900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action.
To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.
I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.
You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense.
At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."
And this, for me, is one of them.
Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship.
If that's the case, if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?
This, I guess.
There are lot of communications in this bundle that are probably pretty mundane, sent and received by people who show up for jury duty and take traffic school when they run a red light. And it sucks that they've lost their privacy on this.
On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission, you can be almost certain that a handful of messages will reveal information where disclosing it is emphatically a public good. Will we find wrongdoing? Downright illegality? I'm not sure.
But I am pretty sure that actions like this are the last reasonably potent check on power we have left.
I have to back you on this. This doesn't sit in any moral grey area. This is nothing but corruption. If people genuinely have no problem with the outing of millions of private correspondences, then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection.
If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.
I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.
Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.
My email was obtained, and my credit card #. I used to subscribe to Stratfor to get another (more in-depth, geopolitical) perspective on the news.
Stratfor has sources whose anonymity (like with Wikileaks) is important.
If indeed the breach does reveal people who have helped Stratfor obtain information for its stories, it will be akin to if the group had hacked Wikileaks and outed Bradley Manning before he was caught by the government.
1) The Stratfor seems to have an impression of being a media organisation akin to Wikileaks. They talk to many contacts, don't form any policy except stories. They pass the stories onto governments/corporations.
2) An another Anonymous group says it's not them and they don't support it because Stratfor doesn't appear bad
3) That same other Anonymous group also warned that these are probably hacker [agent] provocateurs because it may just as well expose honest people who are exposing problems to Stratfor. The original aim was to expose the crimes of the government(s) and corporations by looking at the exchanges between contacts.
You mean “without any prior evidence”. The phrase “a priori” means “by reason or deduction alone, without empirical evidence”. The phrase “a priori evidence” is an oxymoron.
900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action.
That is a reflection of the community this was posted in (/r/WikiLeaks). If you look at the other Stratfor discussions on reddit they tend to be more balanced.
This is due to one of my least favorite traits about reddit: the hivemind criminalizes the rich and powerful by defining them as naturally evil. I don't know how this mindset got started on reddit; I would love to find out. It seems to be their way of justifying being middle/lower class by saying the reason the rich/powerful succeed is due the rich/powerful not having a heart and gaming people of their money.
There's a significant difference between business and personal emails.
If you write anything in a business email you should assume that it may become public at some point in the future. Both your employer and the recipients employer have the right to read it, as does any company that acquires either party.
The email may also be demanded by the government for a variety of reason or by a court in pursuit of a civil case.
Business emails have much weaker privacy protection than personal emails because it's assumed that from the very beginning that any privacy arises from the commercial implications of the contents rather than the inherent privacy that you have when two private individuals are discussing a personal matter.
It seems the same argument you're making about it being distasteful to release the emails without any a priori evidence of wrongdoing could have been applied to the HBGary Federal incident, although Anonymous was provoked in that case since Aaron Barr claimed to be able to expose the "leaders" of the movement.
Was it distasteful to leak the 44,000 emails acquired? If so, was the important information gleaned from the emails exposing all manner of shady dealings in the white hat industry[1] not enough to vindicate the attacks?
Powerful actors must be held accountable for the use of their action. To believe otherwise means that might makes right.
Private actors, whether they be firms or well-connected individuals are (and always have) attempted to influence those holding power. It is in the public interest to expose power and influence-mongering. Government, by virtue of its power over individual citizens needs to be held to a higher standard of openness. Private parties should be held to the same standard, when they choose to deal with the government in a manner that may influence its actions.
"Influencial individuals" can do harm to society at large (and have done it quite a lot in the past years). They are "public persons" and must undergo check and control by the society. That is absolutely not comparable with private individuals who's actions are very unlikely to have any damaging impact on the general society. That's the difference.
In my opinion, just like politicians are worthy of public scrutiny, the people in power should be too. If a person's actions and views affect population, they should be known to the people who it effects.
Having said that, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Stuff like this does have potential to create anarchy, which doesn't benefit anyone.
It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released.
It would be unethical if a company properly secured their servers.
It would be educational if ordinary citizens expected their communications to be completely private without taking reasonable measure to assure same.
