Remaining Snowden docs will be released to avert 'unspecified US war' – Cryptome All the remaining Snowden documents will be released next month, according to whistle-blowing site Cryptome, which said in a tweet that the release of the info by unnamed third parties would be necessary to head off an unnamed "war". Cryptome said it would "aid and abet" the release of "57K to 1.7M" new documents that …
"....so whistleblowers like snowden are a good thing, right?...." It is not whether they are 'good' or 'bad', it is the fact that they brought copious amounts of information into the public arena that you and your fellow bleaters knew nothing about, which demonstrates your complete hypocrisy in claiming you have a self-formed opinion when it is very obvious your knowledge extends only as far as a piece of excrememt known as Jack.
".....And the evidence of echelon was hearsay...." Wow, you really are desperate to deny your ignorant denial! All those I named stood public trials, real evidence was presented in court and is a matter of public record. The 'evidence' for Merkel's phone conversations having been intercepted is simply nothing by comparison and definitely has not withstood examination in a court of law. Stop wasting everybody's time and go and actually learn something.
".....So one EU committee examining echelon...." The committee published a public report on ECHELON, your committee published nothing more than politicised whimsy backed by no legal authority, and definitely not a legal judgement or even a legal case. Your trying to equate the two is simply too childishly desperate for words.
".....I see you've (finally) stopped claiming that the EU's civil liberties committee has 'no legal standing' after me pointing out several times that it clearly did...." Unlike you I don't simply repeat falsehoods in the baaaah-lief that it makes them truths. I have already shown the legal body in question is the European Court of Justice, it is simply that you are desperate to ignore that fact.
Bryant, Bryant, burning bright / did he who make us sheeple make thee?
> It is not whether they are 'good' or 'bad', it is the fact that they brought copious amounts of information into the public arena
You mean like snowden?
> All those I named stood public trials, real evidence was presented in court [about echelon] and is a matter of public record.
Really, you carnivorous little sheep? I may be wrong here, it's been quite a while. So post ref showing that echelon was tried in a court, show this public record and I'll retract what I said.
> The committee published a public report on ECHELON, your committee published nothing more than politicised whimsy backed by no legal authority
So 'my' committee is "politicised whimsy backed by no legal authority" whereas yours... is different? Oh, and for the umpteenth time, it DID have legal authority, like I posted here
> Unlike you I don't simply repeat falsehoods in the baaaah-lief that it makes them truths
(giggle) see link above plumpness.
> I have already shown the legal body in question is the European Court of Justice
Nice try plumpness. The ECoJ had nothing to do with my argument, but nice attempt at diversion.
Look, stop being a dick and rejoin the human race will you.
"....You mean like snowden?...." Fail again! Apart from the fact those gents stood trial whereas Snowjob ran to hide behind Pooties' skirts, the whole point was to show that you were ignorant of the large amount of information out there pre-Snowjob. You are just desperate to deny you were remarkably ill-informed, despite your pretence at knowledge.
".....So post ref showing that echelon was tried in a court, show this public record and I'll retract what I said....." I never said ECHELON was put on trial (how do you try a surveillance system?!?), what I clearly stated (and you are desperately evading again) is that those people stood public trials where the evidence of their whistleblowing was examined, including the information they leaked. It's also long past the point where a retraction would save you face, you really do need to just go do a lot more reading before your next attempt to look even vaguely intelligent.
"....it DID have legal authority....." Once again, your civil liberties commission has authority to make policy about laws, not to enact them and definitely not to try them as a court of law. For the EU laws covering privacy, that job belongs to the Euro Court of Justice. Once again, you simply repeating an idiotic statement (or falsehood) repeatedly will not make it reality. You posted a link to the CLJHA committee homepage, please do go there and show me the bit where it states they try cases? You can't, because they don't. Click on the link for 'Work in progress' and find me a court case - oh, you can't, because all their work is just policies and strategies and other bureaucracy. Once again, you fail. They have zero actual legal authority, they're just another bunch of unelected Euro bureaucrats. So, now we have established beyond a doubt that you are talking male bovine manure, please go back to the ECoJ search tool I linked to and find me the case for the EU trying the NSA or GCHQ for 'illegal activity'. And don't come back until you do (which should give the rest of us a break from your dribbling stupidity for a few years at least).
Hello plumpness vicious carnivore
> Fail again! Apart from the fact those gents stood trial whereas Snowjob ran to hide behind Pooties' skirts, the whole point was to show that you were ignorant of the large amount of information out there pre-Snowjob.
