WikiLeaks has organized the trove of documents about corporations aiding government surveillance around the world. It’s worth wandering around through all this material.
EDITED TO ADD (9/12): I made a mistake. WikiLeaksdidn’t do the organizing; Silk did.
Nova • September 10, 2014 9:40 PM
I dug through the system a bit, but didn’t find anything immediately interesting. Appears to be just a bunch of papers on various commercial surveillance products?
(Not so interesting to me.)
I do like the layout, and hope they put more of their data there.
Clive Robinson • September 11, 2014 7:26 AM
Hmm Thales and Quintiq are very very under represented when you know what they get up to….
Thus I suspect the documents tend to suggest which companies are more open or don’t practice better security….
Peter Boughton • September 11, 2014 8:34 AM
Bruce wrote:
WikiLeaks has organized…
Uh, the website’s first paragraph says:
In early September 2013 WikiLeaks released its last batch of leaked Spy Files…
To mark this anniversary, one of Silk’s data journalists Alice Corona cleaned and structured the data …
Unless Alice works for WikiLeaks as well as Silk, WikiLeaks didn’t do it. :/
Curious • September 11, 2014 9:42 AM
@ Charles Springer
“Hard to believe Wikileaks is still around.”
Do you wish for Wilileaks to not be around? Or what do you mean?
albert • September 11, 2014 12:07 PM
A quick perusal tells me that there must be hundreds of commercial entities around the world engaged in ‘computer and network security’ worldwide. Much of this work can be abused. Add to that the thousands of individuals engaged by government spy agencies, and you’ve got massive problem.
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@Charles Springer,
I’m glad WikiLeaks is still around, despite attempts of governments (especially the US) to destroy it. This is called ‘karma’ in some cultures; here, we say: “What goes around, comes around.”. I like: “You reap what you sow.”
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Who else is going to expose this stuff?
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We need more Deep Throats, Assanges, Mannings, and Snowdens.
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I gotta go…>
Nick P • September 11, 2014 7:11 PM
I’m with Charles in being surprised it’s doing anything useful. Wikileaks was defunded by the banks while falling apart internally due to Assange’s selfish and derranged mind. The low use of the site hurts anonymity. Most leakers are submitting to Guardian, Der Spiegal, etc due to their higher publicity. Assange is also stuck in a room in an embassy surrounded by cops.
If anything, Wikileaks was a once-proud and effective organization that’s become a shell of what it once was. It’s dying a slow death. Let it die and be replaced by a new effective organization, I say.
Andrew_K • September 12, 2014 2:56 AM
The major problem with Wikileaks is its missing guarantees for the whistleblower.
He has to trust both the platform and his own IT skills not to leave traces. After leaking, there is nothing protective. When he’s made, in terms of protection, he is on his own. Probably not a pleasant situation, if you got into a struggle with one of the major three-letter-organizations.
Major media companies can protect a person. Not from legal prosecution, but from other things. They can ring bells if you disappear. They can be supplied with additional stuff to relevate in case you disappear.
Still: Once you leak, you’re a dead man walking — if anything went wrong.
Leaking using a technical system theoretically might be proven to be safe. What cannot be proven is that documents do not reveal who leaked them. And that is a problem, computers currently won’t solve.
I’m unable to imagine an IT system capable of such awareness.
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Charles Springer • September 10, 2014 2:59 PM
Hard to believe Wikileaks is still around.