WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria • Hacker News Board

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#11

Post by grandalf » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:21 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #8

tibbon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

puts on tinfoil hat There's always the chance that Wikileaks in total is just a cover operation for all sorts of other activity, plus giving the US and allies 'reason' to act in various ways. We don't have much of a way to know that any of the documents they've ever leaked were authentic. Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. takes off tinfoil hat I doubt this is happening, but stranger thin…

Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. I doubt this is happening, but stranger things have happened. I'm sure the CIA has at least considered such... If you want to go all super-paranoid-conspiracy-whatever, we could speculate that all this Wikileaks stuff is total false-flag stuff, and that Bradley Manning was never arrested at all, and is actually vacationing in Bermuda somewhere right now,…

This could definitely be true. Ironically, maintaining operational security would be very easy in such a plot, since the cast of characters is very small. It could have begun as a simple honeypot and then evolved into a propaganda strategy.

When you think about it, none of the information released about the US has created any outrage at all on the part of the American public or media.

The few times there has been any outage it's been the standard "tempest in a teapot" kind of ranting that characterizes most political debate, which is largely done for unrelated/indirect reasons and goes away pretty quickly.

I think that the view of the US Government is that social media has made a widespread propaganda strategy an inevitability. No longer can the US rely on the domestic media cartel's message shaping to be adequate to suppress dissent.

I think the goal is for US citizens to feel free and empowered to use social media, but to have mechanisms in place to use it as a monitoring and intel-gathering mechanism and also to leverage it to wage specific propaganda campaigns as needed. These campaigns are subtle and I don't think we've seen any serious ones so far, though I do think that the so-called Arab Spring social media stuff was a trial run which was likely deemed a massive success.

Wikileaks has not yet proven itself as an institution. I believe that over time it may prove itself to be a solid, reliable entity with effective controls to prevent manipulation, infiltration, etc. We'll see.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#12

Post by tatsuke95 » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:24 PM UTC

egs wrote: post #3

Since these kinds of leaks are very difficult to authenticate, there is an opportunity for intelligence agencies to game WikiLeaks by (slightly) altering stolen documents. I'd take everything in these documents with a huge grain of salt.

Or, the far simpler and more plausible explanation:

We live in a world with a massive amount of networked, easily accessible data. Combine that with terrible security and controls, and leaving the final responsibility of data remaining "safe" to the end user (often times just an anonymous cog in the corporate machine) and we have the perfect mix of problems to result in non-public information being "leaked" to the outside world.

If you've followed the Wikileaks releases (as I have only in passing) you'll realize there is tons and tons of useless, boring information in there, interspersed with some interesting nuggets. Often times it requires relatively complex mining methods to comb through the vast quantities of data. If the government was interested in false-flag information planting, there would be far, far easier ways to achieve it.

Just one guy's opinion.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#13

Post by berntb » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

egs wrote: post #3

Since these kinds of leaks are very difficult to authenticate, there is an opportunity for intelligence agencies to game WikiLeaks by (slightly) altering stolen documents. I'd take everything in these documents with a huge grain of salt.

What I wonder, is if sensitive agencies have started to seed emails with slightly wrong facts, like a golf hater which discuss their golf rounds, allergic people discussing dinners that would have killed them, homosexuals discussing mistresses, etc.

If the email archive is published, there are obvious wrong facts about people found by "spot checks"...

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#14

Post by ordinary » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #10

始吾於人也，聽其言而信其行。今吾於人也，聽其言而觀其行。 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3063174 It certainly would be delightful to see a trove of internal documents from the current regime in China, with opportunity for the whole world to examine the inner workings of that regime. I daresay many current issues about effective development policy for third-world countries could be better understood if we all better understood what is going…

I'll save everyone the trip to their favourite search engine. It's part of a larger quote:

"宰予晝寢。子曰：「朽木不可雕也, 糞土之牆不可朽也。於予與何誅」子曰：「始吾於人也, 聽其言而信其行; 今吾於人也, 聽其言而觀其行。於予與改是。」"

"Tsai Yu slept during the daytime. The master said, "Rotten wood cannot be carved; dirty earth cannot be used for cement: why bother scolding him? At first I used to listen to what people said and expect them to act accordingly. Now I listen to what people say and watch what they do. I learned this from Yu."[0]

(I hope Chinese uses quote signs too.)

