Tag: wikileaks

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Editorial

Has WikiLeaks become a tabloid?

When Julian Assange revealed the collateral murder video in Washington DC, I was so incredibly glad that someone had finally brought light to the horrors of war. After learning the effect that such reporting could have from the Vietnam war, the US government has essentially taken complete control of war reporting. I was less impressed with Cablegate, which raised a lot of questions for me. Was the publishing of this information simply a manifestation of Assange’s anti-American bent? Was it possible to even view these cables in the proper context? At this point in time, I still sided with Assange and felt that Bradley Manning’s good intentions and idealistic desire for transparency would make for a better world.

WikiLeaks was marginalized and then demonized in a way that shocked me deeply. I was inspired by the response from Anonymous, and quickly shocked by the pure extremism which climaxed with the FBI’s AntiSec sting operation. Likewise, the publishing of Stratfor’s internal e-mails, which were stolen simply out of opportunism and malice, was absolutely horrifying.

WikiLeaks has become a tabloid, cheerleading for Anonymous and publishing snippets of e-mails from Stratfor which are taken wildly out of context. One infamous quotation of George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor, has been misrepresented in a deeply crass and disgusting way. As is the rule for tabloids, outrageous headlines obscure the true story.

Oh, that must mean Stratfor is not to be trusted!

The link, of course, leads a tiny minority of readers to a silly e-mail about lunches being stolen from the fridge at Stratfor headquarters. The vast majority of people read the quote and go on to the next tweet, automatically assuming that Stratfor is a bunch of conniving liars. The notion that Stratfor is a “Shadow-CIA” has also spread to all corners of the Internet, although it is a gross misrepresentation at best. Really, Stratfor isn’t nearly as sinister as it might sound.

Supporters of WikiLeaks repeatedly state that Stratfor is a legitimate target for this campaign of forced transparency simply because its business overlaps with the military industrial complex. While I fully agree with the sentiment that the military industrial complex is basically an overgrown monster, is it okay to attack Campbell’s soup for feeding the troops? This simple bad guy/good guy paradigm is obviously not realistic, and the situation is much more complicated. Stratfor provides their services to many corporations, individuals, and government entities both in and outside the United States. Many of these subscribers have been targeted by Anonymous and literally robbed, seemingly for no reason at all. The suggestion that there are important confidential e-mails dripping with scandal and crime has so far proven totally false.

What the Stratfor leaks have revealed, essentially, is that there are a bunch of analysts doing their best to figure out world events and speculating about practically every major happening. Some of these analysts don’t really like Julian Assange, and some of them even make racist statements in private e-mails. On the surface, the Global Intelligence Files appear to be an astounding list of revelations which will keep conspiracy theorists abuzz and WikiLeaks in the public spotlight. At their heart, it’s a sad failure for truth where context has been cut out to push an obvious anti-American agenda.

Right now, you might be thinking, “Hey, but all these tabloids are trying to take down WikiLeaks and smear Assange,” and you’d be totally right. But Assange has fired back, making equally outrageous claims about his detractors. The reductio ad absurdum of Assange’s stance is summarized in the following tweet:

Of course the e-mails from Stratfor are legitimate.

I have considered Assange a genuine agent for positive change and much needed transparency in the past, but this is the tweet that made me realize what WikiLeaks has become: A stupid tabloid with a penchant for the absurd. Look at the web site around you. This is absolutely the Internet’s fastest growing tabloid, featuring intelligent and biting satire. I know what a tabloid does. WikiLeaks has become a tabloid.

I challenge Assange to officially recognize the importance of context. Assange should pony up the $50,000 because I pointed out where he literally destroyed veracity by placing a quotation wildly out of context. And what is truth, if the framework of meaning behind it has been omitted?

A tabloid we may be, but at least we aren’t perniciously cramming a single-minded agenda down your throat by twisting the context of stolen material. Well, I guess we are, but at least our agenda is just all about the laughs. Kinda.

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Categories
News Technology

STRATFOR HACK A FALSE FLAG!

