Report: Ex-Wikileaker Domscheit-Berg deletes large cache of unreleased leaks

Der Spiegel reporter Holger Stark tweets that an old cache of unreleased Wikileaks leak documents is "gone forever." Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left Wikileaks after a heated dispute with founder Julian Assange, told Stark today "that he has destroyed it."

After quitting (or, depending on whose account you're reading, being forced to leave) from Wikileaks, Domscheit-Berg created a project called OpenLeaks and wrote a tell-all book: "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website."

An item about Domscheit-Berg's reported private key and document deletion forthcoming in Der Spiegel, I'd presume. More online now: Heise Online, Netzpolitik.org, WL Central.

An extensive statement on the matter from Julian Assange is here. From a quick read, he appears to believe the CIA is behind this, or that Domscheit-Berg is connected to the CIA in some manner.

Update: The Spiegel article is online. Wikileaks' Twitter account (presumably Assange) tweets that the purportedly deleted data included a complete copy of the US no-fly list, 5GB of Bank of America documents, leaked data from neo-Nazi organizations, and intercept data for US internet companies, then solicits financial donations.

A machine-translated excerpt from the Spiegel article follows.

Former Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files that had been sent from unknown informants and are now apparently lost irrevocably. These are documents which were stored until the late summer of 2010 on the Wikileaks server and has taken a group to Domscheit-Berg in their leaving the organization.

He had the files "in the last days shredded to ensure that the sources are not compromised," said Domscheit Mountain. Reason: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could not guarantee a safe handling of the material.

In the data base was located on SPIEGEL information including the so-called "no-fly list" of the U.S. government, on which the names of suspects were listed, which is prohibited from entering an aircraft. Assange said of the material would also have insider information from 20 right-wing organizations is one. Domscheit-Berg would not confirm that. Assange calls since the beginning of the publication of the data

• [Gideon Jones]

  Assange blaming the CIA for something that went wrong?  Crazy talk.  

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    Anything is possible in that dark mirror-world, but a bad case of emoquit followed by rage-delete with no spook involvement is also entirely plausible.

  • [Guest]

    When you run out of excuses, blame the invisible enemies.

• [John Shutt]

  It doesn’t really sound like Assange was directly blaming the CIA for this. More like he was passing along every single rumor he has ever heard about Domscheit-Berg and his wife, in case it might be relevant to any of Wikileaks’ sources. He was probably holding back until now because he was still negotiating for the return of the documents. With the encryption keys deleted, there’s no reason not to air it all out.

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    A fair and reasonable assessment.

• [Brandon Byrd]

  The best part of Assange’s response to DBB:

  “DDB secretly, and in clear violation of WikiLeaks internal security
  directives, recorded internal WikiLeaks encrypted “chat” conversations.
  He initially publicly denied having done so, but attempted to place many
  of these recordings into his ghostwritten book, most of which were
  rejected by his publishers’ lawyers as violations of german privacy law.  …

  His book, “Inside WikiLeaks”, contains many proven malicious libels and
  breaches of WikiLeaks security policies.”

  Cry me a river.

  • [SedanChair]

    Doesn’t sound like he’s crying; like any security-minded administrator, he’s making the nature of the compromise public so others on the network can make their own determinations.

• [Guest]

  Good riddance.

  Can anyone name anything positive that came from the “egoleaks”?

  • [querent]

    We now have a more extensive and detailed history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than has ever existed for any previous war.

    I was going to keep going here, from most recent Haitian coup to Reuters journalists murdered to torture, but I guess if you were actually interested, you’d know.

    • [Guest]

      You mean the same Haiti that Bush and Clinton stole all the money for and built resorts on the north side of the island? Oh guess that wasn’t in the wikileaks…

      • [querent]

        Not entirely sure what your point is here.  I’m honestly not sure.

        What was in the diplomatic cable release was, among other things, that the US oversaw the integration of the paramilitary forces who were on the ground during the coup into the military and police apparatus after the coup was complete, and the concerted international effort–spearheaded by the US–to discredit Aristide (to no avail).

        http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/11/haiti_wikileaks_cables_expose_how_us

        • [Guest]

          So we agree, all the US presidents, including Obama, are complicite in war crimes and a third party should be elected to prosecute them.

        • [querent]

          Hear hear. On that point, we do indeed agree.