This is a great lesson in security.
I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.
One of the ramifications of going to war, like it or not, is increased scrutiny. This is a weaker form of the "collateral damage" that our politicians and bureaucrats routinely write off.
I subscribed to Stratfor for a while and I thought I'd explain what the site is for anyone who's wondering. (And yes, my info was part of the leak, unfortunately)
It's basically a subscription news site ($100/year) that delivers focused international news. They usually stay away from trendy topics and party politics, which is pretty nice.
Despite their claims of having sources around the world, it's quite obvious that most of their information comes from other newspapers and just Googling around. It's infrequent that they would mention getting information from a source, and when they did, it was never anything more than an aside or a rumor. Certainly nothing of value.
That's why I seriously doubt that anything explosive will come from this email leak. People who have access to sensitive information leak it for two reasons: to spread their message to a wide audience (think Watergate and the Washington Post, or Bradley Manning and Wikileaks), or to swap it with other insider groups, in exchange for other information. Stratfor, with its small audience and utter lack of people on the ground, has neither.
Finally, I probably sound kind of negative about Stratfor, and while I no longer subscribe, they did have some really great, unique articles that you wouldn't find in any newspaper. Here's one example:
http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645
Well done, Anonymous. You've hacked into an independent online news service, destroyed their business, probably permanently shut them down, stole money from their readers and will now release all their correspondence with their sources. Fuck you. I was a subscriber - I suppose I should now go back to getting all my news from Murdoch.
This is a blow against the freedom of the press and a blow against a free and open society. There is a reason why we should as a society respect journalists and their sources. I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted and jailed.
Stratfor is not much more than a small news organization. Why would a news company have secret intelligence from the "world's most powerful men"?
They are in the business of publishing everything they know -- that's how they get paid! Their info is not secret. Anyone who emails them is trying to get info RELEASED, not hide it!
They certainly have secret informants, but why do you want to compromise informants who are willing to work with the press? What does that solve?
Dick Cheney does not send emails to Stratfor. He's not stupid!
This whole operation is just another demonstration that Anonymous only targets low hanging fruit. They tried hacking the NYT but their security was too good. They tried hacking the Pentagon but hopelessly failed. So they decided to hack a small (high-quality) news company with 70 employees, that reports exclusively on global affairs.
Now they are going to reveal Stratfor's sources and get people killed, just like they did in the Mexico affair.
This isn't an achievement, it's just showing off. I doubt they are going to find much and the victims of this release are not going to be anyone in powerful positions. Rather it will be informants like Gaddafi's Butler who will have their lives ruined.
For the record, I would support Anonymous if they actually bothered to hack the government and release those files. I would even support them if they hacked known bad guys like Halliburton or known propaganda networks like FOX.
But Anonymous is just picking low-hanging fruit and hyping it up to make themselves look good. The "top secret client list" is nothing more than a marketing strategy by Stratfor. Their client list is: people interested in global politics.
Specifically, of interest (at least to me), as the post claims that Stratfor themselves said this (I haven't actually checked/found external verification, please post URL if you do):
"In the past month Stratfor has drawn attention to a carefully assembled open-source report that asserted that last month's attack on Iraq wasn't intended just to punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed. Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong."
Is everyone here happy with the claim that Anonymous hacked in and copied emails; is it too hard to imagine that it's a false flag op? Neither side can prove themselves, that is true, but there should be more trepidation before making claims or assuming we are being handed the truth.
Also, take a look at http://anonanalytics.com/ if you haven't, the PDF they published recently is a pretty good read. That's a faction of Anon that I have high hopes for.
Why does the title say 3.3 million e-mails? The pastebin claims 2.7 million.
Why did they feel the need to announce this before the wiki had all the data? Barrett just had to get extra PR time?
Why do all these releases sound like they're written by kids in tree forts with bed sheet capes on? Then again all self-righteous announcements kind of read the same way to me.
I've been in the financial consulting business for a while and I'm still sometimes stunned by the kinds of things clients will send me as unencrypted email.
What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?
My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever?
Then, say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.
EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.
> After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[6] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[6] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.
