10 ms·

Confirmed: All Wikileaks Cables to be Released in next 24 hours

157 points by derrida 15y ago

derrida 15y ago
Wikileaks has put whether it should release the cables to a vote on Twitter. Currently 'Yes' is out numbering 'No' 100 to 1.
- grudolf 15y ago
  It seems like they're releasing them now - some pages say 143912 / 251287 released, others are already at 251287 / 251287.
- untog 15y ago
  People really can be naive sometimes. Yes, the content of those cables should be public knowledge. But the names of informants should not be released- I dread to think how many people could die as a result of this.
joeyh 15y ago
Cryptome has the password and a link to the leaked file at the top of their page.
- click170 15y ago
  True, but their link to the file gives a Not Found. I wonder what's going on there..
  - rwmj 15y ago
    cryptome now has a torrent: http://cryptome.org/xyz/z.gpg.torrent http://cryptome.org/xyz/z.gpg.torrent I jumped on there for research purposes, and there were 34 peers.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - ghuntley 15y ago
    A quick whois [1] against the original link by used by Cryptome suggests possible origin of leak is Phillip Bailey[2]. If /xyz/ existed within the contingency torrent which was released to the pirate bay (someone else confirm please :) then that suggests that he was just hosting a HTTP mirror of the torrent; if it doesn't exist then who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NFOMuKVYJWwJ:193.198.207.6/wiki/file/xyz/+http://193.198.207.6/wiki/file/xyz/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NFOMuKV... x.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:32 390M y-docs.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:55 8.0M y.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:55 84M z.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:56 352M [1] http://whois.domaintools.com/193.198.207.6 http://whois.domaintools.com/193.198.207.6 [2] http://cryptolife.org/index.php/Main_Page http://cryptolife.org/index.php/Main_Page
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      A number of people have speculated that cables.csv == insurance.aes256 or whatever its called, due to the similarity in filesizes. Doesn't the insurance file predate the embassy cables affair though?
  - joeyh 15y ago
    The link pointed to an IP address that appeared to be a wikileaks mirror; the z.gpg file was buried deep in the mirror in a directory that also, interestingly had a large x.gpg and a y.gpg.
peteretep 15y ago
Seems to lay the blame very squarely with The Guardian. You can read the Guardian's rebuttal here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/unredacted-us-embassy-cables-online http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/unredacted-us-em... Guardian's quote: "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. "It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database. "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."
- schrototo 15y ago
  > "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book." That's a pretty bullshit excuse. Wasn't the insurance file on PirateBay? How exactly should they have removed that once it was out there?
  - peteretep 15y ago
    From what I've read, I've been given the idea that the files transferred to The Guardian were encrypted for them only - that the password they had worked against that file alone. Presumably (hopefully?) the insurance file uses a different password. I was also under the (perhaps wrong) impression that no-one actually knows what's in the insurance file.
    - schrototo 15y ago
      I can't imagine the insurance file being little more than the full uncensored cable archive. What else could it be? If Wikileaks had a gigabyte of compromising information on the US government or some other powerful entity, surely they would release it? Isn't that their stated mission?
ugh 15y ago
This is ridiculous. I don’t know how any whistleblower could trust Wikileaks after what has happened during the last few weeks. There clearly is a need for a competent whistleblower website. Wikileaks has shown itself to be incapable of filling that role. Egos shouldn’t be more important than leaks.
- marchdown 15y ago
  Excuse my ignorance, but what has happened over the last few weeks? I didn't have an uplink and it's not like there's a reliable archive of important news stories.
  - raphman 15y ago
    Spiegel Online has a good overview (in English): http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.h...
    - eykanal 15y ago
      Excellent overview. Thanks for posting the link.
    - jdp23 15y ago
      Excellent article, thanks for the link!
- derrida 15y ago
  1) The blame lays squarely with the guardian who think that PGP offers some sort of 'temporary' changeable password. 2) From the whistle-blowers perspective all documents have been released. Sure if Wikileaks hung onto them it would have a greater impact.
  - ugh 15y ago
    I’m talking about the kindergarten surrounding the whole issue. I cannot trust Wikileaks any more. I don’t know how anyone else could either.
rowanseymour 15y ago
Surely the largest part of the "blame" has to lie with the US authorities for putting such sensitive cables somewhere where so many people (Bradley Manning being only one of them) could access them?
- mpyne 15y ago
  That was done in response to the fallout from 9/11, where it was demonstrated that there was very little inter-agency cooperation, especially in sharing information about terrorism/terrorists. It was a calculated decision to greatly increase information sharing between government agencies (including the military) to allow for better cooperation.
  - xtracto 15y ago
    Well... it seems they did not calculate accurately the permission controls to prevent people like Manning making and distributing a copy of all those files.
- sprovoost 15y ago
  I think it's more appropriate to blame the second law of thermodynamics and the internet. It's increasingly, if not impossibly, hard to keep information isolated. My suggestion to anyone with secrets that valuable is to assume they get leaked and have a plan for that. I'm curious if Wikileaks saw this coming, but I suspect they were naive enough to believe they could maintain control.
roel_v 15y ago
The real shame is that there are probably people going to be killed because of the irresponsible ego tripping of a couple of journalists, deluded 'transparency advocates' and other mentally unstable individuals. Also, what was Assange thinking? 'Oh I'll just give these people the material, we can trust them?' And the notion that journalists, many of whom are as technologically illiterate as they come, would store these files on a computer not connected to any network is so naive it's not even funny anymore.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- gwern 15y ago
