7 ms·

WikiLeaks releases AKP email database

203 points by runesoerensen 10y ago

dmix 10y ago
Have they release highlights of anything interesting? Edit: Not able to search, I'm getting timeouts. Clearly a heavy load at launch time. Edit 2: Wikileaks mentioned they were hit by 'cyberattacks' before the release but were still able to get it out. Maybe it's getting DDOS by some Turkish supporters. They were also apparently phished well enough to cause them to tweet this: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/photo/1 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/phot...
- tmzt 10y ago
  It would be nice if our technically-minded organizations would use more precise language, even if our government cannot.
Bromskloss 10y ago
> The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. Unclear wording. Does moving "forward" mean to do something earlier than planned? Were we supposed to expect some other publication date when told that "the material was obtained a week before the attempted coup"?
- firewalkwithme 10y ago
  Yes
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    Unclear wording. Which of the questions are you answering?
    - jsprogrammer 10y ago
      The answer applies to both of your questions. I do agree that the answer could have been worded more clearly.
    - dimino 10y ago
      Simply stating "Unclear wording" is not going to work very well if you want answers, and is mildly antagonistic.
      - Bromskloss 10y ago
        I thought it was funny to reuse the same expression. Maybe I should have embellished my utterance with one of them fancy smiling faces.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. This would be considered clear wording by proficient English speakers, 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory. Generally one does not need to write "Wikileaks had publication of the material planned for a later date than today." -- "has moved forward" implies the former.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    > 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory. I think it requires the reader to perform an unfortunate extra step or two of inference. It seems preferable, in my humble opinion, to avoid this in situations where you want to be sure that you are expressing yourself unambiguously.
    - lunula 10y ago
      It seems perfectly unambiguous to me. However, ambiguousness may have been an intended affect of the statement.
  - 1wd 10y ago
    If "moving forward" means "moving to an earlier date", does that mean we experience time backwards (moving to later dates)?
    - x1798DE 10y ago
      No, the metaphor is more like with a line/queue. You move can move an event "up" or "forward" in the same way you move something to the front of a line. The opposite is to push something back (i.e. away from you).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- lucb1e 10y ago
  You're being downvoted but I find that unfair. It's clear to me because the phrase "moving an event forward" is commonly used like this, but looking at the basic meaning of the word, it should mean the same as "postponed". (If I move something "forward", it would appear later on an agenda or other timeline.) To answer your question: Wikileaks moved the publication to an earlier date. They apparently wanted to release it later (probably to prepare better), but thought it was relevant because of the coup attempt.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    Thank you. Your reading coincides with my best guess. Regarding clarity, I avoid using "forward" and "backward" with regards to time.
    - Bromskloss 10y ago
      > Regarding clarity, I avoid using "forward" and "backward" with regards to time. That came out wrong. I don't avoid talking about a forward and a backward direction of time. What I avoid is saying that a planned event has been moved forward or backward, because people have different ideas of which means which.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Does moving "forward" mean to do something earlier than planned? Yes, conventionally, in English (well, at least, American English, and I've seen it frequently enough in British English usage that it seems to be the same there, but its at least possible that its not universal), "moving forward" the time of a planned event means moving it earlier in time, while "moving back" the time of a planned event means moving it later in time. "Forward/back" here is similar to closer/farther from the head of queue.
  - johntb86 10y ago
    cf. before and after.
  - asplake 10y ago
    Bring it forward, push it back.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Site was accessible a few minutes ago. TCP connection now being reset almost immediately after request. Edit: accessible again. Perhaps a DDOS mitigation technique?
mediocrejoker 10y ago
Website loaded a moment ago (17 minutes after this link was posted) but now the site is not responding. Says they are releasing emails from mailboxes from first part of alphabet, and these are more used to communicate with the world than internally. Hopefully server will come back soon. edit: it loaded again, copied text from landing page Today, 11pm Anakara Time, WikiLeaks releases part one of the AKP Emails. AKP, or the Justice & Development Party, is the ruling party of Turkey and is the political force behind the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Part one of the series covers 762 mail boxes beginning with 'A' through to 'I' containing 294,548 email bodies together with many thousands of attached files. The emails come from "akparti.org.tr", the AKP's primary domain. The most recent was sent on July 6, 2016. The oldest dates back to 2010. It should be noted that emails associated with the domain are mostly used for dealing with the world, as opposed to the most sensitive internal matters. The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. We have verified the material and the source, who is not connected, in any way, to the elements behind the attempted coup, or to a rival political party or state.
