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WikiLeaks begins publishing 5 million emails from Stratfor
- SonicSoul 15y agohmm.. so no one commented on pastebin being used as a newsletter CMS. i guess this is common practice? i guess this is in tune with those stories about using git as publishing platform
- tzs 15y agoHow is Stratfor fundamentally different from Wikileaks? They both obtain leaked information, often by methods of questionable legality. Stratfor uses the information to make reports and newsletters they sells to governments, businesses, and ordinary curious members of the public, whereas Wikileaks releases it for free but in ways that seemed designed to promote Assange, but I wouldn't say these are fundamental differences. If Wikileaks were truly about bringing secret information to light, wouldn't they be protecting other leak organizations, rather that exposing their sources?
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago"How is Stratfor fundamentally different from Wikileaks? They both obtain leaked information ..." That's like asking "How are the Crips different from the LAPD? They both drive around Los Angeles and carry guns ..." In the case of Stratfor and Wikileaks, one group finds secret information and makes it public, the other group takes secret information and sells it back to the same secret community from where the leaks originate. "I wouldn't say these are fundamental differences." I certainly would.
- duncan_bayne 15y ago> "How are the Crips different from the LAPD? They both drive > around Los Angeles and carry guns ..." ... and they both enforce laws, and they both initiate the use of force against peaceful citizens, and they both take funding from unwilling people by the threat of violence. I'm not sure you're making the point you intended to make, unless you're an anarcho-capitalist like me ;-)
- nodata 15y agoDo the Crips have a taskforce that investigates corrupt gang members?
- GiraffeNecktie 15y agoThat's exactly my point. Between any two groups, you can cherry pick lots of things that they have in common. So yeah, the Crips and the LAPD both wear "uniforms" and money is a big driving force yada yada. But at the end of the day, one group has a mission that is sanctioned by the overwhelming majority of the community and the other group absolutely doesn't. And I'm sure there's lots to be said about how the gangs and the LAPD are co-dependent but that doesn't make them the same.
- brown9-2 15y agoThis analogy is flawed. Stratfor is not a government organization like the LAPD is. A better analogy would be to compare the Crips and a private detective agency.
- marshray 15y agoI think Stratfor is an example of this trend of for-profit private outsourcers of things which used to be government-only functions. Political science types are fond of saying "government must have a monopoly on the use of XYZ", but apparently now if you put the right retired government people on your payroll it's legit. Military intelligence, international informant "asset" management? Good grief, this is some scary stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoI think the only thing political scientists say government should have a monopoly on is violence and national security. Anything beyond that and you enter a fractious field.
- einhverfr 15y agoeven there, the monopoly on both these things is mighty narrow. For example, how many political scientists would say that the state should have such a monopoly on violence that there should be no recognition of a right to defend oneself and others? However international informent asset management? Does it impinge on the government's necessary monopoly on national security and violence? Two for two, I'd wager.....
- dwhly 15y agoThat's funny, because the way I read the analogy, Stratfor was the Crips, gathering information and using it for private gain, and Wikileaks was the LAPD, using it for public good. Now clearly the LAPD is probably nearly as corrupt as the Crips, just in different ways-- so I'm not sure far this analogy holds, for that reason and many others. Still very amusing.
- tytso 15y agoI am a subscriber to Stratfor, because of their insightful analysis. It feeds my curiousity about why things they way the are, not not just what is happening (which is what you get from most news sources, if you're lucky). I haven't seen much in the way of leaked information in Stratfor's reports --- in fact, I can't think of any that I could identify as leaked information. Care to justify your assertion?
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoI remember them talking about their sources in the FSA when discussing Syria, etc. I still think targeting this was absurd; I lost sympathy for Anonymous after they attacked Stratfor.
- stfu 15y agoTo a large degree I agree with this standpoint. The problem with the Stratfor case is, that it was by and large a private research company who's only "crime" so far was selling information for money. And the idea of running an investment fund based on geo political informations seems a pretty smart idea. But what investment fund doesn't want to consider potential problematic externalities in their investments? The statement including $1,200 a month paid to the informant from the Wikileak's press release seems an almost ridiculously low amount, even when payed regularly, when in contrast other media outlets are paying thousands, and in some cases even millions for access to some temporary celebrities or access to other irrelevant banalities of public life.
