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Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

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Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#41

Post by arethuza »

die_sekte wrote: post #30
rorrr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't you connected to the internet? What would stop you from connecting to Gmail (HTTPS) and emailing something to yourself?

Extensive proxying? MITM? There's no reason they wouldn't put their own root certificate onto the machines. For most work on Wall Street one probably doesn't even need to be connected to the internet.

It's scary the number of people who think that HTTPS guarantees an end-to-end secure channel between your browser and the remote application.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#42

Post by die_sekte »

arethuza wrote: post #41
die_sekte wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensive proxying? MITM? There's no reason they wouldn't put their own root certificate onto the machines. For most work on Wall Street one probably doesn't even need to be connected to the internet.

It's scary the number of people who think that HTTPS guarantees an end-to-end secure channel between your browser and the remote application.

Well, it does if you control the machine you're using. Or am I missing something?

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#43

Post by jfager »

nhangen wrote: post #26
nl wrote: post #13

It's worth noting that this (reduction in the efficiency of internal communications) is exactly what Assange wanted: The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulti…

This assumes that every piece of information being passed back and forth is used to further a conspiracy. Much of it is mundane, albeit necessary. Sure, it's what he wanted, but that's part of the problem here. The government, like they always do, overreacts to fix the problem, and now even basic security measures could be hampered.

That's not what it assumes at all. Actually, that's pretty much the opposite of what Assange explicitly states, that revealing mundane details has the positive effect of demonstrating how overused secrecy is as a tool of governance.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#44

Post by Create »

nl wrote: post #13

It's worth noting that this (reduction in the efficiency of internal communications) is exactly what Assange wanted: The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulti…

...or exactly what GOOG Brothers like: chrome isotopes finally get a whole new market. Something perhaps like the GRiD Compass 2.0

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#45

Post by arethuza »

die_sekte wrote: post #42
arethuza wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's scary the number of people who think that HTTPS guarantees an end-to-end secure channel between your browser and the remote application.

Well, it does if you control the machine you're using. Or am I missing something?

AFAIK if someone else controls the machine you are on (or can get certs installed by one way or another) which can be combined with a MITM proxy to get access to the unencrypted content.

However, a lot people use machines they don't control where this kind of approach is perfectly feasible.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#46

Post by nitrogen »

pyre wrote: post #20
cromulent wrote: post #18

Well, this is the real way to shut down Wikileaks. Don't leak. Wikileaks is poorly named - they are neither a wiki nor do they leak. Wikileaks is to governments as The Sun is to the British Royal Family. If you are doing something unsavoury, you'd better make sure they don't find out.

I'm thinking that Wikileaks is stating that it's the 'Wikipedia for leaks,' but IIRC they were originally running on a mediawiki platform.

Is there an archive of the old wiki? There were some documents on there I might like to revisit.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#47

Post by krschultz »

nl wrote: post #13

It's worth noting that this (reduction in the efficiency of internal communications) is exactly what Assange wanted: The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulti…

That would be a great argument, if eliminating removable thumbdrives and media would in any way impede internal communications. No business communication is done on removable media in these places.

That would never be a good idea for a host of reasons (remember the lost laptop with personal info on it? other than leaking there are lots of reasons this is a bad idea)

This ban prevents the people who work in the government offices from bringing in music CDs and pictures on a thumb drive. Recall Pfc Manning was pretending to play Lady Gaga on a CD when he was burning all this stuff onto disk. That's it. There is no other reason to use removable stuff at work except to leak or bring in files like that.

I'm actually shocked this specific ban took so long. The contractor I work for banned CDs (burned or not) after the Sony rootkit incident, flash or floppy drives have been banned forever.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#48

Post by krschultz »

raganwald wrote: post #8
maqr wrote: post #3

> But the U.S. military is telling its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media — or risk a court martial. I'm pretty sure anyone stealing the data is already risking a court martial. If the secret files are really so wide open that they're just counting on people not being able to take them, then there's some much larger problems that they better start addressing. Also, I…

I'm pretty sure anyone stealing the data is already risking a court martial. Anyone stealing the data, yes. I read the article as saying that people using remobvable media for purposes consistent with their jobs will now be subject to court martial. Example: A machine is normally connected to the network. It is moved to another location and is not connected to the network yet. Someone using a thumb drive to copy a fi…

Based on my experience in these kind of places, the IT procedures are a bit more robust than your average company and your scenario wouldn't really happen.

And not being connected to the network would be the only reason you need removable media. If your computer is not connected to the network, it isn't very useful. Barely anything is stored locally, the risk of someone walking off with the harddrive is too high.

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#49

Post by thalur »

rorrr wrote: post #25
sausagefeet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked on Wall Street all of our Desktops literally had the USB ports ripped out. I'm really surprised the military doesn't do something like this...

Weren't you connected to the internet? What would stop you from connecting to Gmail (HTTPS) and emailing something to yourself?

blocking connections to gmail works ok. Of course, that doesn't prevent you printing stuff out...

Re: Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

#50

Post by krschultz »

zzo38 wrote: post #21

Maybe now someone will use camera to picture from the screen, or retype everything, or tell someone by telephone, or something else.

Camera's are banned obviously, including on cell phones.

Though if your point is that someone can always leak, that surely is true. There are thousands and thousands of people with the classified information stored in their brains walking around in public all the time, and they choose not to talk about it. Really nothing at all stops them from just blabbering on about it at the bar after work. People are the ultimate security hole.

All this is does is prevent mass dumps like Pfc Manning did (alright, is accused of doing). He didn't read all of those papers he leaked, he just dumped them on a flash drive and walked out.

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