knowaveragejoe 10y ago
Translation will be necessary of course, but for some reason Chrome isn't recognizing that the page should be translated for me(not even offering me the context menu item on selection). Trying to search returns a 401 at the moment. Edit: that's no longer happening.
therein 10y ago
Getting a 401 when trying to search.
sohrab-b 10y ago
Getting"401 Authorization Required" trying to reach page
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  Same - chrome is bringing up a modal username/password box for me to fill in.
jolux 10y ago
I'm getting a 401. edit: it's fixed
grownseed 10y ago
A random, cursory look didn't yield anything particularly interesting: lots of fairly shallow emails, google groups conversations, disgruntled citizens writing in all caps and a fair bit of spam. Granted, I'm also relying on Google Translate for a lot of this, so I may well be missing something obvious. According to Wikileaks, the release was hastened in light of recent events, so I presume they didn't have time to comb through the data. That said, I would assume this was released for a reason (i.e. some of the emails have some value), but I honestly can't tell what that might be.
- viraptor 10y ago
  > cursory look didn't yield anything particularly interesting I think that's to be expected. If it was full of easy find critical information, it would mean they filtered what's being released. This way, it's simply a dump of everything - now it's for others to dig for anything interesting.
- ORioN63 10y ago
  Why does Google Translate breaks newlines when translating? It makes really hard to read.
  - chronolitus 10y ago
    You just made me realize, it's a harder problem than at first glance: - If you translate line by line, you lose information shared between lines (state of the current sentence, etc) "Did you stay \n up last night?" - A solution would be to remember where the newline was (here, after the word stay) translate the whole sentence, then add it back in. But after translation, maybe "stay up" transformed into another word entirely. "stay" doesn't exist anymore, Or it might have shifted to another place in the sentence. where do you put the newline? - Idioms would further exacerbate this problem. - As a result, you would need to train your translation unit (e.g. a neural net) on also intelligently carrying newlines to the translated language. This might be more work than worth the payoff. This might or might not be the reason. Could be a simple oversight, or something entirely different.
- vintermann 10y ago
graffitici 10y ago
I am also having trouble loading the site. But shouldnt WikiLeaks be releasing this as a torrent?! Wouldn't that be much more effective, both efficiency and cost-wise?
- bane 10y ago
  It would pretty great if everything wikileaks put out was available to download. They're actually really great research corpora in theory, but they send them to their website to die.
denfromufa 10y ago
There is also Fuat Avni, who was exposing Turkish government for last few years with very accurate predictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuat_Avni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuat_Avni
alpb 10y ago
Is there no way to download a dump of this leak and keep digging offline? (also started getting HTTP 500s now, search doesn't work either with HTTP 400).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yekillmeagainhn 10y ago
It's frustrating all the hate directed to middle eastern and Islamic countries that seem to be gradually finding their own way towards modernity and prosperity. Always finding a way to sabotage that progress. Happened in Egypt, and now trying with Turkey.. _and_ claiming to be on our side and trying to 'fix' our 'sub-par' countries at the same time..
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sylvinus 10y ago
Are they claiming to have some new Clinton emails as well? https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264
sorpaas 10y ago
An initial search gave me lots of spams and malware...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
beyti 10y ago
for the sake of clearness, story title can be switched to "turkish government" from "AKP", since other than turkish people would not be familiar with the name "AKP"(ruling party name's acronym)
- steve19 10y ago
  The title is correct. It would be woefully incorrect to say "turkish government". Emails from the party email server have been leaked. If it had been government email servers, then government would be correct.
  - beyti 10y ago
    I'm not saying it's incorrect, it's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though. It could be "Turkey's ruling party" then in light of your comment. But it's ok if everybody's ok with it, just my thoughts.
    - tremon 10y ago
      it's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though Only if you've been living under a stone for the past week.
whorleater 10y ago
Is there a data dump of all of this instead of Wikileak's website? Would certainly make it a lot easier to comb through.
forvelin 10y ago
Sadly, absolutely useless data -this batch at least-. Appearently nobody in AKP uses email but few rather nonimportant people.

