Man Leaks Sensitive Documents To 4chan; Receives Insults, Arrest For His Troubles
from the didn't-really-think-this-through,-did-you? dept
If you'd like to blow the whistle on government activity, there are several options available to you. First, there are the "proper channels," which come highly recommended by government officials who don't care much for whistleblowers. Then there's the media. Depending on which outlet you choose, there's probably going to be a lot of backdoor chatter with officials to "negotiate" the terms of document releases -- which could result in a more concerted effort by the government to expose the source of the documents..
There are other outlets like Wikileaks, which provide less narrative and analysis, but are generally more willing to release large sets of documents at one time, rather than trickling them out over a period of several years. Safety isn't guaranteed, but Wikileaks is far less likely to return government agencies' calls.
Then there's 4chan, a route no one has recommended for anyone ever. (via Vice News)
In an embarrassing security breach, a 21-year-old Department of Defence graduate allegedly managed to download a secret Defence Intelligence Organisation assessment, burn it to a disc, take it home and post it to anonymous image-sharing forum 4chan while praising Julian Assange as his hero.Why this person decided 4chan was the best outlet for a top secret, Five-Eyes-only document is unclear. It seems to suggest the leaker had some familiarity with the forum and its denizens. But if so, he surely had to know his leak had about a 99% chance of being greeted with derision… at best.
Michael Scerba, the alleged document leaker, watched his original post -- which supposedly contained the first two pages of the classified document -- get the usual 4chan response. He complained about it -- at 4chan -- four days later.
A user, who prosecutors allege was Scerba, complained that no one had believed the documents were real.No suggestions were forthcoming, apparently. Scerba was caught by authorities. He's now facing charges of leaking sensitive information.
"Plus to my dismay I just got a bunch of 'fake and gay' remarks and the secret documents went 404 [website not found] about 4 comments 1 hour later," he allegedly posted.
"So... any other suggestions on how to minimize getting caught by authorities?"
Almost as astonishing as Scerba's actions is how the leak was discovered.
Court documents describe the discovery of the leak as "fortuitous", occurring only when a former Defence Signals Directorate employee stumbled onto the post while browsing the website.It's unclear from this sentence whether the employee was browsing the site on his own time after leaving the employ of the Directorate or whether he kept one eye on the website as part of his Defence Signals activities. If it's the latter, 4chan is being monitored by at least one government agency.
It's also unclear as to how much damage actually needs to be mitigated. The original post only stayed live for one hour. The government's statements claim "14 people had already commented on it" as if that's some sort of significant amount. It also suggests the government believes it was 14 different people (at minimum) who had seen the post, which is quite the assumption in regards to this wholly anonymous forum.
No one does "meta" quite like 4chan. Two definitely NSFW threads (here and here) discussing the news report of the attempted 4chan document leaking are available for those who have some general idea what they're getting into if they click through. Those unfamiliar with the particular charms of 4chan are probably better off
And, in the end, we learn absolutely nothing new about our Five Eyes partner's secret activities, other than that some former or current employees of a certain agency browse 4chan for work/pleasure. As for 4chan, it will continue to be 4chan. Vice's Drew Millard boils down the essence of 4chan to a single sentence:
The site's users seemed generally pleased with their actions.Feed something to 4chan and you'll get back whatever the users choose to give you. The site exists largely for its own amusement. Scerba may have thought using an anonymous board would give him additional protection, but all it really got him was insults to go with his legal injuries.
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Filed Under: leaks, michael scerba, whistleblower
Companies: 4chan
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Is 4chan truly anonymous?
Most every posting site I've been to requires a valid email to register because they will send one that you have to click to confirm you want to register. You don't click that email you don't get to post. Even if you use Gmail, Hotmail, and the like are you truly anonymous?
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
Like Techdirt, you'll be given a random identifier based on your IP so you can at least attribute a series of posts to a single person. And of course IP logging means you can be tracked back if someone cares enough.
Of course, that's what I know from 2nd hand knowledge, so I could be completely wrong.
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Re: Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
The default method labels you 'Anon', asks for nothing except a captcha, and gives you a text box. Starting a new topic requires an image as well.
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Re: Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
In short, you're anonymous to other users. You are only as anonymous to the site moderators and administrators as your IP address. So largely the same as posting to Techdirt.
In general, you should be able to read their FAQ page for more information: https://www.4chan.org/faq
It contains no NSFW content, aside from the fact that 4chan.org itself may be blocked due to the parts of the site that do contain NSFW content.
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
That does not apply to 4chan. There is no signup, only logs of IP addresses.
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Re: Is 4chan truly anonymous?
There are no accounts, no usernames, no passwords. Every user, by default, has the same name, 'Anonymous'. No login or accounts of any kind.
Some boards have thread-specific IDs turned on. These are not proper IDs, you don't have an email or anything associated- this is just a hashtag unique to a particular poster. So you can tell what posts belong to a particular poster, but A, only within that thread, and B, there is no further information. (And it doesn't cover, say, the same person making posts on two different computers.) Again, these are thread specific; wait for the thread to die, or post literally anywhere else, and presto, new identity.
Finally, if desired, you can put a name in the name field, so it doesn't display "Anonymous". Optional. Frequently, the site's users try to discourage this (in the ways 4chan is famously uncivil for) unless it's particularly relevant to a topic. Of course, if other users want to impersonate someone with a name, they can just put the same name in their name field too. (And frequently, that's a way to mock those who are using names unnecessarily.)
Also available are manual hashtags. Put in a name (or nothing at all), then # or ## and some string of text after, in the text field, and it will generate a unique hash based on the seed {#seed or ##seed} to display along with your post. Others can't impersonate this without knowing your seed string. Unnecessary use of this is also frowned upon.
Finally and most importantly; everyone is essentially anonymous unless they do something stupid like post a real name, SSN, real email, what have you. Except; provided a warrant or something comes in, the site does have your IP and so you can actually be tracked down.
As far as the users are concerned, you are functionally anonymous unless you wish to expend effort not to be.
I'm not sure how politic it is to too someone's horn in the comments section of a newspost, but I happen to like this analysis of 4chan's culture.
http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/96020280368/faceless-together
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Honeypot, anyone?
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"...praising Julian Assange as his hero..."
but doesn't use Wikileaks to disseminate the leak.
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Re:
Manning did. Look where "she" is now.
I gave you a funny anyway. It is.
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... as in "he is no longer a DoD employee"? Or did he get a degree of some sort?
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Re:
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This is kind of horrifying
...but he was smart enough to fool the DoD into giving him access to the materials, or else acquire them without permission.
Think about that.
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Re: This is kind of horrifying
How deep does this go??!?!?!?!
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"OP got v& for being a massive faggot"
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how to use email anonymously
lets just say if your my friend or a friends friend, you will get taught
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Should not have
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420chan took down Hal Turner who's neonazi radio show was all paid for by the FBI and Turner was an FBI informant.
Just sayin'.
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Number of unique posters is displayed at the top of every thread. This can be inaccurate if one person is posting from multiple locations, but their assumption is still reasonable.
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