Boing Boing » foia

HOWTO search the Web like the NSA

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:49:48 +0000

Wired's Kim Zetter rounds up some of the highlights from Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research [PDF], an NSA guide to finding unintentionally published confidential material on the Web produced by the NSA and released in response to a Muckrock Freedom of Information Act request. As Zetter notes, the tactics discussed as described as legal, but are the kind of thing that weev is doing 3.5 years in a Federal pen for:

Want to find spreadsheets full of passwords in Russia? Type “filetype:xls site:ru login.” Even on websites written in non-English languages the terms “login,” “userid,” and “password” are generally written in English, the authors helpfully point out.
Misconfigured web servers “that list the contents of directories not intended to be on the web often offer a rich load of information to Google hackers,” the authors write, then offer a command to exploit these vulnerabilities — intitle: “index of” site:kr password.
“Nothing I am going to describe to you is illegal, nor does it in any way involve accessing unauthorized data,” the authors assert in their book. Instead it “involves using publicly available search engines to access publicly available information that almost certainly was not intended for public distribution.” You know, sort of like the “hacking” for which Andrew “weev” Aurenheimer was recently sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for obtaining publicly accessible information from AT&T’s website.

Use These Secret NSA Google Search Tips to Become Your Own Spy Agency

Supreme Court says states can limit freedom-of-information requests from out-of-state, Muckrock hacks around it with your help

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:06:17 +0000

Michael from MuckRock sez,

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that states have the right to restrict public records access to locals, meaning one more hurdle to would-be muckrakers everywhere. Even in-state requesters are harmed: It means one more bureaucratic hurdle and another excuse for agencies to respond in paper rather than electronically.
MuckRock has helped file requests in all 50 states -- important for projects like the Drone Census -- and we're looking for more volunteers to help ensure transparency from sea to shining sea.
States impacted:
* Alabama
* Arkansas
* Delaware
* Georgia
* New Hampshire
* New Jersey
* Tennessee
* Virginia
If you live in one of the above, fill out a simple form and we can help ensure that sunshine isn't restricted depending on where you live:

To keep filing in all 50 states, MuckRock needs your help (Thanks, Michael!)

Truth about Beyonce's inauguration performance can't be published until 2122

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:56:08 +0000

Muckrock Michael sez, "Today MuckRock's Mara Berg chronicles the saga of a particular public records request I put in for the following: A copy of the backing track used during Beyonce's Inauguration performance, as well as copies of other backing tracks created in preparation for Inauguration events, whether or not they were actually used. Unfortunately, while we received (some) of the requested documents, two outside legal experts and the U.S. Marines Corps have warned us strongly against publishing what we have. The reason? Copyright."

Cops in Somerville, MA: "It would endanger the public to tell you what guns we have"

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:56:45 +0000

Michael from Muckrock sez, "Want to know what guns your neighbor has? Generally public record. What guns your government has? That's top secret. A recent public records request for the armaments of a local police department in Somerville, MA., was met with a surprising response: Releasing a list of guns the department held 'is likely to jeopardize public safety,' and so is exempt from public disclosure. Maybe they're arming up for an insurrection?

Government Attic: repository of noteworthy declassified/FOIA'd/public records access government docs

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:12:55 +0000

A reader writes,

GovernmentAttic.org, a noncommercial independent website, announces the publication of thousands of important government documents obtained through proper channels using public records access laws such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Government Attic includes fascinating historical documents, oddities and fun stuff about government programs, and government "bloopers". Browsing the site is like rummaging through the Government's Attic -- hence the name.
Among the notable holdings:
- Tens of thousands of pages of FBI files on important events and famous people;
- Weird items seized by customs inspectors at airports;
- A listing of movies, books and TV shows available on the International Space Station;
- Air Defense System audio recordings of the events on 9/11;
- Lists of investigations performed by dozens of agency Inspectors General;
- Internal newsletters from the National Security Agency;
- Complaints to the FCC about various television series, including The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and Law & Order; and
- Documents from most federal agencies, including those with responsibilities in law enforcement, intelligence, and national defense.

Welcome to governmentattic.org

UFO memo the FBI's most viewed

Rob Beschizza — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:03:42 +0000

An unconfirmed report of a UFO over New Mexico is the most popular item in the FBI's online reading room, the agency reports. Russell Contreras with the AP:

Vaguely written, the memo describes a story told by an unnamed third party who claims an Air Force investigator reported that three flying saucers were recovered in New Mexico, though the memo doesn't say exactly where in the state. The FBI indexed the report for its files but did not investigate further; the name of an "infomant" reporting some of the information is blacked out in the memo.

