Wikileaks Releases A Massive "Insurance" File That No One Can Open 394
An anonymous reader writes "Anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks just released a treasure trove of files, that at least for now, you can't read. The group, which has been assisting ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden after he leaked top-secret documents to the media, posted links for about 400 gigabytes of files on their Facebook page Saturday, and asked their fans to download and mirror them elsewhere."
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea (I think) is that these files will be released in time, but releasing them all at once, but encrypted, is to discourage governments from arresting or killing the high-ups of WikiLeaks. The info will come out, just like it did last time (wasn't the last insurance file the bulk of cables that was eventually released?), but this is a mechanism for doing that while protecting themselves.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
If their "mission" is openness - and the info is that damning - shouldn't they be publishing it? I mean, isn't that sort of the point of Wikileaks? Or just attention whoring?
I suspect they will expend a lot of hours working with outside entities to redact the documents of information that would threaten their sources or private citizens or anyone's life before releasing them, and getting their fans to mirror encrypted files is an "Insurance policy" ---- where powerful forces working against Wikileaks may become aware of the leak; Wikileaks folks have probably designed some elaborate scheme, contingency plan, or something strange of that nature to get the keys released in case of emergency: corporate or government interference, coercion, arrest, or kidnapping of the Wikileaks folks working to release redacted documents.
Getting 400 gigabytes of data uploaded to the internet in a pinch is no easy task.
But posting a 100 KB key far and wide to unlock 400 gigabytes of pre-distributed data, is a trivial thing.
Re:NSA has cribs? (Score:4, Insightful)
I might have missed the point, but as I see it, the blackmail part of this is 'leaking to the world'. If the NSA verifies that the files they suspect stolen are in this, then sure they could try to go after wikileaks people - but with the archive widely disseminated, they'd have forfeited the game as the mirrors releases it in its entirety. The encryption just seems more to prevent premature release, as opposed to pretending the NSA has no idea what they have.
This just feels like it's moving into 'end game'.
This fundamentally a political act (Score:5, Insightful)
This is fundamentally a political act. The trouble is, there's no scaling back. Unless something happened behind the scenes that is not generally know, this'll be perceived as an escalation.
Gotta wonder why now, that idiot at Time Magazine aside.
The thing is, Western democracies have to get used to the Memory Hole, Cryptome, Wikileakeaks and the rest. You can play whack a mole with them or deal with the fact that people from now on will treat digital information in a way that nation states may not wish they would. This'll have positive and negative consequences but it needs to treated as fact.
Re:A field marshal’s baton? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm as real of an American as can be done. What I want is a more focused government. I do not want the militarization of local police. I do not want decisions that affect the lives of me and others made behind closed doors. If the NSA programs were more transparent and if they did no lie about what they are doing, it would not be as much of an issue. I do not want a government that itself finds too complex to manage and uses that as an excuse to not do anything. If they can not do the job, they should give the job to states or counties or towns.
As a real American, I want to be able to trust my government. Any faith in the government is only faith that it will not collapse in on itself. There is no faith in supporting those that pay into it, us tax payers. Those that do not pay tax are paid for the security of the tax payers, so they are also included.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't call it an accident, it was more incompetence and negligence on part of Guardian journalists.
Re:NSA has cribs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NSA has cribs? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the NSA suspects that certain of their internal documents occur in the insurance files, can't they use these as cribs to break the encryption?
These files were almost certainly from the NSA in the first place - they already have the unencrypted versions.
I imagine they also have a pretty good idea which specific files Snowden had access to.
Re:NSA has cribs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether NSA breaks it or not is actually irrelevant, wikileaks could even send the key to them without trouble.
The question is, do they (NSA) dare risk that the rest of us get access to it.
Re:NSA has cribs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Known-plaintext is helpful in cracking certain weak ciphers. One of the criteria for a cipher being strong, is that it *not* be vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack. As far as we know, aes-256 is strong.
Furthermore, cracking the files won't help the NSA. The info in them is likely already well-known to the NSA. It's however unknown to the public. Thus the NSA isn't as much concerned with cracking the encryption, as it is with -avoiding- that anyone else cracks it. (or learns of the key)
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:3, Insightful)
The best gauge would be unique to each country. Gauge by whichever group a country treats the worst. Human rights includes all humans.
