4 ms·

Would it be any better if it was sent to Wikileaks and published there?

by RoyTyrell 6y ago

coldtea 6y ago
Only if it the data was government / private sector data, not citizen messages
- newacct583 6y ago
  What exactly the difference between "private sector data" and "citizen messages"? Wikileaks published a ton of data from personal sources. Famously, the Podesta leak was from a private account and absolutely contained personal communication (about, again famously, a favored pizza joint).
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >What exactly the difference between "private sector data" and "citizen messages"? That "fuck businesses", while "leave actual people ok".
  - Agaliarept21 6y ago
    I think where most people would reasonably draw the line is in the level of political power a person has over matters which impact the public interest. While I personally disagree with the leaking of Podesta's emails, the amount of political power and relevance he has makes him somewhat of a public figure. He is not in anyway comparable to your average person. I do see a public good in providing this data to law enforcement, so that they can obtain evidence to build a case against the people who were involved. I however can not see any public good in potentially exposing random people to identity theft and criminal harassment for simply registering an account on a website. While people could make the argument that the site has culpability for what happened so this data must be exposed, to hold that position in good faith you would then also have to say that a leak of Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube users is also justifiable. Seeing as those platforms have held worse calls for violence than any other platforms. Parler isn't a website where all the users who register are guilty of espousing harmful rhetoric. I would agree that there are some websites that exist like Stormfront where that would definitely be the case, but ultimately Parler is simply an alternative social media site with more lax moderation than Twitter. That lax moderation unfortunately will attract a large number of bad actors who have been banned from other sites. However this still doesn't change that this site isn't anything but a social media site with a different philosophical opinion on how moderated speech on their platform should be. Which means a lot of innocent people with no political power will be harmed.
whatshisface 6y ago
Huh? Wikileaks is where people go to publish evidence of government crimes, not Granddad's chats with his friends.
- QuesnayJr 6y ago
  Wikileaks leaked John Podesta's emails, including such criminal activity as his recipe for risotto.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    It's generally a good idea for leakers to be selective about their releases (Snowden did a better job than Manning in that area IMO). I guess Wikileaks is between a rock and a hard place, because if they started editorializing then that would lead to political bias.
    - diegocg 6y ago
      Political bias? Like when Wikileaks supported researching the Pizzagate conspiracy during the 2016 US election and posted links to /r/The_Donald "investigation" threads?
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      They sided against the US government (and with Russia) years ago.
      - whatshisface 6y ago
        Has anyone leaked something about Russia that was then denied by Wikileaks? It could be that the US has a more active community of investigative journalists.
        QuesnayJr 6y ago
        Apparently, yes: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
valvar 6y ago
Yes, because WikiLeaks is very diligent in scrubbing sensitive private information from leaks.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  They aren't, or did they get much better at it in recent years?
- tootie 6y ago
  Didn't WikiLeaks publish the decryption key for the Manning leaks and all the unredacted messages got into the wild?
  - dleslie 6y ago
    IIRC, that was the Guardian, who was provided the key in trust in order to help publish the data.
  - 9387367 6y ago
    > Didn't WikiLeaks publish the decryption key for the Manning leaks and all the unredacted messages got into the wild? No. > WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange phoned the White House to warn lives would be put at risk by the publication of cables online, a court has heard. > On 25 August, 2011, German news outlet Der Freitag revealed that it was possible to access the unredacted database of cables by using a mirror site and a 58-key password that had been published in a book by The Guardian earlier in the year. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wikileaks-julian-assange-white-house-hillary-clinton-chelsea-manning-a9359191.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wikileaks-...
    - mike00632 6y ago
      https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html No. Wikileaks did indeed accidentally give out the decryption key to the encrypted trove they published from the Manning leaks. There is probably still a torrent available of the full, unredacted scrape of Secret data from the SIPR network.
bdefore 6y ago
I can think of one benefit of going through Wikileaks (or WaPo): there would be a review by experts of what is legal/responsible to share, redacting for example driver's license uploads.
- hannasanarion 6y ago
  Wikileaks doesn't vet anything, their policy is to publish whatever they're given. That's why Snowden specifically didn't take the NSA leaks to them.
  - ravel-bar-foo 6y ago
    One of the interesting things to come out in Dec 2020 is evidence that Wikileaks offered the State Department advance warning when the encryption keys for the Iraq War Logs were about to be published by their collaborators at the Guardian. Prior to that, publication of the Iraq War Logs had been piecemeal as they redacted PII. https://news.antiwar.com/2020/12/16/recording-proves-assange-warned-state-department-ahead-of-cable-dump/ https://news.antiwar.com/2020/12/16/recording-proves-assange...
  - j16sdiz 6y ago
    https://www.britannica.com/topic/WikiLeaks https://www.britannica.com/topic/WikiLeaks >> WikiLeaks had originally followed a policy of redacting personal or sensitive information from documents prior to release,...
Udik 6y ago
If you hack a source and send it to Wikileaks, do you qualify as "security researcher"? This is what we're taking about.
varjag 6y ago
Wikileaks would never publish anything that hurts authoritarian cause, so it's highly hypothetical.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Would it be any better if it was sent to Wikileaks and published there? Not really. If they had sent it to a journalistic organisation à la the Panama Papers, where e.g. curious peoples’ government IDs could be stripped and criminal activity highlighted, that would have be been different.