        • [Guest]

          Maybe truth and reconciliation would be a more productive common goal than revenge and vindication? I dunno. I’m not saying anything was right about what the US did or continues to do, but the ideal goal of the penal system is reform, not retribution. So if you want my help going in that direction with things, start talking about us just stopping and owning up to it, and less about making us pay.

          We all did that, I feel responsible, but I’m not sure it could have gone down any other way, but I do know, for sure, that tomorrow could.

  • [Dv Revolutionary]

     Arab Uprising starting in Tunisa and finishing off Kadafi real soon now.

    We got that from Wikileaks after the Tunisan people heard an honest assessment of their leaders from the state department cables.

    Think how much the US spent to spread fake democracy in the middle east and think how much wikileaks spent to spread the real stuff.

    • [Guest]

      Wait, wasn’t a high-level google employee responsible for Egypt? Isn’t that extremely suspicious?

      • [John Shutt]

        That’s like picking out which drop of water is responsible for a wave.

      • [Mister44]

        Suspicious in what way? And he was a figure in it – but I wouldn’t call him responsible.

    • [Mister44]

      I think I would be careful giving too much credit to wikileaks for the Arab Spring. I think they were a factor – but a small factor. Perhaps you could say they were the tipping point. But this was decades in the making and 99% of the credit goes to the brave people who fought/are fighting for freedom.

      (PS – Here’s to hoping the establish a republic, and not end up swapping on evil for another.)

  • [gregorylent]

    yes … it is the best barometer of the times that one could possibly imagine, visible to all.

  • [Guest]

    yes, many people illuminated the lengths they will go to to apologize for and obfuscate misdeeds the truly powerful perpetrate in our names. Thanks are to Julian, for making those with deep cognitive dissonances show themselves as the obtusely selfish creatures they are.

• [archmagetrexasaurus]

  k lol

• [querent]

  The statement on WL central linked above is certainly damning.  I’m curious to here DDB’s justification of his actions, assuming he as deleted leaked material as reported.

  • [querent]

    (Not to mention the allegations of blackmail, threats, and the collaboration with US intelligence against Manning, Assange, WL in general, and others.)

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Never attribute to the CIA that which can be reasonably explained by a hissy fit.

  • [asuffield]

    Never attribute to the CIA that which can be reasonably explained by a hissy fit.

    As I understand it, Assange isn’t attributing this to the CIA anyway. It is a well-documented fact that the CIA (and FBI) has an anti-wikileaks taskforce, dedicated to stopping them from releasing material harmful to the public image of the US government. Assange’s allegation is simply that DDB contacted them and handed over some information.

    That’s actually not hard to believe at all. If he was throwing a hissy fit and wanted to hurt Assange, that’s an effective way to do it.

  • [Mike Estee]

    the CIA corollary: never fix a problem with force that can be solved with misdirection.

• [willyboy]

  Are we to assume that there were not digital copies?

  • [neapel]

    That basically shows it’s just a media stunt to keep their flamewar going nice and public. DDB can’t possibly prove he didn’t copy the data before destroying something, Assagne will point this out and look like the paranoid maniac he clearly is. (what’s interesting though, in Assagne’s note it reads as if DDB just copied data, not stole the only disc it was stored on as previously said by both sides. I guess that’s Assagne starting to realize how ridiculous it makes him look that Wikileaks didn’t even do backups…)

• [Arturo_Ulises]

  I thought Boing Boing readers where smarter than this. Guess not. 

  Domscheit-Berg, despite whether he’s right or wrong about Assange, has just moved into full douchebag territory. Shameful, really.

• [John Shutt]

  I’m trying to figure out what explanation Domscheit-Berg could possibly present for why he destroyed the archive. Even if he didn’t want to return it to Wikileaks, why wouldn’t he release it through Openleaks? Lack of media partners? Lack of staff? Is Openleaks holding any other leaks besides the stolen and now-inaccessible Wikileaks archive?

  And the most important question: Why would any whistleblower EVER choose to work with Openleaks after they deleted six months worth of data that whistleblowers risked their lives to reveal just to settle a personal vendetta against Julian Assange? With Domscheit-Berg getting publicly expelled from the CCC and petulantly destroying the archive, I think it’s safe to say that Openleaks is stillborn.

  • [wheezer]

    Pure conjecture: if the contents of his book are anything to go by, then the practices of screening leak data and the practices for securing leak data and leakers identities inside Wikileaks were not kosher. It would appear from Domscheit-Bergs book that leaks were cherrypicked by Julian Assange, with some leaks residing on Wikileaks servers, unpublished, for months if not years.

