 'leak' would be. Is it morally reprehensible for the NSA to withhold this information from the public? Was the NSA doing something illegal by withholding this info? If the only actionable information leaked is politically charged or simply falling within the established/mass media narrative, is it wrong to suspect this 'leak' is disinformation?

Really? All kinds of motivations are easy to imagine, but the reporting about the leaker herself indicates that she maybe just did it for political reasons (ie- she is Anti-Trump).

But given the response and the constellation of corroborating info from various sources, it seems pretty reasonable at this point to presume it is NOT disinformation. It's almost certainly not a complete picture of what various parties know and it's likely a snapshot of an evolving knowledge base (ie- the broader intelligence community's knowledge of what was going on before and during our election).

But the presumption that it is not 'false' information should be pretty solid by now.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#118

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway-1209 wrote: post #116
braderhart wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. I think she was careless on purpose. Imagine if she transferred it using encryption and Russia got ahold of it, and then claimed she gave it to them. I think she wanted people to know so that she could claim that she was doing the right thing.

That would be unbelievably stupid. It's not like in DOJ anyone cares if she "did the right thing", they'll put her in the slammer all the same. Not even Hillary Clinton would get off scot free after something like this.

> That would be unbelievably stupid. It's not like in DOJ anyone cares if she "did the right thing"

A jury (with nullification power), in principal, might (as might the electorate who choose Presidents who have pardon and clemency power); if you aren't going to flee to avoid capture and aren't confident of your ability to evade the counterintelligence services in the long term, compromising your ability in the short term to improve the optics of the event may not be completely irrational, even if it is far from guaranteed to pay off.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#119

Post by tanderson92 »

tptacek wrote: post #114
tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Have we learned nothing about the NSA's tactics? The Intercept publishes reporting that they would rather not have been printed, and the very day the DOJ unseals charges where they try to say they learned about the leak from a paper crease from what can be reasonably inferred to be The Intercept. Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept (in contradiction with their recomm…

And so the top comment on this HN thread is more or less a content-free distilled expression of rooting interest. NSA bad, Intercept good, what more do you need to know?

Excuse me? Your characterization is far off the mark, and your snark unappreciated. I was simply remembering that the government can and does lie, and that there we should remember the interests of the parties involved. It's not content free to observe this fact and to stress what we do and do not know.

If I had to change anything it would be the fact that they only signed up for an intercept mailing list using work email, not direct contact. I regret the error, I was going off what I read yesterday.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#120

Post by tibarun »

tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Have we learned nothing about the NSA's tactics? The Intercept publishes reporting that they would rather not have been printed, and the very day the DOJ unseals charges where they try to say they learned about the leak from a paper crease from what can be reasonably inferred to be The Intercept. Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept (in contradiction with their recomm…

WaPo is a CIA mouthpiece. So it's to be expected if they portray "The Intercept" as an unsafe place to leak to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofB1b3RMdhA&list=PLTpcK80ird...
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