  > The real shame is that there are probably people going to be killed because of the irresponsible ego tripping of a couple of journalists, deluded 'transparency advocates' and other mentally unstable individuals. That's what people were saying about the Afghanistan and Iraq log leaks.
  - omouse 15y ago
    Right but people are still dying in those countries, though not due to journalists.
- wnight 15y ago
  Get a sense of perspective. The USA and its allies (who are, of course, by all their own laws, complicit) have directly killed and caused the deaths of over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan during the faked hunt for Osama. The vast majority of those were of course absolutely unrelated to the conflict in any way. And of the rest, most were innocent in this context because they didn't support Osama and weren't shooting at us until we started shooting at them. There are a million dead, at least, many of them with holes made by US (and allied) munitions, and you're quibbling about a few who could be threatened, in what has actually been by far the largest and safest (innocents/dictators hurt) release of classified documents EVER. This is serious stuff, stuff worth having posted everywhere, spammed to everyone, SMSing to every phone in the world, etc, on the chance that one copy would get through and let one journalist write one good expose. That it's been managed so as to have a groundbreakingly huge ratio of exposes written to actual data leaked is a stunning testimony to their delicate and thoughtful handling of the media organizations. What we see in North America and the EU is just a shadow of the literally world-wide (and now, hopefully, world-wise) fallout from these leaks. Irresponsible ego tripping and deluded transparency advocates indeed.
jarin 15y ago
It's unfortunate that they're unredacted, but doesn't it seem like it would be against Wikileaks' purpose to cherry pick information to release? I mean I thought they were supposed to be about "information freedom", not pushing their own agenda.
- RuadhanMc 15y ago
  They have to check the leaks to make sure that they aren't putting any ones life in danger (when they haven't done this in the past their enemies have used it against them in the ongoing PR battle). That takes time. It also means that they do cherry pick because they have to prioritize what leaks they will check and release first. They've got 250,000 cables. A small team is going to take a long time to check 250,000 cables. No doubt they do keyword searches of the cables to find the juicy ones and release those first, but, what you gonna do... release the boring, mundane stuff first? No one would pay attention to you.
  - jarin 15y ago
    I think the boring, mundane stuff could potentially be the most interesting stuff. Run statistical analysis for unusual words and phrases and find the secret diplomatic codes. :)
    - RuadhanMc 15y ago
      The boring, mundane stuff should absolutely be released... invaluable stuff for the historical record.
JonnieCache 15y ago
Boingboing have a grab of the section of the book where the guardian leaked the password: http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/wikileaks-guardian-journalist-negligently-published-password-to-unredacted-cables.html http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/wikileaks-guardian-journali... Amusingly it's been available in the google books preview all this time.
kahawe 15y ago
All serious implications aside for a moment, isn't this refreshingly ironic? Wikileaks having to deal with important information about THEM being leaked for a change.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- gwern 15y ago
  Refreshing? No, it is the brain-dead cached response, one that has been invoked countless times for everything to do with Wikileaks internals. The donation list became public? 'Oh ho ho, how ironic!' One of the supporters splits and writes a book about it? 'isn't this refreshingly ironic?' The cable database goes public? 'how very ironic!' And so on. I'm about as sick of it as I am of articles about a random bit of Wikipedia vandalism.
  - kahawe 15y ago
    Even worse then! Why should an organization trying to leak as much about anyone they can and matters be above their own standards and mantras? If "True information does good." well then who knows what this and the other leaks were good for. I do not see wikileaks as any more trustworthy or "better" or "more ethical" than the authorities they are acting against - yes, AGAINST, read Assange's book, he has an agenda and it might not be as altruistic and do-good as most people like to believe.
    - gnosis 15y ago
      "I do not see wikileaks as any more trustworthy or "better" or "more ethical" than the authorities they are acting against" Um.. let's see... last I checked, Wikileaks hadn't tortured any prisoners, invaded any countries, or murdered countless civilians. So, yeah, I'd count them as just a tad more ethical than the scumbags they're releasing dirt on.
      - kahawe 15y ago
epenn 15y ago
Can someone explain why/how the cables allegedly kicked off Arab Spring? I get how they pertain to Egypt's former information minister specifically, but wasn't the greater amount of unrest in the region preexisting?
- guelo 15y ago
  The first Arab revolution was in Tunisia. Shortly before that there was a Wikileaks release about the corruption of the Tunisian dictator and his family. The success of the Tunisian revolution inspired the other Arab countries to revolt.
  - jgrahamc 15y ago
    I believe this argument to be totally overblown. The release of the cables did nothing IMHO to inform the Tunisian people about the corruption of the Ben Ali and his family. I visit Tunisia regularly and have family there. The corruption was widely known throughout the country and spoken about behind closed doors. Ben Ali himself was tolerated but his wife and her family were despised.
    - derrida 15y ago
      You are absolutely correct. Wikileaks published a cable that said (paraphrasing) that the US was unsatisfied with Ben Ali and wouldn't mind if he went. This only helped the Tunisians understand their own government, and what was possible politically.
    - Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
      The boy who cries that the emperor has no clothes changes everything on how the emperor is seen. A truth spoken in public has a different impact form a truth spoken behind doors.
  - drzaiusapelord 15y ago
    Are you kidding? The guy who set himself on fire did so because his fruit cart was taken. He wasn't some high minded HN/Reddit addict who dropped his monocle when he read about some corruption issue. Tunisians dont need wikileaks to tell them their government is corrupt. Its sad that the netizen class is going to give wikileaks credit for everything good that happens from now on. What self-congratulatory armchair revolutionary nonsense.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

