Wikileaks' Vault 7 CIA document release

discoii

Wikileaks released Vault 7, a trove of CIA documents detailing their cyberwarfare arsenal, including revealing the ability for them to assassinate anyone driving a smart car (of which basically all newer models are), transform your smart TV into a surveillance post, among thousands of other goodie goods.

Four arguments against Wikileaks from liberals today:

1) They lost our precious Hillary the election so we will boycott them.

Counter: They did that by pointing out that the DNC deliberately tampered with Bernie Sanders' election chances. Do you not like accurate news? If no, then you have no basis to criticize Fox, Breitbart, Drudge et al for anything. If yes, suck it up, we all should make decisions based on reasons and good data.

2) They are an instrument of Russian state media.

Counter: Wikileaks has had 100% publication accuracy and always has, even before the alleged association with the Russian government. They have released documents implicating both Democrats and Republicans since almost a decade ago. Do you not like accurate news?

3) We already knew about most of the leaks.
Counter: No you didn't, unless you worked in the CIA -- and even then, you still probably didn't.

4) We have nothing to hide, so why is this relevant?
Counter: Let me put it to you in a way you can understand. Trump has the ability to blow up your car at will and no one will know who did it. And that's just one tool he has, among multiple thousand. Even if you trusted Obama with these tools (which, by the way, were developed under the Obama presidency), do you really trust Trump to be responsible?

You can say "oh, get off your high horse!" to which we respond "how about you hop on?"

Moliere

Maaan.... liberals in the U.S. are worthless. Which is basically just a rah-rah, yeah, but hey -- rah-rah yeah. ;)

I know who I'd vote for -- but it's basically based upon who I have a larger chance, relatively speaking, of guilt-tripping into doing what I think is better, if not best.

Shawn

So, what's your point here?

I mean, it's kind of obvious. The only safe place is cyberspace or a house in the middle of nowhere; but, even using TOR and other such methods flags you for further surveillance.

It's really a no win situation.

discoii

↪Question

Well, maybe a first step is to know how they get into your devices and then force them to either stop doing it or defund them entirely. In the leaks, it says the CIA had to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to get around some regulations -- which effectively compromised their organization's ability to act covertly, which ultimately led to these leaks.

So what we should be doing is adding a whole bunch of forced mental gymnastics clauses to make them just not do any of this.

Shawn

↪discoii

If it's for the sake of national security, and always will be, then there will always be ways around civil rights, even more so post-Patriot Act.

discoii

↪Question

Well, guess we should all give up then.

Metaphysician Undercover

Wikileaks has had 100% publication accuracy and always has, — discoii

What does this mean?

Shawn

Well, guess we should all give up then. — discoii

Give up on what exactly? I never trusted the government, but I'm a nobody and never will be. Besides, there's so much information out there, that there's no way to sift through it all by any human means. Unless, you become a target for whatever reason.

Journalists have pretty safe protection still, though.

You can use plenty of operating systems that are hardened and secure to a reasonable degree along with some pretty sophisticated anonymizing techniques.

discoii

↪Metaphysician Undercover

It means that the claims they make about things in the world correspond to their factual being in the world 100% of the time, at least as far as claims about factual things in the world can be considered accurate if there is direct evidence that verifies that their claim about the fact in the world is true.

It does not mean that their textual description of the world is necessarily accurate to 100% to how it is in the world -- since there is still information entropy.

discoii

↪Question

Give up on trying to pressure the government to not do this? That's all I'm saying here.

Since there are intelligence agencies, politicians, public advocacy groups that are vying for power, and one source of power is political legitimacy, then trying to get certain intelligence agencies to comply with the law involves playing all the players against one another.

Shawn

↪discoii

Yeah; but, it's been going on for/since the start of the cold war.

It's been pretty good so far?

discoii

↪Question

Technologically, yeah, it's been great for intelligence agencies.

But as far as defense of our civil liberties goes, yeah and during that whole time it would have been much worse if there weren't people doing anything about it.

Pneumenon

In the leaks, it says the CIA had to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to get around some regulations -- which effectively compromised their organization's ability to act covertly, which ultimately led to these leaks.

So what we should be doing is adding a whole bunch of forced mental gymnastics clauses to make them just not do any of this. — discoii

Bingo. The value of adding regulations is not that the intelligence agencies will follow them (they won't), but that it gives us an excuse to bust them when they start getting too big for their britches. One of the few cases where bureaucratic bloat is useful.

Wayfarer

I can't see anything good about it, exposing corruption is one thing, but simply publishing all this stuff because it's secret is something else altogether.

Harry Hindu

2) They are an instrument of Russian state media.

Counter: Wikileaks has had 100% publication accuracy and always has, even before the alleged association with the Russian government. They have released documents implicating both Democrats and Republicans since almost a decade ago. Do you not like accurate news? — discoii

So then why don't they release a hoard of info on Russia and Putin, or China, or other countries? Why focus on the US? Maybe because Assange knows that he will be assassinated if he were to do so, kind of like how environmentalist whacks don't go to China to spout their propaganda for fear of being jailed or eliminated. It's all right to talk dirty about the country that embodies free speech, but fail to be consistent when talking dirty about other countries that aren't, and have just as much skeletons in the closet as anyone else.

discoii

↪Harry Hindu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_material_published_by_WikiLeaks

Also, have you considered that Wikileaks is an English speaking organization? A Chinese leak would require a bunch of Chinese <-> English translators to verify it doesn't destroy the entire Chinese government (same thing Wikileaks mostly does with the US).

I can't see anything good about it, exposing corruption is one thing, but simply publishing all this stuff because it's secret is something else altogether. — Wayfarer

But it isn't that simple. This stuff comes out as an act of whistleblowing, which is an act of alerting attention to a perceived wrongdoing. The reason given would not simply be because it's secret, but because it's secret and shouldn't be because of x, y and z. One reason has already been suggested, which is that the authority in question can't be trusted to be responsible.

