4 ms·

>The group's recent release of emails from the Democratic National Committee exposed things such as the credit card numbers, social security numbers and passpor

>The group's recent release of emails from the Democratic National Committee exposed things such as the credit card numbers, social security numbers and passport numbers of some donors -- putting them at risk of identity theft. It is not like any of the people that wrote the information in the emails has any fault, right? It is not Wikileaks' job to save DNC's collective ass. You put your donor's info in jeopardy - you are to blame. If there was common sense in the DNC - the leak would not have been possible.

formula1 10y ago
Well, if we are talking about common sense. I should never make a payment transaction online. Never send personal details to doctors, freinds or family. Never provide information under nda to parties online. This isnt a problem of common sense, this is a problem of encryption, who has access and how easy it is to force access. Saving emails could also prove things in the courts defensively if necessary
- fit2rule 10y ago
  Never do it .. unless its encrypted. (Hint: you can do this pretty easily, if you learn how.) Email is not, by default, encrypted. Anyone on any of the networks between the send and the recipient of any of those emails could have seen this data. The security failure happened when the person composing the email typed in the data that should have been protected. People - especially people in power - need to realize that email is NOT private by default - it is by its very nature, an open and public line of transmission, and can be very, very easily intercepted by interested third parties. So, lets stay focused on the real point where the security failure occurred: whoever typed the data in, in the first place, while composing their 'very important' emails ..
  - formula1 10y ago
    Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? If anything, this is a problem with their IT staff. Now that being said, the DNC may have not made it obvious that this was necessary and thats where the burden can rest. They knew that everything needed to be secure but either assumed incorrectly that it was encrypted or didnt want to inform IT that there are sensetive materials
    - fit2rule 10y ago
      >Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, indeed, I do expect that level of competence from people who aspire to govern the subject.
    - venomsnake 10y ago
      > Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, yes I do. It takes less than an hour to learn how to use pgp. It takes less than a second to understand why you don't put passwords, credit card details or root passwords in email. Is that so much to ask from the nation's Ivy League elite?
  - crummy 10y ago
    Would end-to-end encryption have helped this situation at all? None of the emails were intercepted between parties, to my knowledge.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      It's likely, unless the email dump also included private keys of recipients.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Some of that data was almost certainly sent encrypted. I'd be slightly surprised to find that their internal emails weren't encrypted at the transport layer. If they were using Exchange or even GApps, that'd be the default. It looks like a few individual mailboxes were popped. So even with a secure network, the result would have been the same.
LA_Banker 10y ago
It's not Wikileaks' job to save the DNC, but they could claim more moral authority if they didn't so brazenly also play a role in disseminating donor financial information. That's essentially what Snowden is saying. Go ahead and expose things worthy of exposure (by all means!), but doing so in a way that puts others at risk is irresponsible. If your home gets broken into because the door was left unlocked, is the thief innocent because "you are to blame"? No. Sure, you bear some responsibility for not being more responsible and exercising better judgment; but you're not the one who committed the theft.
- fit2rule 10y ago
  The problem is, the word 'theft'. There is no theft possible in an open protocol such as email. There is only interception and observation - which occurs inherently as a part of the way email is handled. If the original author of the leaked emails had used encryption, none of this would matter. The fact that they chose not to encrypt the contents of the email, instead stupidly thinking that email was secure by nature (it most definitely is NOT), is the real issue here. If I hear you shouting your social security number at the top of your voice to your friend across the room, its not my responsibility that your information is no longer secure or protected. Its yours, and yours alone. The technological incompetence of the authors of DNC emails is the issue here, people. Do you really want someone running the country who can't even fathom the most basic, basic aspects of the technology that runs the world?
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Even if you hear somebody shouting a secret across the room, you can choose not to rebroadcast that information.
  - csydas 10y ago
    No, this is wrong from a legal standpoint, at least with US law and many EU laws as well. Ownership laws are fairly clear and have lots of precedent in regards to email, and there are also clearly defined cases of theft and violations of the CFAA. Your analogy breaks down in that the leaks are are a result of a breach, most certainly a violation of CFAA. No current understanding of law shares your opinion that because it's an open protocol that you no longer have agency over the content. Security measures were put in place, though certainly not enough to prevent a major leak. Though I hate bringing in analogies, you're not more culpable for your house being broken into just because you don't have 6 cm steel shutters for all openings; it's certainly more secure, but illegal access is illegal access. I say this next part not to be demeaning but to state an assumption of mine, but I'm going to assume you probably dislike the CFAA; I do as well, but to say there's no theft possible is a naive notion in the face of labyrinthine laws. The world has been dealing with email breaches since your average hacker got a home connection fast enough to move a few megabytes of data without timing out. The law's opinion on theft of email is incredibly different from your own.
detaro 10y ago
That the DNC is partially at fault doesn't absolve all other involved from their part.