157 points by derrida 15y ago

Wikileaks has put whether it should release the cables to a vote on Twitter. Currently 'Yes' is out numbering 'No' 100 to 1.

grudolf 15y ago
It seems like they're releasing them now - some pages say 143912 / 251287 released, others are already at 251287 / 251287.
untog 15y ago
People really can be naive sometimes. Yes, the content of those cables should be public knowledge. But the names of informants should not be released- I dread to think how many people could die as a result of this.

joeyh 15y ago

Cryptome has the password and a link to the leaked file at the top of their page.

click170 15y ago
True, but their link to the file gives a Not Found. I wonder what's going on there..
- rwmj 15y ago
  cryptome now has a torrent: http://cryptome.org/xyz/z.gpg.torrent http://cryptome.org/xyz/z.gpg.torrent I jumped on there for research purposes, and there were 34 peers.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- ghuntley 15y ago
  A quick whois [1] against the original link by used by Cryptome suggests possible origin of leak is Phillip Bailey[2]. If /xyz/ existed within the contingency torrent which was released to the pirate bay (someone else confirm please :) then that suggests that he was just hosting a HTTP mirror of the torrent; if it doesn't exist then who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NFOMuKVYJWwJ:193.198.207.6/wiki/file/xyz/+http://193.198.207.6/wiki/file/xyz/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NFOMuKV... x.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:32 390M y-docs.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:55 8.0M y.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:55 84M z.gpg 09-Jun-2010 00:56 352M [1] http://whois.domaintools.com/193.198.207.6 http://whois.domaintools.com/193.198.207.6 [2] http://cryptolife.org/index.php/Main_Page http://cryptolife.org/index.php/Main_Page
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    A number of people have speculated that cables.csv == insurance.aes256 or whatever its called, due to the similarity in filesizes. Doesn't the insurance file predate the embassy cables affair though?
- joeyh 15y ago
  The link pointed to an IP address that appeared to be a wikileaks mirror; the z.gpg file was buried deep in the mirror in a directory that also, interestingly had a large x.gpg and a y.gpg.

