W i k i l e a k s

The Washington Post newspaper has had several articles about the Wikileaks issue in the last few days. One of the interesting facts was that there is no law per say against publishing classified material. It's a freedom of the press issue. There are non-disclosure agreements that everyone with access to classified material signs. Violation of that agreement is what will convict the Army private the actually stole the info. As far as harm, it was pointed in the newspaper that no actual harm could be shown when the classified Pentagon papers were published decades ago.

One of the obvious faults is the total lack of access control on the State Department's data servers. Apparently total lack of any information technology controls. For example it's very simple to put in place controls that flag repeated large downloads by a single individual. Lots of other concerns, too. For example, why would there be a file zip and CD burning capability on the computers. When you want to restrict data you don't give any user the tools to steal it!

Of the government agencies, the Social Security Administration is the gold standard in protecting it's data. There are lots of checks and monitoring of access to data records, especially when accessing real peoples data. The rest of the government could learn from the processes used at SSA. My wife was a computer specialist at SSA headquarters for most of her civil service career.

I'm not sure I'd brag about SSA and "security"

http://www.examiner.com/finance-examine ... ompromised

A San Diego based company has finished doing analysis on more than 290 million social security numbers issued to the American people, and they have discovered that over 40 million have been found to be attached to more than one person.

Social Security fraud is probably only second behind Medicare fraud.

The thing about WikiLeaks.............It just showed me that we are as bad as we say every other country is. I thought we were supposed to be better than every one else. Treating others with respect.

Compromising details aside there is not going to be much in those documents that is going to surprise very many people. The only thing say Russia for example is going to be pissed about is they were publicly released like that. They probably want Assange in jail just as much as many here in the US.

If they put Assange in jail, they would have to put every member of the media that has ever reported "a source told us..."

Assange didn't steal the information. He published it. I know we don't use it anymore, but that used to be covered under the First Amendment.

Theres a reason why some things that go on are better off not being known about by everyone. And no the United States is not the purveyors of truth, freedom & fair-play that the average citizen wants to think. That being said we are still IMO hands down the best & fairest but in a dog eat dog world you got to make sure your dog eats.

jpete wrote:Assange didn't steal the information. He published it. I know we don't use it anymore, but that used to be covered under the First Amendment.

If he had access to real time data of the exact locations of our carriers and published it do you still feel the same way? If he has in his possession some really sensitive information that could put this country at risk and publishes it then what?

There's a limit here on freedom of the press and he's certainly toeing the line or has gone over it. I know in the past news organizations have held up, redacted or not published documents in their possession out of concern for national interests. This person apprently has no concern as shown by the release of the list I noted above, the only thing that release has done is given our enemies a laundry list of targets. Granted many things on that list might be well known but there is still no justification for it other than his own self interests.

FYI, Assange has been arrested: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/07 ... police-uk/

jpete wrote:

A San Diego based company has finished doing analysis on more than 290 million social security numbers issued to the American people, and they have discovered that over 40 million have been found to be attached to more than one person.

Social Security fraud is probably only second behind Medicare fraud.

I agree. But the fraud does not exist because of some access to the social security records. It exists because individuals are making fraudulent claims, usually using forged documents. In the Wikileaks State Department leak there wasn't any checks on access to the classified data. When you are protecting a secret you have to devise a system that can catch someone that does have authorized access but is up to no good. Monitoring and review of who accesses data and how much of it can identify it. But there first needs to be such a monitoring system in place. It appears there wasn't any for the State Department data. For SSA data records such a system is in place.

How can you say that when fraud is rampant? If there were a system in place to determine who is accessing the system, fraud would be nil.

If you mean they know which employee accesses the system, that's virtually meaningless because the bad guys aren't employees.

And the bad guy in the majority of this WikiLeaks stuff is a Pfc that was fully authorized to access the system so what good did any of the "security" do?

samhill wrote:Theres a reason why some things that go on are better off not being known about by everyone. And no the United States is not the purveyors of truth, freedom & fair-play that the average citizen wants to think. That being said we are still IMO hands down the best & fairest but in a dog eat dog world you got to make sure your dog eats.

If this government wants to take action that foments terrorism and then in order to "protect" me from that terrorism it seeks to violate me Constitutional rights, then I think I need to know what they do in my name.

Rrringgggg rrrinnnngggg

" You have reached the office of Julian Assange. Mr. Assange is unable to answer your call at the moment. He should be able to return your call.... NEVER. If your call is urgent, please try to reach Mr. Assange through the number of... Mr. Charles Manson. Thank you and have a transparent day."

jpete wrote:And the bad guy in the majority of this WikiLeaks stuff is a Pfc that was fully authorized to access the system so what good did any of the "security" do?

I believe the point that Yanche is trying to makes is we have a break down in security here. While his job may have required him to have access to all these documents there should have been a red flag somewhere. For example if these cables were in a database making specific queries would be normal, if you pull up the whole database that would be abnormal and flagging or even preventing such an action would be child's play.

Richard S. wrote:

jpete wrote:And the bad guy in the majority of this WikiLeaks stuff is a Pfc that was fully authorized to access the system so what good did any of the "security" do?

I believe the point that Yanche is trying to makes is we have a break down in security here. While his job may have required him to have access to all these documents there should have been a red flag somewhere. For example if these cables were in a database making specific queries would be normal, if you pull up the whole database that would be abnormal and flagging or even preventing such an action would be child's play.

Clearly. Why was the database anything but "read only"? Even the incompetent IT guy at my work can lock out most people.

These are the people that are "making the world safe for democracy?" They can't keep their e-mails safe from an effeminate Pfc.

jpete wrote:Assange didn't steal the information. He published it. I know we don't use it anymore, but that used to be covered under the First Amendment.

samhill wrote:Theres a reason why some things that go on are better off not being known about by everyone.

I'm going to mark this day on the calendar! It's not often I agree with jpete and disagree with samhill. Bleeding-heart liberal pinko Democrat that I am, I still greatly distrust "my" government and everybody else's government, and the more I know about what they are doing for me (ha! -- FOR me!), the better I feel. What astonishes me, and scares me, is the degree to which governments of all stripes are ganging up on this guy. He threatens business as usual, where us common folk are bought and sold in secret by the insiders, for our own good of course.

What I am saying is that the more people that are privy to things the more likely your going to have a leak. I had a lot more rank than this kid & only had access to what I needed to know. And yes as is widely known now I spent many days outside the boundaries of Nam. Most everything has been declassified but there was reasons that they didn`t want that out during the war. Just like I said Westinghouse was just able to release some documents about the local testing around here & others are still top secret. But gathering info on other countries has been going on since the beginning of other countries & it doesn`t need published.