_____ [0] http://www.lrsolution.com/konkar/SF_LunYu.html

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#15

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:49 PM UTC

locusm wrote: post #7

Just as interesting as the leaks themselves has been the pathological hatred traditional journos seem to have for Assange/WL or new press in general.

At least in the US the old press is protected by the First Amendment. Far too many here in the US seem to think it applies nearly everywhere else too. Yet one disturbing side effect is that the "press" is more than willing to see the government of the US put restrictions if not ban political speech made by other groups and individuals provided they are not part of the traditional press. Blogs, political action groups, radio commentators, and even television, are all fair game according to the tradition press for restrictions they themselves would scream if placed on them.

So yeah, they don't want competition.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#16

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

ordinary wrote: post #14

tokenadult wrote: post #10

始吾於人也，聽其言而信其行。今吾於人也，聽其言而觀其行。 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3063174 It certainly would be delightful to see a trove of internal documents from the current regime in China, with opportunity for the whole world to examine the inner workings of that regime. I daresay many current issues about effective development policy for third-world countries could be better understood if we all better understood what is going…

I'll save everyone the trip to their favourite search engine. It's part of a larger quote: "宰予晝寢。子曰：「朽木不可雕也, 糞土之牆不可朽也。於予與何誅」子曰：「始吾於人也, 聽其言而信其行; 今吾於人也, 聽其言而觀其行。於予與改是。」" "Tsai Yu slept during the daytime. The master said, "Rotten wood cannot be carved; dirty earth cannot be used for cement: why bother scolding him? At first I used to listen to what people said and expect them to act accordingly. Now I listen to what…

「 and 」 are quotation marks.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#17

Post by krschultz » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 5:04 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #5

egs wrote: post #3

Since these kinds of leaks are very difficult to authenticate, there is an opportunity for intelligence agencies to game WikiLeaks by (slightly) altering stolen documents. I'd take everything in these documents with a huge grain of salt.

Most of the mainstream media is unquestioning at best. The government doesn't need to manipulate WikiLeaks. The sort of people who are more inclined to listen to WikiLeaks over CNN or Fox News were already skeptical, so there's nothing to gain by feeding them false information.

There's no value to an intelligence agency slipping in some bits of information for CNN or Fox News to parrot and throw an advisory off track?

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#18

Post by krschultz » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #8

tibbon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

puts on tinfoil hat There's always the chance that Wikileaks in total is just a cover operation for all sorts of other activity, plus giving the US and allies 'reason' to act in various ways. We don't have much of a way to know that any of the documents they've ever leaked were authentic. Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. takes off tinfoil hat I doubt this is happening, but stranger thin…

Bradley Manning could just be a fall-guy for false information. I doubt this is happening, but stranger things have happened. I'm sure the CIA has at least considered such... If you want to go all super-paranoid-conspiracy-whatever, we could speculate that all this Wikileaks stuff is total false-flag stuff, and that Bradley Manning was never arrested at all, and is actually vacationing in Bermuda somewhere right now,…

If that is the case, I can't wait for a Wikileaks leak blowing Wikileaks cover.

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#19

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 5:19 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #17

mkr-hn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the mainstream media is unquestioning at best. The government doesn't need to manipulate WikiLeaks. The sort of people who are more inclined to listen to WikiLeaks over CNN or Fox News were already skeptical, so there's nothing to gain by feeding them false information.

There's no value to an intelligence agency slipping in some bits of information for CNN or Fox News to parrot and throw an advisory off track?

[deleted]

Re: WikiLeaks says it has obtained 2.4 million emails from Syria

#20

Post by jlgreco » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #16

ordinary wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll save everyone the trip to their favourite search engine. It's part of a larger quote: "宰予晝寢。子曰：「朽木不可雕也, 糞土之牆不可朽也。於予與何誅」子曰：「始吾於人也, 聽其言而信其行; 今吾於人也, 聽其言而觀其行。於予與改是。」" "Tsai Yu slept during the daytime. The master said, "Rotten wood cannot be carved; dirty earth cannot be used for cement: why bother scolding him? At first I used to listen to what people said and expect them to act accordingly. Now I listen to what…

「 and 」 are quotation marks.

The directionality of those is pretty cool. Of course with latin style quotation marks you can always do the 'smart quote' style quotation marks, but those really depend on handwriting a lot more.

I suppose adopting those style quotation marks in English is probably a lost cause though.