SABU was working with the FBI when Stratfor was hacked

Sabu, leader of both AntiSec and LulzSec, was actually working with the FBI during the Christmas hack of STRATFOR, and the entire meaning of this event has come into question. Is it possible that what has become the biggest story for WikiLeaks in several months was actually planned by the FBI from the outset? Analysts suggest that yes, this entire leak was designed from the ground up by the FBI to discredit the hacktivism movement. In fact, the bizarre and uncharacteristic move by Anonymous to work with WikiLeaks was the first sign something was not right.

Experts have all agreed that Stratfor is actually not a well-connected intelligence agency, but instead a bumbling assortment of analysts who are mostly amateurs. Many of the outlandish statements made by amateurs at Stratfor have been blown out of proportion and taken out of context. This is exactly what law enforcement wants, because it discredits Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and most importantly Julian Assange.

In related news, Barrett Brown’s apartment was raided, but he was not arrested. This can only mean that Barrett Brown is most likely working with the FBI as well.

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Categories
News

Julian Assange weighs in as Anonymous lashes out at leadership within U.S. Department of Justice

Anonymous has long been “infiltrated” by the Department of Homeland Security, whose job it is to instigate irrational, retaliatory actions within the Anonymous collective; however, the cyberwar took a giant leap forward Friday during #OPMegaUpload when Anonymous attacked the Department of Justice website, turning on what many believe to be its own leadership. Also amid the attacks are Universal Music, who once encouraged the very same file sharing tactics they now wish to charge people with using.

The root of Friday night’s story is the person(s) in control of the LOIC botnet effectively betrayed all politically active anons involved in deliberations and general IRC channels, handing their identities directly over to the federal government. In a long campaign against online anonymity, attacking the Department of Justice website “as a means of protest” is a strategic political move (on behalf of the United States Government) which appears on the surface to protest SOPA while in fact falling in line with larger plan to constrict freedom of the Internet on the whole.

When Rolling Stone magazine questioned Julian Assange about Anonymous, possibly his largest group of supporters, he said, “We were involved with Anonymous from 2008. They were providing us with material related to our investigations into abuses by the Church of Scientology. It was a young pranksterish Internet culture, not something at all to be taken seriously.”

How a conspiracy theory became reality

Among anons, the rationale is as follows: (1) a major part of the collective implicates you in a LOIC attack on the DoJ website using malicious software inadvertently downloaded by a relatively large group of anons who were, unfortunately, tricked into visiting an unsafe web address address, automatically linking them into the botnet. (2) The botnet strikes, leaving your IP address on the long list of attackers involved, which, (3) signals your involvement with anonymous collectives to the authorities who simply go down the list subpoenaing the corresponding ISPs for later prosecution “at-will.”

In almost all previous cases – the LOIC attacks on PayPal and Mastercard, for example – your identity was handed over for prosecution to authorities if you were in the top 1,000 participants of the DDoS attack on their website, since government resources are not unlimited. But in this case, the identities of anons were handed directly to the government, logged by government machines for safekeeping and a few thousand anons’ names just got added to an already long list of domestic surveillance subjects. Worse yet, these are innocent bystanders who did not volunteer to participate in a DDoS attack, but were implemented anyway.

You hear that? Shh. They’re listening in now. On you, this time.

Julian Assange is waiting for the freedom to operate which may never come back in his lifetime, because “In relation to the United States, we’ll have to wait for the revolution.” Inside Anonymous, an all-too familiar feeling is sinking in as hundreds, if not thousands, of people sit at home waiting to be arrested. DDoS attacks, while somewhat useful for sending a message, are becoming widely recognized as the blunted tool of their own eventual demise.

Advice from Assange

“I have a lot of sympathy for journalists who are trying to protect their sources. [ Remaining anonymous is ] very hard now. Unless you’re an electronic-surveillance expert or you have frequent contact with one, you must stay off the Net and mobile phones. You really have to just use the old techniques, paper and whispering in people’s ears. Leave your mobile phones behind. Don’t turn them off, but tell your source to leave electronic devices in their offices. We are now in a situation where countries are recording billions of hours of conversations, and proudly proclaiming that you don’t have to select which telephone call you’re intercepting, because you intercept every telephone call.”

Julian Assange