You said "it is the fact that they brought copious amounts of information into the public arena". Snowden did. Whether anyone stood trial is irrelevant to the release of the information. So snowden did good like the others did good, right?
> never said ECHELON was put on trial
you are correct
> what I clearly stated [...]is that those people stood public trials where the evidence of their whistleblowing was examined, including the information they leaked
Ref please, and I'll retract. If I don't provide evidence which I need to retract my statement then you are conceding that I am correct.
> Once again, your civil liberties commission has authority to make policy about laws
At least you've given up on the 'politicised whimsy' line and gone to 'unelected Euro bureaucrats' (giggle).
Anyway, you said they had no legal standing. Again, from their website, the link to which you cannot apparently click (bit of footrot paining you there, plumps?)
"
The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is in charge of most of the legislation and democratic oversight for policies linked to the transformation of the European Union in the area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ) (art. 3 TEU).
"
So it "...is in charge of most of the legislation..." but has no legal standing?!
> Euro Court of Justice blah blah
Plumpo tries the distraction technique again. Falls flat on face again. Breaks fearsomely sharp canine.
So you're still desperately trying to avoid admitting you knew nothing about the NSA or GCHQ pre-Snowden? It's getting very boring reading your dribbling evasions.
"....Whether anyone stood trial is irrelevant to the release of the information...." Quite the opposite, it shows character and a determination to stand up for what they believe in, taking responsibility for their actions. They also didn't run away and give reams of information to unfriendly states or try making a living off their leaks. Snowjob very obviously thought his leaks were a lifetime ticket on the gravy train in some South American dictatorship, only he got stuck in Moscow instead.
The fact that you don't even know about Perry Fellwock, whose revelations of ECHELON led to the changes in law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is simply shocking. You are simply not equipped for the debate.
"....tries the distraction technique again...." I supplied facts and verifiable information to show how ill-educated on the matter you are. In short, as usual, I won again, and you just failed again.
Hello plumpkins lethal pile of muscle and teeth
> So you're still desperately trying to avoid admitting you knew nothing about the NSA or GCHQ pre-Snowden?
Sure I knew. What we didn't know before snowden was (prick up those tiger ears plumpo) was the extent of the surveillance. That's what snowden revealed. That's what you've been whinging about all along.
> Quite the opposite, it shows character and a determination to stand up for what they believe in, taking responsibility for their actions
Like snowden.
> The fact that you don't even know about Perry Fellwock,
... is true but irrelevant. Since you have not provided the info I sought, I cannot retract my statement. You therefore concede I'm correct.
> I supplied facts and verifiable information to ...
... divert from the fact you got caught out claiming that the EU's Committee on Civil Liberties didn't have legal standing. Didn't work (again). Sorry, my little cotton bud, hope the tooth is feeling better.
Now, from the wiki page about fellwock (ta for the ref) it says something really striking. Let me post it in full because it deals with EXACTLY the concerns that every person has here, but passes you by totally, and will do forever I suspect (words are of Frank Church regarding the Fellwock revelations):
"...[T]hat capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology... I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return
Sadly, sheep are cute and tigers are beautiful, but neither are intelligent.
".....What we didn't know before snowden was (prick up those tiger ears plumpo) was the extent of the surveillance...." You are such a bad loser! Shall we recap? Tapping of submarine cables - already known. Efforts by the NSA and GCHQ to break popular encryption - already known. Ability to track individuals on the Web - already known. Ability to hack email accounts - already known. Ability to intercept phone calls and automatically listen for keywords - general knowledge back in the Eigties! Ability of the US authorities to patch into US companies' network and systems - already known. Ability for the US authorities to serve warrants to gain access to online data held by US companies - already known. Program's by the NSA and GCHQ to develop wiretap systems and code - already known. All Snowjob provided was a few codenames and some diagrams, and all you are doing is showing your lack of knowledge.
".....Like snowden...." Snowjob hasn't taken responsibility for his actions, all he did was take a load of documents and run to where he thought he could sell them.
"....claiming that the EU's Committee on Civil Liberties didn't have legal standing...." They do not have the legal authority to pass a judgement on a breach of EU law, only the Euro Court of justice does. You are again repeating a falsehood in the farcical baaaah-lief that doing so will somehow make it true. It won't, so just grow up and admit you were wrong.
".....If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country...." So now you want to claim Obambi is a despotic tyrant? I'm sure the melodrama of Chruch's hypothetical case appealed to your sheepleness, but it seems you have again struggled to separate fact from hypothetical fantasy. But at least you're finally admitting you knew SFA about Fellwock.
