information imbalance - The Rise of Plitical Doxing [ bonus points for contrast with AP! :]

[oshwm]

On 01/11/15 18:17, intelemetry wrote:
> Where is the OPM link in .7z format?
> 

Didn't Barrett Brown end up in Solitary Confinement for giving out links
to data?

As for the real question, my ethical argument still stands:-

Those people in the OPM leak who were using personal resources to
conduct government business got what they deserved (leaked).

Those who were being honest and kept business dealing to the appropriate
and democratically accountable systems did not deserve their details to
be leaked.

Then there is another group who work to deceive the public and preserve
the state at any cost, those also deserve to be leaked (NSA, CIA, FBI
etc etc).

The hack on OPM also proves another thing that Governments (or indeed
anyone) should not create large databases of personal information
because they become huge and irresistable targets for crackers.


> - intelemetry
> 
> oshwm:
> 
> 
>> On 01/11/15 03:53, coderman wrote:
>>> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-rise-of-political-doxing
>>>
>>> Last week, CIA director John O. Brennan became the latest victim
>>> of what's become a popular way to embarrass and harass people on
>>> the internet. A hacker allegedly broke into his AOL account and
>>> published emails and documents found inside, many of them
>>> personal and sensitive.
>>>
>>> It's called doxing—sometimes doxxing—from the word "documents."
>>> It emerged in the 1990s as a hacker revenge tactic, and has since
>>> been as a tool to harass and intimidate people on the internet.
>>> Someone would threaten a woman with physical harm, or try to
>>> incite others to harm her, and publish her personal information
>>> as a way of saying "I know a lot about you—like where you live
>>> and work." Victims of doxing talk about the fear that this tactic
>>> instills. It's very effective, by which I mean that it's
>>> horrible.
>>>
>>> Brennan's doxing was slightly different. Here, the attacker had a
>>> more political motive. He wasn't out to intimidate Brennan; he
>>> simply wanted to embarrass him. His personal papers were dumped 
>>> indiscriminately, fodder for an eager press. This doxing was a 
>>> political act, and we're seeing this kind of thing more and
>>> more.
>>>
>>> Lots of people will have to face the publication of personal 
>>> correspondence, documents, and information they would rather be 
>>> private
>>>
>>> Last year, the government of North Korea allegedly did this to
>>> Sony. Hackers the FBI believes were working for North Korea broke
>>> into the company's networks, stole a huge amount of corporate
>>> data, and published it. This included unreleased movies,
>>> financial information, company plans, and personal emails. The
>>> reputational damage to the company was enormous; the company
>>> estimated the cost at $41 million.
>>>
>>> In July, hackers stole and published sensitive documents from
>>> the cyberweapons arms manufacturer Hacking Team. That same
>>> month, different hackers did the same thing to the infidelity
>>> website Ashley Madison. In 2014, hackers broke into the iCloud
>>> accounts of over 100 celebrities and published personal
>>> photographs, most containing some nudity. In 2013, Edward Snowden
>>> doxed the NSA.
>>>
>>> These aren't the first instances of politically motivated doxing,
>>> but there's a clear trend. As people realize what an effective
>>> attack this can be, and how an individual can use the tactic to
>>> do considerable damage to powerful people and institutions, we're
>>> going to see a lot more of it.
>>>
>>> On the internet, attack is easier than defense. We're living in
>>> a world where a sufficiently skilled and motivated attacker will 
>>> circumvent network security. Even worse, most internet security 
>>> assumes it needs to defend against an opportunistic attacker who
>>> will attack the weakest network in order to get—for example—a
>>> pile of credit card numbers. The notion of a targeted attacker,
>>> who wants Sony or Ashley Madison or John Brennan because of what
>>> they stand for, is still new. And it's even harder to defend
>>> against.
>>>
>>> What this means is that we're going to see more political doxing
>>> in the future, against both people and institutions. It's going
>>> to be a factor in elections. It's going to be a factor in
>>> anti-corporate activism. More people will find their personal
>>> information exposed to the world: politicians, corporate
>>> executives, celebrities, divisive and outspoken individuals.
>>>
>>> Of course they won't all be doxed, but some of them will. Some of
>>> them will be doxed directly, like Brennan. Some of them will be
>>> inadvertent victims of a doxing attack aimed at a company where
>>> their information is stored, like those celebrities with iPhone
>>> accounts and every customer of Ashley Madison. Regardless of the
>>> method, lots of people will have to face the publication of
>>> personal correspondence, documents, and information they would
>>> rather be private.
>>>
>>> In the end, doxing is a tactic that the powerless can effectively
>>> use against the powerful. It can be used for whistleblowing. It
>>> can be used as a vehicle for social change. And it can be used to
>>> embarrass, harass, and intimidate. Its popularity will rise and
>>> fall on this effectiveness, especially in a world where
>>> prosecuting the doxers is so difficult.
>>>
>>> There's no good solution for this right now. We all have the
>>> right to privacy, and we should be free from doxing. But we're
>>> not, and those of us who are in the public eye have no choice but
>>> to rethink our online data shadows.
>>>
> 
>> Political figures in most countries have been using their personal
>> email accounts to conduct business 'under the radar' in order to
>> avoid information being subject to oversight, most probably because
>> its illegal, unconstitutional or at the very least not good for the
>> image of governments.
> 
>> When they started to do this, they threw the book on ethics in the
>> bin and opened themselves up to any abuse of their personal life
>> that may happen.
> 
>> If people in power act properly in their professional dealings
>> then their is an argument against d0xing their personal information
>> but once they start to try to hide information then it's open
>> season on every aspect of their life.
> 
> 
> 

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