203 points by runesoerensen 10y ago

dmix 10y ago

Have they release highlights of anything interesting? Edit: Not able to search, I'm getting timeouts. Clearly a heavy load at launch time. Edit 2: Wikileaks mentioned they were hit by 'cyberattacks' before the release but were still able to get it out. Maybe it's getting DDOS by some Turkish supporters. They were also apparently phished well enough to cause them to tweet this: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/photo/1 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755140834836832256/phot...

tmzt 10y ago
It would be nice if our technically-minded organizations would use more precise language, even if our government cannot.

Bromskloss 10y ago

> The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. Unclear wording. Does moving "forward" mean to do something earlier than planned? Were we supposed to expect some other publication date when told that "the material was obtained a week before the attempted coup"?

firewalkwithme 10y ago
Yes
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Unclear wording. Which of the questions are you answering?
  - jsprogrammer 10y ago
    The answer applies to both of your questions. I do agree that the answer could have been worded more clearly.
  - dimino 10y ago
    Simply stating "Unclear wording" is not going to work very well if you want answers, and is mildly antagonistic.
    - Bromskloss 10y ago
      I thought it was funny to reuse the same expression. Maybe I should have embellished my utterance with one of them fancy smiling faces.
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. This would be considered clear wording by proficient English speakers, 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory. Generally one does not need to write "Wikileaks had publication of the material planned for a later date than today." -- "has moved forward" implies the former.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  > 'However' sets up the clause, and 'has moved forward its publication schedule in response to..' is pretty self explanatory. I think it requires the reader to perform an unfortunate extra step or two of inference. It seems preferable, in my humble opinion, to avoid this in situations where you want to be sure that you are expressing yourself unambiguously.
  - lunula 10y ago
    It seems perfectly unambiguous to me. However, ambiguousness may have been an intended affect of the statement.
- 1wd 10y ago
  If "moving forward" means "moving to an earlier date", does that mean we experience time backwards (moving to later dates)?
  - x1798DE 10y ago
    No, the metaphor is more like with a line/queue. You move can move an event "up" or "forward" in the same way you move something to the front of a line. The opposite is to push something back (i.e. away from you).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
lucb1e 10y ago
You're being downvoted but I find that unfair. It's clear to me because the phrase "moving an event forward" is commonly used like this, but looking at the basic meaning of the word, it should mean the same as "postponed". (If I move something "forward", it would appear later on an agenda or other timeline.) To answer your question: Wikileaks moved the publication to an earlier date. They apparently wanted to release it later (probably to prepare better), but thought it was relevant because of the coup attempt.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Thank you. Your reading coincides with my best guess. Regarding clarity, I avoid using "forward" and "backward" with regards to time.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    > Regarding clarity, I avoid using "forward" and "backward" with regards to time. That came out wrong. I don't avoid talking about a forward and a backward direction of time. What I avoid is saying that a planned event has been moved forward or backward, because people have different ideas of which means which.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Does moving "forward" mean to do something earlier than planned? Yes, conventionally, in English (well, at least, American English, and I've seen it frequently enough in British English usage that it seems to be the same there, but its at least possible that its not universal), "moving forward" the time of a planned event means moving it earlier in time, while "moving back" the time of a planned event means moving it later in time. "Forward/back" here is similar to closer/farther from the head of queue.
- johntb86 10y ago
  cf. before and after.
- asplake 10y ago
  Bring it forward, push it back.

jsprogrammer 10y ago

Site was accessible a few minutes ago. TCP connection now being reset almost immediately after request. Edit: accessible again. Perhaps a DDOS mitigation technique?

mediocrejoker 10y ago

Website loaded a moment ago (17 minutes after this link was posted) but now the site is not responding. Says they are releasing emails from mailboxes from first part of alphabet, and these are more used to communicate with the world than internally. Hopefully server will come back soon. edit: it loaded again, copied text from landing page Today, 11pm Anakara Time, WikiLeaks releases part one of the AKP Emails. AKP, or the Justice & Development Party, is the ruling party of Turkey and is the political force behind the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Part one of the series covers 762 mail boxes beginning with 'A' through to 'I' containing 294,548 email bodies together with many thousands of attached files. The emails come from "akparti.org.tr", the AKP's primary domain. The most recent was sent on July 6, 2016. The oldest dates back to 2010. It should be noted that emails associated with the domain are mostly used for dealing with the world, as opposed to the most sensitive internal matters. The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government's post-coup purges. We have verified the material and the source, who is not connected, in any way, to the elements behind the attempted coup, or to a rival political party or state.

