5 ms·

I saw this this morning and it seemed like the first example of something that should severely not be leaked. I wanted to contact them privately and directly an

I saw this this morning and it seemed like the first example of something that should severely not be leaked. I wanted to contact them privately and directly and bring their attention to it but there turns out being no discernable channel to do that. These especially struck me as dangerous; http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09DOHA214&hl=%3Anewest http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09DOHA214&hl=%3... Specifically; 2. (C) There are three main industrial facilities of interest that if destroyed, or if their production is disrupted, could have an immediate effect on U.S. national economic security. In order of priority, these are Ras Laffan Industrial City (RLIC), Mesaieed Industrial City (MIC) and port complex, and Dukhan Industrial City. All three industrial centers are under the control and supervision of Qatar Petroleum (QP), a semi-autonomous government organization whose Chairman, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, is also the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy and Industry. Natural gas production is primarily centered around the coast and offshore areas in the northeast of Qatar, in and round Ras Laffan; while, oil production is concentrated on the western coast near Dukhan as well as offshore platforms. In both the #startups and #wikileaks channels on freenode people variously assured me that they had already considered it or I was just being a troll. I suppose it really is naive to expect unmitigated good to come of this episode, but I really wish they would not hand ammunition to the opposition in this fashion. I wish there was a way to privately contact them to ask them to reconsider a particular release without drawing attention to it in a public fashion. P.S. I will happily edit this message to omit the sensitive information directly in the event that anyone can tell me how to bring the necessary attention to it in a more private way.

lionhearted 16y ago
Who is downvoting this? What's wrong with people? You can't see how listing the facilities that the United States thinks are vital to national security in Qatar could possibly be a bad idea? It's like once people pick their teams, they can't reconsider. They have to find rationalizations "oh, this isn't so bad" or "well now we know what the government is working on" - guess what? There's random unhappy people in Qatar who don't have the resources or skill to do their own recon and intelligence work. Wikileaks just delivered America's own intel/recon to them. This makes the world less safe. This is a bad thing. I don't care what team you're on. This one is a bad thing. Shame on everyone who downvotes etherael for pointing out a really valid point. Stop the blind allegiance to the cause and think this one through critically. This is a bad thing.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- grandalf 16y ago
  Should it make us feel safer to know that the US Government was relying upon security by obscurity for vital interests?
  - btmorex 16y ago
    The problem with security researchers when they rail against "security by obscurity" is that they assume everyone is reasonably competent.... or that the main actors in any situation are nations with huge resources at their disposal. Neither of those are true in the general case. The reality is that most terrorists seem to be fairly incompetent with meager resources. This kind of intelligence is actually really dangerous because it means someone can do a lot of damage without expertise or a lot of money.
    - grandalf 16y ago
      Well, that's an empirical point. I'd be willing to wager that none of the would-be targets get attacked in the next 6 months.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    I wouldn't really call it security by obscurity, you can probably find most of this information already. When I was in high school I had a map of the natural gas pipelines and power transmission lines in my state (public records). Since the forest is cleared for both, they are great places to go skiing in the winter on the hilly parts or ride around on ATVs or horseback in the summer. The leak to worry about is the priority. What is the difference between a super critical oil refininery and the average refinery? I bet the average terrorist niether knows or has the means to find this out, but now there is a hit list in their hand given to them by the leakers. Going back to my example, we knew we were under powerlines, but is this just some random line to a town or is it THE line to New York City. I didn't know and I didn't care, but this might help answer questions like that for people we don't need or want to be telling. If that doesn't damage our national security, I really don't know what does.
aw3c2 16y ago
What exactly is the danger of this information? It is obvious that fuel/power facilities are vital to any nation's economy that is attached to those facilities. I think at least one good thing from this leak is that maybe people realise that their country relies on things coming from far far away and how that might be an unstable and insecure base for any economy.
- etherael 16y ago
  It's a list of the three highest priority industrial facilities in the country directly across the gulf from one of your primary warzones, it also gives the name of the controlling company, and the name of the bureaucrat directly in charge of the controlling company. More to the point, it is a concrete priority list according to the US' own economic research, it's like paying a research team to discern your weak spots and then handing that information directly to your enemies. Frankly, the extent to which this information is dangerous is obvious enough that I actually feel somewhat uncomfortable discussing it in this public forum. But since somebody else clearly has already gone public with similar information in a much more obvious way...
  - aw3c2 16y ago
    The war is there because the USA attacked. As I said, if this actually is a significant leak, then let it be an eye-opener and improve your land's self-support. You can only exploit other countries through globalism so much. Nothing beats having all you need at home.
    - etherael 16y ago
      Ok so let me see if I follow your line of reasoning here. A) War is bad. B) The war in Iraq is particularly bad C) So let's provide intel to the enemy in order to make the war even worse for the US, potentially killing many innocent foreign workers or friendly bureaucrats in the process? You lost me at C.
      - borism 16y ago
zzleeper 16y ago
You make a point, but anyone doing 5 minutes of research would find this exact same spots. Besides, being "industrial cities" they are actually hard to hit. It's like saying NYC, Chicago and DC are critical..
pygy_ 16y ago
As of two days ago, https://sunshinepress.org https://sunshinepress.org [1] was hosting a webclient pointing to two Wikileaks IRC channels, but it appears to be down at the moment. That said, I didn't check if the site was legit, but, from the activity, it looked real at first sight. [1] The "about" page of wikileaks.ch describes WL as a project of Sunshine Press.
etherael 16y ago
Extrapolating from the newly available Groups to contact for comment section on the wikileaks site. It looks like you can get in contact privately with someone who can get in contact with wikileaks reps via e-mail here; Leonard Weinglass weinlen@earthlink.net +1 212 807 8646

