Shockingly Unshocking: More Wikileaks Competitors Pop Up
from the gee,-who-could-have-expected-that... dept
Just recently, we noted that the attempts by Wikileaks critics to try to "shut down" the site (or physically harm its leaders) were misguided, because it wouldn't take long for other sites to step up and offer the same functionality. In fact, there already are a few similar sites (with a somewhat lower profile). Now comes the news that some of the disgruntled former Wikileaks insiders are planning to create a new Wikileaks-like service. Who knows if this new project will be a success, but it certainly seems to highlight the fact that these kinds of sites are going to exist one way or another, and pretending that they can be stopped is a naive position.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: competition, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks
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; P
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You cant put information on the net with out some kind of fingerprints that the FBI cant follow. I suspect loading files from a spoofed IP address from a public airport on public wifi using an account you have never used on a computer you stole from the guy in the bathroom then swaping tickets with someone on your flight and finally just going home could be enough, but you'll just get caught when they look up the security cams anyway.
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Re: Hard Time! (not xxx)
Here's some real numbers:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_25.html
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And contrary to your assertion, it's trivially easy to put information on the net that the FBI can't follow. Keep in mind that there 100-200 million fully-compromised systems on the 'net at the moment, and more every day. It's quite easy to acquire access to those, either by (a) creating them (b) wresting them away from their current owners or (c) renting them from their current owners. (I trust everyone knows that the "owners" are NOT the people whose desks they reside on or whose briefcases they ride around in.) Those aren't the only resources available, of course, but they're essentially inexhaustible at the moment (and for the forseeable future), so in conjunction with a little crypto here and a little port-knocking there and a pinch of spread-spectrum communication, they provide an easy way to make it very very obvious that someone else is responsible.
This isn't say that people won't screw up: they will. Some of them will screw up badly and will get caught. But those who are clueful and diligent won't be.
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We need to start charging the govt with war crimes and start jailing those responsible.
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Re:"We need to start charging the govt with war crimes and start jailing those responsible."
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boot off an OS off a USB drive.
use a USB wifi.
drive around until you find an open Wifi.
Do what ever online.
Toss both USBs when done.
Simple ...
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They do it for child porn already.
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You people are gravely wrong about the political climate.
The police state is escalating, cheered on by most of the media and the ignorant thugs who actually do the killing in the perpetual war. Glenn Greenwald writes about war-monger Jonah Goldberg, who asks "Why is Assange still alive?"
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/29/goldberg/index.html
The number of people willing to risk their lives for nebulous principles of freedom will continue to decrease.
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This is interesting. In Oregon where I live there are 3,006,767 people of voting age. But only 1,418,133 voted for Governor. So anyone thinking that this was a victory and you got 50% of the vote. That meant that only 25% of actual voters believe in you. My point is: If you don't vote you get what you deserve.
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If they want to add some checks and balances, they can encrypt it three times with three different keys and have each key reside with different departments. No one person should ever be able to see all three (or even any two of the three) keys. When it's time to view the data, one person from each department must physically meet at a central location with a USB key that has their key. Each has their own laptop and one has a "designated, trustworthy" laptop that the information gets decrypted onto. Whoever needs to view the information can come with them. To view the information requires booting from a read only boot CD, each person first verifies the contents of the CD (ie: by putting it in their laptop and running a hashsum and file checker to ensure the CD is the correct CD and data hasn't been tampered with) and then the CD gets booted from the designated laptop (checking that the laptop hardware isn't compromised is a whole different issue) and each person verifies that the CD was booted. Each person enters their USB drive with their code and the information gets decrypted, viewed by the interested parties, and then the decrypted version gets deleted. The information should never touch any hard drive unencrypted, it should only be decrypted in ram alone. If it's too much information to be decrypted into ram all at once then portions at a time can be decrypted and loaded into and removed from ram as needed (I believe truecrypt already has such a feature).
Sure, the method is not foolproof (some hardware based spyware could be installed on the designated laptop by one person without anyone else's knowledge, for example. Sure, tamper evident seals can help alleviate this possibility and placing the laptop in a safe and protected place can help, but nothing is foolproof) but it's much better than what we have now.
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Wikileaks and its successors
Having, at one time, held essentially every security clearance we offer (at a lower level, anyway) I can tell you with certainty that the purpose of security is to protect the guilty.
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