> ".....What we didn't know before snowden was (prick up those tiger ears plumpo) was the extent of the surveillance...." You are such a bad loser! Shall we recap? ...
You know what, I didn't know all of that and I'm mighty grateful to Snowden for revealing or at the very least highlighting the crap that's going on. It's certainly helped me find the motivation to improve on my communication security.
Trouble is that you can deluge the Great Unwashed with information. It won't stop half of them being convinced that the moon landings were faked, the pyramids were built by aliens and we were made by the Sky Fairy.
That statement sort of implies that Democracy requires an electorate capable of making decisions based on hard data in order to work. If so, it's fundamentally fucked and we should get rid of it now.
Okay TeeCee, who is qualified to lead us as a benevolent dictator? McCarthy? Bush the lesser? Gandhi? Kofi Annan? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Tony Abbot? What about Matt Bryant? You? Personally, I vote Elon Musk.
How are we to decide upon who's magnanimity we are to rest our future? In whose hands do we balance between liberty and security if not those of the people who must live with the consequences?
The problem isn't who's in the chair now; but who could be in the chair in the future. The classic oft-cited case of the IBM census is a case in point...the people involved thought they were filling in a standard census form and couldn't have known at the time that it would lead to some seriously horrible repercussions less than a decade later.
Information can be misused and the real problem with it is that once it's out there, it's there forever. You never know if the next guy in the chair is going to have a hard-on for people called 'moiety' or use of the word 'sheeple' (I might even vote for that) or be -for example- a devout muslim and crack down on the use of beer (that'd be all of us fucked).
We probably aren't going to stop the information hoovering...if I was a spook then I'd be hoovering up everything I could get my hands on too. What we do need to do is regulate it and limit the storage time.
I think it falls somewhere between "material classified for the hell of it" and "material classified for a good reason." At the time the facility was set up there was probably a good reason to classify that particular aspect of it's operation.
"Tapping all fibre pipes for the purpose of dragnet surveillance" was not going to come as a shock to nation-states or terrorists, but the ability to do so was rare and incredibly expensive. That meant that taking out that facility could have severely crippled UK intelligence gathering capability and hence would have been a priority target for many groups.
Today, everyone knows about the fibre tapping, and we've moved from "difficult and expensive" to "mundane and industrialized." You don't need a footbal feild full of servers to tap the stream and nose out juicy bits of data any more. You can do that in a half rack, and stream the bits you want to store to storage located at ???.
Today's spies don't have to worry about building mega-facilities to tap fibre. "Distance to storage" and "amount of signal interference" are of greater concern than "physical space to store compute" or "availability of electricity and cooling." You can park a sub on top of a fibre pipe and get all the juicy goodies you want, or send a squad with truck out into the hills.
So, what does the information released by The Register really do? That base was already a generic "UK military be here" target long ago. It was long suspected of doing SIGINT work, and after Snowden, anyone who actually cared to try to pin down the locations where this was taking place would have added A and B and said "oh, there's one."
Maybe it causes the UK to beef up security a little, or add a few more keywords to their SIGINT search filters. It doesn't make the facility more or less of a target because the period during which taking that place out would have truly made the UK vulnerable has already passed.
Now, it's existence and purpose are a footnote in history. Interesting not because of what it does, but because of the political machinations that allowed it to exist in the first place. That means revealing it's existence doesn't compromise operational security, but it does call into question the actions of politicians and spooks, and may embarrass some people.
Good.
If the idea is that people must be prepared to give up a bit of liberty for a bit of security, doesn't it follow that it is an equally valid choice if people want to give up a bit of safety for a bit of liberty? That was, after all, the very point of the American Revolution (as well as similar struggles around the world), wasn't it?
No one wants to put lives at risk for nothing*, but if this is a trade (liberty for security) that is made for us, enmasse and without our consent, then how are people to make their governments understand that we don't want the trade being made for us.
I mean, you can't have an open discussion with the government because they have consistently hidden their activities and then lied to us about it. How can you tell your government how you wish to be governed if they won't tell you what they are doing and don't ask your permission before doing it?
It's a minefield and there are difficult decisions that have to be made, but this situation is one of our governments' making and there are people out there desperate to find a way to make their leaders understand. Not everyone shares their position but however incensed anyone here may be that someone would release information that threatens security, you have to understand that there are other people just as incensed that the government destroys their civil liberties.
* - At least no one worth listening to.
"If the idea is that people must be prepared to give up a bit of liberty for a bit of security, doesn't it follow that it is an equally valid choice if people want to give up a bit of safety for a bit of liberty?..." Yes. All societies are based on compromise, the difference being in a democratic society the people exercise a measure of choice over what they compromise on. That being so, you need to convince the majority that giving up either liberty or security is a good idea, and at the moment the vast majority are happier (though maybe not happy) with the idea of security.
