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Saturday, 3 September 2011
WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange Could Face Arrest in Australia
A question: Are the ASIO agents names printed in the Australian 'Government Gazette'?
The United States of Chris Mitchell: The Power of Rupert Murdoch and the Australian’s Editor-in-Chief
Talk to any journalist, commentator, politician or public figure in Australia, and it seems they all have a view of Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Australian newspaper, now widely regarded as the most influential news outlet in the country – one that polarises readers and infuriates targets with its relentless crusading journalism.
Visionary. Zealot. Grenade thrower. The last of the great newspaper men. Arch Machiavellian brute – this from Mitchell himself, delivered tongue-in-cheek, and for the purpose of denying it.
If there is one thing his detractors and admirers largely agree on, though, it is that Mitchell has styled himself as the most powerful media executive in the land and transformed Rupert Murdoch’s flagship into a journal whose political impact far outweighs its modest circulation of 130,000 on a weekday.
“The biggest story in politics at the moment is the relationship between News Limited and the government,” a veteran Canberra-watcher says. According to a News Limited insider, “Mitchell has inculcated a view [at the newspaper] that they are there not only to critique and oversee the government, [but also that] it is their role to dictate policy shifts, that they are the true Opposition.” An angry cabinet minister fumed recently, “The Oz doesn’t report the policy issues. It just reports that big business is shitting on the government, and Abbott is shitting on the government, it reports politics in any way that shits on the government, day after day.” Whether it’s climate change, asylum seekers, industrial relations, the schools building program or the National Broadband Network: “It’s just ‘let’s shit on the government’, every single fucking day.”
Chris Mitchell once told a colleague, “You have to understand – this is a dictatorship and I am the dictator.”
So who is the strongman at the helm of Australia’s national broadsheet? And have he and his paper overreached the proper role of the fourth estate in holding governments to account..?
Continue reading
Sally Neigbour @'The Monthly'
First Listen: Wild Flag - 'Wild Flag'
Let's look back, past the swirling cloud of expectation that has subsequently gathered around the first full-length recording by said "supergroup," and focus on that statement. Out Sept. 13, Wild Flag the album sounds more than anything like the work of four people who need music. People who, after more than two decades of playing, still need it as much as they did the day they started.
A lot of the album, in one way or another, is about music: the way it pulls you into the moment, the way it moves and seduces, the way it communicates across barriers of space, time, and language. "We love the sound, the sound is what found us / Sound is the blood between me and you," they sing in the indelible chorus of "Romance."
When they're not singing out loud, Brownstein and Timony's guitars speak volumes: They're two of the most wonderfully lyrical players out there. Add Weiss' exuberant beats, Cole's keyboard flourishes, and some killer multi-part vocal harmonizing by all four, and you've got a supergroup superball sound that bounces between Television, Wire, and The Go-Gos but always lands in a place very much their own.
The album is a no-frills affair, recorded live (except for the vocals) in The Hangar, a cavernous Sacramento recording studio that occasionally doubles as a skate park. It sounds live, as hard to imagine as that is: a real live record with a beating heart, a record that needs you as much as you need it.
Rachel Smith @'npr'
Hear 'Wild Flag' In Its Entirety
Henry Rollins Speaks On The Freeing of the West Memphis Three
If you are not familiar with this agonizing -- yet simultaneously fascinating -- case, I encourage you to learn about it. It is the perfect tragedy. In 1993, three 8-year-old boys were found dead in a secluded area of West Memphis, Ark. With no physical evidence and a very suspect confession, three teenage boys were found guilty of the murders in a trial that was the stuff of bad television.
The teenagers became known as the West Memphis Three. They are now free. With a new trial about to start -- featuring new evidence to be introduced by the defense, earlier witnesses recanting testimony and new witnesses with new information set to testify -- suddenly the prosecution seemed uninterested in doing battle again. Interestingly, Echols, who was on death row after having been found guilty of murdering three people, now was seen fit to leave his cage and go free. Someone blinked. It wasn't Echols.
