Posted on 12/06/2010 10:56:08 AM PST by ConorMacNessa
(CNN) -- WikiLeaks has published a secret U.S. diplomatic cable listing locations abroad that the U.S. considers vital to its national security, prompting criticism that the website is inviting terrorist attacks on American interests.
The list is part of a lengthy cable the State Department sent in February 2009 to its posts around the world. The cable asked American diplomats to identify key resources, facilities and installations outside the United States "whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the United States."
The diplomats identified dozens of places on every continent, including mines, manufacturing complexes, ports and research establishments. CNN is not publishing specific details from the list, which refers to pipelines and undersea telecommunications cables as well as the location of minerals or chemicals critical to U.S. industry.
The list also mentions dams close to the U.S. border and a telecommunications hub whose destruction might seriously disrupt global communications. Diplomats also identified sites of strategic importance for supplying U.S. forces and interests abroad, such as in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Panama Canal.
The cable is classified secret and not for review by non-U.S. personnel.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
But isn't that a big part of what the CIA is tasked to do?
Lots of info connecting BO to WikiLeaks here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2637720/posts
Single person infiltrates American military network? Surely not?
Gary McKinnon.
From his girlfriend’s bedroom.
Looking for UFOs.
And he was a rank amateur with NO military knowledge.
Phishing for credentials to get into any system is a lot easier than brute-forcing your way in, and in any system the most dangerous point of failure is the disgruntled (or naive) worker.
Logically, for that amount of data to get out through one disgruntled, er, grunt, only a couple of years after some Aspergers-inflicted Brit hunting for UFOs was able to do it from his girlfriend’s bedroom, and twenty five years after Hollywood picked up on the fact that this was even plausible (WarGames), can only mean one of two things:
1. These “hackers” are all hitting a very skilfully crafted honeytrap and the intelligence services are having a field day following the paper trails of misinformation.
2. The people in charge of locking down your defense systems, are so utterly, utterly, UTTERLY incompetent that they are every bit as culpable as the guy who siphoned this data out of the network to begin with, and I wouldn’t trust those dozy berks to lock their front doors on the way to work.
Go after Assange by all means. Prosecute the traitor.
But while you’re at it, round up anyone who’s been in charge of securing the military network for the past five years... court martial, charges related to negligence.
“If our government really wants to keep our nation’s top secrets classified, they should be kept in the same place that OBAMA’S COLLEGE TRANSCRIPTS AND BIRTH CERTIFICATE ARE KEPT.”
Please excuse the caps, this came to me with the caps.
IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WITHIN A WEEK OF TIGER WOODS CRASHING HIS ESCALADE, THE PRESS FOUND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC. AND, THEY NOT ONLY KNEW THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNEW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT HIS WIFE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNEW WHICH WEDGE! AND EACH AND EVERY DAY, THEY GAVE AMERICA MORE UPDATES ON HIS SEX-REHAB STAY, HIS WIFE’S PLANS FOR DIVORCE, AND THE DATES AND TOURNAMENTS HE WILL PLAY IN.
OBAMA HAS BEEN IN OFFICE FOR 2 YEARs NOW, AND THIS SAME PRESS:
STILL CANNOT FIND ANY OF HIS CHILDHOOD FRIENDS OR NEIGHBORS,
OR LOCATE ANY OF OBAMA’S COLLEGE PAPERS OR GRADES,
OR HOW HE PAID FOR A HARVARD EDUCATION,
OR WHICH COUNTRY ISSUED HIS VISA TO TRAVEL TO PAKISTAN IN THE 1980’S,
OR BARRY SOETORO, OR EVEN MICHELLE OBAMA’S, PRINCETON THESIS ON RACISM.
THEY JUST CAN’T SEEM TO FIND THEM.
YET THE PUBLIC STILL TRUSTS THAT SAME PRESS TO GIVE THEM THE WHOLE TRUTH!
TRULY REMARKABLE!!!
Nope. He's published the tactical maps without a battle plan.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. There wasn’t any hacking apparent in this case. It was a guy with a Secret clearance accessing archives of files at the Secret clearance level. No hacking required. It’s like being surprised that a librarian “had access” to the books in the library.