formula1 10y ago

Well, if we are talking about common sense. I should never make a payment transaction online. Never send personal details to doctors, freinds or family. Never provide information under nda to parties online. This isnt a problem of common sense, this is a problem of encryption, who has access and how easy it is to force access. Saving emails could also prove things in the courts defensively if necessary

fit2rule 10y ago
Never do it .. unless its encrypted. (Hint: you can do this pretty easily, if you learn how.) Email is not, by default, encrypted. Anyone on any of the networks between the send and the recipient of any of those emails could have seen this data. The security failure happened when the person composing the email typed in the data that should have been protected. People - especially people in power - need to realize that email is NOT private by default - it is by its very nature, an open and public line of transmission, and can be very, very easily intercepted by interested third parties. So, lets stay focused on the real point where the security failure occurred: whoever typed the data in, in the first place, while composing their 'very important' emails ..
- formula1 10y ago
  Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? If anything, this is a problem with their IT staff. Now that being said, the DNC may have not made it obvious that this was necessary and thats where the burden can rest. They knew that everything needed to be secure but either assumed incorrectly that it was encrypted or didnt want to inform IT that there are sensetive materials
  - fit2rule 10y ago
    >Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, indeed, I do expect that level of competence from people who aspire to govern the subject.
  - venomsnake 10y ago
    > Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, yes I do. It takes less than an hour to learn how to use pgp. It takes less than a second to understand why you don't put passwords, credit card details or root passwords in email. Is that so much to ask from the nation's Ivy League elite?
- crummy 10y ago
  Would end-to-end encryption have helped this situation at all? None of the emails were intercepted between parties, to my knowledge.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    It's likely, unless the email dump also included private keys of recipients.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Some of that data was almost certainly sent encrypted. I'd be slightly surprised to find that their internal emails weren't encrypted at the transport layer. If they were using Exchange or even GApps, that'd be the default. It looks like a few individual mailboxes were popped. So even with a secure network, the result would have been the same.

LA_Banker 10y ago

It's not Wikileaks' job to save the DNC, but they could claim more moral authority if they didn't so brazenly also play a role in disseminating donor financial information. That's essentially what Snowden is saying. Go ahead and expose things worthy of exposure (by all means!), but doing so in a way that puts others at risk is irresponsible. If your home gets broken into because the door was left unlocked, is the thief innocent because "you are to blame"? No. Sure, you bear some responsibility for not being more responsible and exercising better judgment; but you're not the one who committed the theft.

fit2rule 10y ago
The problem is, the word 'theft'. There is no theft possible in an open protocol such as email. There is only interception and observation - which occurs inherently as a part of the way email is handled. If the original author of the leaked emails had used encryption, none of this would matter. The fact that they chose not to encrypt the contents of the email, instead stupidly thinking that email was secure by nature (it most definitely is NOT), is the real issue here. If I hear you shouting your social security number at the top of your voice to your friend across the room, its not my responsibility that your information is no longer secure or protected. Its yours, and yours alone. The technological incompetence of the authors of DNC emails is the issue here, people. Do you really want someone running the country who can't even fathom the most basic, basic aspects of the technology that runs the world?
- tedunangst 10y ago
  Even if you hear somebody shouting a secret across the room, you can choose not to rebroadcast that information.
- csydas 10y ago
  No, this is wrong from a legal standpoint, at least with US law and many EU laws as well. Ownership laws are fairly clear and have lots of precedent in regards to email, and there are also clearly defined cases of theft and violations of the CFAA. Your analogy breaks down in that the leaks are are a result of a breach, most certainly a violation of CFAA. No current understanding of law shares your opinion that because it's an open protocol that you no longer have agency over the content. Security measures were put in place, though certainly not enough to prevent a major leak. Though I hate bringing in analogies, you're not more culpable for your house being broken into just because you don't have 6 cm steel shutters for all openings; it's certainly more secure, but illegal access is illegal access. I say this next part not to be demeaning but to state an assumption of mine, but I'm going to assume you probably dislike the CFAA; I do as well, but to say there's no theft possible is a naive notion in the face of labyrinthine laws. The world has been dealing with email breaches since your average hacker got a home connection fast enough to move a few megabytes of data without timing out. The law's opinion on theft of email is incredibly different from your own.

detaro 10y ago

That the DNC is partially at fault doesn't absolve all other involved from their part.