"....but if this is a trade (liberty for security)..." So where is it shown this is a trade-off? How are you any less at liberty post-Snowjob's 'revelations' than you were before? In essence, show me the 'harm', a request the sheeple that bleat here are very keen not to answer.
<snip>
"...something about this doesn't smell right at all. It doesn't seem like the Cryptome of old. It certainly doesn't seem kosher, based on the limited amount of information available"
<snip>
He is by any definition of the term a "traitor". Personally part of me would not be moved if he was shot tomorrow along with that other chap whose name is now lost to our 7 minute attention spans, as for poor old Chelsea well who cares?
But, but ... part of me salutes them, it is probably my programmed / unconditioned civilian side so I am effectively caught twixt a rock and a hard place.
I am sick and tired of the self publicist / self exoneration of all of this and the fact that others will get hurt particularly if they do a core dump of non controlled data. Should what cryptome are saying be true, then may the devil take the hindmost.
The character Lindsey tells Angel that Hell is already on Earth and *the* apocalypse is in full swing
"What? Did you think there would be a starting gun? We are already 1000 years in to the fight between good and evil and you are already 2 soldiers down."
"Heroes don't accept the world the way it is, Heroes fight to change it".
They talk about art imitating life, but look that viciousness of the corporate structures that are the govt, newspapers and their brazen attempts to silence criticism.
It might be that being well informed nowadays, is simply being able to articulate the list of things you cannot know about because the information is privileged in some way....
P.
I think the issue is more finding a hosting provider who has enough grunt to handle attacks, enough control over the platform to allow the client to implement strong security (everything up to the edge hardware), and enough moral fibre (or however you want to phrase it - madness, heroics, etc) to agree to risk charges of assisting treason (if US based) or the weight of the US administration falling on them (if non-US) should it turn out to be something genuinely heavyweight that turns the tables - it could be enough to take a hosting business completely off the net if their DC is raided and their hardware taken away.
There's more to hosting potentially dodgy/compromising security info than just paying someone to host a blade server with your data on it - this stuff is a massive hot potato these days.
Fail? Really? REALLY? They're in posession of a massive cache of documents stolen from the largest, best funded gang of cyber criminals in the world, who have potentially compromised the bios and microcontrollers of a good percentage of the hardware in the world, have already been attacked. I think being a bit choosy about their providers is kinda fair.
Not sure why they don't release as an encrypted tarball by torrent and later give the passwords to a few people. Then they don't need hosting and the cache itself is safely in the public domain.
Because the contents are probably too big to torrent properly before the contents are fingerprinted and everyone and their mother who touches it gets fingered. One thing BitTorrent is NOT is anonymous. But then again, on the Net, anonymity and efficiency are at odds, as efficiency requires statefulness which by definition leaves traces that can be assembled in Jigsaw-like attacks.
IOW, Cryptome can't rely on BitTorrent and the content's too big for something like Freenet.
Do we need to know every little thing that the "government" choses to do in our name? I don't think that's the case, there are things which happen which quite frankly, I don't want to know the details about because I don't want to worry about the things which are stopped from happening.
Do I think that we also need more transparency on the subject, yes, but also bearing in mind that only a fool believes that the Internet, a tool designed to share, gather and collate information is private. If I want to keep something a secret, I don't publish it online, and heck, if I can avoid it, I don't put it on a computer at all, because that's just basic uncommon sense.
In fact, I'd go as far to say as that we have more to fear from what is undertaken by private companies than government agencies, precisely because they do have a greater level of oversight and morals which are stronger than "Well can we get sued for this and if we do get sued, do we make more money than we're likely to lose"
No, we don't need to know everything our governments are doing in our name. We do, however, need to be able to know anything our governments are doing in our name. Transparency doesn't mean forcing everyone to constantly monitor governments' actions, it means having the ability to expose any action that people would have a good reason to object to.
You might not want to know the details, but those who have the means to stop the government from acting unjustly may need to know the details in order to prevent it from doing so.
'In fact, I'd go as far to say as that we have more to fear from what is undertaken by private companies than government agencies, precisely because they do have a greater level of oversight and morals which are stronger than "Well can we get sued for this and if we do get sued, do we make more money than we're likely to lose"'
What I think you're saying is that private corporations are more problematic because they only follow rules they absolutely have to.