    Domscheit-Berg might have felt that the data was already insecure due to this, and therefore unsuited for Openleaks or any other forum.

  • [Mike Estee]

    i think there is an assumption at the root of these motivations which might not be true: that he has in fact deleted the keys.

    unfortunately, it’s only possible to prove the existence of information. proving that digital data has been deleted once it has been shown to exist is at best a probability game.

    as Xeni said, “anything is possible in that dark mirror world”.

  • [Guest]

    how about this argument: “I am destroying my ball and going home, your game sucks” while walking away giving everyone the finger.

    What else could he possibly be saying? Sure, it’s dramatic, but is he wrong?

    • [John Shutt]

      Except that it was never Domscheit-Berg’s ball to begin with. Even if we take him at his word that the only damage his team did to Wikileaks’ submission system was to revert it back to the state it was in before they arrived – which is childish, but whatever – the archive that he took was never given to him. It was entrusted to Wikileaks. If he had made a separate copy of it, that would have been fine. Hell, even if he had taken the only copies and released them through Openleaks, that wouldn’t have been all that bad. But what can’t be excused (or even explained) is taking leaks that whistleblowers have entrusted to someone else and destroying them.

      • [Fisches Nachtgesang]

        I agree, in my opinion the “original sin” here was that DDB took the data when he left. It wasn’t his and it surely wasn’t his to take.

        He claims he took it because he feared the data wouldn’t be safe. But he maneuvered himself into a corner there.

        He can’t publish the information via his site because a) it would be admitting he “stole” it and didn’t only take it to keep it safe; b) OpenLeaks doesn’t work that way, they work with NGO’s and international papers and the data submitted there is not supposed to be published “as is”, it’s a different business model from the WikiLeaks model. But also c) because he’d lose all credibility were he to publish data entrusted to WikiLeaks via his own site.

        But he also can’t give it back as blogger Felix von Leitner points out here. Von Leitner basically says DDB made himself the “safe”keeper and protector of the sources. So he needs to make sure WikiLeaks is safe before he gives the data back. And how is he supposed to do that? Run a security check of the new WikiLeaks site? There really is no feasible scenario in which DDB could give the data back. (I’m paraphrasing von Leitner.)

        If he can’t give it back and he can’t publish it, there really is no other option than to delete the data. And make the deletion public so the sources know about it and (maybe, hypothetically) have a chance to re-submit the data to a whistleblower platform they trust.

        This is of course devastating for the sources. But IMHO once DDB had taken the data, there really was no way out of this mess.

      • [Guest]

        I’m sure it can be explained, and that neither you nor I have the narrative exactly so – but I never can trust ‘explanations’ from people who are name calling every third sentence. Call him childish all day long, as you have here, but children are entirely capable of doing the right things, so his childishness, even if taken as a given, does not shed light on his actions in the way your name calling sheds light on your perspective. If you have something new to add, please do get on with it.

        • [John Shutt]

          I was agreeing with what appeared to be your assessment: That Domscheit-Berg was “destroying [his] ball and going home,” a stereotypically childish thing to do. And my perspective has always been right out there in the open. I think Domscheit-Berg is childish, Julian Assange is paranoid, Openleaks is DOA, Wikileaks is in decline, and a distributed system of leaks will rise up to replace it. If the question is whether or not Domscheit-Berg did the right thing, I would say no, not because his actions are childish, but because they have done nothing but harm. He deleted six months’ worth of data meant to go into the public domain, and destroyed the system whistleblowers might have used to re-submit it to Wikileaks. He could have written the no-fly list in finger paint, folded it into a paper airplane, and sent flying into the window of the New York Times for all I care. Childishness is not the issue here, except insofar as it relates to his decision to destroy the archive.

          Edit: And I should also note that in calling him childish, I am consciously trying to take the most sympathetic reading of his actions that I can. I don’t want to jump to the conclusion that he was being malicious.

• [John Shutt]

  Wikileaks has made a new, extended statement. Among other things, they say that the CCC mediator Andy Müller-Maguhn was the one who ended the negotiations, due to doubts about Domscheit-Berg’s integrity, and that the only reason Wikileaks hasn’t said much about the whole affair until now is because they still thought they might get the documents back.

  http://www.twitlonger.com/show/chek37

• [Zacqary Adam Green]

  Christ, what an asshole.

  • [mat catastrophe]

    What did Jesus do to you?