Aaron Swartz's FBI File

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:54:18 +0000

Aaron Swartz spent many years trying to get the FBI to cough up its file on him. Now that Aaron is dead, that file is automatically declassified, so FireDogLake's DSWright decided to request it, and has posted it, with a summary:

Exceptions aside, the records reveal that the FBI investigated Swartz for his role in the accessing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) documents. Swartz himself was aware that he was being investigated and would later send a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for his own FBI file. Swartz’s request seems to be different than what I received at least in redactions for example the 4/16/2009 meeting was apparently with Swartz’s lawyer Andrew Good who refused to talk to the FBI unless an assurance was given that his client would not be hurt – no assurance would be given so no further conversation took place.
There is another odd redaction on 2/19/2009. The FBI agent writes a report that includes information from a New York Times article but redacts one of the names that is actually listed in the article – Carl Malamud. Malamud also seems to be the one referenced in the 4/15/2009 report in a conversation with the FBI claiming he did not know “how Aaron did it.”
Overall the files tell you more about the FBI than they do Swartz. They collected information from Linked In, followed his blog posts, and even thought his membership in the “Long-term Planning Committee for the Human Race” was worthy of note. There is also a Kafkaesque entry concerning Swartz’s blog post NYT Personals which includes the question “Want to have the F.B.I. open up a file on you as well?” – which I read for the first time in Swartz’s FBI file. One can only wonder what is in the two classified pages of Swartz’s FBI file.

Aaron Swartz’s FBI File

Aaron H. Swartz FBI File by Daniel Wright

FBI responds to ACLU FOIA request...with 111 blank pages

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:01:50 +0000

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI seeking details of its surveillance policy -- who it spies upon, and how, and under what circumstances. The FBI sent back two 50+ page memos in reply, each of them totally blacked out except for some information on the title page.

In a 12-minute video posted online, Weissmann spoke about two memos: one focused on the use of GPS tracking on forms of transportation beyond cars, the other regarding how Jones applies to tracking methods outside of GPS (presumably like cellphone ping data).
“Is it going to apply to boats, is it going to apply to airplanes?” Weissmann asks in the video. “Is it going to apply at the border? What’s it mean for the consent that’s given by an owner? What does it mean if consent is given by a possessor? And this is all about GPS, by the way, without getting into other types of techniques.”
And those questions remain wholly unanswered.
“The Justice Department’s unfortunate decision leaves Americans with no clear understanding of when we will be subjected to tracking—possibly for months at a time—or whether the government will first get a warrant,” Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney, wrote on Wednesday.

FBI to ACLU: Nope, we won't tell you how, when, or why we track you [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

Free Freedom of Information Requests, in honor of Aaron Swartz

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 05:00:11 +0000

Michael, from Muckrock (a site that helps you make Freedom of Information Act requests) sez, "Aaron Swartz was one of MuckRock's earliest users, and a steadfast friend and advisor. He regularly suggested that we make the site free for anyone to file a request, and so in his honor, we're doing that. Many of his own requests, on topics from the U.S. Mint to Bradley Manning to Domain Seizures, are public here. I was always struck by Aaron's confidence and sincerity when we spoke, and always sensed that to him, the latest charges were a game to be beaten. That it should end like this is too tragic for me to comprehend.

Australian Attorney General says that public scrutiny of spying bill would not be in the public interest

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:43:12 +0000

The Australian government is following the UK, US and Canadian governments' examples and establishing a secretive, no-holds-barred snooping regime. The "data retention" bill that's been prepared by the Federal Attorney-General’s Department requires ISPs to store all communications for two years, and grants wide access to those stored records, as well as allowing snooping on residents' social networking activities. What's more, the Attorney General has denied a Freedom of Information request for a look at the draft legislation from the Pirate Party, saying that public scrutiny of spying laws is "not in the public interest" and would be prejudicial to the decision-making process.

The Pirate Party, which is an activist and political organisation which lobbies to maintain and extend Australians’ digital rights and freedoms, issued a media release this morning noting that it had filed a Freedom of Information request with the department, seeking draft national security legislation which had been prepared in 2010 with respect to the current proposal. The draft legislation had been mentioned by the Sydney Morning Herald in an article in August.
However, the Attorney-General’s Department wrote back to the organisation this week, noting that the request had been denied. Logan Tudor, a legal officer with the department, wrote that he had decided that the draft legislation was exempted from being released because it contained material which was being deliberated on inside the department. “… the release of this material would, in my view, be contrary to the public interest,” Tudor wrote.
In the Pirate Party’s statement, its treasurer Rodney Serkowski described the response by the Attorney-General’s Department as “disgraceful and troubling”.
“They have completed draft legislation, prior to any transparent or consultative process, and are now denying access to that legislation, for reasons that are highly dubious and obviously politically motivated,” wrote Serkowski. “The Department is completely trashing any semblance or notion of transparency or participative democratic process of policy development.”