Good reasoning but the bit you fail to notice is that, whatever the motives, the rules governing corporations are, by and large, available to the general public. Contrast this with what is now known without a doubt to be he case with our governments, which is that the 'rules' governing them are kept secret from the public.
Representative Democracies work on a basic principle, which is that our elected representatives are empowered to make decisions on our behalf. When the head of the NSA is able to lie to those elected representatives, in what way do you have a democracy at all?
Democracy and Freedom in the west is & always has been simply an illusion.
Our Governments spy on us and have more info on us than the Chinese, Russian & North Korean governments ever had on their citizens, and they are increasingly curtailing our Freedoms.
it won't be long till the day comes when you will be punished for past actions criminalised in the future (except where it is rightly so like those found guilty in operation yew tree).
Whilst i can never condone the release of info that will put peoples lives in jeopardy, the info released so far has highlighted & raised the importance of info security and data retention to the public at large, & they are rightly questioning the need for large scale data retention.
"[...] (except where it is rightly so like those found guilty in operation yew tree)."
It is my understanding that the Yew Tree defendants can only be prosecuted according to the laws that were extant at the time of the alleged offences. A judge has already said in one guilty verdict that he therefore could not give the higher sentence that is now available under current law.
However - what has changed recently is in what is considered evidence. Previously each offence was considered on its own facts. Now the prosecution attempts to prove the case by saying that the defendant appeared capable of committing the alleged offences. To do this they present many witnesses who allege similar things, not necessarily illegal, about events that are not in the trial. They apparently do not have to produce any evidence to support their testimony about something they allege happened to them or someone else.
In the failed case against the former Deputy Speaker the Police had actively sought such people to provide the bulk of their material. This strikes me as a dangerous change akin to accepting hearsay bordering on character assassination.
These cases are complicated by the payment of Criminal Compensation awards only if the defendant is found guilty. Apparently the sums are quite substantial. There was at least one case that collapsed when an alleged victim broke down in court - and admitted he only made his false testimony because the Police sought him out and told him how much compensation he could claim.
The Police and CPS have a narrow line to walk between seeking impartial justice - or boosting their own career progression. Human nature and institutions can be a bad combination for everyone concerned.
Yes, GCHQ and NSA are far too intrusive and need their leash yanked severely. We are, however, far better off than citizens of Russia, China and North Korea. Ridiculous hyperbole annoys me, because people in those countries genuinely have a horrific time.
In NK, the police will shut down power to your building, then check what DVD you are watching - if it's not approved, your entire family goes to a labour camp.
In China, protesting against your six-day, 12-hours-a-day workweek, or the fact that your drinking water comes from a black river, is likely to get you in jail as well.
In Russia, if you're not a wealthy, well-connected biznesman, anything you own or do can be taken from you at any time.
We in the West are incredibly lucky to live where we do, and maintaining this society requires commitment and vigilance. Saying "Well, we're just as bad off as North Koreans" is not only offensive and stupid, it's surrendering to apathy about the state of our society.
"it won't be long till the day comes when you will be punished for past actions criminalised in the future (except where it is rightly so like those found guilty in operation yew tree)."
How will they do that without running afoul of Article I, Section 9, where it explicitly states that ex post facto (read: retroactive) laws are forbidden? The only way they can do that is to amend the Constitution to remove that restriction and our governments lack the unity for such a front or they'd have already altered the Fourteenth Amendment to deal with immigration and "birther" issues. Either that or ignore the Constitution itself as "ink on a page". But once you do that, you de-legitimize yourself as a government, meaning it devolves into anarchy.
In fact, I'd go as far to say as that we have more to fear from what is undertaken by private companies than government agencies, precisely because they do have a greater level of oversight and morals which are stronger than "Well can we get sued for this and if we do get sued, do we make more money than we're likely to lose" .....Paul 87
How very odd that you would think one is any better or any worse than the other, whenever they are both in cahoots and competition and opposition to each other, Paul 87.
If y'all know what is going on and what is being planned to happen, who do you think has everything to fear? The wannabe dodgy perpetrators or the ignorant hapless victims?
Do you know what is happening and would you be able to believe it if it wasn't hosted and posted by mainstream media brainwashing channels...... perception management machinery ..... Global Operating Devices, or would it be as an explosive surprise to you whenever the markets crashed because the machinery was crack hacked and the charade was no longer viable?
Take a walk in the sun and a stroll in the dark web side of life and avail yourself of the realities of your current position in present situations ..... Caveat Emptor …… This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to potential future losses, significant amount of indebtedness, competition, commercial agreements and strategic alliances, seasonality, potential fluctuations in operating results and rate of growth, foreign exchange rates, management of potential growth, system interruption, international expansion, consumer trends, inventory, fulfillment center optimization, limited operating history, government regulation and taxation, fraud, and new business areas.