- retrogradeorbit 15y agoOne difference is one makes money doing it and the other loses money doing it. One silos information in order to extract wealth from people who are interested in that information. The other releases it for free. One in moving in the direction of more secrecy and information hiding. The other is moving in the direction of more openness and transparency. I disagree that this is not "fundamentally different". It doesn't get much more "fundamental" than the ideological difference that drives the two organisations.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoSo journalists are evil because they're paid for what they do?
- wpietri 15y agoStratfor sought to make a profit. Journalists seek to make a living. A lot of the journalists I know would be perfectly happy to work for a not-for-profit organization because they're in it for the work, not the money.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoThe news organisations seek to make a profit just as much as STRATFOR. When that interferes with their ethics you get News Corp. When it doesn't we have reputable journals. The people at STRATFOR, similarly, could generally earn much more by working at macro hedge funds. Why they choose not to is their personal decision to make. I'm not trying to tease out a nuance here, but simply demonstrate that a profit motive doesn't inherently corrupt information collection and analysis.
- wpietri 15y agoSure, but there's a difference between journalists and news organizations. You were conflating them. Also, I suspect you're wrong. Every serious journalism organization maintains Chinese walls between the journalists and the profit-seekers. I think that's because a profit motive does inherently corrupt in that it creates conflicts of interest.
- andrewfelix 15y agoSTRAFOR has a commercial interest in keeping its collected information limited to its customers. Wikileaks exposes its information to the public.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- GigabyteCoin 15y agoPerhaps wikileaks just cast the first stone in the information wars? Julian is a former hacker himself.
- zerostar07 15y agoIt's best to have both, competition, and have them expose each other as they do now. Unless it's a massive well organized public stunt, i think it benefits the public.
- namdnay 15y agoThat's like saying there's no difference between Applebee's and UNICEF. Yeah, they both give food to people. One of them does it to those in need to help them, the other to those that have money.
- wxs 15y agoI found this one particularly fun to read: http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/1239829_fyi-.html http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/1239829_fyi-.html (Sorry, it's a doc). A glossary of the intelligence jargon that they use, written in an entertaining style.
- aristus 15y ago"Denial Plan: Specific plan for managing security breaches. In some intelligence organizations, multi-volume regulations. In others, the plan consists of running around circles, waving your arms and blaming everyone else. Which one are we?"
- treus 15y agoA bit from the definition of Passive Intelligence "...The flow of passive material decreases the cost of intelligence and increases the time for analysis. Problem-the same intelligence is available to everyone. Stratfor’s strength is efficient gathering of passive intelligence, rapid patterning, superb analysis. Or so we tell our customers. Better to have a few sources in your pocket as well."
- biot 15y agoIt's not without a sense of irony that WikiLeaks puts an embargo on the press release and asks that news organizations not leak the story beforehand.
- eli 15y agoActually I think it's intended to be completely unironic
- arctangent 15y agoOr maybe even post-ironic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-irony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-irony
- amurmann 15y agoIn February 2009, before Wikileaks was well known, I listened to an interview (http://www.kuechenradio.org/wp/?p=366 http://www.kuechenradio.org/wp/?p=366) with the back then German representative of wikileaks. Back then they had the problem that big media didn't care about anything that came out of wikileaks. They thought that part of the reason for the lack of attention was that no publication wanted to use a lot of pages for material that was accessible to their competitors as well. The practices Wikileaks employs today might be against the intended ethos, but have sure shown to be effective and are this way better for the cause.
- tfh 15y agoIt will take some time until people will filter interesting stuff out.
- veb 15y agoWell... this is going to be interesting. Forgive my ignorance, but this feels like its going to hurt a lot of people.
- pallinder 15y agoNot really, its not a secret organization, hell Ive been a subscriber for a long time and I guess my email will be included in this dump.
- chairface 15y agoYou misunderstand. Your email _address_ (and mine) have already been leaked, shortly before Christmas 2011. What WikiLeaks is now publishing is a list of actual internal emails, as in, the content of their internal, private communication. Unless you were a source for them, or a buyer of their more confidential information, you won't be directly affected by this leak.
- Joakal 15y agoHow is it going to hurt a lot of people?
- lwat 15y agoI guess he means STRATFOR people
- retrogradeorbit 15y agoAnd by a lot, what like 20? 50?
- rdp 15y agoI think the impact could be bigger than you suggest. Communications between Stratfor staff, clients, and sources are buried in this data dump. There is an entire spreadsheet of non-US media contacts who had agreements of some kind with Stratfor. There is correspondence between Stratfor executives and their attorneys that was most certainly subject to attorney/client privilege before it was posted. This only scratches the surface.
