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WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

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Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#11

Post by Alex3917 »

riffer wrote: post #7
NathanKP wrote: post #5

Is anyone else getting just a little bit sick of WikiLeaks? The basic concept of providing transparency is good, but I think they are taking things way too far. I hadn't even thought of the issue of the Taliban being able to read the records themselves to find out who the informants are. Just because something is a secret doesn't mean it has to be exposed, and I think that is the fundamental problem with Wikileaks. S…

What Julian appears to me to be trying to do is to reduce the ability of large bureaucratic militarized organizations to dominate innocent individuals. Secrets exist for many purposes, but their primary impact on history is to permit groups of people to organize in order to persecute other less organized groups of people. Ultimately, it was the combination of industrialization and secrets that made it possible for na…

"War is a failure of the imagination."

In an ideal world Wikileaks wouldn't be necessary, but in the world we have it helps ameliorate the damage caused by our cognitive biases.

Also, someone should really make Chris Hedges' book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning into a movie.

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#12

Post by derefr »

NathanKP wrote: post #5

Is anyone else getting just a little bit sick of WikiLeaks? The basic concept of providing transparency is good, but I think they are taking things way too far. I hadn't even thought of the issue of the Taliban being able to read the records themselves to find out who the informants are. Just because something is a secret doesn't mean it has to be exposed, and I think that is the fundamental problem with Wikileaks. S…

But who decides what "has to" be exposed, and what doesn't? The problem is that there is no third party at all trustworthy enough to bear the responsibility of "filtering" through all the world's dirty laundry to just find the "morally reprehensible" parts. So, there must be some (transparent) strategy set in advance: they either release nothing (most news agencies), everything (Wikileaks), or use some other pre-defined filter that can be proven to function (i.e. they cover everything, but then push their stories to a proxy server, with a transparent and inspectable program designed to only publish the stories that match some algorithm.)

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#13

Post by [deleted] »

riffer wrote: post #8
dlytle wrote: post #2

It feels like I'm watching someone try to act out the part of a character in a spy novel. Big encrypted files called Insurance, twittering about being followed by government agents, sensationalizing the things they post... I think they have good reasons for what they're doing (or at least good intentions), and I do like the concept behind WikiLeaks. I just think they're getting a bit caught up in the whole drama/myst…

A couple of years ago Julian and his colleagues released information that swung the national election in Kenya. This must have gotten the attention of every government with something to hide (all of them). Since then, he claims to have released more confidential information than the rest of the worldwide media. Combined. The stakes are enormous. And the reality is that that puts a target on your back. Go Julian, go.

[deleted]

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#14

Post by faramarz »

dlytle wrote: post #2

It feels like I'm watching someone try to act out the part of a character in a spy novel. Big encrypted files called Insurance, twittering about being followed by government agents, sensationalizing the things they post... I think they have good reasons for what they're doing (or at least good intentions), and I do like the concept behind WikiLeaks. I just think they're getting a bit caught up in the whole drama/myst…

I have to agree with you.

I think if there ever is a downfall to the Wikileak initiative, it will be due to the gloating and the drama they perpetuate.

Julian and his gang need to stop with the commentary and just release the documents. leave the opinions to be formed by the people. The twitter account is going to come back and bite them in the ass if they keep pushing commentary out.

I fully support the need for an organisation like this and having seen multiple interviews of Julian, I have to say he's the right character to lead this mission.

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#15

Post by riffer »

[deleted] wrote: post #13
riffer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago Julian and his colleagues released information that swung the national election in Kenya. This must have gotten the attention of every government with something to hide (all of them). Since then, he claims to have released more confidential information than the rest of the worldwide media. Combined. The stakes are enormous. And the reality is that that puts a target on your back. Go Julian, go.

[deleted]

Please produce a statement that I made in which I pretend he's a journalist holding a neutral point of view.

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#16

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #13
riffer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of years ago Julian and his colleagues released information that swung the national election in Kenya. This must have gotten the attention of every government with something to hide (all of them). Since then, he claims to have released more confidential information than the rest of the worldwide media. Combined. The stakes are enormous. And the reality is that that puts a target on your back. Go Julian, go.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#17

Post by philwelch »

riffer wrote: post #7
NathanKP wrote: post #5

Is anyone else getting just a little bit sick of WikiLeaks? The basic concept of providing transparency is good, but I think they are taking things way too far. I hadn't even thought of the issue of the Taliban being able to read the records themselves to find out who the informants are. Just because something is a secret doesn't mean it has to be exposed, and I think that is the fundamental problem with Wikileaks. S…

What Julian appears to me to be trying to do is to reduce the ability of large bureaucratic militarized organizations to dominate innocent individuals. Secrets exist for many purposes, but their primary impact on history is to permit groups of people to organize in order to persecute other less organized groups of people. Ultimately, it was the combination of industrialization and secrets that made it possible for na…

Sixty to seventy years ago, the following information was kept secret by Western governments:

-How to build an atom bomb

-How to build effective radar systems to detect incoming bombers

-The fact that German and Japanese encryption codes had been compromised

-The US Navy's awareness of Japan's intention to attack Midway Island

-The fact that Patton was actually removed from command, and that his travels around Italy and north Africa were a ruse to misdirect German defenses away from Normandy

Need I go on? If some idealist decided to leak these secrets, a lot more innocent individuals would be dominated by certain nation states. State secrets are no different from any other power of the state--they can be used for good or for ill, and it's careful to ensure they're used for good, but it's foolish and suicidal to try and keep them from being used at all.

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#19

Post by mishmash »

Groxx wrote: post #18
mishmash wrote: post #4

Hmm posted this earlier and it got no love. :( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1562651

haha, and the poster of this one is "mixmax" Talk about a coincidence ( or is it??!? ).

A conspiracy in a thread about conspiracies - I'm hooked. ;)

Re: WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File

#20

Post by maika »

By my understanding there are around 12401769434657526912139264 possibilities, therefore to calculate the time taken in days to brute force a password would be the application of the following formula:

  t = n / m / 86400 / P
  
  n: search space (no of possible passwords)
  m: amount of random passwords that can be tested a second
  86400: 60*60*24 (converts units to days)
  P: parallelism (number of crackers)
Let

  n = 12401769434657526912139264
  m = 100
  P = 1,000,000
It would only take 143 days to be successful. Is this correct? Second question, how do we carve up the search space and distribute this to the internet?

Edit: n is generated by limiting the key to be a composition of alphanumeric and related characters. Could be wrong.

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