What are you? Men or mice? Squeak up now or forever hold your peace.
<snip>
"What are you? Men or mice? Squeak up now or forever hold your peace."
Hmmmm and ad hominem, that obviously strengthens your argument and adds credibility to your cause. Bravo.
I strongly suspect that a lot of people hereabouts are more "man" than you will ever be [1]. Take your name for example why not just post as anon.
El Reg, any chance of a killfile setup to deal with people like this? We could call it a Mars bar.
1. For whatever definition of man you seem to be choosing.
So the "last" of the archive is being released soon....
I would have assumed that Snowden would have a rather large hole-card somewhere that will never be played unless some action were taken towards him. I do have to wonder if his hole-card is about Putin since that's his safe harbor.
Avert a war? Unless there's something very specific and fairly recent, I can't think of anything that would prevent a war. Cause a few maybe... but then again, I'm not the most creative "outside the box" thinker.
BTW, Mr. Pott... the idea (unless you're of a certain religious persuasion and want your 72 virgins) is to not die for your country/belief but to make the other guy die for his. Ok.. bad attempt at humor but it's been a tenet of the US Marines for as long as there been US Marines.
<snip>
"(unless you're of a certain religious persuasion and want your 72 virgins)"
<snip>
72 Virgins? I find that thought horrifying. I want two old slappers and a beer fridge that is perpetually full and that will be me.
As for making the other person die, yes. We however are tied down with rules of engagement, the Geneva convention, Western morals and mores, religious aversion to killing and another myriad of things that makes us less efficient against fundamentalists or nutters of any persuasion.
As we used to say when I wore the green "Cry ribbet and let slip the frogs of war"!
Please don't shout at me for posting this but I have a lot of direct experience in the Middle East and if Cryptome aren't playing silly buggers, it could be related to what is happening in Iraq with ISIS. http://russellchapman.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/isis-and-islamic-state/
Howdy Russel, have an upvote.
Interesting article, I also have quite a lot of experience in these areas and have noted similar things in ISIS. You mention how efficient they are at getting infrastructure etc. up and running. Well so were Hezbollah {1.} after they defeated the Israeli's in their last adventures in Lebanon. Before you knew it, food, tents, fuel etc, was there for the poor and needy and people who traditionally had at best antipathy to Hezbollah were proud at what they had achieved. The same goes for various disasters etc. the boys were there and people were looked after.
The fingerprint on this one is Iran and the Israeli's know it. The finesse and as you say attention to detail regarding expenses etc. is not a typical Arab / Magreb thing {2.}. Israel is now trying to bolster and support the Kurds and "The times they are a changing".
Having said that Al Quaeda was a US creation and caused similar havoc but showed what could be done by determined chaps. Come back Biggles, Bertie, Ginge and Josh, your country needs you.
1.. Have used common spelling
2. Typical not really the right word as there is no such thing.
Thanks Bloakey. I agree with you. This has got Iran's prints all over it. Them Persians be clever blighters, in an evil genius sort of way.
You can be sure as hell that this has got KSA seriously worried, why else would they be trying to patch things up with Iran now. Yesterday I was speaking to a Jordanian friend, I asked him about Ma'an down in the south and he said there are areas where the police don't go, it is too dangerous, he also told me there are a lot in Zarqa and Mufrak who are ready to join ISIS. Ironic as this is where Zaatari refugee camp is also. Jordan has a big pot of poo bubbling under the surface. Methinks this Islamic State is just getting warmed up.......
Sykes-Picot is finished, that's for sure.
Cheers Russel.
I think Al Quds is deeply involved and apparently all leave is cancelled ! I have always said that while the US was diplomatically plaing poker with the Iranians, the Iranians were playing chess. they are well educated, skillful, dedicated and are intellectually well suited to think in Operational, tactical and strategic depth. This is definitely looking like their baby and so far the Shia seem remarkably untouched despite all the brouhaha about volonteers being called up etc.
Agreed about the KSA, Turkey will probably come in on their side if necessary despite their past problems. The border must be protected will be their attitude and a bolstering force even if it is the traditional enemy is far better than ISIS knocking on the front door with an 'invitation' to join the caliphate.
Jordan has traditionally been relatively unstable so no surprise if the excrement hits the helical rotating device. Now where will the Palestinians go with this? They have spent years trying to achieve some action and then ISIS trot up and show how it should be done.
On a more positive note this could be the one thing that unites Lebanon and I fear their traditional instability makes them vulnerable to attack from Syria.