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, because gays aren't humans.
Change the word gay for "Jewish", "minority" or any number of things and see how much of a pathetic little bigot you are.
The rights of any group are a litmus test of the rights of all. We're just as human as you, thanks.
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smaller chunks 400GB would transmit/store easie (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably need to divide that gargantuan thing, 400GB, down into smaller, more manageable, chunks before encrypting it. Then they might get more people cooperating with them. How many people can download and store 400GB in one chunk?
Also, the bigger the chunk, the more easily corrupted, and the corruption takes out the possibility of decrypting the whole thing?
If only there was some kind of error-correcting software that divided files into chunks for transfer; a way to download torrents of bits, if you will.
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck I'm glad there's always a partisan idiot like you around to frame every situation in terms of Republican or Democrat.
From the perspective of the rest of the civilised world, both are utterly fucking barking mad.
shooting the messenger (Score:5, Insightful)
Shortly after Snowden escaped the U.S., one of the NSA's agents specifically stated that he got out with detailed architectural designs of their entire operation. This might be the payload he was talking about. That agent stated that the U.S. should handle Snowden with kid gloves and offer to forgive and forget in exchange for destroying that data. However, congress did not listen and instead had a knee jerk reaction by going on a witch hunt for him instead.
Re:Assange is a loser. (Score:4, Insightful)
And Russia doesn't seem "so bad". Homosexuality is legal and has been for 20 years. The Russian people seem more hostile towards it, but the law makes it legal. Picking one "fringe" cause and using that as a litmus test misses the greater issue. The main problem with Russia at the moment is that nobody has free speech. A straight person supporting gay rights with speech only is breaking the law in some areas (depending on how they support it). That's not a gay rights issue, that's a human rights issue. Making it about gay rights misses the point. But, based on the rest of your post, you were deliberately missing the point.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
They have to balance their limited ability to vet people involved with the leaks against the public interest in knowing the contents of these documents.
They are doing the best they can in the circumstances, I'm not sure what more you could realistically ask for.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
If conference calls can cause America to close embassies, piss away money like there's no tomorrow and spy on its own citizens then I think we have to conclude that the terrorists are winning.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
If conference calls can cause America to close embassies, piss away money like there's no tomorrow and spy on its own citizens then I think we have to conclude that the terrorists are winning.
When you add up everything US citizens have lost, its clear the terrorists have already won big time.
But in all the years of chasing Bin Laden, and all the other terrorists that have been killed or captured when have you ever heard of a conference call? Secret messages, couriers, double blind message drops, and encrypted text messages. Not once conference call.
If it happened at all, I'm sure it was orchestrated to see what effect it would have and to determine if the NSA was listening.
But the timing suggests it was totally contrived by the NSA in some sort of childish attempt at self justification with the administration playing along. What is odd, is the press is buying the whole act, they've stopped talking about Snowden. 7th graders could concoct a more believable one act play on a saturday afternoon. The CIA will probably have to pay some useful idiots to toss grenades into the empty embassies when it becomes clear that nothing else was actually planned, and the egg starts running down their collective faces.
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hey look at us, we are still relevant! (Score:5, Insightful)
They rushed to close embassies on the slimmest of evidence and are hoping desperately that there will in fact be some actual attacks.
This. They thought they could draw media attention away from Snowden and turn public sentiment back to uninterestedly issuing blank checks for the executive when it comes to terrorism. Recall that just earlier that week (or perhaps it was earlier the same day), some poll results found that more Americans were concerned with the domestic surveillance program than with terrorism.
There's something to be said about the timing. But there's even more to be said about the reaction. That it was so over-the-top pretty much made it clear that the right people were getting worried.
I wouldn't be surprised if some 9/11 consipracy-style event was to occur real soon, that it's in the works even now. After all, the FBI could have a president assassinated, and then have congress cover it up afterwards. What's a few hundred or thousand civilians, killed by a religious radical whose source for the raw materials could never be found? And then there'd be no debate about domestic surveillance anymore.
Eisenhower warned us. We did not listen.
Re: Assange is a loser. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or we could just bloody stop discriminating people in our own countries before preaching to others to stop.
A societies worth is determined by how they treat it's least powerful members.