Nonetheless... removing them and releasing them was treason. He’ll be tried for that. Now... the problem isn’t him anymore but the guy he gave it all to.
Agreed. This is the game changer. Irritating information is one thing, opening a country to terrorist attack is another. He has to held accountable.
There is so much information.
How many others like him were compromising the information.
Remember Abu-grab was a cluster of sex fetishists in charge of a prison.
What if ALL the information released was a similar situation of seeking out homosexuals in the military and cultivating them for information.
I do believe that qualifies as POST OF THE DAY.
It’s amateur hour in the US government. :(:(:(:(
You’ve just said what I was talking about.
The system has been open to hackers, and there’s been all this brouhaha about McKinnon, and all along the bigger threat was the enemy within - in this case, the disgruntled colleague.
This is why I think this information is either part of a honeytrap, or the people running the security systems must be incompetent.
I should add, my perspective on this comes from working in the IT security industry where time after time, I find a bulletproof network let down by the human element.
Every now and again I’m called in to do security audits. My modus operandi is to arrive half an hour early, walk through the car park, ask where the smoking shelter is, stop out there for a couple, listen and engage in a bit of small talk, tailgate into the building with the smokers, go into the kitchen, get myself a cup of coffee, spin a yarn about the trouble I’ve been having with the IT department, get a bit of “Ah, you want to talk to Dave Smith, he’s always good”, wait for the kitchen to clear, call Dave Smith up, ask him to reset the password for the person I’ve just spoken to, write it down, go back round to the reception, and announce I’ve just arrived for my appointment with the IT Security manager.
I nod politely while he tells me how good the security is, and then I say, “I arrived half an hour early, so let’s see what we’ve got...”
Now bearing in mind, that the customers do actually know I’m coming in to test their IT security... and yet they’re still gobsmacked.
In fairness, most of my customers are 100-200 users, and the guy looking after the IT doesn’t usually have a background in information security.
But you can’t say that the American Military really falls into that bracket. Frankly, it should know better.
That’s why I suspect there’s a lot of disinformation and a few deliberate leaks in that portfolio handed over to Wikileaks. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
Why would a hacker have been necessary? The guy who leaked the stuff was already on the inside. He didn’t have to hack anything. It was his job to have access to that stuff.
And yeah, I understand the difference. I’ve got over 20 years in IT myself.
Point taken. That was back in the 2001-2002 time frame. You'd think that we'd have been on heightened alert for this kind of activity back then, but obviously we weren't.
BUT, this kind of outside hacking is an all or nothing proposition. You get and get it all or you don't. You are working with your own computer in your own space without supervision. If you get in, the data is yours for the taking, with no one around to stop you.
There is a big difference in the security you use against a hacker like McKinnon who with some skill got lucky, vs the security you use with someone who you know has access already has access to the data. The security to protect against hackers is all electronic. The security you use with someone who already has access to the data is one that prevents them from being able to copy it and remove it from the premises, and that is is physical security. These two forms of security are complimentary but non-comparable.
The people in charge of locking down your defense systems, are so utterly, utterly, UTTERLY incompetent that they are every bit as culpable as the guy who siphoned this data out of the network to begin with, and I wouldn’t trust those dozy berks to lock their front doors on the way to work.
Yes, that's the physical security of the data, and unless -- as you suggest, it may be a honeytrap -- this level of security was completely incompetent.
Go after Assange by all means. Prosecute the traitor. But while you’re at it, round up anyone who’s been in charge of securing the military network for the past five years... court martial, charges related to negligence.
Yes, unless they actually followed military protocol and it's the protocols themselves that are completely useless.
Now this is the kind of crap that Wikki leaks is totally wrong about, and it forces the US to act. Wikki should have stuck to exposing corruption. It never ceases to amaze me how all this information was so insecure that it could be picked up in mass by wikki leaks.
“I personally think that Assange is an anti-American journalist and a great one.”
Yes, I think if they get him it would be on “conspiracy to access computer” (like the Palin hacker) or the like.
I’ve read a lot of this stuff -— it’s largely (largely) harmless, but really hurts Obama and Clinton more than anyone -— they are shown as dishonest bullies, and ineffective ones at that.
Journolists' "Don't ask, don't tell."
Exactamundo. Read post #33 for what should be the transcript of this guy’s last day on earth.
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