Govt censors pre-prepared data retention bills (via /.)

Feynman's FBI files

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:54:39 +0000

Michael sez,

Loved your piece about the Trinity graphic novel this morning, and thought you might find this interesting. MuckRock has published the FBI files of noted physicist, esteemed author and all-around geek Richard Feynman.
Feynman and the FBI had an extended encounter after the Bureau discovered he had been invited to speak at the USSR, which set off a flurry of investigations into his loyalty — even as he pestered the State Department for guidance on whether he should or shouldn't go, guidance they only gave belatedly.
Of particular interest to the FBI was his avid devotion to the art of lock picking, his high school membership in a socialism club (for social reasons, he swore), and the fact that he was a godless scientist who loved his bongo drums.
As always, the original FBI files are available free and unencumbered.

Which all puts me in mind of the outstanding Feynman graphic biography.

Austerity obliterates transparency: budget cuts mean cuts to Canada's Freedom of Information

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:53:53 +0000

A reader writes, "Yet another voice calling attention to the ever narrowing access to information in Canada as the Harper Government repeatedly thumb their nose at the Canadian Access to Information Act." And the CBC's Meagan Fitzpatrick reports:

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault reported today that the federal government's budget cuts could jeopardize a "fragile" access to information system that has been improving... Legault said the access to information areas within government departments tend to be vulnerable when there are cuts and she has already heard from some requestors that they've been told their files are being delayed because of cuts.

Budget cuts threaten access to information, watchdog says

Shocking new photos from BP disaster unearthed by Greenpeace

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:22:47 +0000

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones writes about a trove of new photographs documenting the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which released nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico two years ago.

In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life.The images were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act Request that Greenpeace filed back in August 2010, asking for any communication related to endangered and threatened Gulf species. Now, many months later, Greenpeace received a response from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included more than 100 photos from the spill, including many of critically endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles dead and covered in oil.

More photos and more about what they reveal at Mother Jones.

10MM images from Guatemala's National Police go online: disappearances, STD experiments, more

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:09:38 +0000

Forensic human rights statistician Patrick Ball sez, "More than 10 million images from the Historical Archive of the Guatemalan National Police (AHPN in the Spanish acronym) are now online at the University of Texas. Documents from the Archive start in the late nineteenth century and continue until the Police were disbanded in 1996. Scholars using the documents have detailed the role of the National Police in illegal surveillance and attacks on dissidents during Guatemala's armed internal conflict, scientists have used sampling and statistics to find patterns in the Archive that illuminate how command works, and prosecutors have won convictions of former police officers for disappearances that were unsolved for decades. Several retired officers from the senior leadership of the Police, including the former Director, Col. Héctor Bol de la Cruz, have been charged with overseeing disappearances in the 1980s, and are likely to stand trial. Now the AHPN is putting the entire archive online, unredacted, so that the world can learn from Guatemala's example."

A product of broad international collaboration, these digitized documents from the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN) aim to facilitate scholarly and legal research into a vast cache of historical documentation. The discovery of the National Police Historical Archive in 2005 opened an extensive and timely resource for the study of Guatemalan history and human rights in the region, spanning a broad array of topics from Guatemala's armed conflict between 1960 and 1996 to the sexually transmitted disease experiments performed at the behest of the United States government in the 1940s. The Archive is presented online here for the first time.
This site currently includes over 10 million scanned images of documents from the National Police Historical Archive. This digital archive mirrors and extends the physical archive that remains preserved in Guatemala as an important historical patrimony of the Guatemalan people.

Digital Archive of the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive (AHPN) (Thanks, Patrick!)

Five significant, formerly classified documents

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:09:15 +0000

To kick off Sunshine Week, Catherine Shreve, the librarian for public policy and political science at Duke University's Perkins Library lists her five favorite declassified documents.