I bring all of this up because this case seemed to be embraced by a lot of bands, musicians and young people all over the world. In the West Memphis Three, a lot of people saw themselves. Heavy-metal albums found in their rooms, antisocial behavior -- the very stuff of youth -- were used in court. In lieu of any physical evidence placing them at the crime scene, this "evidence" supposedly showed that these three were definitely the ones who did it.
In a real court of law, this would have been laughed out of the courtroom.
I found out about the case more than a decade ago. I read about it online and it seemed to me that justice had not been served. After seeing a documentary on the case, Paradise Lost, with Metallica providing the soundtrack, I decided I was angry enough to get involved...
Cryptocurrency
Continue reading
James Surowiecki @'technology review'
ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald
Here's a list of all of Open Leaks' disclosures so far - also has the names of those killed from WikiLeaks' releases: is.gd/kWFSg3
Friday, 2 September 2011
Charles Schulz Draws Charlie Brown
Charles "Sparky" Schulz talks about Charlie Brown as he draws him playing the piano in this official video clip from the never released documentary, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown."
Via
The life of a heroin user
Others are opium, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, buprenorphine and methadone.
Of all these drugs, heroin is probably the one perceived to be the most dangerous. But what do we really know about who's likely to even try heroin or become addicted to it?
In his new book Professor Shane Darke, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, takes a biographical approach to the lifecycle of the heroin user from birth until death.
Listen/Download
@'ABC'
LulzSec Kayla suspect(s) held in UK
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) have today arrested two men for conspiring to commit offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The arrests - [E] 24ys and [F] 20ys - are part of an ongoing investigation in collaboration with the FBI, South Yorkshire Police and other law enforcement bodies in the UK and overseas, into the activities of the online 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec - in particular in connection with suspected offences conducted under the cover of the online identity 'Kayla'.
The men were arrested separately at addresses in Mexborough, Doncaster, South Yorkshire and Warminster, Wiltshire. The Doncaster address was searched by police and computer equipment was removed for forensic examination.
The arrested men have been detained at police stations in South Yorkshire and central London whilst further enquiries and interviews are conducted.
Detective Inspector Mark Raymond, from the PCeU, said: "The arrests relate to our enquiries into a series of serious computer intrusions and online denial-of-service attacks recently suffered by a number of multi-national companies, public institutions and government and law enforcement agencies in Great Britain and the United States.
"We are working to detect and bring before the courts those responsible for these offences, to disrupt such groups, and to deter others thinking of participating in this type of criminal activity."
@'The Met'
The arrests - [E] 24ys and [F] 20ys - are part of an ongoing investigation in collaboration with the FBI, South Yorkshire Police and other law enforcement bodies in the UK and overseas, into the activities of the online 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec - in particular in connection with suspected offences conducted under the cover of the online identity 'Kayla'.
The men were arrested separately at addresses in Mexborough, Doncaster, South Yorkshire and Warminster, Wiltshire. The Doncaster address was searched by police and computer equipment was removed for forensic examination.
The arrested men have been detained at police stations in South Yorkshire and central London whilst further enquiries and interviews are conducted.
Detective Inspector Mark Raymond, from the PCeU, said: "The arrests relate to our enquiries into a series of serious computer intrusions and online denial-of-service attacks recently suffered by a number of multi-national companies, public institutions and government and law enforcement agencies in Great Britain and the United States.
"We are working to detect and bring before the courts those responsible for these offences, to disrupt such groups, and to deter others thinking of participating in this type of criminal activity."
@'The Met'
Anonymous and Lulzsec: Two Men held in hacking inquiry
The Murdoch Media Empire Has Cost Humanity Decades in the Battle Against Climate Change
Reality becomes so distorted that The Australian was able to state earlier this month, “it is in keeping with this newspaper’s rationalist pedigree that we have long accepted the peer-reviewed science on anthropogenic climate change,” while at the same time engaging in a campaign to misrepresent and distort climate science.
Other editorials have made it clear that The Australian believes it is treating its readers as mature adults who should be able to make up their own minds based on arguments from “both sides” of the debate.
The problem is that on one side of the debate you have 97% of the world’s published climate scientists and the world’s major scientific organisations, and on the other side you have fools.
