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Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
- yuvadam 14y agoAny other mirrors online?
- zekenie 14y agoanyone found anything interesting in the emails? it just says they're evil, and the download's slow.
- bmaeser 14y agothat is a lot of data. i think journalists will sum it up for you, if there is something interesting.
- dfc 14y agoThat is a strange philosophy/view-point for HN...
- javajosh 14y agoAu contraire. Journalists are highly motivated to plough through the data for the scoop. ("Data scoop" is certainly an interesting development in our 21st century, btw!) I'm happy to let a highly motivated person do the ploughing, and give me the highlights, especially about a subject as marginally interesting as Scientology.
- dfc 14y agoAu contraire? Respectfully, in my opinion sitting back and hoping someone else has the motivation to be inquisitive/curious is counter to the spirit of HN. Furthermore as others have pointed out (as well as myself in another thread) CoS has deep pockets and I imagine that serves as a decent motivation for big media to not publish the incident.
- mikescar 14y agoNothing complex about this--it's a time-saving measure. Obviously there will be plenty of people sifting through this data, and we are free to rely on them to do so. You don't have to do everything yourself and find every data problem interesting to keep within the 'spirit of HN'.
- dfc 14y agoIt has nothing to do with finding everything interesting. I was speaking about the "if there is ever something interesting, the journalists will investigate/sum it up for me" line of reasoning. And whats with the "we are free" language, its not a cable news show. When did I ever say that anyone lacked the liberty to do something?
- javajosh 14y agoTell you what, you sift through the data and let me know what you find via email!
- mikescar 14y agoYou're reading entirely too much into minor points.
- anthonyb 14y agoWell, technically you are free to ignore the Scientologists... up until they overthrow the government and appoint L. Ron's disembodied head as ruler for life.
- javajosh 14y agoI think the underlying message here is that Scientology is a lot more interesting to you than it is to me! Honestly, I care about global warming a lot more and yet I didn't take much time to sift through the "Climategate" emails in detail[1]. I also care about Linux security, and yet I've not done an audit of the kernel I'm currently running. I also care about the federal tax code, and have certainly not taken the time to analyze it for inconsistencies and unfairness. Would you say that these decisions are "counter to the spirit of HN"? Of course, Paul Graham started HN mainly to have intelligent, on topic discussions about technology and startup issues. And in that sense, apart from my aside about "data scoops", I am probably posting contrary to the spirit of HN, since the bulk of this message and the one before it are just simple opinion expression, rather than anything more susbtantive. Heck, now that I think about it I'm tempted to delete them both! [1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_... And for the record, those emails are pretty disgusting and I'm surprised and disappointed at the reaction.
- deno 14y agoNot to mention there’s the language barrier…
- ctchocula 14y agoMaybe someone will parse the emails and have a detector that will find the ones written in English.
- dfc 14y agoThat's the spirit;) Most of the marketing material that I have seen is in English. But that is just based off skimming the attachments Extracting the MIME attachments is pretty straight forward: ls *.txt |xargs -n1 munpack
- anthonyb 14y agoUnfortunately journalists are also highly motivated not to get sued.
- DanBC 14y agoGood journalists should be able to plough through the data and put the information into context; referencing previous news stories or other organisations. Unfortunately, as can be seen by the bloody awful mess they make of almost any scientific or medical or technical press release, it's unwise to rely on a journalist to provide sensible analysis. Maybe there's some great crowd-sourcing website that could do this? (A bit like the "Human Flesh Search Engine" in China, but different.) Or perhaps as a MVP someone could just write a script that turns many words into links to a wikipedia entry?
- 46Bit 14y agoTo risk being viewed as that crazy paranoid commentator: Scientology is no stranger to lawsuits. They may well discourage publishing such at risk of expensive, drawn-out legal action.
- zekenie 14y agoi mean, has anyone even gotten a chance to look at what's in the folder?
- dfc 14y agoIts unfortunate that they were not distributed via bittorrent and/or a tor hidden service. The files are large enough that downloading them with the "free download" option is a terribly long wait. I do not understand how this has so many upvotes after being up for such a short time. Have that many people actually downloaded the files already? Does anyone have any guesses about the string at the end of the announcement? Is that something Anonymous normally does? 6693b5c82009cdf9a2abf2fc80d0aeab25aa8a3a5d5d33ec24dd1c5a3038fee0b10a8460d4b3cf922ce77e2abda13ca6d3fd0c18081be3c7626587c767fb7d7b
- deno 14y agoIt’s not straightforward to distribute via Bittorrent anonymously.
