3.3 million e-mails between the most powerful men are about to be released.

It's so secret multiple HN readers have said they subscribed. It's so exclusive that anyone can subscribe for a yearly price that is cheaper than cable TV, let alone secret publications like "Science" or "Nature".

You really seem to have the wrong end of the stick here, as in not-clear-on-the-concept of how Stratfor worked.

If you want to know if someone has "lied to the public about an issue of global importance", and think Stratfor holds the answer, you would subscribe to Stratfor and compare what Stratfor reported to what the public figure claimed.

You've bought into some kind of radical left fantasy of what Stratfor does, turning it into the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers.

"Any entity that needs Stratfor's analysis of global events and decisions seems like a reasonable candidate to deliver an important payload in such a leak."

See above about the Bilderbergers.

Say you're a company doing business with Turkey. Not a huge business, but you've got a lot riding on stability in Turkey. Maybe you import rugs. Maybe you do package tours of Istanbul. Maybe you have a team of developers there. Where do you go for good analysis of the situation there, given the history of military takeovers and whatnot?

The newspapers only cover it occasionally, probably too late to do you much good. MSNBC won't cover it at all on a weekend. FOX News would be all "OMG, Turkish Muslims! Threat or Menace?" and be useless. Turkish media might cover it, but not provide good analysis, and you don't know if the coverage is biased there, or if so, how.

So where do you turn? You could read the Economist, but that might not be good enough. Maybe you could buy some reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, or Jane's. Or you could subscribe to Stratfor, which is probably cheaper.

If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.

Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.

I would have more of a issue if this was personal correspondence but this is dealing with large US institutions and people that deal with policy.

If you write anything in a business email you should assume that it may become public at some point in the future. Both your employer and the recipients employer have the right to read it, as does any company that acquires either party.

The email may also be demanded by the government for a variety of reason or by a court in pursuit of a civil case.

Business emails have much weaker privacy protection than personal emails because it's assumed that from the very beginning that any privacy arises from the commercial implications of the contents rather than the inherent privacy that you have when two private individuals are discussing a personal matter.