peteretep 15y ago

Seems to lay the blame very squarely with The Guardian. You can read the Guardian's rebuttal here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/unredacted-us-embassy-cables-online http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/01/unredacted-us-em... Guardian's quote: "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. "It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database. "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."

schrototo 15y ago
> "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book." That's a pretty bullshit excuse. Wasn't the insurance file on PirateBay? How exactly should they have removed that once it was out there?
- peteretep 15y ago
  From what I've read, I've been given the idea that the files transferred to The Guardian were encrypted for them only - that the password they had worked against that file alone. Presumably (hopefully?) the insurance file uses a different password. I was also under the (perhaps wrong) impression that no-one actually knows what's in the insurance file.
  - schrototo 15y ago
    I can't imagine the insurance file being little more than the full uncensored cable archive. What else could it be? If Wikileaks had a gigabyte of compromising information on the US government or some other powerful entity, surely they would release it? Isn't that their stated mission?

ugh 15y ago

This is ridiculous. I don’t know how any whistleblower could trust Wikileaks after what has happened during the last few weeks. There clearly is a need for a competent whistleblower website. Wikileaks has shown itself to be incapable of filling that role. Egos shouldn’t be more important than leaks.

marchdown 15y ago
Excuse my ignorance, but what has happened over the last few weeks? I didn't have an uplink and it's not like there's a reliable archive of important news stories.
- raphman 15y ago
  Spiegel Online has a good overview (in English): http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.h...
  - eykanal 15y ago
    Excellent overview. Thanks for posting the link.
  - jdp23 15y ago
    Excellent article, thanks for the link!
derrida 15y ago
1) The blame lays squarely with the guardian who think that PGP offers some sort of 'temporary' changeable password. 2) From the whistle-blowers perspective all documents have been released. Sure if Wikileaks hung onto them it would have a greater impact.
- ugh 15y ago
  I’m talking about the kindergarten surrounding the whole issue. I cannot trust Wikileaks any more. I don’t know how anyone else could either.

rowanseymour 15y ago

Surely the largest part of the "blame" has to lie with the US authorities for putting such sensitive cables somewhere where so many people (Bradley Manning being only one of them) could access them?

mpyne 15y ago
That was done in response to the fallout from 9/11, where it was demonstrated that there was very little inter-agency cooperation, especially in sharing information about terrorism/terrorists. It was a calculated decision to greatly increase information sharing between government agencies (including the military) to allow for better cooperation.
- xtracto 15y ago
  Well... it seems they did not calculate accurately the permission controls to prevent people like Manning making and distributing a copy of all those files.
sprovoost 15y ago
I think it's more appropriate to blame the second law of thermodynamics and the internet. It's increasingly, if not impossibly, hard to keep information isolated. My suggestion to anyone with secrets that valuable is to assume they get leaked and have a plan for that. I'm curious if Wikileaks saw this coming, but I suspect they were naive enough to believe they could maintain control.

roel_v 15y ago

The real shame is that there are probably people going to be killed because of the irresponsible ego tripping of a couple of journalists, deluded 'transparency advocates' and other mentally unstable individuals. Also, what was Assange thinking? 'Oh I'll just give these people the material, we can trust them?' And the notion that journalists, many of whom are as technologically illiterate as they come, would store these files on a computer not connected to any network is so naive it's not even funny anymore.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
gwern 15y ago
> The real shame is that there are probably people going to be killed because of the irresponsible ego tripping of a couple of journalists, deluded 'transparency advocates' and other mentally unstable individuals. That's what people were saying about the Afghanistan and Iraq log leaks.
- omouse 15y ago
  Right but people are still dying in those countries, though not due to journalists.
wnight 15y ago
Get a sense of perspective. The USA and its allies (who are, of course, by all their own laws, complicit) have directly killed and caused the deaths of over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan during the faked hunt for Osama. The vast majority of those were of course absolutely unrelated to the conflict in any way. And of the rest, most were innocent in this context because they didn't support Osama and weren't shooting at us until we started shooting at them. There are a million dead, at least, many of them with holes made by US (and allied) munitions, and you're quibbling about a few who could be threatened, in what has actually been by far the largest and safest (innocents/dictators hurt) release of classified documents EVER. This is serious stuff, stuff worth having posted everywhere, spammed to everyone, SMSing to every phone in the world, etc, on the chance that one copy would get through and let one journalist write one good expose. That it's been managed so as to have a groundbreakingly huge ratio of exposes written to actual data leaked is a stunning testimony to their delicate and thoughtful handling of the media organizations. What we see in North America and the EU is just a shadow of the literally world-wide (and now, hopefully, world-wise) fallout from these leaks. Irresponsible ego tripping and deluded transparency advocates indeed.

jarin 15y ago

It's unfortunate that they're unredacted, but doesn't it seem like it would be against Wikileaks' purpose to cherry pick information to release? I mean I thought they were supposed to be about "information freedom", not pushing their own agenda.

