WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Quote:

Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography - review
(David Leigh, The Guardian, 26 September 2011)

grant him a share of the credibility slowly built up over 190 years of reputable reporting.

It took more than being arrested at his home in the Netherlands by a swarm of police officers to shake 19-year-old Martijn Gonlag’s faith in Anonymous, an amorphous cyber-collective that has terrorised law enforcement and leading companies on five continents.

Gonlag, who lives in Hoogezand-Sappemeer, 100 miles north-east of Amsterdam, was interrogated for two days last year before being released pending a trial that could send him to jail for six years. But the college student stood by his decision to download attack software and participate in 2010’s electronic assaults on the websites of Visa, MasterCard and others that had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks as it published secret diplomatic cables. “WikiLeaks hasn’t been charged, but they were being worked against by governments and companies. That wasn’t right,” Gonlag told the Financial Times.

The state of technology security overall is so weak that intelligence officials see hacking as one of the largest threats to western powers. While their top concern is nation-backed attacks, the lines between protesters, criminals and spies can be hard to discern. Gonlag is one of thousands who have joined an unprecedented wave of what has been dubbed “hacktivism”, referring to the combination of computer hacking with political activism. The largest and best known of these groups is Anonymous, a virtual mob that makes it easy for people with little technological aptitude to participate in protests, many of them illegal.

The increasingly likely threat of apprehension isn’t enough to dissuade many Anonymous supporters from what they compare with “sit-ins” – conscious acts of trespassing that inconvenience their targets while bringing the underlying issues to wider attention. Yet though such dedication persists even after dozens of recent arrests in the UK, US, Italy and elsewhere, there are signs that Anonymous is being torn apart from the inside. Internal feuds thus might finish the job that law enforcement – infuriated by attacks on the CIA, FBI and US defence contractors – has barely begun.

The most important split is between the leadership and the rank and file. Gonlag underwent his own change of heart when he watched an administrator in an Anonymous chat channel encourage a minor to download the same software that had led to his weekend behind bars. The old hand told the teenager that he wasn’t in danger because the attack tool would mask his internet address.

“LOL,” Gonlag typed in the chat channel, for “laughing out loud”. He meant it as a warning born of hard-won experience. But the administrator immediately shot him a private message: “Shut the f*** up.” “That showed to me they are trying to use kids to do their dirty work,” Gonlag recalled. “That’s when the tide turned and I left Anonymous.”

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In January 2008, 4chan visitors and others passed around a YouTube video of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. Ignoring the maxim that, on the internet, squashing something makes it bigger, the church served YouTube with a copyright warning and got the video taken down. This offended 4chan regulars such as Gregg Housh, an anti-establishment website programmer.

A debate began over what to do. One suggestion was that since YouTube videos are often downloaded and reposted, the group should look out for a repost and grab a copy for distribution to other sites. It did just that, adding text naming another internet chat that viewers could join to plot next steps. More than 50 people signed in. Some suggested an answering video, with a digitised voice reading a press release where “Anonymous” declared “war” on Scientology. As Housh and his online peers put the finishing touches to the press release, someone suggested the ominous tagline: “Expect Us”. Housh loved it. “You win!” he shouted.

Housh, who is now 34, thought the video would last for a week or so before new people stopped watching. “This is the internet,” he shrugs. But the online tech tabloid The Register found the fresh imagery and tone irresistible, embedding the video on its front page. High-traffic gossip site Gawker followed and then came cable channel CNN.

The chat channel grew so crowded with new participants that communication was close to impossible – the messages scrolled too quickly up the screen. Housh dispersed the flock to new channels for every big city and set up a secret one for core organisers to thrash through plans to keep the movement going.

The group held real-world demonstrations in front of Scientology churches. In keeping with the nameless spirit of their movement and to guard against lawsuits, they picked a uniform disguise – Guy Fawkes masks like those used in the movie V for Vendetta. Thousands appeared at the appointed hour and Anonymous took on new life as an outward-facing social force. And the more its members intersected with other activists, the more they thought about where internet freedom was imperilled on the world stage.

Anonymous’s attention on Scientology flagged but participants put up a website, WhyWeProtest, to explain their reasoning on net censorship and related issues.

After the suspect Iranian elections in 2009, local activists appeared and asked how to organise online without being caught by the government’s surveillance techniques. Housh and his colleagues coached them with the best research they could find. At one point he was speaking to five activists inside Iran. Then came days of silence before one got back in touch using the code word. The other four were dead, he said, and he wouldn’t be in contact again.

Housh was shattered. So much for the fun and games. “I’m done,” he said.

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The next natural winner on the chat channels was WikiLeaks. Interest surged as it began to expose government secrets, and even more so when MasterCard, PayPal and other companies refused to process donations.

Anonymous could have taken any number of avenues to express itself, but the main one favoured by members was denial-of-service attacks that overwhelmed financial websites and temporarily knocked them offline.

With help from the press, Anonymous’s attacks on behalf of WikiLeaks brought it to its widest ever audience, attracting thousands of people like Martijn Gonlag: college students, slackers and office workers who were rooting for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, himself a hacker of some repute 15 years previously.