Would it be any better if it was sent to Wikileaks and published there?

coldtea 6y ago

Only if it the data was government / private sector data, not citizen messages

newacct583 6y ago
What exactly the difference between "private sector data" and "citizen messages"? Wikileaks published a ton of data from personal sources. Famously, the Podesta leak was from a private account and absolutely contained personal communication (about, again famously, a favored pizza joint).
- coldtea 6y ago
  >What exactly the difference between "private sector data" and "citizen messages"? That "fuck businesses", while "leave actual people ok".
- Agaliarept21 6y ago
  I think where most people would reasonably draw the line is in the level of political power a person has over matters which impact the public interest. While I personally disagree with the leaking of Podesta's emails, the amount of political power and relevance he has makes him somewhat of a public figure. He is not in anyway comparable to your average person. I do see a public good in providing this data to law enforcement, so that they can obtain evidence to build a case against the people who were involved. I however can not see any public good in potentially exposing random people to identity theft and criminal harassment for simply registering an account on a website. While people could make the argument that the site has culpability for what happened so this data must be exposed, to hold that position in good faith you would then also have to say that a leak of Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube users is also justifiable. Seeing as those platforms have held worse calls for violence than any other platforms. Parler isn't a website where all the users who register are guilty of espousing harmful rhetoric. I would agree that there are some websites that exist like Stormfront where that would definitely be the case, but ultimately Parler is simply an alternative social media site with more lax moderation than Twitter. That lax moderation unfortunately will attract a large number of bad actors who have been banned from other sites. However this still doesn't change that this site isn't anything but a social media site with a different philosophical opinion on how moderated speech on their platform should be. Which means a lot of innocent people with no political power will be harmed.

whatshisface 6y ago

Huh? Wikileaks is where people go to publish evidence of government crimes, not Granddad's chats with his friends.

QuesnayJr 6y ago
Wikileaks leaked John Podesta's emails, including such criminal activity as his recipe for risotto.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  It's generally a good idea for leakers to be selective about their releases (Snowden did a better job than Manning in that area IMO). I guess Wikileaks is between a rock and a hard place, because if they started editorializing then that would lead to political bias.
  - diegocg 6y ago
    Political bias? Like when Wikileaks supported researching the Pizzagate conspiracy during the 2016 US election and posted links to /r/The_Donald "investigation" threads?
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    They sided against the US government (and with Russia) years ago.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      Has anyone leaked something about Russia that was then denied by Wikileaks? It could be that the US has a more active community of investigative journalists.
      - QuesnayJr 6y ago
        Apparently, yes: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...

valvar 6y ago

Yes, because WikiLeaks is very diligent in scrubbing sensitive private information from leaks.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
They aren't, or did they get much better at it in recent years?
tootie 6y ago
Didn't WikiLeaks publish the decryption key for the Manning leaks and all the unredacted messages got into the wild?
- dleslie 6y ago
  IIRC, that was the Guardian, who was provided the key in trust in order to help publish the data.
- 9387367 6y ago
  > Didn't WikiLeaks publish the decryption key for the Manning leaks and all the unredacted messages got into the wild? No. > WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange phoned the White House to warn lives would be put at risk by the publication of cables online, a court has heard. > On 25 August, 2011, German news outlet Der Freitag revealed that it was possible to access the unredacted database of cables by using a mirror site and a 58-key password that had been published in a book by The Guardian earlier in the year. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wikileaks-julian-assange-white-house-hillary-clinton-chelsea-manning-a9359191.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wikileaks-...
  - mike00632 6y ago
    https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html No. Wikileaks did indeed accidentally give out the decryption key to the encrypted trove they published from the Manning leaks. There is probably still a torrent available of the full, unredacted scrape of Secret data from the SIPR network.

bdefore 6y ago

I can think of one benefit of going through Wikileaks (or WaPo): there would be a review by experts of what is legal/responsible to share, redacting for example driver's license uploads.

hannasanarion 6y ago
Wikileaks doesn't vet anything, their policy is to publish whatever they're given. That's why Snowden specifically didn't take the NSA leaks to them.
- ravel-bar-foo 6y ago
  One of the interesting things to come out in Dec 2020 is evidence that Wikileaks offered the State Department advance warning when the encryption keys for the Iraq War Logs were about to be published by their collaborators at the Guardian. Prior to that, publication of the Iraq War Logs had been piecemeal as they redacted PII. https://news.antiwar.com/2020/12/16/recording-proves-assange-warned-state-department-ahead-of-cable-dump/ https://news.antiwar.com/2020/12/16/recording-proves-assange...
- j16sdiz 6y ago
  https://www.britannica.com/topic/WikiLeaks https://www.britannica.com/topic/WikiLeaks >> WikiLeaks had originally followed a policy of redacting personal or sensitive information from documents prior to release,...

Udik 6y ago

If you hack a source and send it to Wikileaks, do you qualify as "security researcher"? This is what we're taking about.

varjag 6y ago

Wikileaks would never publish anything that hurts authoritarian cause, so it's highly hypothetical.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Would it be any better if it was sent to Wikileaks and published there? Not really. If they had sent it to a journalistic organisation à la the Panama Papers, where e.g. curious peoples’ government IDs could be stripped and criminal activity highlighted, that would have be been different.