3. Bay of Pigs: Military Evaluation of the Central Intelligence Agency Para-Military Plan, Cuba. This memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara in early 1961 foreshadowed the humiliating failure of President Kennedy's Cuban invasion. It reads in part: "The amphibious assault should be successful even if lightly opposed; however the personnel and plans for logistic support are marginal at best. Against moderate, determined resistance logistic support as presently planned will be inadequate."
4. Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction: Senate Report 109-331 "Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments (unclassified version)". This 2006 report refuted President George W. Bush's reason for invading Iraq -- that it was developing weapons of mass destruction. In part, it says: "Postwar findings support the assessment...that claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are 'highly dubious.'"
5. John Nash letters to National Security Agency. A find that made me smile, remembering the movie "A Beautiful Mind" based on the brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician John Nash. In this handwritten letter, he proposes an enciphering-deciphering machine he has invented. "I hope my handwriting, etc. do not give the impression I am just a crank or circle-squarer."

Top 5 Formerly Top Secret Documents (Thanks, Eric!)

HOWTO request your FBI file

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:54:52 +0000

xyzzy123 sez, "Want to make a freedom-of-information request to the FBI or other three-letter agencies for any information they might have about you? This post links to a website that lets you enter personal information (or not, if you prefer), and then automatically print form letters to the correct government offices."

The incident that precipitated the article is pretty bizarre: a woman with a history of protest asked the FBI for her file and discovered that she'd been closely followed. What's more, she learned that despite all that close surveillance, the FBI got her political allegiances completely wrong, describing bitter rivals as fellow travelers and generally getting it all messed up.

Life Get Your FBI File! (Thanks, xyzzy123!)

The Quantico Book of the Dead

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:01:39 +0000

Via a FOIA filing, Government Attic yielded the FBI's official list of notable dead people. (PDF link)

FOIA haul covers a half-century of government telephone security phear

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:36:05 +0000

Government Attic's latest FOIA haul is a compilation of FBI documents concerning the security of telephone services, 1952-1995. The collection is posted as a single 66MB monster PDF. Get cracking! On reading the PDF, I mean.

DOJ to America: we won't reveal the circumstances under which you can be assassinated by us

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:39:01 +0000

The DOJ has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request from the New York Times that asked the agency to reveal the legal basis for the newly unveiled American program of strategic drone-attack assassinations of American citizens off the field of battle.

Summary:

* The government dropped a bomb on a U.S. citizen,

* who, though a total dick and probably a criminal, may have been engaged only in propaganda,

* which, though despicable, is generally protected by the First Amendment;

* it did so without a trial or even an indictment (that we know of),

* based at least in part on evidence it says it has but won't show anyone,

* and on a legal argument it has apparently made but won't show anyone,

* and the very existence of which it will not confirm or deny;

* although don't worry, because the C.I.A. would never kill an American without having somebody do a memo first;

* and this is the "most transparent administration ever";

* currently run by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

For Christmas, Your Government Will Explain Why It's Legal to Kill You

Blackwater and co Iraq data-dump: mercenaries shot a judge with impunity, used bullets as hand signals, were not disciplined as this "would lower morale"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:32:51 +0000

Four years after their initial Freedom of Information Act request, Gawker has received and published 4,500 pages' worth of detail on the way that mercenaries from Blackwater and other defense contractors conducted themselves in Iraq. Their basic procedure appears to have been to shoot any car that attempted to pass or tailgate any of the convoys they guarded, especially if the driver was a "military aged male." Then, with no followup (or very little), they would conclude that the driver was unharmed and drive on, filing a report later. One victim of a ~~Blackwater~~ mercenary shooting was a judge, who was wounded in the leg (though the mercs' report claimed he was unharmed). The State Department backed the mecenaries on this; in Gawker's words, 'The State Department determined that shooting at judges for driving too fast in their own country is "within the established Department of State policy for escalation of force."' Other drivers were shot because they carried passengers with "devices" in their hands -- such as mobile phones.

When Blackwater teams were caught lying about their roadside battles and executions, they faced little or no discipline. The State Department officials supervising the mercenaries' behavior were told that discipline "would lower morale" among the mercenaries, and seemed to accept this at face value.

A July 2007 email from one State Department official to several colleagues—apparently in reference to the judge's shooting—openly worried about contractor teams indiscriminately shooting their way around Iraq:

When was the last time we...looked into all the other contractor PSD elements running around Iraq? I'm hearing stories of quite a few PSD elements moving from Mosul to Irbil firing up to 50 rounds per move and using bullets like we use hand and arm signals, flashers, or a water bottle. [Security teams would often toss plastic water bottles at the windshield of a suspicious car to get the driver's attention—Ed.]

It doesn't appear that anyone wrote him back or addressed his concerns.

Blackwater subsequently rebranded itself as "Xe," and has just changed its name to Academi, and is still seeking lucrative government contracts. I reviewed Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army in 2007, and it remains an important read for anyone who wants to understand the way that US-funded mercenaries run amok in America's fields of war (and in America's disaster zones, such as post-Katrina New Orleans), murdering and rampaging with impunity.

