Ron Paul on Wikileaks

Linton

Degenerate wrote: »

Just because they can't do anything about the information that's already out there, doesn't mean they should let it go. They need to send a message to stop Assange and others from thinking they can do this sort of thing with impunity.

We have the difficulty of being a democracy with pesky human rights laws, so personally I'd have our intelligence services mount an operation where they plant a "dissident" to leak something juicy we got from spying on the Russians or Chinese. They'd take care of the problem soon enough. Would you like some Polonium with your tea Mr Assange?

And presumably the same thing applies to the Guardian, BBC, New York Times, Observer etc etc who must have publicised the contents of the leaked documents to far more people than have read wikileaks.

One could ask what is the point in having a democracy if you dont have "pesky human rights laws".

A._Badger

Linton wrote: »

And presumably the same thing applies to the Guardian, BBC, New York Times, Observer etc etc who must have publicised the contents of the leaked documents to far more people than have read wikileaks.

One could ask what is the point in having a democracy if you dont have "pesky human rights laws".

Slightly at a tangent, I confess, but this would be the same BBC, Guardian and NYT that tutted and hised like a matched set of maiden aunts over the 'stolen' Climategate e-mails, would it?

Hypocrites, the lot of 'em!

vivatifosi

Degenerate wrote: »

Just because they can't do anything about the information that's already out there, doesn't mean they should let it go. They need to send a message to stop Assange and others from thinking they can do this sort of thing with impunity.

This shouldn't be about Wikileaks, it should be about the security of the system in which the information was held and about the person who originally leaked it. If Wikileaks hadn't published, someone else would have, or worse still, the initial perpetrator could have passed sensitive information to terrorist organisations without releasing it to the press and the world would have been none the wiser. Putting all the blame on Wikileaks and Assange is giving the US too convenient a scapegoat.

tomterm8

Our computer security is no better than the Americans.

You might even go further, and say that our corporations and governments have pitiful control over data security.

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

Our computer security is no better than the Americans.

You might even go further, and say that our corporations and governments have pitiful control over data security.

Agreed. But I do find it quite surprising that the distributor of mundane day to day items that I work for sometimes has what appears to be a more sophisticated IT security policy than the US State Department.

tomterm8

Well, I don't know what precautions your company has, but it is possible to produce a very sophisticated looking IT policy that doesn't, in fact, offer any security whatsoever.

Actually, I am sure that someone who knows computers could break into your company, I used to work at a company that had a security division,(I didn't work in that division, I worked in another one) and they would run grey hat operations against companies to test their security. They never found a company they couldn't get into.

Recently NASA sold on computers that it had no use for. They didn't wipe them, and their was a scandle about it. You could buy classified information on how to build a space shuttle for a couple of hundred dollars. On the side of the computers, there were network ID's and other information that would get you 75% of the way into their secured network. Everyone made a fuss of that, saying they should have removed data and labels.

However, they are wrong. Such labels are a major security threat, because all you need to do is get a temporary cleaning job at NASA, and you can learn the basic network information within hours.

I am sure you could also put a key logger onto one of their computers, and then you are in.

Degenerate

Linton wrote: »

And presumably the same thing applies to the Guardian, BBC, New York Times, Observer etc etc who must have publicised the contents of the leaked documents to far more people than have read wikileaks.

The information was already in the public domain when they republished it. It was Assange who chose to take the leaked information and disseminate it widely to the public.

One could ask what is the point in having a democracy if you dont have "pesky human rights laws".

I came up with an inventive solution to avoid having to breach our principles by getting those with less scruples to do the dirty work for us. What's wrong with that? It would be poetic justice if he got offed by the Russians because of false information. It would demonstrate the fact that recklessly spreading sensitive information gets people killed.

vivatifosi wrote: »

This shouldn't be about Wikileaks, it should be about the security of the system in which the information was held and about the person who originally leaked it. If Wikileaks hadn't published, someone else would have, or worse still, the initial perpetrator could have passed sensitive information to terrorist organisations without releasing it to the press and the world would have been none the wiser. Putting all the blame on Wikileaks and Assange is giving the US too convenient a scapegoat.

I was responding to Gen's point about there being nothing to do about the Wikileaks situation. If they can be identified, the original leaker of the information is straighforward to deal with. They have commited a very serious crime and can be jailed for a long time under whatever equivalent the US has to our official secrets act.

tomterm8

The person they believe leaked the documents is being held in solitary confinement, waiting for a court martial.

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

Well, I don't know what precautions your company has, but it is possible to produce a very sophisticated looking IT policy that doesn't, in fact, offer any security whatsoever.

The thing that the company I sometimes work for has done is bought computers that have no ability to plug in storage devices. AIUI, the Wikileaks documents were downloaded to a memory stick. With a company producing basic goods, they only need to make it difficult to take information - screening emails and stopping downloads will do. No hacker is going to be interested in breaking in beyond this because what they do isn't interesting enough. In the case of the State Department, it looks as though they didn't even take these rudimentary precautions.

vivatifosi

Changing the subject a bit, I've been scanning the Wikileaks daily and I really like the slightly bonkers cables. Up until today, my favourite was the one about the Burmese junta which had invested in setting up a national football team, which the population has got behind, to make the country look slightly less objectionable to its countryfolk than it actually is.

However I now have a new favourite, courtesty of this weekend's batch. In this, it is suggested that more South Koreans may be able to meet their families in North Korea, something which is often hard to arrange due to N Korean intransigence. How to do this? Book a concert by Eric Clapton, thought to be the favourite musician of the leader's middle son.