- dfc 14y agoWhat hurdles/risks are present in bittorrent that are not incurred when uploading to a free file hosting service? I do not think bittorrent and/or free file services provide any serious level of anonymity against a group with pockets as deep as the CoS. Let's not forget these are the people that brought down anon.penet.fi... N.B.: I also updated my post to include using a tor hidden service. I thought I had included it originally. From the responses I have read it seems that I should have been more clear that I was also taking censorship resistance into consideration.
- deno 14y agoJust use Tor bundle and that’s it. The only way you can shoot yourself in foot is if you use flash uploader and that bypasses Tor (fortunately plugins are disabled in Tor bundle AFAIK). Seeding via Tor? You need to configure Torrent client to use Tor, make sure it doesn’t leak anything (DNS lookups, publishing to DHT or tracker, some stuff on the protocol level was a problem as well). There’s nothing that comes working out of the box. Of course it’s not rocket science, it’s just a bit more work. Hosting just via hidden service is actually worse than uploading to random locations on clearnet: 1) Still no way to do load balancing with hidden services 2) It’s usually slower anyway 3) If your server gets compromised you’re toasted, unless you use hacked servers, or buy your servers with Bitcoins or stolen CCs. The best network for publishing that kind of leaks would be Freenet or I2P + Tahoe. But those are not nearly as popular (and secure) as Tor.
- raphman 14y agoSome of the emails can apparently be read at [1], [2] - via [3] [1] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/ http://pic.pwny.biz/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/ [2] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/ http://pic.pwny.biz/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/ [3] http://blog.esowatch.com/?p=8247 http://blog.esowatch.com/?p=8247 (in German, of course)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dfc 14y agoUsing CoralCDN may be a lot better for everyone. http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/ http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.a... http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/ http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/
- fjh 14y ago> (in German, of course) That's what I would have assumed, but many of them are actually written in (mostly hilariously bad) English for some reason. They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon, which seems to consist entirely of English words or phrases.
- dfc 14y ago> They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon First time reading CoS material? Anything in particular? LRH was an american so it is not surprising that the domain specific jargon is english...
- nnnnni 14y ago"domain specific jargon" ಠ_ಠ
- deno 14y agoLoaded language is a very powerful cult tactic. E.g. Jehovah’s witnesses call their religion “the Truth” in their everyday conversations. Any kind of critical thought is equivalent then to “rejecting the Truth,” which automatically substitutes critical thinking with an emotional response. http://www.garloff.de/kurt/sekten/mind1.html http://www.garloff.de/kurt/sekten/mind1.html
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- MultiRRomero 14y agoAm I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough, without having to resort to intrusive attacks. We have the warrant system in the states for a reason, and if this were to happen in court the evidence would just get tossed right out. Idk, am I alone here? Am I wrong? I'm open to contrary opinions.
- evertonfuller 14y agoRight with you. This is illegal, plain and simple. Acts like this should not be celebrated. No matter if it's against the 'bad' guys.
- icebraining 14y agoThis is illegal, plain and simple. Who cares? The question is whether it's wrong.
- far-I 14y agoor "Does it serve a greater goal"? Does it enlighten the masses or does it just bring more useless information like a lot of leaks.
- rondon1 14y agoGay Marriage is also illegal in many places, but that doesn't make it wrong.
- tptacek 14y agoOh. I see. We have unjust laws, therefore, everyone should be entitled to use coercion to enforce their personal morals and ethics. Good plan. What could possibly go wrong with it? After all, everyone capable of coercing us of anything must share our morals and ethics.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- munchor 14y agohttp://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/00273.txt http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.a... This is one strange email...
- Eduard 14y agobuchladen = bookstore
- mhd 14y agoStrange? Someone's got a couple hundred of Euros in credit at the CoS bookstore, but should already own his full set of encyclopedias, considering that he's a Level 60 Warlock. So they're asking if he can donate that for some "charity" event about their popular "psychiatry is eeeevil" line of thought.
- quadrant6 14y agoThis should be brought to public attention but the public don't want to have to download 2.8 gb of data and filter through it. Someone has to do that first and make it easily digestible, highlighting the worst or most 'dangerous' emails.
- rplnt 14y agoJournalists should do that. But I have the feeling they are happy with youtube videos nowadays.
- pud 14y agoIt troubles me a tiny bit to see comments on HN like (paraphrased) "Members of [group that has different religious beliefs than me] are evil." I am not defending religion or Scientology.
- NathanKP 14y agoI would day almost every religion has dirty secrets, because with power over people comes evil actions. Scientology in particular has a bad reputation of engaging in particularly dubious activity though, as even a cursory inspection of their history will reveal.
- tptacek 14y agoOh, well then, to hell with the rule of law.
- fleitz 14y agoRule of law? That's a quaint pre-2001 POV.
- jlgreco 14y agoWhat is legal and what is ethical do not have as much overlap as you appear to think.
- masterzora 14y agoThe ethical approach is subversion of the law less often than the internet appears to think.