• [Noodle]

  I feel a bit stupid asking this but I couldn’t find this out: How has he deleted these documents? 

  I can’t believe these were just files on a USB stick. Has he instead deleted the encryption codes? If the things were encrypted then why not back them up everywhere? If he was the only person with the codes then how was anyone ever supposed to look at the documents? This all seems silly.

• [Jens Reuterberg]

  Oh no someone doesn’t like the Julian “Jesus of Nasareth” Assange – he must be from the CIA :D

  Why is it always like this – some group does something really great – then suddenly we need to hero worship the guy who leads or is a spokesperson for it. And when we do those who didn’t like the original cool thing the group did attacks the “leader” and suddenly its split between 

  a) Love Julian Assange, he can walk on water.
  b) hate Wikileaks.

  • [DirkSJ]

    Why is it always like this – some group does something really great –
    then suddenly we need to hero worship the guy who leads or is a
    spokesperson for it. And when we do those who didn’t like the original
    cool thing the group did attacks the “leader” and suddenly its split
    between 

    a) Love Julian Assange, he can walk on water.
    b) hate
    Wikileaks.

    This was covered recently on BB:
    http://boingboing.net/2011/08/17/criticism-of-a-brand-lowers-the-self-esteem-of-its-adherents.html

  • [Cowicide]

    Oh no someone doesn’t like the Julian “Jesus of Nasareth” Assange – he must be from the CIA :D

    Why is it always like this – some group does something really great – then suddenly we need to hero worship the guy who leads or is a spokesperson for it. And when we do those who didn’t like the original cool thing the group did attacks the “leader” and suddenly its split between 

    a) Love Julian Assange, he can walk on water.
    b) hate Wikileaks.

    Actually, you’re playing right into the inane stuff yourself by saying that people are “always” equating Assange to Jesus Christ.

    For the most part, what I see is people that support what Assange has done with Wikileaks and not too much more than that.  A lot of shit is talked on Assange, but I do find it strange that nearly each and every time I see him… he’s a calm, well-spoken, intelligent guy.  I guess there’s a little bit of a disconnect there for those of us who haven’t been allegedly threatened and assaulted by him.

    Because I don’t actually know if he’s a threatening rapist scumfuck for sure, I guess I’ll have to reserve my angsty judgement for when (and if) I do.  If that’s equating a man to Jesus Fucking Christ, I apologize.

    On the OTHER HAND….

    Everyone should also be reminded Assange hasn’t been found guilty in a court of law of anything yet he’s fairly often called a “rapist”, etc. – Get’s a little annoying after a while.

    Also, dare anyone mention that Wikileaks may have had ANYTHING to do with Arab Spring and then we get these obtuse trolls that say they are equating Wikileaks with practically performing the protests themselves, etc.

    Let us not forget the ever incessant, obtuse trolls that keep asking, “what good has wikileaks done?” – When we all know they assisted in exposing war crimes (end of fucking story).

    Meanwhile, I  ’shopped this for the trolls a while ago…  enjoy.

    http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5288/5329262595_ccf31a541b_z.jpg

• [travtastic]

  Did I just shift into a parallel universe where data backup doesn’t exist?

• [jacobian]

  Probability that the CIA is charged with disrupting and smearing wikileaks and has used their resources to effect this charge?  Try damn near 100%. 

  Not suspecting CIA and other security services involvement puts one in the willfully naive camp.  Maybe the CIA wasn’t involved, but it’s certainly not silly to suspect
  them.  It’s quite the opposite. 

  If the CIA doesn’t have a hand in the various negative press about wikileaks then what the hell are they doing with all the money they are meant to use to destroy wikileaks?  Really, people must think the CIA is sitting on their hands.

• [sugarsails]

  Why would you get in a “heated dispute” with someone with this kind of power in your organization?

  • [Simon Vehicle!]

    The same reason you might do [everything Assange has ever done].

• [allen]

  “ name anything positive…” 

  real insight on how much diplomatic capital is being spent to try to strongarm other countries into passing copyright laws that will create advantageous business conditions for the RIAA and MPAA?  Or, conversely, how little was being spent on trying to create conditions in which citizens had recourse when defrauded or hacked by criminals in those countries.

• [Fisches Nachtgesang]

  The computer-generated translation is not bad but maybe I can improve it somewhat (I must admit I am not a trained translator though):

  Former Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files that had been sent from unknown informants and are now apparently lost irrevocably. These documents were stored until the late summer of 2010 on the Wikileaks server and were taken by Domscheit-Berg and others when they left the organization.

