On 11/24/18 2:06 PM, John Young wrote:
Matt Taibbi reports on Assange in Rolling Stone in a one of the more salient grasps of what journalism has missed about WikiLeaks feeding its maw.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/taibbi-julian-assange-ca...
Very impressive article - Matt Taibbi has clearly been paying professional attention to the leakage bizniz. I would guess he did some in depth research based on the question of how he should proceed if offered "red hot" classified docs. Or maybe, after being handed same - in which case he decided to steer clear. I only spotted one error: He attributed the disclosure of NSA tapping Merkel's phones to Snowden, but that was another actor - likely employed at NSA in Germany, and a damn sight better at hide and sneak than good ole Ed.
A noteworthy observation is how all the risk is taken by leakers not by publishers and journalists -- nor by WikiLeaks and Assange.
Nearly every major leak to WikiLeaks (and the media) has led to the leaker being hammered while the publishers are awarded prizes, as with WikiLeaks.
No duh, as they say. I'm about two nines confident that Greenwald's Intercept deliberately burned Reality Winner. Can incompetence alone account for Intercept employees contacting the affected organization to 'fact check' the article in advance of publication by giving away their source's location, then publishing both the serial number of the printer she used, and the date/time she printed the documents? (I pulled the watermarks off an image I downloaded from The Intercept shortly after the story broke, using a freeware image editing program.) Speaking of Greenwald, how about the hatchet job his partner in crime, Laura Poitras, did on both IO Error and Mendax in her Risk film? Random spiteful bitch, or faithful CIA asset? Either way, fat USIC paycheck and/or mega-cred in toxic pseudo-feminist circles accomplished. At least it's a classier way to attention-whore than punching an alt-Reich asshole. We can't leave out Ed Snowden, international man of mystery. How early was he spotted, and to what extent was he manipulated to assure that specific documents would be among those he handed off to a press contact? Hell, DID the published docs come from him? Given the number he claims to have handed off, Ed himself would not be likely to know for sure. How was Snowden's choice of Greenwald assured, and was his life in danger up to the moment he chose the right non-journalist to pass his docs off to? How long did it take him to realize he had been played - or has he even figured that out yet? To date his public presentation in exile remains consistent with making the best of that particular bad situation. A funny thing happened to the allegedly thousands of documents Ed handed to Glenn for publication: After promising Snowden he would release all the docs within ten days of breaking the first big story, Glenn sold them all to the highest bidder, Pierre Omidyar. If Greenwald's claims about how many docs there were are to be believed, over 99% were either destroyed, or locked up securely for blackmail use by his new employer. All I know for sure about the Snoweden Affair is that once the dust settled, the U.S. intelligence community got everything it wanted: Not just authorization to continue illegal domestic surveillance programs, but a clear precedent that U.S. intelligence officials are allowed to tell lies under oath in Congressional hearings, with no consequences other than high-fives back at the office later. "Almost as if" the USIC had lots of advance warning and got to pick the specific battles themselves, with specific purposes in mind. A suggested leaker's protocol: Pardon my language but "fuck journalists." They need have no role until /after/ all your red hot docs are in the public domain. 1) Use an extraordinary physical security protocol to upload an encrypted archive of your docs to the I2P torrent network. Clues: You need a "clean" laptop from a flea market, a home made high gain antenna, and a conveniently located open WiFi hot spot. Don't forget to scramble your MAC address before plugging in the antenna. Include one or more "medium value" docs in the clear, to assure interest in your uploaded archive. In your description of the torrent, promise the key will be published under the same user name within a given time frame. 2) A few days later, use the same security protocol, from a location at least hundreds of miles away from your first upload site, to post the key (a pass phrase, see diceware.com) on the same torrent tracker site in I2P space. 3) Destroy everything used in the above process, and resume your "normal" life. Mission accomplished, you got the docs into more than enough hands to assure public release at /minimal/ personal risk. Better alternatives to this protocol are solicited... And remember, on the day you brag about your success start a countdown timer to your arrest and conviction, if not death by natural causes. :o)