- jlgreco 14y agoI am merely to sum of all the politics of those on the internet far less often than you appear to think.
- tptacek 14y ago
- grandalf 14y agoIf you think Scientology is "weirder" than mainstream religions, it's b/c you are buying into the propaganda sponsored by its competitors.
- lobster_johnson 14y agoThe issue people have with Scientology is not that it's "weird". It's that they are an organization created expressly as a kind of pyramid scheme designed to funnel money from its clueless members to its corrupt leaders, and that they will go great (and highly immoral) lengths to safeguard the structure of the organization. All the weirdness -- the bogus science, the alien mythology, the extreme secrecy and protectiveness, the level hierarchy, etc. -- is merely a side effect of that goal. The mythology, for example, is the carrot, and the secrecy is the stick; they need the mythology because they need to feed some new knowledge (even if bogus) at each level, and they need the secrecy to make that knowledge desirable in the first place, both to members and to non-members. Sure, all religions are "weird". But most religious organizations -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart. Scientology has no such concerns.
- uptown 14y ago"But most religiour organization -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart." I think that's highly dependent on whether you believe what's being preached. There's countless examples of mainstream religions exploiting their power for financial and organizational gain at the expense of individual followers. From a financial standpoint, just take a look at the Vatican City as an example of how much money has been funneled from their followers.
- lobster_johnson 14y agoApparently you missed my point. Most religious organizations have elements of corruption, sure, but Scientology as an organization is built to exploit its members by design.
- sakopov 14y agoIt's illegal to distribute confidential information of another group. This isn't about democrats or republicans. We're not talking about a group of people here. We're talking about a religion. If a religion has "secrets" which cannot be shared among believers and non-believers than it's not a religion - it's a sect.
- Falling3 14y agoI think you mean cult.
- mutant 14y agoRidiculous distrobution method. Piratebay upload could have gotten this out in a few hours.
- aj700 14y agoCan someone alert the relevant authorities of Germany. Yes, they may have already noticed this. But: Kann ein deutscher Sprecher mitteilen, Bundesnachrichtendienst und BfV. http://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/__Home/Startseite/startseite__node.html?__nnn=true http://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/__Home/Startseite/startseite__node... http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/index_en.html http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/index_en.html A least one country takes the threat seriously.
- pgeorgi 14y agoWhy should German authorities be bothered with an Austrian leak?
- shellox 14y agoI still don't understand why they use this one click hoster, which have a waiting time and limited download rate instead of bittorrent. The files are large enough and I think enough people would seed it. Decentralization is an important point for such data leaks as well.
- fromhet 14y agoWell, anonymity over bittorrent is hard(er, at least), and that is probably the reason why the hackers didnt distribute the data in that way. But for us who didnt do the hack, distributing the files is not as bad to be caught doing. So while the hackers release the data in an anonymus manner, we can easily create a torrent. I would be surprised if one didnt already exist, actually.
- shellox 14y agoThis mail from an Austrian police man is weird. http://pastebin.com/PN2GFaaA http://pastebin.com/PN2GFaaA (German)
- esbwhat 14y agoWhat's so weird about it? He said he's been sick over the holidays and doesn't want to continue some sort of course he apparently enrolled to
- Kliment 14y agoHe is also hitting on the course organizer.
- shellox 14y agoHe writes also that he has a positive opinion on Scientology. The guy is a cop, so he should know that Scientology is a criminal "organization" and shouldn't support them with money. The whole system Scientology is a huge fraud. He also write her with his work mail account, which should be another reason to fire him.
- vertis 14y agoThe original download links are slow. For a torrent of the files see http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/2949566 http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/2949566
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- token78 14y agoThe various tacts and arguments taken by Scientology apologists in this discussion makes for interesting reading. But I suspect that Hacker News has more than it's fair share of Devil's Advocates and contrarians - and I'm sure Scientology's official social media 'shepherds' are focussing their attentions on much bigger news and social media sites than this. I used to find it quite interesting to map the rigour, rhetoric and "set plays" demonstrated by a number of pro-china/anti-Dalai Lama redditors who I'm sure were tasked by the People's Liberation Army to do that for a living... Now THAT would make for an engaging AMA! They were actually quite effective at gently nudging the hive mind sometimes - I found the only way to cancel out their influence was via what amounted to incessant trolling and arguing semantics. This usually meant they were too caught up in my tomfoolery to properly engage in the more substantial conversation; it was an interesting experiment, but I don't really have the time or energy for all that these days.
- jheriko 14y agoI find it beautifully ironic - the statement "2.They are evil. They are dangerous. Everyone must know." from people who invaded privacy under the misguided belief they are fighting the good fight... Two wrongs don't make a right. Grow the f*ck up - stand up instead of skulking in the shadows.