lionhearted 16y ago

Who is downvoting this? What's wrong with people? You can't see how listing the facilities that the United States thinks are vital to national security in Qatar could possibly be a bad idea? It's like once people pick their teams, they can't reconsider. They have to find rationalizations "oh, this isn't so bad" or "well now we know what the government is working on" - guess what? There's random unhappy people in Qatar who don't have the resources or skill to do their own recon and intelligence work. Wikileaks just delivered America's own intel/recon to them. This makes the world less safe. This is a bad thing. I don't care what team you're on. This one is a bad thing. Shame on everyone who downvotes etherael for pointing out a really valid point. Stop the blind allegiance to the cause and think this one through critically. This is a bad thing.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
grandalf 16y ago
Should it make us feel safer to know that the US Government was relying upon security by obscurity for vital interests?
- btmorex 16y ago
  The problem with security researchers when they rail against "security by obscurity" is that they assume everyone is reasonably competent.... or that the main actors in any situation are nations with huge resources at their disposal. Neither of those are true in the general case. The reality is that most terrorists seem to be fairly incompetent with meager resources. This kind of intelligence is actually really dangerous because it means someone can do a lot of damage without expertise or a lot of money.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    Well, that's an empirical point. I'd be willing to wager that none of the would-be targets get attacked in the next 6 months.
- krschultz 16y ago
  I wouldn't really call it security by obscurity, you can probably find most of this information already. When I was in high school I had a map of the natural gas pipelines and power transmission lines in my state (public records). Since the forest is cleared for both, they are great places to go skiing in the winter on the hilly parts or ride around on ATVs or horseback in the summer. The leak to worry about is the priority. What is the difference between a super critical oil refininery and the average refinery? I bet the average terrorist niether knows or has the means to find this out, but now there is a hit list in their hand given to them by the leakers. Going back to my example, we knew we were under powerlines, but is this just some random line to a town or is it THE line to New York City. I didn't know and I didn't care, but this might help answer questions like that for people we don't need or want to be telling. If that doesn't damage our national security, I really don't know what does.

aw3c2 16y ago

What exactly is the danger of this information? It is obvious that fuel/power facilities are vital to any nation's economy that is attached to those facilities. I think at least one good thing from this leak is that maybe people realise that their country relies on things coming from far far away and how that might be an unstable and insecure base for any economy.

etherael 16y ago
It's a list of the three highest priority industrial facilities in the country directly across the gulf from one of your primary warzones, it also gives the name of the controlling company, and the name of the bureaucrat directly in charge of the controlling company. More to the point, it is a concrete priority list according to the US' own economic research, it's like paying a research team to discern your weak spots and then handing that information directly to your enemies. Frankly, the extent to which this information is dangerous is obvious enough that I actually feel somewhat uncomfortable discussing it in this public forum. But since somebody else clearly has already gone public with similar information in a much more obvious way...
- aw3c2 16y ago
  The war is there because the USA attacked. As I said, if this actually is a significant leak, then let it be an eye-opener and improve your land's self-support. You can only exploit other countries through globalism so much. Nothing beats having all you need at home.
  - etherael 16y ago
    Ok so let me see if I follow your line of reasoning here. A) War is bad. B) The war in Iraq is particularly bad C) So let's provide intel to the enemy in order to make the war even worse for the US, potentially killing many innocent foreign workers or friendly bureaucrats in the process? You lost me at C.
    - borism 16y ago

zzleeper 16y ago

You make a point, but anyone doing 5 minutes of research would find this exact same spots. Besides, being "industrial cities" they are actually hard to hit. It's like saying NYC, Chicago and DC are critical..

pygy_ 16y ago

As of two days ago, https://sunshinepress.org https://sunshinepress.org [1] was hosting a webclient pointing to two Wikileaks IRC channels, but it appears to be down at the moment. That said, I didn't check if the site was legit, but, from the activity, it looked real at first sight. [1] The "about" page of wikileaks.ch describes WL as a project of Sunshine Press.

etherael 16y ago

Extrapolating from the newly available Groups to contact for comment section on the wikileaks site. It looks like you can get in contact privately with someone who can get in contact with wikileaks reps via e-mail here; Leonard Weinglass weinlen@earthlink.net +1 212 807 8646