Excuse my bluntness, but it is past time to acknowledge that the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid. The sceptics have had the time and opportunity to come with up a convincing case, but their best efforts read like arguments that NASA faked the moon landing.
My colleagues working in the climate sciences have largely given up trying to correct the constant stream of misinformation from The Australian, in frustration.
The Australian’s anti-science campaign takes many forms.
One is the inflation of the credentials of their fake experts. For example, OpEd writer and member of the Outdoor Recreation Party Jon Jenkins was referred to as an “Adjunct Professor”. Bond University wrote to The Australian informing them that this was not true...
Clinton Fearon - 2011 06 18 @ Saint Gratien Centre culturel du forum
Former Gladiators lead singer Clinton Fearon playing The Gladiators "On the other side" and 2 solo tracks "Who cares" & "Vision"
A Dispatch Disaster in Six Acts
In the end, all the efforts at confidentiality came to naught. Everyone who knows a bit about computers can now have a look into the 250,000 US diplomatic dispatches that WikiLeaks made available to select news outlets late last year. All of them. What's more, they are the unedited, unredacted versions complete with the names of US diplomats' informants -- sensitive names from Iran, China, Afghanistan, the Arab world and elsewhere.
SPIEGEL reported on the secrecy slip-up last weekend, but declined to go into detail. Now, however, the story has blown up. And is one that comes as a result of a series of mistakes made by several different people. Together, they add up to a catastrophe. And the series of events reads like the script for a B movie. Act One: The Whistleblower and the JournalistThe story began with a secret deal. When David Leigh of the Guardian finally found himself sitting across from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as the British journalist recounts in his book "Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy", the two agreed that Assange would provide Leigh with a file including all of the diplomatic dispatches received by WikiLeaks.
Assange placed the file on a server and wrote down the password on a slip of paper -- but not the entire password. To make it work, one had to complete the list of characters with a certain word. Can you remember it? Assange asked. Of course, responded Leigh.
It was the first step in a disclosure that became a worldwide sensation. As a result of Leigh's meeting with Assange, not only the Guardian, but also the New York Times, SPIEGEL and other media outlets published carefully chosen -- and redacted -- dispatches. Editors were at pains to black out the names of informants who could be endangered by the publication of the documents.
Act Two: The German Spokesman Takes the Dispatch File when Leaving WikiLeaks
At the time, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who later founded the site OpenLeaks, was the German spokesman for WikiLeaks. When he and others undertook repairs on the WikiLeaks server, he took a dataset off the server which contained all manner of files and information that had been provided to WikiLeaks. What he apparently didn't know at the time, however, was that the dataset included the complete collection of diplomatic dispatches hidden in a difficult-to-find sub-folder.
After making the data in this hidden sub-folder available to Leigh, Assange apparently simply left it there. After all, it seemed unlikely that anyone would ever find it.
But now, the dataset was in the hands of Domscheit-Berg. And the password was easy to find if one knew where to look. In his book Leigh didn't just describe his meeting with Assange, but he also printed the password Assange wrote down on the slip of paper complete with the portion he had to remember.
Act Three: Well-Meaning Helpers Accidentally Put the Cables into Circulation
Immediately after the first diplomatic dispatches were made public, WikiLeaks became the target of several denial-of-service attacks and several US companies, including Mastercard, PayPal and Amazon, withdrew their support. Quickly, several mirror servers were set up to prevent WikiLeaks from disappearing completely from the Internet. Well-meaning WikiLeaks supporters also put online a compressed version of all data that had been published by WikiLeaks until that time via the filesharing protocol BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is decentralized. Data which ends up on several other computers via the site can essentially no longer be recalled. As a result, WikiLeaks supporters had in their possession the entire dataset that Domscheit-Berg took off the WikiLeaks server, including the hidden data file. Presumably thousands of WikiLeaks sympathizers -- and, one supposes, numerous secret service agents -- now had copies of all previous WikiLeaks publications on their hard drives.
And, what they didn't know, a password-protected copy of all the diplomatic dispatches from the US State Department...