  He had the files “shredded in the last days to ensure that the sources are not compromised,” said Domscheit-Berg. Reason: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could not guarantee a safe handling of the material.

  According to SPIEGEL sources the data included the so-called “no-fly list” of the U.S. government, which lists the names of suspects prohibited from entering an aircraft.
  Assange said of the material that it also included insider information from 20 extreme-right-wing organizations. Domscheit-Berg would not confirm this. Since the start of the year, Assange has demanded a handover of the data. 

  ((As a comment I would like to add that in his book Domscheit-Berg says he and his colleagues who also left changed the WikiLeaks software back to the state that it was before they arrived and this is precisely the reason why it is not safe anymore for whistleblowers to contact the site. Domscheit-Berg has always claimed he took/stole the data because the data would not be safe at WikiLeaks. But he and his friends are the reason for the safety risk. Think about that what you like. But to me it seems rather strange that the (supposedly) highly skilled people at WikiLeaks have not been able to get the site back online and running since DDB and his friends left. Also: why is Assange now blaming DDB’s wife? Cherchez la femme?! Pur-lease!))

  • [asuffield]

    But to me it seems rather strange that the (supposedly) highly skilled people at WikiLeaks have not been able to get the site back online and running since DDB and his friends left

    The problem is that it’s now basically impossible for them to recruit any help, as 99 out of the top 100 applicants would all be moles (a few for governments, mostly for media, and a few random jerks who just want to screw with Assange because of something they read on the internet). That leaves them in the limbo of no manpower to get anything done.

    • [Fisches Nachtgesang]

      Correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I can see WikiLeaks is a virtual company. It only exists via its platform. If the platform for submissions doesn’t work, the whole company doesn’t work, i.e. is basically non-existant. What more damage could a mole do? Of course you can never be a 100% sure if the people you’re hiring are legit but you can try to check them out first. If your whole enterprise ceases to exist without new people, it’s just a risk you have to take, right?

      • [John Shutt]

        It seems to me like Wikileaks is a victim of Assange’s own technique: Eroding trust between nodes of a network in order to make conspiracy impossible. Any organization that does serious journalism is, to a certain extent, a conspiracy. With Wikileaks’ journalists and sources under threat from the entire national security establishment of the United States, the scariest possible institutional adversary, Assange & Co. have become incredibly paranoid. Right or wrong, they are jettisoning anybody that they don’t think they can trust (the NYT, the Guardian, Domscheit “Mountain”, and probably more Wikileaks insiders we don’t know of). The lines of communication are calcified, their leader’s under house arrest, their system has been sabotaged, the organization has 100x more work than staff to do it, and like asuffield said, a good percentage of their new applicants are probably moles from a dozen different alphabet agencies. I think the solution would be to open-source the leak submission system (such as it is) and let thousands of independent journalists use it and thousands of programmers test and improve it. People can leak to whomever they trust, or post their leaks independently. The system has to be distributed. Right now it’s focused on a single organization, which is weakened by its paranoia, limited resources, and flashy public image.

        Nevertheless, Wikileaks has done a lot of good and has shown the way for the systems that will replace it. Domscheit-Berg has done nothing but harm, as far as I can tell. The things he deleted deserve to be in the public domain, and his excuse doesn’t make any sense. If he doesn’t trust Wikileaks to protect sources, why didn’t he strip the source information himself and release it through Openleaks? He’s finished. He was only well-known because of his connections with the CCC and Wikileaks, and those connections have been severed. He’s being banished to the no-man’s-land where Adrian Lamo lives.

      • [asuffield]

        What more damage could a mole do

        Well, their objectives are (in turn):

        - government agencies want to run a phishing operation to identify whistleblowers in their own ranks and haul them off to gitmo/etc before they leak anything to the real press
        - media outlets want to get copies of the data early so that they can “break” the story without having to do any of the investigative work themselves
        - and the random Assange-haters just want to get him arrested for something

        In all cases, it’s better to have wikileaks doing nothing rather than let it get abused.

        • [Fisches Nachtgesang]

          If the picture you paint is indeed accurate and they can’t hire new people and if on the other hand the existing team isn’t able to establish a new, secure platform then IMHO WikiLeaks needs to face the facts and simply admit they’ve lost their raison d’être. They’re finished. No platform, no whistleblowing, no more WikiLeaks.