- revelation 15y agoStill think this is misguided. STRATFOR isn't the CIA; they like to pretend for marketing and what not, but they are obviously not the enemy here.
- lwat 15y agoWell maybe STRATFOR is not YOUR enemy, that doesn't mean Wikileaks is wrong to leak these.
- reitblatt 15y agoAnyone bribing governmental officials for personal profit is "the enemy". Edit: It's in the article. Stratfor gathers information using paid informants, including government officials. That's bribery.
- spindritf 15y agoWhat are you referring to? EDIT: ok, really, what bribes?
- ortatherox 15y ago"The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world." + "Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky" - from the link
- webXL 15y agoWhat about those who bribe the electorate for personal profit ? What about politicians who blackmail each other for personal profit? Is it not possible to profit by bribing/blackmailing a government official and benefit the public at the same time? Please think these things through next time before you cathartically post that someone is "the enemy".
- spitfire 15y agoI hope no one is surprised by this. If governments are willing to spend billions upon billions for intelligence, why wouldn't private corporations. Hell I've throughout of doing this a few times - then I think about the work it entails. I bet there'll bee som interesting, actionable material in there.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kristianp 15y agoWhere is the data itself? I can't find a link to it, possibly it's not available yet?
- rdp 15y agoThe data is here: http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/ http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/
- olefoo 15y agoThat's not particularly useful to people who want to rip through the entire corpus using standard textmining tools; we'd really rather a signed torrent of a compressed imap archive or something similar. Having all the headers in formats accessible to scripts to read and tag different emails, etc. This is sort of like having to do research on an archive that's been photocopied onto kleenex. But, we'll suck it up, and write a scraper to turn it into what we need. But it means that some of the interesting stuff is delayed, because wikileaks is trying to get the most bang for the buck by dribbling it out. Just to pick an example of what I mean by interesting; tag all emails that mention a country or city and see if there are correlations between who sent and received emails and the countries mentioned, or if informants are mentioned in connection with more than one country.
- rdp 15y agoOne of the more interesting things to emerge from this is Strafor's failed attempt to create a hedge fund that would use their intelligence to invest in government bonds, currency, etc.
- chairface 15y agoThe only reference I found to their hedge fund said that it hasn't launched yet, not that it has failed.
- rdp 15y agoMy interpretation of this document is that the initial attempt at creating the fund failed and those involved were trying to salvage it. http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/400961_fw-failure-of-stratfor-stratcap-deal-.html http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/400961_fw-failure-of-strat...
- chairface 15y agoThank you for the reference - I agree, that's the most likely interpretation of the email. I wonder why this wasn't called out more strongly when the hedge fund was mentioned in the press release.
- kylemaxwell 15y agoI've read STRATFOR's intel summaries / newsletters for a while - and I generally support Wikileak's and Anonymous's goals, if not always their specific tactics. So this is grabbing my interest, both personally and professionally. If nothing else, it will be interesting to consider ways to apply their methodology to the sort of threat intelligence we work with in network security. (Side note: it's entirely possible to support Wikileaks and still think Assange is kind of a jerk.)
- unconed 15y agoThe thing is, though I'm not saying that's true in your case, that many people's perceptions of Assange are entirely due to the picture the media has painted rather than things he has himself said or done. Check out the disinformation campaign that's been going on in Sweden for example, propagated by tabloid press in releases oddly synchronous with statements by the prime minister concerning an upcoming 'smear campaign against Sweden'.
- shalmanese 15y agoOh, the irony: http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/866124_random-business-idea-network-security-.html http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/866124_random-business-ide...
- Maxious 15y agoStratfor CEO George Friedman Resigns Over Latest Breach http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leaked-email-shows-stratfor-ceo-george-friedman-resigned-two-hours-ago-over-latest-breach http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leaked-email-shows-stratfor-ce... "But we must acknowledge that this incident would not have been possible if Stratfor had implemented stronger data protection mechanisms - which will be the case from now on. Indeed we will immediately move to implement the latest, and most comprehensive, data security measures." Seriously? These people were emailing what they considered the most sensitive information straight out of their organisation, the only "security" being a caveat in the subject line. I wouldn't trust them with a cookie jar let alone preventing leaks ;)
- jacquesm 15y agoHe didn't resign according to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9107911/WikiLeaks-publishes-security-think-tank-emails.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/9107911/...