Continue reading
Christian Stöcker @'Der Spiegel'
Unredacted State Department Cables Are Unleashed Online
An encrypted WikiLeaks file containing some 251,000 unredacted U.S. State Department cables is now widely available online, along with the passphrase to open it. The release of the documents in raw form, with the names of U.S. informants around the globe exposed in them, has raised concerns that dozens of people could now be in danger.
The release of the file comes amidst a heated blamefest between WikiLeaks and the Guardian newspaper in London, who let slip the encrypted version of the database and the decryption key respectively. As details about how the leak occurred surface, it appears that both organizations share the blame.
The 1.73-GB file and passphrase were published Thursday on Cryptome, a competing secret-spilling site, after news broke over the last week that they had been circulating on the internet unnoticed for several months. A keyword search through the file by Wired.com shows that the uncensored cables contain over 2,000 occurrences of the phrase “strictly protect”, which is used in cables to denote sources of information whose identities diplomats consider confidential.
It’s unclear how the release will affect imprisoned 23-year-old Pfc. Bradley Manning, who’s facing court martial for allegedly leaking the database to WikiLeaks last year.
WikiLeaks had given the Guardian access to the file, along with the passphrase, last summer when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange met with Guardian editor David Leigh.
WikiLeaks, the Guardian and other media outlets have been publishing the cables in dribs and drabs since last November, after carefully removing the names of most informants. The full database of cables was to have been released piecemeal through November 29 of this year. But on Friday, as news of the leaked file and passphrase were made public, WikiLeaks suddenly began publishing a torrent of cables from the database. It has so far published about 144,000 cables, most of them unclassified. The Associated Press found the names of 90 confidential U.S. sources, including human rights workers laboring under totalitarian regimes, named in that subset of cables.
WikiLeaks said in a statement that it “advanced its regular publication schedule, to get as much of the material as possible into the hands of journalists and human rights lawyers who need it,” before information about the file and passphrase was widely published and repressive regimes sifted through the cables. WikiLeaks has been soliciting votes from the public on whether people agree or disagree that all 250,000 of the cables should be released in raw, unredacted form. The popular vote favors release, and WikiLeaks has telegraphed on Twitter its intention to publish. But this time third parties have overtaken the secret-spilling site, and the file is already easily found elsewhere.
WikiLeaks blames the Guardian for disclosing the password, which it did so in a book it published earlier this year about its collaboration with WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks called the Guardian’s action “gross negligence or malice.” “The Guardian disclosure is a violation of the confidentiality agreement between WikiLeaks and Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, signed July 30, 2010,” the group said in a lengthy statement.
The Guardian has downplayed its role in the debacle, while simultaneously revealing a lack of security savviness at the dawn of its relationship with WikiLeaks. The paper notes that although the Guardian’s book did reveal the passphrase, it did not reveal the location of the file, and that Assange had told the paper that “it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.”
“No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files,” the paper went on to say. “That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.”
Crypto keys, however, last forever, and even if WikiLeaks hadn’t blundered in its handling of the encrypted file, the Guardian clearly should have treated the key as highly-sensitive for the foreseeable future.
The fracas heated up last Friday when an editor for the German news weekly Der Freitag revealed that his publication had found the uncensored cables in a 1.73-GB password-protected file named “cables.csv” that was available on the internet, and that the password had inadvertently been published online.
WikiLeaks revealed on Wednesday that the passphrase was indeed been published in a book written by Leigh. In the book, Leigh wrote that during the paper’s meeting with Assange in Belgium last year, Assange had given him the passphrase, in part in writing, and in part orally.
Assange had told the paper that the file, which was placed in a subdirectory on a WikiLeaks server, would remain online only a short time, after which it would be removed. Assange, however, apparently never removed the file, and it later found its way into the hands of the organization’s former spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and then back to WikiLeaks, after which it wound up on BitTorrent as part of a large archive of WikiLeaks files, which could be downloaded by anyone.
Kim Zetter @'Wired'
The release of the file comes amidst a heated blamefest between WikiLeaks and the Guardian newspaper in London, who let slip the encrypted version of the database and the decryption key respectively. As details about how the leak occurred surface, it appears that both organizations share the blame.
