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

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

#111

Post by shadowfiend »

eternalban wrote: post #105
danilocampos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense. At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." And this, for me, is one of them. Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship. If that's the case, if t…

> At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." Cognitive dissonance overload! "Anonymous"/"99%"/TPTB_NOT is correct (imo) in criticizing the TPTB's theory of 'suspended norms/ethos due to emergency' e.g. get ready to be groped by a uniformed servant from the margines. Good times. Now we have supporters of anon/99/we-the-people's position asserting that the philosophy of "what is Right is what is con…

In a democracy, people don't get re-elected when they're shown to be crooks in such a huge way that it's impossible to ignore. We already know, to some extent, how crook-y some of these people are. In particular, we know how easily they assault our civil liberties, or perhaps better stated our right to privacy. If assaulting theirs is how we convince the masses that they should not be there, then it is perhaps reasonable to do so. Ours are already under fire, the question is whether destroying theirs will produce a big enough result to make it worth it. I don't think the answer is clear-cut in general, and time will tell in this case, but I don't know that it's as cognitively dissonant as it seems.

In the case of the government, they can't say “well we're watching everyone's conversations because so are the terrorists”. That makes their justification very different from the one in use here, and thus changes the equation a lot.

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

#112

Post by oasisbob »

jmvoodoo wrote: post #103
jasondrowley wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that government employees' correspondence with a private company is confidential.

You're wrong. You can foia request any communication between government employees and anyone if it was done in their official role or on government equipment. There are some exceptions of course, but generally speaking correspondence is anything but confidential (at least in the USA)

It's really hard to generalize about this in the US, each state has their own laws, FOIA isn't applicable to state and local governments: http://www.nfoic.org/state-foi-laws

The allowable exemptions -- and penalties for non-compliance -- vary wildly from state to state.

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

#113

Post by electromagnetic »

forensic wrote: post #104
paganel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In normal circumstances I would agree with what you say, any sane person would agree with you actually, but these are not n…

Stratfor is a news company. Their only mission is to print accurate information for the consumption of the public. They give away many articles for free, and individuals can subscribe for about $20/month. Stratfor is not Halliburton. It's sort of the opposite. While mainstream media propaganda spins bullshit about the Euro crisis, Stratfor gives straight-to-the-point, honest reporting and is only concerned with accur…

Agreed, this is scummy anarchy just so they can watch the world burn.

I'm all for government transparency, however I believe the media has the right to privacy as they alone seem to do the work of keeping the government transparent. All the Anons are doing is fuelling fires that will allow the government more secrecy and ratting out the whistle blowers isn't going to help anybody.

If people would actually READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE instead of spouting off about governments hypocrisy to defend an attack against a news company.

Bravo forensic, you seem to be one of the few capable of looking at the evidence on this issue.

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

#114

Post by mberning »

eternalban wrote: post #105
danilocampos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense. At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." And this, for me, is one of them. Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship. If that's the case, if t…

> At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." Cognitive dissonance overload! "Anonymous"/"99%"/TPTB_NOT is correct (imo) in criticizing the TPTB's theory of 'suspended norms/ethos due to emergency' e.g. get ready to be groped by a uniformed servant from the margines. Good times. Now we have supporters of anon/99/we-the-people's position asserting that the philosophy of "what is Right is what is con…

You must have a fundamental misunderstanding of what cognitive dissonance is.

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

#115

Post by electromagnetic »

angersock wrote: post #80
electromagnetic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original. If you opened mail from my physical mailbox, you'd have committed the federal crime of mail tampering, which faces a fine and/or jail time. If you opened 3.3 million letters from my mail box, you'd probably be the first person to live the remainder of their life in jail for mail tampering... regardless of your age. My mail is stored in…

If you opened mail from my physical mailbox, you'd have committed the federal crime of mail tampering, which faces a fine and/or jail time. If you opened 3.3 million letters from my mail box, you'd probably be the first person to live the remainder of their life in jail for mail tampering... regardless of your age. Right, yes, it's illegal , but that's more an accident of legislature than anything else. Don't pretend…

Jesus dude stop fucking trolling. Mail tampering isn't illegal through an accident of legislature, it's illegal because even a hundred years ago they realised its a serious deal.

As long as I only copy your social insurance number, credit card numbers, banking information, etc, what does it matter? I'm just copying!