knowaveragejoe 10y ago

Translation will be necessary of course, but for some reason Chrome isn't recognizing that the page should be translated for me(not even offering me the context menu item on selection). Trying to search returns a 401 at the moment. Edit: that's no longer happening.

therein 10y ago

Getting a 401 when trying to search.

sohrab-b 10y ago

Getting"401 Authorization Required" trying to reach page

oh_sigh 10y ago
Same - chrome is bringing up a modal username/password box for me to fill in.

jolux 10y ago

I'm getting a 401. edit: it's fixed

grownseed 10y ago

A random, cursory look didn't yield anything particularly interesting: lots of fairly shallow emails, google groups conversations, disgruntled citizens writing in all caps and a fair bit of spam. Granted, I'm also relying on Google Translate for a lot of this, so I may well be missing something obvious. According to Wikileaks, the release was hastened in light of recent events, so I presume they didn't have time to comb through the data. That said, I would assume this was released for a reason (i.e. some of the emails have some value), but I honestly can't tell what that might be.

viraptor 10y ago
> cursory look didn't yield anything particularly interesting I think that's to be expected. If it was full of easy find critical information, it would mean they filtered what's being released. This way, it's simply a dump of everything - now it's for others to dig for anything interesting.
ORioN63 10y ago
Why does Google Translate breaks newlines when translating? It makes really hard to read.
- chronolitus 10y ago
  You just made me realize, it's a harder problem than at first glance: - If you translate line by line, you lose information shared between lines (state of the current sentence, etc) "Did you stay \n up last night?" - A solution would be to remember where the newline was (here, after the word stay) translate the whole sentence, then add it back in. But after translation, maybe "stay up" transformed into another word entirely. "stay" doesn't exist anymore, Or it might have shifted to another place in the sentence. where do you put the newline? - Idioms would further exacerbate this problem. - As a result, you would need to train your translation unit (e.g. a neural net) on also intelligently carrying newlines to the translated language. This might be more work than worth the payoff. This might or might not be the reason. Could be a simple oversight, or something entirely different.
vintermann 10y ago

graffitici 10y ago

I am also having trouble loading the site. But shouldnt WikiLeaks be releasing this as a torrent?! Wouldn't that be much more effective, both efficiency and cost-wise?

bane 10y ago
It would pretty great if everything wikileaks put out was available to download. They're actually really great research corpora in theory, but they send them to their website to die.

denfromufa 10y ago

There is also Fuat Avni, who was exposing Turkish government for last few years with very accurate predictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuat_Avni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuat_Avni

alpb 10y ago

Is there no way to download a dump of this leak and keep digging offline? (also started getting HTTP 500s now, search doesn't work either with HTTP 400).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

yekillmeagainhn 10y ago

It's frustrating all the hate directed to middle eastern and Islamic countries that seem to be gradually finding their own way towards modernity and prosperity. Always finding a way to sabotage that progress. Happened in Egypt, and now trying with Turkey.. _and_ claiming to be on our side and trying to 'fix' our 'sub-par' countries at the same time..

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sylvinus 10y ago

Are they claiming to have some new Clinton emails as well? https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755501298687115264

sorpaas 10y ago

An initial search gave me lots of spams and malware...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

beyti 10y ago

for the sake of clearness, story title can be switched to "turkish government" from "AKP", since other than turkish people would not be familiar with the name "AKP"(ruling party name's acronym)

steve19 10y ago
The title is correct. It would be woefully incorrect to say "turkish government". Emails from the party email server have been leaked. If it had been government email servers, then government would be correct.
- beyti 10y ago
  I'm not saying it's incorrect, it's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though. It could be "Turkey's ruling party" then in light of your comment. But it's ok if everybody's ok with it, just my thoughts.
  - tremon 10y ago
    it's not a well known acronym outside Turkey though Only if you've been living under a stone for the past week.

whorleater 10y ago

Is there a data dump of all of this instead of Wikileak's website? Would certainly make it a lot easier to comb through.

forvelin 10y ago

Sadly, absolutely useless data -this batch at least-. Appearently nobody in AKP uses email but few rather nonimportant people.