The 1.73-GB file and passphrase were published Thursday on Cryptome, a competing secret-spilling site, after news broke over the last week that they had been circulating on the internet unnoticed for several months. A keyword search through the file by Wired.com shows that the uncensored cables contain over 2,000 occurrences of the phrase “strictly protect”, which is used in cables to denote sources of information whose identities diplomats consider confidential.
It’s unclear how the release will affect imprisoned 23-year-old Pfc. Bradley Manning, who’s facing court martial for allegedly leaking the database to WikiLeaks last year.
WikiLeaks had given the Guardian access to the file, along with the passphrase, last summer when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange met with Guardian editor David Leigh.
WikiLeaks, the Guardian and other media outlets have been publishing the cables in dribs and drabs since last November, after carefully removing the names of most informants. The full database of cables was to have been released piecemeal through November 29 of this year. But on Friday, as news of the leaked file and passphrase were made public, WikiLeaks suddenly began publishing a torrent of cables from the database. It has so far published about 144,000 cables, most of them unclassified. The Associated Press found the names of 90 confidential U.S. sources, including human rights workers laboring under totalitarian regimes, named in that subset of cables.
WikiLeaks said in a statement that it “advanced its regular publication schedule, to get as much of the material as possible into the hands of journalists and human rights lawyers who need it,” before information about the file and passphrase was widely published and repressive regimes sifted through the cables. WikiLeaks has been soliciting votes from the public on whether people agree or disagree that all 250,000 of the cables should be released in raw, unredacted form. The popular vote favors release, and WikiLeaks has telegraphed on Twitter its intention to publish. But this time third parties have overtaken the secret-spilling site, and the file is already easily found elsewhere.
WikiLeaks blames the Guardian for disclosing the password, which it did so in a book it published earlier this year about its collaboration with WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks called the Guardian’s action “gross negligence or malice.” “The Guardian disclosure is a violation of the confidentiality agreement between WikiLeaks and Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, signed July 30, 2010,” the group said in a lengthy statement.
The Guardian has downplayed its role in the debacle, while simultaneously revealing a lack of security savviness at the dawn of its relationship with WikiLeaks. The paper notes that although the Guardian’s book did reveal the passphrase, it did not reveal the location of the file, and that Assange had told the paper that “it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.”
“No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files,” the paper went on to say. “That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.”
Crypto keys, however, last forever, and even if WikiLeaks hadn’t blundered in its handling of the encrypted file, the Guardian clearly should have treated the key as highly-sensitive for the foreseeable future.
The fracas heated up last Friday when an editor for the German news weekly Der Freitag revealed that his publication had found the uncensored cables in a 1.73-GB password-protected file named “cables.csv” that was available on the internet, and that the password had inadvertently been published online.
WikiLeaks revealed on Wednesday that the passphrase was indeed been published in a book written by Leigh. In the book, Leigh wrote that during the paper’s meeting with Assange in Belgium last year, Assange had given him the passphrase, in part in writing, and in part orally.
Assange had told the paper that the file, which was placed in a subdirectory on a WikiLeaks server, would remain online only a short time, after which it would be removed. Assange, however, apparently never removed the file, and it later found its way into the hands of the organization’s former spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and then back to WikiLeaks, after which it wound up on BitTorrent as part of a large archive of WikiLeaks files, which could be downloaded by anyone.
Kim Zetter @'Wired'
keepingitpeel Keeping It Peel
Listen to John Peel's 50th birthday w/live perf from House Of Love/Wedding Present/The Fall: 1) nka.nu/3n9 2) nka.nu/3na
Listen to John Peel's 50th birthday w/live perf from House Of Love/Wedding Present/The Fall: 1) nka.nu/3n9 2) nka.nu/3na
wikileaks WikiLeaks
WIKILEAKS RELEASE: Australia: All US cables from Australia released, including SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL wikileaks.org/tag/AU_0.html
WIKILEAKS RELEASE: Australia: All US cables from Australia released, including SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL wikileaks.org/tag/AU_0.html
Thursday, 1 September 2011
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