Haha if stratfor bothered to encrypt anything, I trust that they would keep the encryption keys in their home folder in a file called "ENCRYPTION KEY.PRIVATE"
In any case, I expect the emails to be a lot of subscriber list maintenance, back issues, UNSUBSCRIBE messages, maybe PDFs of scans of material that was either public at the time or became public since, that were sent in by contacts or sources.
[+] [-] DevX101|14 years ago|reply
To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.
I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.
[+] [-] danilocampos|14 years ago|reply
You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense.
At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."
And this, for me, is one of them.
Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship.
If that's the case, if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?
This, I guess.
There are lot of communications in this bundle that are probably pretty mundane, sent and received by people who show up for jury duty and take traffic school when they run a red light. And it sucks that they've lost their privacy on this.
On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission, you can be almost certain that a handful of messages will reveal information where disclosing it is emphatically a public good. Will we find wrongdoing? Downright illegality? I'm not sure.
But I am pretty sure that actions like this are the last reasonably potent check on power we have left.
[+] [-] electromagnetic|14 years ago|reply
If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.
I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.
Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.
[+] [-] grandalf|14 years ago|reply
Stratfor has sources whose anonymity (like with Wikileaks) is important.
If indeed the breach does reveal people who have helped Stratfor obtain information for its stories, it will be akin to if the group had hacked Wikileaks and outed Bradley Manning before he was caught by the government.
[+] [-] Joakal|14 years ago|reply
2) An another Anonymous group says it's not them and they don't support it because Stratfor doesn't appear bad
3) That same other Anonymous group also warned that these are probably hacker [agent] provocateurs because it may just as well expose honest people who are exposing problems to Stratfor. The original aim was to expose the crimes of the government(s) and corporations by looking at the exchanges between contacts.
4) I tend to agree with you.
[+] [-] jonshea|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naner|14 years ago|reply
That is a reflection of the community this was posted in (/r/WikiLeaks). If you look at the other Stratfor discussions on reddit they tend to be more balanced.
[+] [-] bballbackus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ig1|14 years ago|reply
If you write anything in a business email you should assume that it may become public at some point in the future. Both your employer and the recipients employer have the right to read it, as does any company that acquires either party.
The email may also be demanded by the government for a variety of reason or by a court in pursuit of a civil case.
Business emails have much weaker privacy protection than personal emails because it's assumed that from the very beginning that any privacy arises from the commercial implications of the contents rather than the inherent privacy that you have when two private individuals are discussing a personal matter.
[+] [-] mcphilip|14 years ago|reply
Was it distasteful to leak the 44,000 emails acquired? If so, was the important information gleaned from the emails exposing all manner of shady dealings in the white hat industry[1] not enough to vindicate the attacks?
[1]http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked...
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] quanticle|14 years ago|reply
Private actors, whether they be firms or well-connected individuals are (and always have) attempted to influence those holding power. It is in the public interest to expose power and influence-mongering. Government, by virtue of its power over individual citizens needs to be held to a higher standard of openness. Private parties should be held to the same standard, when they choose to deal with the government in a manner that may influence its actions.
[+] [-] sigzero|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|14 years ago|reply
What do you mean, "if" the tables were turned?
[+] [-] yaix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sajidnizami|14 years ago|reply
Having said that, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Stuff like this does have potential to create anarchy, which doesn't benefit anyone.
[+] [-] BaseBand|14 years ago|reply
I would have more of a issue if this was personal correspondence but this is dealing with large US institutions and people that deal with policy.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] noonespecial|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurbytree|14 years ago|reply
This is why we can't have nice things.
[+] [-] funkah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angersock|14 years ago|reply
It would be unethical if a company properly secured their servers.
It would be educational if ordinary citizens expected their communications to be completely private without taking reasonable measure to assure same.
This is a great lesson in security.
I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.
One of the ramifications of going to war, like it or not, is increased scrutiny. This is a weaker form of the "collateral damage" that our politicians and bureaucrats routinely write off.
[+] [-] akamaka|14 years ago|reply
It's basically a subscription news site ($100/year) that delivers focused international news. They usually stay away from trendy topics and party politics, which is pretty nice.