        • [asuffield]

          Well, they might be able to get it working eventually, somehow. For the present moment, I’d be inclined to agree that they have passed from “current events” to “history”. But they built it up from scratch once, so it’s not impossible for them to do it again.

• [ocschwar]

  Given that one alleged leaker is likely to face a firing squad here in the States, why is it any surprise that they’re calling it quits? Seems reasonable to me, although I  would have liked to see Bank of America twist in the breeze. 

• [jerwin]

  The deleted material sounds like gold.

  As far as how the deleted material gets “deleted” so easily, my guess/wild speculation is that wikileaks stores a lot of data in encrypted form, and authorized persons have usb drives with the encryption keys– if one of those drives goes walking off, any backups will be rendered useless,

• [semiotix]

  This is an outrage. Only Julian Assange and/or the 800-some anonymous volunteers of unknown qualifications and ideologies that he’s chosen to share the Manning leaks with are entitled to decide what information is legitimately secret or not. Not bureaucrats, not elected officials, and certainly not rogue individuals!

  My god, where would we be if just anyone could unilaterally defy the proper authorities and disseminate or destroy sensitive information like this! I hope Assange finds this guy and locks him away in a dark cell for the rest of his life. After a fair trial in WikiCourt, of course. 

• [Wagner James Au]

  Wait, so Wikileaks is upset that the unauthorized material Wikileaks received through unauthorized sources was deleted without Wikileaks’ authorization? The irony, it is rich.

• [t3kna2007]

  > deleted data included … 5GB of Bank of America documents

  Noooooooooooo! Really wanted to see that.

  (Also: mountain is the literal translation of Berg; Domscheit-Berg shouldn’t be translated.)

  • [dr_awkward]

    >Also: mountain is the literal translation of Berg; Domscheit-Berg shouldn’t be translated.

    Unless you intend to refer to the (imho) douchebag as a Dumbshit Mountain.

• [John Shutt]

  A few relatively recent links that might be relevant:

  A Wikileaks source from Latin America calls out Domscheit-Berg, and asks if the documents he submitted to Wikileaks are among the ones Domscheit-Berg took with him when he left. (Post dated 8/16/11, pre-CCC expulsion and key-deletion).
  http://nothingispermanent.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter.html

  An attendee at the Chaos Communication Camp says Openleaks’ designers don’t understand how SSL works. (Post dated 8/12/11. Domscheit-Berg’s request that camp attendees test the security of his website was apparently what led to the vote for his expulsion, since the CCC saw it as him trying to piggy-back on their reputation.)
  http://www.hboeck.de/archives/786-OpenLeaks-doing-strange-things-with-SSL.html

• [Matthew]

  I also had tons of super-secret files.  The location of Hoffa’s remains, Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe, the Bush’s baked beans recipe, McDonald’s “special sauce” recipe, and the formula for Coke.  But, I deleted them.  But I’m totally awesome!  I really did have it before I deleted it!  I also deleted my address book, because it had the names, addresses, and irc handles (aka nicks) of the Illuminati’s entire membership.  I did it all because the CIA made me sad.

• [Cowicide]

  US no-fly list, 5GB of Bank of America documents, leaked data from neo-Nazi organizations, and intercept data for US internet companies, then solicits financial donations.

  It’s still out there.  It may come back.  And, Domscheit-Dumbshit is a douche-berry, BTW.

• [Wagner James Au]

  “the entire national security establishment of the United States, the scariest possible institutional adversary”

  Dude, seriously? To cite but just one counter-example, do you even know what Putin’s security establishment does to journalists it doesn’t like?

  • [John Shutt]

    I don’t mean “scariest” as in “most violent”. What I mean is that the US has the greatest reach, resources, and skills, which makes them the hardest adversary to defend against. I can see how what I said could be confusing, though. To be clear: I would rather be alone in a room with an agent of the NSA than an agent of the FSB. But I think the NSA would have a better chance of shutting down my website.

• [Spriggan_Prime]

  I haven’t really been following this so bear with me but;
  1 We’re to believe that these digitized documents have never been copied elsewhere?
  2 That you can just magically delete something nowadays and data recovery ceases to exist?
  3 Assange & Co. magically have discovered a completely unbreakable encryption?
  4 Nobody had a backup of the files or keys even secretly, you know, to cover their own ass?

  • [Mister44]

    re: “3 Assange & Co. magically have discovered a completely unbreakable encryption?”