Sykes - Picot, all those straight lines? Who would have thought it would all go wrong. El Awrence saw it coming way back.
I err, cough, hmmm, lived in Beirut in the early eighties and every facet of the divisiveness was there, Shia, Dervish,Christians, Sunni, Druze, even Wahabi and then there were all the sub divisions of those. They fought like cat and dog for no apparent gain.
Through all the fighting the Moscow Narodny bank in Beirut whose structure featured a large amount of glass was untouched. Funny that! I also found out there that Libya was the world's biggest producer of tractor parts. All of those grey boxes of the ammunition type were marked "Tractor Parts Lybia".
Anyway. Iran seems to have secured it's borders in a devilishly fiendish plot worthy of Enid Blighton.
The Persians have been planning since the overthrow of the Shah. They have always had hegemonic ambitions. Iran and Russia together make quite a alliance. I'm waiting for the chaos to start effecting oil supplies, this would give a huge injection of cash to Russia, which it desperately needs and I think Iran will use ISIS to do this as a way of helping its comrade. What you say about the Shia in the south east being pretty much untouched was one of the things I noticed too. I wrote about it recently that it would be a strong indicator of who was running ISIS.
As for KSA, considering the fact that they have been working in collaboration with Israel and Jordan regarding Syria and that Egyptian President Sisi has close ties with KSA I think it is more likely this group will make an alliance along with UAE in the face of the threat. Turkey has allowed ISIS to ship huge numbers of "tractor parts" from Libya across its border into Syria. Turkey has a force inside Syria, ostensibly to protect the tomb of Suleyman Shah, very close by is an ISIS base. When Erdogan sent the force he was quoted as saying “Right now, the issue is not about ISIL”, so if he wasn't worried about them at the time then what was/is he up to?
I can potentially see a lot of Palestinians in Jordan joining the cause as they are treated very much as 3rd rate, possibly also a number of Syrian refugees, they will never be able to go back to Syria as it is today, they might feel it is a better bet than being stuck in a refugee camp in the desert.
Can anything unite Lebanon??? Some of my family have left recently, it isn't a healthy place to be. Way too divided. Last time I was there I was followed by one of their muppet security guys in a very obvious shiny black 4x4 while I was wandering around, managed to lose him fairly quickly.
I know what you mean about the Russian bank not being touched. Maybe it was so beautiful nobody wanted to damage it ;) I used to joke back in the 80's that the IRA must be sponsored by the big construction companies, they were making a fortune off of them.
USSR diplomats were kidnapped once in Lebanon civil war. Within hours beaten to death bodies of male relatives of local insurgent leaders were being thrown over compound walls with a note saying one of these every hour or less until our people are back, safe and untouched. Anything Russian was left alone after that. Apparently they speak the same language as the locals.
Does Rumsfeld still believe in in "Once you have them by short and curlies, their hearts and minds will follow." ? Now here is the $64 question. If the spookeries surveillance was worth a damn, why is ISIS and current mess a surprise ?
".....why is ISIS and current mess a surprise ?" It's not a surprise. The real sign it was going to kick off big time was the American and European refusal to get involved in Syria, it gave the jihadis the realisation that they could start on building a 'caliphate' without interference. No-one else was going to stop them. And that's the real surprise - that the rest of the World, after castigating the US and allies for wading into Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, that moaned about them trying to be World police, then were actually surprised when the US and allies said they weren't going to do it in Syria. Just look at how the same handwringers are now insisting the US 'sorts out' the problems in Iraq.
And that's because, without the muscle and money provided by the West, the UN is a toothless talking shop. There is zero chance of the local countries sorting it out as they are the ones stoking the problem. Just look back through the last sixty years and see if you can find ANY successful major UN peacekeeping exercise that didn't depend on the US, the old colonial European countries or Australia to provide the money or the hardware. TBH, I'd tell Obambi to make his priority getting on with the fracking and drill everywhere there is oil in the US whilst developing better electric cars, and take a leave out of Pootie's book and sell the excess gas cheap to friendly Europeans.
the mass release of 'information' does'nt stop a war from happening... it starts it.
While the release of information regarding what the NSA/GCHQ and 2/3rds of the west's spying agencies are doing to us and passing to each other maybe in the realms of illegality, the release of so much other info could be seen as a direct attack on the capabilities of GCHQ etc to intercept and decode the correct messages
After all.. if we know enemy elements are using a nokia phone, and we know howto track that one and decode everything coming from it and suddenly the target knows his calls are being tracked...