Despite their claims of having sources around the world, it's quite obvious that most of their information comes from other newspapers and just Googling around. It's infrequent that they would mention getting information from a source, and when they did, it was never anything more than an aside or a rumor. Certainly nothing of value.
That's why I seriously doubt that anything explosive will come from this email leak. People who have access to sensitive information leak it for two reasons: to spread their message to a wide audience (think Watergate and the Washington Post, or Bradley Manning and Wikileaks), or to swap it with other insider groups, in exchange for other information. Stratfor, with its small audience and utter lack of people on the ground, has neither.
Finally, I probably sound kind of negative about Stratfor, and while I no longer subscribe, they did have some really great, unique articles that you wouldn't find in any newspaper. Here's one example: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645
[+] [-] russellallen|14 years ago|reply
This is a blow against the freedom of the press and a blow against a free and open society. There is a reason why we should as a society respect journalists and their sources. I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted and jailed.
[+] [-] forensic|14 years ago|reply
They are in the business of publishing everything they know -- that's how they get paid! Their info is not secret. Anyone who emails them is trying to get info RELEASED, not hide it!
They certainly have secret informants, but why do you want to compromise informants who are willing to work with the press? What does that solve?
Dick Cheney does not send emails to Stratfor. He's not stupid!
This whole operation is just another demonstration that Anonymous only targets low hanging fruit. They tried hacking the NYT but their security was too good. They tried hacking the Pentagon but hopelessly failed. So they decided to hack a small (high-quality) news company with 70 employees, that reports exclusively on global affairs.
Now they are going to reveal Stratfor's sources and get people killed, just like they did in the Mexico affair.
This isn't an achievement, it's just showing off. I doubt they are going to find much and the victims of this release are not going to be anyone in powerful positions. Rather it will be informants like Gaddafi's Butler who will have their lives ruined.
For the record, I would support Anonymous if they actually bothered to hack the government and release those files. I would even support them if they hacked known bad guys like Halliburton or known propaganda networks like FOX.
But Anonymous is just picking low-hanging fruit and hyping it up to make themselves look good. The "top secret client list" is nothing more than a marketing strategy by Stratfor. Their client list is: people interested in global politics.
[+] [-] asdfurtedfgs|14 years ago|reply
http://pastebin.com/8yrwyNkt
Specifically, of interest (at least to me), as the post claims that Stratfor themselves said this (I haven't actually checked/found external verification, please post URL if you do): "In the past month Stratfor has drawn attention to a carefully assembled open-source report that asserted that last month's attack on Iraq wasn't intended just to punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed. Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong."
Is everyone here happy with the claim that Anonymous hacked in and copied emails; is it too hard to imagine that it's a false flag op? Neither side can prove themselves, that is true, but there should be more trepidation before making claims or assuming we are being handed the truth.
Also, take a look at http://anonanalytics.com/ if you haven't, the PDF they published recently is a pretty good read. That's a faction of Anon that I have high hopes for.
[+] [-] jonhendry|14 years ago|reply
As opposed to a bunch of misguided, ignorant script kiddies thinking Stratfor is something it isn't?
[+] [-] peterwwillis|14 years ago|reply
Why does the title say 3.3 million e-mails? The pastebin claims 2.7 million.
Why did they feel the need to announce this before the wiki had all the data? Barrett just had to get extra PR time?
Why do all these releases sound like they're written by kids in tree forts with bed sheet capes on? Then again all self-righteous announcements kind of read the same way to me.
What's with their wiki? What is this shit? http://echelon2.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges
This whole thing is a big Anonymous waste of fucking time. Please flag this.
[+] [-] rufibarbatus|14 years ago|reply
What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?
My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever?
Then, say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.
EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.
[+] [-] gwern|14 years ago|reply
If only. That would be an improvement. As matters stand, they're much more poorly protected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_privacy
> After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[6] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[6] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.
[+] [-] officemonkey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imurray|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschonfeld|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonhendry|14 years ago|reply
In any case, I expect the emails to be a lot of subscriber list maintenance, back issues, UNSUBSCRIBE messages, maybe PDFs of scans of material that was either public at the time or became public since, that were sent in by contacts or sources.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] test01|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hessenwolf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisismyname|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donky_cong|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschonfeld|14 years ago|reply