‘Gentlemen, We Shot a Judge’ and Other Tales of Blackwater, DynCorp, and Triple Canopy’s Rampage Through Iraq

Enthusiasm for tablets grows in government

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:27:32 +0000

Government workers are dying to get their hands on tablet computers, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act and published by Government Attic. The files show, however, that security protocols may result in a slow roll-out at some agencies.

The Federal Trade Commission, National Archives and Records Administration, Deparment of Veterans Affairs, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority each produced internal records which discuss the merits of iPads and similar devices.

Another federal agency, the General Services Administration, said that it would charge $113,680 to yield its internal discussions.

Though Apple's market-leading tablet appears to be the clear choice among rank-and-file workers, emails show security-focused IT staff leaning toward RIM's BlackBerry Playbook instead—at least until they get a closer look at it.

At the National Archives, released documents[PDF] included a proposal to "extend the availability of tablets to potentially all NARA staff," a capital planning review, and various memos and emails between staff.

"We have found the iPad for be very useful in investigating work at the OIG," wrote one agency official. "For example, instead of taking a bulky laptop to the collector shows where we have a display, or in some cases just walk around to meet and greet, the iPad works much better. It is light, has great battery power and is super fast."

The capital planning review saw nearly universal enthusiasm in the feedback garnered: "The iPad has dramatically improved my productivity," says one worker. " ... It would be great if we could find an iPad use for staff tied to our hard core busines functions - record centers, pulls/re-files, description, reference, etc. That would yield a big productivity gain and demonstrate a solid business case for more widespread use of tablets for our staff."

Adds another: "NARA should start building [iPad] apps for customers."

In the VA's disclosures[PDF], a memo dated August 22 describes a a pilot program established to determine the viability of iOS. The program, conducted with the help of Agilex, a government IT services contractor, was scheduled to end Oct 1. The memo prohibited field operations staff from purchasing more iOS devices: "VA currently has enough pilot users to determine viability..."

In another letter, the VA's assistant IT secretary writes that its remote access solutions are not compatible with devices such as the iPad, and discusses the measures they might take to allow workers to use them.

A selection of heavily-redacted documents from the FTC include details of a pitch from RIM to equip staff with its Blackberry PlayBook tablet[PDF]. Unfortunately for the Canadian firm, the device's shortcomings soon crop up in the form of a negative PC World review shared among officials.

At the Tennessee Valley Authority, staff produced a slick internal newsletter[PDF] covering the increased interest in tablets.

At the NHTSA, the BlackBerry Playbook is seen to have security advantages over the iPad[PDF]: "Given that Blackberry has built a strong reputation in enterprise security for movile deices in the federal sector, it does give it a leg up over Apple in the Enterprise Security space," writes one staffer in an email.

Responding to reports of increased interest in Apple's iPad by other government agencies, a senior IT project manager suggests Apple's portables are insecure due to the ability of users to "jailbreak" them.

"It's pretty obvious that with a security flaw clearly known, these devices should not be distributed beyond the R&D group," he writes. "I guess I have to ask the obvious, how is this an authorized piece of hardware at this point in any gov't shop?"

Unfortunately, RIM's alternative suffers from its own disadvantage: no-one seems to want one.

"I'm not hearing a huge uproar for the Playbook, probably 'cause of the downsides ... mentioned below," writes on staffer.

"I'm going to skip it," writes the project manager, concluding one email thread released to the public. "I only had a passing fancy."

DoD warming on cool energy?

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:38:20 +0000

A document revealed under the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. government is interested in low-energy nuclear reactions, but remains cautious due to the issues such as the "lack of robust experimental verification and rigorous peer review." [New Energy Times. Thanks, M!]

Which of America's mobile carriers keeps the most intel on you?

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:28:04 +0000

The American Civil Liberties Union has unearthed a Department of Justice document called Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers (PDF), which documents the length of time that America's mobile operators retain your texts, IP sessions, call details, and copies of your bills.

Verizon, for example, keeps a list of everyone you’ve exchanged text messages with for the past year, according to the document. But T-Mobile stores the same data up to five years. It’s 18 months for Sprint, and seven years for AT&T.
That makes Verizon appear to have the most privacy-friendly policy. Except that Verizon is alone in retaining the actual contents of text messages. It allegedly stores the messages for five days, while T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint don’t store them at all.
The document was unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina via a Freedom of Information Act claim. (After the group gave a copy to Wired.com, we also discovered it in two other places on the internet by searching its title.)

Which Telecoms Store Your Data the Longest? Secret Memo Tells All [wired.com]