- joeyh 15y agoBuried in the mass of text at http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html is this interesting thing: "WikiLeaks is about to launch a distributed, encrypted "Facebook for revolutionaries" (https://wlfriends.org/ https://wlfriends.org/)." https://wlfriends.org/about#whatfowlis https://wlfriends.org/about#whatfowlis I see no evidence it's truely distributed though.
- cenuij 15y agoThe charge levelled @manning doesn't concern you all?
- jsz0 15y agoThey don't really concern me. He made the choice to do it. I think he was probably aware of the risks and decided it was worth the punishment. If not then he made a huge mistake.
- cenuij 15y agoNaevity is prevelant, chase your own story.
- cenuij 15y agoHello USA, We are the rest of the world. We understand that you are embarrased, so are we. We understand that your experiment in government has slid towards fascism. Don't worry, you are not alone, it was a popular movement for Mussolini.
- corin_ 15y agoDo you realise that a vast majority of HN readers would support Manning's release? You're being downvoted because you come across as a young, annoying child, not because of your opinion.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- r4vik 15y agoAnyone got a full dump? I want to run the from/to's through a network analysis to understand who the 'supernodes' or connectors are at stratfor.
- roel_v 15y agoWhat software do you use for this?
- r4vik 15y agoI've been waiting to try out Neo4j and Gephi: http://gephi.org/tag/neo4j/ http://gephi.org/tag/neo4j/
- iddqd 15y agohttp://wikileaks.org/gifiles/releases.html http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/releases.html "torrent dumps are available at http://wlstorage.net/torrent/gifiles/ http://wlstorage.net/torrent/gifiles/, pick newest one available"
- cenuij 15y agomanning must die/pay: What kind of backward society would prosecute this?
- mr_eel 15y agoAnyone commenting about the supposed irony of Wikileaks putting an embargo on releasing this information before an agreed date is being naive. At one point in time Wikileak's stated mission was just to leak information, and this was done without — comparatively — much fanfare. What we see now is a change of tactics. If the ultimate goal is not simply to leak information, but to effect change, then what is the best way to do this? A coordinated, simultaneous release has a better chance of being noticed by more people and thus a greater chance of effecting some meaningful change. We can disagree on tactics. Assuming you believe their goals are reasonable, what else could they do? I'm not suggesting there are not other options, but I rarely read any suggestions of a better way.
- notatoad 15y agoi'm not sure you can say that wikileak's goal is to effect change. their goal is to take information that was private, and make it visible to as many people as is possible. controlling the release furthers that goal. they don't seem to care what happens with the information once it is released, just that the release gathers notice. i don't think their goals have changed over time, they've just become more aware of the fact that releasing information is no good if there's no audience for the release.
- mr_eel 15y agoWell, effecting change is their stated goal. Assange has spoken at length about the idea of exposing information in order to break down conspiracies which an informed public may consider corrupt. I think that Wikileaks is a long way from being able to do that yet — undermine the corruption/lawlessness in a govt to an extent where it's weakened — but I'm hopeful. Their focus is not simply exposing private information. Again, Assange has repeatedly said that Wikileaks has no interest in violating personal privacy and has in fact explicitly said that an individual has a right to privacy. Exposing all private information is a radical position, one for which they couldn't expect to gain popular support. In other words, that is not their goal at all. It's reductive to simply say that they want to destroy privacy.
- 15y ago
- cenuij 15y agoManning perhaps had the guts to remind you all of your constitution. If you are prepared to ignore your constitution then I will ignore all the things that make U.S.A. great.
- SkyMarshal 15y agoAn interesting article popped up on G+ the other day, outlining the effects the Cablegate release has had: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-2 https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-2 TLDR: US Government got mud on its face, but dictators around the world faired much worse, and the fallout for them is ongoing.
- redthrowaway 15y agoWhich really makes you question just why the US is persecuting Wikileaks as vigorously as it is... until you notice that most of the dictators who have fallen and countries where rebellions occurred were US allies, or at least had close ties to the US. Even Gaddafi was cozying up to the west until things got hairy. The truly sad thing is, we knew all this. We've known that supporting friendly but brutal and murderous dictators has been the modus operandi for the US for years. Despite the leaks and the Arab Spring, this will continue to be the case so long as it's easier to keep a friendly dictator in power than try and work with a democratically elected government of a country where the vast majority of people don't like you.
- fijal 15y agoDon't you think it also works the other way around? The majority of people don't like you because you support a violent dictator that's clearly bad for them.