It was both easier and more effective than traditional forms of protest. Sign into a chat channel, download the software and afflict the comfortably off while spreading the word. “Going on the street with a flag is not going to get you any media attention. It won’t help any more in a digital world,” Gonlag reasoned. “We need to do other things.”

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Yet many of the Anonymous members who supported the denial of service attacks didn’t like the antisecurity operations that were generating so much new press. Others choked at the wanton dissemination of financial data and passwords of random citizens.

“Anonymous does have a leadership and they don’t give a **** about us,” one member known as SparkyBlaze wrote in a self-published list of parting complaints. “Does Anon have the right to remove the anonymity of innocent people? They are always talking about people’s right to remain anonymous, so why are they removing that right?”

Some followers came to believe that the leaders sought only personal aggrandisement or were effectively in cahoots with the organised criminals who may have raided Sony’s credit-card hoard after Anonymous knocked down the door. Even stalwarts such as Housh are unhappy that much of Anonymous’s infrastructure is now housed on computers used by Russian criminals. “It’s not like the Russians wanted us to get HBGary, but I want to know personally why they are doing this,” he says of the chat hosts. “Where is the money coming from?”

Gonlag began actively working against Anonymous after the HBGary hack, as did other ex-followers. Private security experts, including Aaron Barr, bent on professional redemption, joined PayPal and other victims in gathering documents pointing to real identities. Gonlag has passed on tips to the FBI. “I don’t like being a snitch, but what they are doing is wrong.”

In July, Scotland Yard’s e-Crime unit arrested young British men it accused of being Topiary and Tflow; Kayla’s arrest was claimed in early September. Once irrepressible on Twitter, Sabu, too, has gone quiet. Suspicions about who is ratting out whom abound, hindering collaboration on new projects.

The annual DefCon hacking convention in Las Vegas this August drew many current and former members and sympathisers of Anonymous. The latter included a surprising number whose day jobs involve warding off such threats but who welcome the increased scrutiny Anonymous has brought to cyber-defence.

Opinion was divided. At one panel, professional analysts suggested ways the mob might improve on itself, such as by setting criteria for responsible behaviour for security firms that wish to avoid being attacked. At another meeting, former Anonymous member Jennifer Emick railed against what the organisation had become and fended off hecklers, including one in a Guy Fawkes mask.

Speaking to me outside the convention, Barr agreed that Anonymous has brought internet activism to a level that will be maintained or exceeded regardless of whether the group itself survives.

Less clear is whether the anarchic hacking carried out against security companies like his own former employer will continue. Although he says it may depend on who is arrested and convicted, Barr guesses that it will go on regardless. “I think it’s reached a critical mass.”

Al-Jazeera changes raise questions:

A change at the top of the Arab television channel Al-Jazeera is raising questions about its editorial line.
Some critics say that the departure of the director general, Wadah Khanfar, is linked to documents published by WikiLeaks suggesting that American pressure succeeded in getting the broadcaster to remove some images from its coverage of Iraq during the war. Mr Khanfar gives his perspective.

Ambassador: WikiLeaks reports do not reflect US official position
(V.Zhavoronkova, Azerbaijan Trend, September 28, 2011)

The U.S. Government does not acknowledge the reports published by WikiLeaks, U.S. Ambassador Matthew Bryza said on Wednesday.

"We have never acknowledged anything reprinted by WikiLeaks reflecting an actual report written by the State Department or anyone else," Bryza told journalists.

In any case actual telegrams reflect private opinion, and don't reflect truth, he said.

"We, diplomats, just as private people should have the right to confer privately with our colleagues and superior," he said, adding that the U.S. Government finds WikiLeaks reports reprehensible.

Previously, WikiLeaks published materials, containing correspondences of former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Anne Derse.

"We, diplomats, just as private people should have the right to confer privately with our colleagues and superior," he said, adding that the U.S. Government finds WikiLeaks reports reprehensible.

The U.S. Government does not acknowledge the reports published by WikiLeaks, U.S. Ambassador Matthew Bryza said on Wednesday.

"We have never acknowledged anything reprinted by WikiLeaks reflecting an actual report written by the State Department or anyone else," Bryza told journalists.

In any case actual telegrams reflect private opinion, and don't reflect truth, he said.

"We, diplomats, just as private people should have the right to confer privately with our colleagues and superior," he said, adding that the U.S. Government finds WikiLeaks reports reprehensible.

Tsvangirai dismisses Wikileaks as ‘gossip’
(Zimbabwe Zimeye, September 29, 2011)

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister and leader of the main MDC faction has dismissed Wikileaks US embassy cables that quoted four of his most trusted senior cadres describing him as a weak political operator, as mere gossip.

This is the first time Tsvangirai has spoken in public this year following the August confidential cables’ release onto the public domain which quoted Tendai Biti, Nelson Chamisa, Obert Gutu and Roy Bennet allegedly criticising their leader for incompetence.