    I thought this was already basically possible for all intents and purposes, as the processing power and time required would be so great.

    • [Spriggan_Prime]

      “as the processing power and time required would be so great.”

      Simply a matter of resources and scale. Unlikely, expensive and improbably are not impossible.

      • [travtastic]

        I’m not sure you understand what that scale is.

        • [Spriggan_Prime]

          Sure I do. Fucking HUGE. Exponentially Huge. But not impossible. Highly unlikely and prohibitively expensive sure. But not impossible. Anything a 40 year old programer is making a 14 year old kid in the basement is breaking. Just imagine a botnet being used for something other than spam. Billions upon billions of free cycles out there behind tissue paper security free for the taking. And let’s not forget Moore’s law. So yes, time and scale and big fucking heap of luck.

          I’m simply stating that people are running around going “OMG GONE FOREVER!”
          I’m simply trying to say, hold on, calm down, how can that be? I’ve yet to hear a clear explaination on how the data is suddenly houdini’d. Encryption issues aside. Data doesn’t just vanish without a trace. Especially juicy bits and bytes like this.

          I do really think it just boils down to two adults having a pissing contest resulting in a bad grasp for pity PR/fuck you I’m outta here PR. Shame that some potential for good got flushed because of inflated egos.

        • [travtastic]

          No, seriously. We’re not talking about having to use BOINC for a few weeks. Proper implementation of AES-256 is practically unbreakable. Proper use of a one-time pad is theoretically unbreakable.

          And as stated over here, there’s no real reason you couldn’t encrypt an encrypted file in an encrypted file in an encrypted file until you get tired of it.

        • [Spriggan_Prime]

          “Nah just put it in a zip file mate! That German’d never screw us.”

          “Yeah, the password is ’1234password’ okay?”

          That’s about the amount of credit I give them at this point, everything else is PR peepee showing.

• [Telegram Sam]

  With character names like Domscheit-Berg, it’s disappointing that no journalist has given attention to the specific brands of cigarettes, automobiles, liquor and apparel involved, such as proper Ian Fleming parody would require.

• [Alex Thompson]

  This just in: Julian Assange is a self-absorbed douche who uses Wikileaks to further his personal political views. Later: Bear poops in the woods.

• [Everson Bernardes]

  We currently have encryption algorithms that would take a supercomputer a few billion years to decrypt. Nothing short of an algorithm break or a quantum computer can reasonably defeat it. And that’s not even talking about some sort of layered encryption within a cryptographic filesystem.

• [Thad Boyd]

  Hm.  The no-fly list is something that certainly could have served the public interest, and maaaaaybe some of the other stuff, if limited to just documents that were actually incriminating.

  Bank docs could prove useful if they actually provided evidence of wrongdoing, but not if they were just gossip or, worse, customer account information.

  Similarly, I can see outing neo-Nazis if they’re public figures or if they’re planning violence, but if they’re just private citizens airing their beliefs in a private forum, I think I’m going to have to come down on the side of respecting that privacy even if I find their beliefs abhorrent.

• [PeaceLove Love]

  All this Assange bashing is disappointing, especially from the normally enlightened BB readers. Assange has been very clear on his motives and intentions with Wikileaks. Transparency is essential for any functioning democracy and the world’s most powerful factions, including the U.S. government, conduct far too much business in secret. Wikileaks has revealed extraordinary corruption and mendacity all over the world, so much so that the U.S. government has waged an unprecedented war on the site.

  Visa, MasterCard and PayPal have all launched a financial blockade against Wikileaks, even though the site has never been even so much as charged with breaking any laws in the United States. As Assange put it, “We now know that Visa, MasterCard and PayPal are all agents of U.S. foreign policy. We did not know that before.” In fact, the Wikileaks saga has shown free speech activists all over the Web that much of our speech takes place on commercial online spaces that can be shut down at will. Assange: “Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.”

  For his troubles, Assange has been detained under house arrest without charge for 9 months on the mere suspicion of having consensual sex but without a condom. Not rape by American standards — no violence or threat of violence. Just consensual sex without a condom.

  Character assassination is standard operating procedure for powerful entities facing threats from truth tellers. Don’t believe mainstream media bullshit. Truth and transparency are the hallmark of free peoples, and Julian Assange has been the sacrificial lamb in the campaign to bring more of it to the world. The guy’s got some of the biggest balls on the planet and deserves our undying gratitude.