- AkThhhpppt 15y agoIt's a ratchet effect. Population are not particularly interested either way; government tells US government they're not going to put US interests ahead of their own people's, gets overthrown and replaced with a brutal dictatorship, population gets distinctly unfriendly, democratic government replaces dictator after revolution, opposes US interests as it plays well with population. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Pahlavi_dynasty_.281925.E2.80.931979.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Pahlavi_dynasty_.281925.E2...
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
- SkyMarshal 15y agoAn interesting article popped up on G+ the other day, outlining the effects the Cablegate release has had: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-2 https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-2 TLDR: US Government got mud on its face, but dictators around the world faired much worse, and the fallout for them is ongoing.
- Vivtek 15y agoUnfortunately, I don't see any timetable for release of the entire corpus; if they're going to release 167 emails per day, that's going to take 82 years.
- cenuij 15y agoSo which one is it? * Fuck yeah, america!!!! killing our own troups just because * Fuck yeah, amerida!!?! killing everyone just because.
- cenuij 15y agoAre you wankers still intent on the prossecustion[spelling] of Manning?
- cenuij 15y agostill now?
- steve8918 15y agoLike other HN members, I'm also a Strafor subscriber and my details and credit card information were leaked, so I have a vested interest in this issue. At first I was pretty supportive of Stratfor, and thought that Anonymous attacking Stratfor was completely stupid. However, a couple of things from the news release caught my eye. I guess I was naive, but I believed that Strafor was more like a news agency, and they would do their best work to uncover information, analyze breaking situations, and supply information to its members. However, from reading the news release from Wikileaks, I get the vague sense that maybe Stratfor was gathering a lot more information than I thought, using it to their advantage, and then throwing a bone to its subscribers every now and then, just enough to keep them subscribing and generating income. It certainly seems like there's a lot more going under the covers than I anticipated. The comment about "Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase." makes it seem like Friedman is more than willing to make anyone their pawns, including subscribers. Also, the idea of their StratCap Fund really kind of makes me question exactly what they are. I thought their motivations were really about analysis and information, but I kind of don't believe that now. At first, I didn't think the emails themselves were important, but now I'm definitely going to be keeping a close eye on whatever gets turned up from this point on.
- JumpCrisscross 15y agoI used to be a corporate subscriber (tens of thousands a month) and personal subscriber (a hundred or so a year). Some of the intel I commissioned at corporate worked its way into retail analysis; this was their policy. STRATFOR is getting heat since they're well known in the public because of their philosophy that everyone should have access to top-grade intelligence. I don't understand how attacking the guys who find secret information, analyse it, and sell it to businesses, governments, and the public promotes an open society. Now we have shifted our business to Kroll and Dilligence and similar firms. They are stoutly anti-public. Not coincidentally their IT security is also top-notch. What was once public will now be very, very secret (Kroll has a 30-day email full deletion policy). I worked for an investment bank. Found their idea of a STRATFOR hedge fund funny, but not evil. Another way to woo colleagues over from the public side while giving themselves a marketing tool against finance firms by being able to point to a performance trail. Mis-guided, perhaps, but given that Google basically runs a prop desk off its cash pile and has no problem with it (many corporate treasuries operate for profit)suggests it may not be an end-of-the-world conflict of interest. Note: I hold no bad blood for Wikileaks; they're informatior brokers. But I do judge the guys who hacked them. Though I judge STRATFOR as well for being so cavalier with their security.
- some1else 15y agoTook a peek at a few emails. It looks like some of their 'analysts' are what people call 'social media experts'. I was beginning to wonder what kind of job that skill set can land you.
- senthilnayagam 15y agoThe one issue concerning London Olympics is Dow Chemicals sponsoring it, but there has been opposition in India and NGO for their role in Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984. If stratfor was gathering intelligence and buying silence for Dow, then it would be indictment and self implication
- eta_carinae 15y ago> The material contains privileged information about the US government's attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor's own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. I'm getting tired of Wikileak's bullshit. Either you have proof about this and you should just publish it in a pastebin, or you shut up. You don't publish 5 million emails and hint that there is material in there that could take down governments.
- peteretep 15y ago> You don't publish 5 million emails and hint that there is material in there that could take down governments. Unless you want to crowd-source analysis of them. Then you do, it seems.
- MrGrey 15y agoThe Stratfor CEO is YAJ (Yet Another Jew) and behaves like one. What did you expect? Our methods of reasoning about human behavior keep proving reliable, but you reject and even revile us because of your conditioning. The victors write the history (and did after WW2) yet you can't accept that THE BAD GUYS WON!