Metaphysician Undercover

This stuff comes out as an act of whistleblowing, which is an act of alerting attention to a perceived wrongdoing. — Sapientia

How is the act of spying, by the CIA, perceived as wrongdoing, isn't that their mandate? Oh I think I understand, when you're a member of the party being spied on, then it's clearly wrongdoing.

Shawn

Freedom ain't free.

That entails civil liberties as well.

Hell, you had the director of the FBI coming out today and saying that there's no such thing as absolute privacy in America. I can understand why given how many people hate America for meddling with their affairs, which is something I hope decreases and not increases with these tools the CIA and other agencies use.

Wayfarer

One reason has already been suggested, which is that the authority in question can't be trusted to be responsible — Sapientia

Call me reactionary but I trust Assange a great deal less than the institutions he's exposing - in this case anyway.

Wayfarer

Snowden is in Russia. If Assange wasn't holed up in an Embassy he'd be there too, I'm sure. Putin is running rings around the West and they're aiding and abetting him. Trump is too vain to see it because Putin plays him like a fiddle. For that matter, where are all the big leaks out of the Russian spy services? I bet if Wikileaks dared publish a whole bunch of KGB information, Assange would be dead the week after, embassy or no embassy.

tom

4) We have nothing to hide, so why is this relevant?
Counter: Let me put it to you in a way you can understand. Trump has the ability to blow up your car at will and no one will know who did it. And that's just one tool he has, among multiple thousand. Even if you trusted Obama with these tools (which, by the way, were developed under the Obama presidency), do you really trust Trump to be responsible? — discoii

I think you've missed the point of "Vault 7 Part One".

It was these very cyber-attack tools that were used to wire-tap Trump and his transition team during the election and during the transition. It was these very tools that were used to masquerade as Russian hacks, to provide probable-cause to get the FISA warrant to spy on Trump. Furthermore, Obama seduced the security clearance of the wire-taps on Trump and ordered their wide dissemination among the security community - basically facilitating the leaks.

An interesting side issue is that Loretta Lynch made the last (and successful) FISA application hours after meeting with Bill Clinton.

Trump was told of the contents of Vault7 a few days before the dump, hence his famous Twitter tirade against Obama for spying on him. Various conversations that were used to incriminate Flynn took place in Trump Tower. Now Trump knows not only where he was spied on, but how, by whom, and the source of his alleged Russian connections.

There is unquestionably going to be a shit-storm of large proportions over this. It is essentially sedition, if not an actual attempted coup, on behalf of Obama-loyalists in CIA.

The CIA is clearly out of Trump's control, but there are also clearly some members of the CIA, at a lower level, who are on his side.

But even this isn't the main shocking revelation of Vault7, if sedition was not enough. It's that after spending $100Billion developing "Umbrage", the CIA have lost control of it. If you know the right people, you could get a copy!

Wayfarer

?

tom

Looks like the Germans may prosecute over the CIA hacker base in Frankfurt!

Call me reactionary but I trust Assange a great deal less than the institutions he's exposing - in this case anyway. — Wayfarer

Assange doesn't have the ability to assassinate anyone driving a smart car, transform your smart TV into a surveillance post, and thousands of other goodie goods. He has the ability to publish information. The two are hardly analogous.

tom

Assange doesn't have the ability to assassinate anyone driving a smart car, transform your smart TV into a surveillance post, and thousands of other goodie goods. He has the ability to publish information. The two are hardly analogous. — Sapientia

Assange may indeed have much of that ability, as have others.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

Assange may indeed have much of that ability, as have others.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. — tom

It's possible, but that's not good enough reason to believe that it's true. We have good enough reason to believe that it's true of the CIA. If someone were to expose Assange (assuming, of course, that there's something there to expose) like he has exposed the CIA, then that'd be good enough reason, but that hasn't happened as far as I'm aware. It would probably be all over the news if it had. I'm not going to lap up some conspiracy theory attempting to turn the tables on Assange - possibly with an agenda.

discoii

↪tom

This isn't new in politics -- I don't think anything here is that revealing insofar as scandals go. Every president has basically used the CIA for political ends since its inception -- whether it be foreign ends or local ends. So, your outrage here might be about 50 years late. Personally, the game doesn't bother me that much if it's used against themselves. I like it when the hydra eats its own heads, so to speak.

Metaphysician Undercover

It was these very cyber-attack tools that were used to wire-tap Trump and his transition team during the election and during the transition. It was these very tools that were used to masquerade as Russian hacks, to provide probable-cause to get the FISA warrant to spy on Trump. Furthermore, Obama seduced the security clearance of the wire-taps on Trump and ordered their wide dissemination among the security community - basically facilitating the leaks. — tom

If there was evidence of Russian hacking, and interfering in the U.S. election, then isn't it the responsibility of the CIA to determine the specifics about this activity? Wire tapping is a standard procedure isn't it? I think your claim that the Russian hacks are fictitious is a little far-fetched.

Wayfarer

Assange doesn't have the ability to assassinate anyone driving a smart car, transform your smart TV into a surveillance post, and thousands of other goodie goods. He has the ability to publish information. The two are hardly analogous. — Sapientia

What I mean is, I don't much trust US government agencies, but I trust Assange's motivations less.

I think your claim that the Russian hacks are fictitious is a little far-fetched. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only 'a little'?

What I mean is, I don't much trust US government agencies, but I trust Assange's motivations less. — Wayfarer

Okay, but this isn't about Assange. It doesn't matter who published the information. What matters is the information itself and its consequences.

Wikileaks' Vault 7 CIA document release

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