RuadhanMc 15y ago
They have to check the leaks to make sure that they aren't putting any ones life in danger (when they haven't done this in the past their enemies have used it against them in the ongoing PR battle). That takes time. It also means that they do cherry pick because they have to prioritize what leaks they will check and release first. They've got 250,000 cables. A small team is going to take a long time to check 250,000 cables. No doubt they do keyword searches of the cables to find the juicy ones and release those first, but, what you gonna do... release the boring, mundane stuff first? No one would pay attention to you.
- jarin 15y ago
  I think the boring, mundane stuff could potentially be the most interesting stuff. Run statistical analysis for unusual words and phrases and find the secret diplomatic codes. :)
  - RuadhanMc 15y ago
    The boring, mundane stuff should absolutely be released... invaluable stuff for the historical record.

JonnieCache 15y ago

Boingboing have a grab of the section of the book where the guardian leaked the password: http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/wikileaks-guardian-journalist-negligently-published-password-to-unredacted-cables.html http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/wikileaks-guardian-journali... Amusingly it's been available in the google books preview all this time.

kahawe 15y ago

All serious implications aside for a moment, isn't this refreshingly ironic? Wikileaks having to deal with important information about THEM being leaked for a change.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
gwern 15y ago
Refreshing? No, it is the brain-dead cached response, one that has been invoked countless times for everything to do with Wikileaks internals. The donation list became public? 'Oh ho ho, how ironic!' One of the supporters splits and writes a book about it? 'isn't this refreshingly ironic?' The cable database goes public? 'how very ironic!' And so on. I'm about as sick of it as I am of articles about a random bit of Wikipedia vandalism.
- kahawe 15y ago
  Even worse then! Why should an organization trying to leak as much about anyone they can and matters be above their own standards and mantras? If "True information does good." well then who knows what this and the other leaks were good for. I do not see wikileaks as any more trustworthy or "better" or "more ethical" than the authorities they are acting against - yes, AGAINST, read Assange's book, he has an agenda and it might not be as altruistic and do-good as most people like to believe.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    "I do not see wikileaks as any more trustworthy or "better" or "more ethical" than the authorities they are acting against" Um.. let's see... last I checked, Wikileaks hadn't tortured any prisoners, invaded any countries, or murdered countless civilians. So, yeah, I'd count them as just a tad more ethical than the scumbags they're releasing dirt on.
    - kahawe 15y ago

epenn 15y ago

Can someone explain why/how the cables allegedly kicked off Arab Spring? I get how they pertain to Egypt's former information minister specifically, but wasn't the greater amount of unrest in the region preexisting?

guelo 15y ago
The first Arab revolution was in Tunisia. Shortly before that there was a Wikileaks release about the corruption of the Tunisian dictator and his family. The success of the Tunisian revolution inspired the other Arab countries to revolt.
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  I believe this argument to be totally overblown. The release of the cables did nothing IMHO to inform the Tunisian people about the corruption of the Ben Ali and his family. I visit Tunisia regularly and have family there. The corruption was widely known throughout the country and spoken about behind closed doors. Ben Ali himself was tolerated but his wife and her family were despised.
  - derrida 15y ago
    You are absolutely correct. Wikileaks published a cable that said (paraphrasing) that the US was unsatisfied with Ben Ali and wouldn't mind if he went. This only helped the Tunisians understand their own government, and what was possible politically.
  - Andrew_Quentin 15y ago
    The boy who cries that the emperor has no clothes changes everything on how the emperor is seen. A truth spoken in public has a different impact form a truth spoken behind doors.
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago
  Are you kidding? The guy who set himself on fire did so because his fruit cart was taken. He wasn't some high minded HN/Reddit addict who dropped his monocle when he read about some corruption issue. Tunisians dont need wikileaks to tell them their government is corrupt. Its sad that the netizen class is going to give wikileaks credit for everything good that happens from now on. What self-congratulatory armchair revolutionary nonsense.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]