But then some of you would be happy with everything any government does released instantly onto the internet, perhap I could interest you with the mathematics of designing H-bomb warheads that can fit into a MIRV.....
"perhaps I could interest you with the mathematics of designing H-bomb warheads that can fit into a MIRV....."
It's been 50 years. Do you honestly think that The Register's readers couldn't build a relevant miniaturized implosion core if we wanted to? I personally don't know the math off the top of my head, but I know enough to know what questions to ask and where to find the answers. The rest is learning and simulating. That can be done on Amazon these days.
No, civilians - and for that matter most nations - don't have nukes because they simply have no use for nukes. Nukes are great for establishing you as a sovereign power, but they suffer from three fatal flaws.
1) They're outrageously expensive.
2) They're absolutely useless unless you have multiple launch systems that can participate in MAD.
3) Unless you have the conventional resources of a nation-state you can't defend them against the current signatory powers of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty who will take your toys away from you.
Even a "terrorist" has no use for a nuke. Let's say some crazy ISIS Jihadi blows up New York. They don't gain anything by this. They don't fracture the USA, sow terror or otherwise do anything but kill a few infidels. What they absolutely will do is cause the entire rest of the world to unite against Islam, get the entire middle east turned into a sheet of glass in retaliation and trigger an anti-religious genocide the likes of which this world has never seen.
They know it. We know it.
Even if you were completely batshit crazy and wanted to wipe out a city or two...you don't need a a MIRV to do that. You can pack relevant "kaboom" onto trucks or boats and get things into the city in far more mundane ways.
If you're really smart you wouldn't even use a nuke; every major city in the world has radiometric sensors so good luck with a nuke. If you want an earth-shattering kaboom go with fuel air bombs. Pretty much untracable, and from they pack the punch of a small nuke. (Especially since you need to detonate the nuke somewhere around 1700 ft in order to actually make use of the plasma shockwave.)
Of course, MOABs are flash-and-gone. If you had access to fissionable material - which to make your fusion MIRVs you'd need - then why not just build a dirty bomb? If you're truly nuts and want to kill a lot of people in a horrible fashion that's pretty much the worst possible way. Or you could poison water supplies. Or...
*shrug* I could do this all day. The last time I played this game I think I hit 83 different designs before I ran out of ideas. My point is this: the overwhelming majority of people, including "terrorists" have no use or desire for weapons of mass destruction. Unless you are already a powerful nation-state, they don't offer the individual or the organization any value, and cost them rather a lot.
There are always crazies, like those wackos that murdered cops in Nevada a few weeks back, or folks like McVeigh. It is for this reason that we control access to the kinds of materials necessary to make the really neat toys. That's part of the "eternal vigilance" price of freedom.
But you can't control knowledge. The genie, once out of the bottle, doesn't go back in. There are literally millions of people on this planet that could build you a basic gun-type fission bomb from memory. Hundreds of thousands that could design you a fusion bomb with a little effort. Any wacko at any time can kidnap and torture these people until they give up the how.
But he can't do a damned thing unless he can get the fissionable material. Or a metric tonne of Strychnine. Or...
People who have the resources to get WMDs have thus far been reluctant to actually use them. That limits the terrorists to small-scale attacks that at best wipe out a few city blocks or a subway station.
If you want to fret about something, freak out about the concept of "designer DNA". This is a thing that you can do, if you have the right equipment. The skillset and knowledge are about where nuclear weapons were in the late 50s.
Give it 60 years, and there will be millions of individuals capable of designing "printing" DNA, then injecting it into a bacterial host of their choice. How do you control that? The raw resources required to do this are impossible restrict and the fundamental knowledge is already in the public domain. All that is required is commoditisation of the technology, something that is already being worked on.
The true "threat" to our individual and national security is not going to come from the sharing of government secrets, because the technologies the government developed were developed under the watchful eye of true paranoids. They worked out how to control those kinds of technologies long before we proles ever heard of them.
The "threat" techs are those coming out of the commercial and academic sectors, where they go through layers of peer review and even commercialization before the paranoids ever get involved and go "hey, wait, this could go really badly."
A terrorist with a nuke will only get himself and his entire religion wiped off the face of the Earth. A lone nutjob isn't going to get the material to ever build one...but both of them could be building designer plagues within the next 50 years and we'd not only be unable to figure out who unleashed them, we might not be able to contain them.
@Trevor Pott
Between you and Russell, I think I'm starting to prefer Matt's posts!
Tallying up my drinking and general bad-living, I reckon I just might miss the worst of the world being created. It's the weakest possible position but, it might make the shortness of this existence slightly less upsetting, on balance.
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