Tsvangirai said he does not consider Wikileaks cables to be reliable information and handles them with suspicion: “Our party regards WikiLeaks with suspicion. We can’t follow rumours and we cannot run a country on gossip. We can’t,” he said.

He also noted that his party would not do anything about the said ‘revelations’ which have been yet the subject of many news houses across the world in recent weeks: “We are not doing anything about that and that’s where it ends.”

He also claimed that he enjoys the support of 12 provinces: “I enjoy the support of 12 provinces. That was confirmed at our Bulawayo congress and that is the yardstick of my support. I don’t go about asking people if they support me or not. I don’t see WikiLeaks as a true reflection of the situation in the party. I have confidence in my lieutenants.”

In another twist in his speech Tsvangirai brought in the issue of Jonathan Moyo’s promotion to the powerful JOMIC(Join Operations Monitoring and Implementation Committee) board and admitted that Moyo’s promotion had the potential to hinder progress in the Zimbabwe’s transitional political renaissance.

“If Zanu PF wants to bring in Moyo, that’s their choice, but in doing so they should consider whether they are helping or hindering progress by bringing people who are controversial and anti-progress,” said Tsvangirai.

In the cables, Tsvangirai is allegedly described as a weak political operator who “does what the last person tells him to do,” and lacks strategic direction for MDC-T allegedly according to Treasurer-General Roy Bennett and secretary-general Tendai Biti. Nelson Chamisa and Obert Gutu are allegedly quoted as saying that Tsvangirai was weak and indecisive during conversations with a US ambassador.

Bennett was allegedly quoted stating that Tsvangirai remembers the advice of the last person he would have spoken to while Biti, who blasted his boss for ‘‘for lacking a strategic plan for the MDC in Government” in a cable dated June 30 2009 which attributed Mr Tsvangirai’s rare moments of lucidity to prior preparation by party officials, him included. The MDC-T leader is also given to taking advice from informal advisors, usually foreign, while ignoring the counsel of elected MDC-T officials, the party’s organising secretary Nelson Chamisa allegedly added.

Their ‘conversations’ became the talk of many Zanu PF sympathetic publications as they appeared to be exposing cracks in Tsvangirai’s party.

My guess would be that the majority of the diplomatic cables were more gossip than truth.

What would be the point of the U.S. government investing the amount of $$$ they have over the years in collecting gossip?

Really.

It's stupid if they think they were collecting gossip. It's stupid if they didn't know it was just gossip until wikileaks happened.

The front end of your post doesn't make sense once you get to the end of it.

Wikileaks is a leaking boat: Assange
(By Isabel Hayes, Australian Associated Press, September 30, 2011)

Wikileaks is a leaking boat, filled with torpedo holes, that is struggling to stay afloat, founder Julian Assange says.

But the organisation has only just begun its work, the under-siege Australian has promised.

Assange, 40, who is currently on bail in Britain facing extradition to Sweden, appeared via videolink at the Sydney Opera House's annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Friday night.

"At the moment, WikiLeaks is a rather big boat with a lot of torpedo holes in it that has taken water in and is drifting along and we're doing our best to keep it afloat," Mr Assange said.

But despite this, the organisation had not yet gone nearly far enough, he said.

"We have only just begun. We have put into that historic record less than one-thousandth of the series of information that is concealed that needs to be there," he said.

Assange reflected on how 310 days ago he was in Wandsworth Prison in London and the Australian government was doing "everything in their power to see me...shipped off to the United States".

"And that swift reaction from the Australian government was only stopped by the Australian population and our friends in Australia," he said.

"It was an expression of democratic discipline."

Assange is awaiting a decision by Britain's High Court of Appeal as to whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault and rape against two women.

Wikileaks came under criticism earlier this month after it posted its entire archive of US State Department cables on its website, making potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone.

Mr Assange has blamed the Guardian newspaper for the leak, saying the newspaper's negligence in publishing an encryption key to uncensored files forced his organisation's hand in publishing the secret US diplomatic memos.

"Who is the biggest critic of all of this, who has been creating three articles a day for the past four weeks on this? The Guardian, the very newspaper that disclosed the password, that is trying to save its arse from criticism," he said.

Assange's other former media partner, The New York Times, was also trying to distance itself from WikiLeaks to "save its own arses", he said.

The leak of 251,287 cables was "the greatest intellectual political treasury that has ever been put into the historic records of modern times", Assange said.

"It can't be called a dump -- dump is what you do to garbage," he said.

"This is a treasure."

Wikileaks is also under severe pressure from a credit card ban on donations to the site undertaken by Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, among others.

"That has wiped out 95 per cent of our revenue. Over $US20 million ($A20.53 million) has been destroyed as a result of that completely political blockade," Mr Assange said.

"In your wallet is an instrument of unstated US foreign policy and it's affecting your actions right now," he said.

Assange said he has accepted Wikileaks may not survive as an organisation.

"(But) even if WikiLeaks is destroyed, other people have been inspired by our work and they will continue to carry the flame."

undertaken by Visa, Mastercard and Paypal