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

#116

Post by eternalban »

shadowfiend wrote: post #111
eternalban wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it." Cognitive dissonance overload! "Anonymous"/"99%"/TPTB_NOT is correct (imo) in criticizing the TPTB's theory of 'suspended norms/ethos due to emergency' e.g. get ready to be groped by a uniformed servant from the margines. Good times. Now we have supporters of anon/99/we-the-people's position asserting that the philosophy of "what is Right is what is con…

In a democracy, people don't get re-elected when they're shown to be crooks in such a huge way that it's impossible to ignore. We already know, to some extent, how crook-y some of these people are. In particular, we know how easily they assault our civil liberties, or perhaps better stated our right to privacy. If assaulting theirs is how we convince the masses that they should not be there, then it is perhaps reason…

There are dragon slayers and there are also those who tilt at windmills. I'll be a believer the day that Anonymous/Lulzie-ones core dump the archives of The City of London.

Slaying that dragon is a game changer; effectively random acts of cyber anarchy and antisocial behavior (people's CCs, for ex.) just raise dust and TPTB love occultation and delight in the demonstration of the emptiness of our "convictions" and "principles".

Have you ever considered that this is an intellectual/spiritual battle between a subset asserting superiority in every dimension of human endeavor that (literally) justifies their rule? If yes, then mind your "principles" and "convictions". That is the Human Front. Hold the line, please.

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

#117

Post by forensic »

BaseBand wrote: post #67
DevX101 wrote: post #7

900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action. To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether…

I would have to follow the twisted logic, Do you really expect these people to have not committed any crimes over the entire course of the emails? 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.

Policy makers don't get intelligence from Stratfor!

For fuck's sake! You people are truly clueless!

"Policy makers" get their intelligence from the CIA. Duh! No government relies on Stratfor, it would be grossly irresponsible.

Stratfor makes most of its money from corporations that operate in foreign countries and are not large enough or important enough to have CIA-access.

This means corporations OUTSIDE the military-industrial-security complex. Anyone inside this complex uses Stratfor for light reading at most. The real intelligence is classified and is available to megacorps that collaborate with the CIA.

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

#118

Post by forensic »

danilocampos wrote: post #64
jonhendry wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I mean interesting as in "lied to the public about an issue of global importance."" 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 w…

> You've bought into some kind of radical left fantasy And you've gone to the zoo, friend. Almost to the point where I wonder if you're being deliberately obtuse to troll me. (Nice one, if so.) Two things to note, here. 1. Stratfor has public products and private analysis services . 2. I'm not talking about what they've disclosed publicly. You could substitute "Stratfor" with "The New York Times Company" in this scen…

Nobody important uses the analysis service. Everyone important uses the CIA.

Stratfor serves small and medium sized businesses with global operations.

Huge military-industrial operations like Halliburton get their intelligence from the CIA.

You don't know what Stratfor is. It's a niche news product, nothing more. Like any newspaper, they have secret sources.

But the news product and analysis services offered by Stratfor are extremely benign. Anon is targeting them for no other reason than that Stratfor is a small business who hired a shitty engineering firm with bad security practices.

Any script kiddie can go around finding non-technical businesses with poor security. Stratfor's 70-person staff is peopled entirely by nerdy writers with humanities degrees who spend all day compiling mostly-public information released by the world's parliament buildings and militaries.

Stratfor deals in the analysis of public information for the benefit for private parties. No government agency relies on them, though they may subscribe, Stratfor will not be their primary source.

The people who rely on Stratfor are companies too small and inconsequential to get CIA-access.

Anyway I support the mission of Anonymous to hack the government and hack evil big corporations but Stratfor is not part of that complex and no juicy information is going to come out of this leak. It's going to be extremely mundane stuff and will probably get a few innocent cab drivers in 3rd world countries murdered.

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

#119

Post by forensic »

danilocampos wrote: post #55
jonhendry wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Dick Cheney were running Stratfor, they wouldn't have said that Iraq probably didn't have WMD.

Get off this, dude, no one thinks Dick Cheney's running Stratfor. I bet he has friends on their client list, though.

All of Dick Cheney's friends get their intel from the CIA. Stratfor is small potatoes.

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

#120

Post by noonespecial »

DevX101 wrote: post #7

900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action. To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether…

“In normal times, evil should be fought by good, but in times like this, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil”
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