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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.

#91

Post by paganel »

electromagnetic wrote: post #63
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 have to back you on this. This doesn't sit in any moral grey area. This is nothing but corruption. If people genuinely have no problem with the outing of millions of private correspondences, then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection. 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 mo…

> 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 normal circumstances, what with all the TSA crap, the Iraq war that was started based on a huge LIE by the US Government and happily backed by the British, and I could go on and on.

At some point, better sooner rather than later, we the citizens of democratic countries should realize that our Governments are not there to rule over us, they have no special privileges, they have been chosen by us just to be mere executors of statutes and laws. They're not there to (tacitly) rewrite the Constitution and take away our rights (see the Guantanamo debacle in the United States), if they start doing that we as citizens have every right in our power to take actions against our fellow citizens who don't respect the fundamental laws of our countries (what most of them call a Constitution).

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

#92

Post by quanticle »

jasondrowley wrote: post #87
devs1010 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection" We already are, the government has made it fairly clear that they have the "right" to read anyone's emails they please due to their bullshit "war on terror", its about time we get the same chance to do it to them

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

Is it? If it is, it shouldn't be. If the matter concerns clear and present threats to national security, then why is a private firm involved at all? If there is no clear and present threat, then why bother with secrecy?

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

#94

Post by rhizome »

blurbytree wrote: post #10
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…

And, it's the reason governments will clamp down and regulate the internet more and more. This is why we can't have nice things.

They'll clamp down regardless. If anything maybe they'll try a little quicker this way, but they'd also run the risk of shooting too quick.

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

#95

Post by paganel »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #70
mike-cardwell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacking is already illegal. What could governments have done to prevent this?

What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

> What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't live in the States, even though I am a huge admirer of how your political system was first set up (the Founding Fathers and all that), but all I want to say is that if you, as a citizen, have started to be afraid just at the mere mention of something possibly passing into "terrorism" territory only because one of your elected represantives hinted about that then it means they've already won.

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

#96

Post by nl »

angersock wrote: post #82
nl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't view this as a valid moral claim. Regardless of your argument, that's not what happened here. They broke into the (secured) Stratfor servers, then decrypted the email using a key they stole. At best the real an…

The whole "but nothing was destroyed" argument is a whole other argument, but equally as weak. The fact that exclusive access information has value has been long established, and there are numerous precedents in the physical world showing it. The best example is someone breaking into a commercial office, gaining access to private commercial documents which they can use in negotiations. Clearly harm has been done, as…

So, lost profits due to being in a worse bargaining position is hardly a "harm".

You might not agree, but there is plenty of case law against you.

If you don't like that example, there are plenty of others showing the value of private information regardless of its destruction (for example, there is a whole genre of entertainment build around the spy novel|film).

The real issue is the fact you disagree with that, and are presenting your opinion as fact.

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

#97

Post by devs1010 »

quanticle wrote: post #92
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.

Is it? If it is, it shouldn't be. If the matter concerns clear and present threats to national security, then why is a private firm involved at all? If there is no clear and present threat, then why bother with secrecy?

We need to take back the concept of the government serving the people, they are our employees, we pay taxes that go towards their salaries, last time I checked, my boss has the ability to read emails I send from a company email address.

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

#98

Post by danilocampos »

stfu wrote: post #88
jonhendry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission" The dissemination of information? What's wrong with that?

I still don't get what was wrong with Stratefor. I subscribed to their newsletter a long time ago and the content was somewhat on the Foreign Affairs magazine level. Sure, some military and secret service personal were among the subscribers, but they are most likely among the subscribers of the Wired magazine as well. I am truly looking forward to the email leak and what kind of secret in formations they are able to…

I mean, there's nothing wrong with Stratfor. It's just the business they're in means that the clients who engage them for one-off analysis jobs are often into some pretty... globally interesting things.

Think of it like this.

Say that, one day, all the pigs in town just disappear. Gone.

And everyone's like, "Hey. Where are all the pigs? This is crazy. Hey, Danilo, do you know where the pigs went?"

"Me? Uh, no."

But a few years later, the town librarian has all his emails leaked. And included among this is a brief exchange, a week before The Pig Event, wherein I ask "So, librarian, any advice on books for transporting livestock? Oh, could you set aside Pigs for Dummies for me?"

This message is now... pretty interesting.

Does it prove I'm a pig thief? Not necessarily, unless I get into more detail in other messages. It does suggest, though, that I might have known more than I did when the event happened. And that it's worth digging around for links between me and the pigs.

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

#99

Post by jessedhillon »

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…

It's a sad fact of subjectivity that you can, apparently seiously, call out anyone else for trolling. You've run every fallacious argument up the flagpole here. But it's the fault of jonhenry or any rational person for taking this issue up with you, since you admitted squarely in the beginning that your intellectual justification for this is "fuck it."

The only thing preventing my using this line to justify the publication of internal emails between the 5 people who run my competitor is a thin, grey line that you seem to be drawing and redrawing continually. This is an intellectually and morally bankrupt idea you've got here, it hardly suffices for a proper argument as to why this is legitimate action.

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

#100

Post by philwelch »

Joakal wrote: post #30
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…

1) The Stratfor seems to have an impression of being a media organisation akin to Wikileaks. They talk to many contacts, don't form any policy except stories. They pass the stories onto governments/corporations. 2) An another Anonymous group says it's not them and they don't support it because Stratfor doesn't appear bad 3) That same other Anonymous group also warned that these are probably hacker [agent] provocateur…

I like how people blame agent provacateurs when someone on their side does something wrong.
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