Wikileaks

A correspondent has sent me the following interesting story on Wikileaks, Julian Assange, IMMI and The TCI Journal:

A real free press for the first time in history

July 12th, 2010 Posted by Joel Gunter

Julian Assange, editor of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has criticised mainstream media for not making proper use of “primary resources” and claimed that the site has created “a real free press (…) for the first time in history”.

Speaking at the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School at City University London on Friday, Assange accused the media of failing to consult important evidence in its reporting of a 2007 US Air Force strike that killed two Reuters news service employees and several Iraqi civilians

Julian Assange

The attack became infamous after a video of the event was leaked through Wikileaks, entitled Collateral Murder. The footage was recorded by one of two Apache helicopters involved in the attack.

Showing an alleged copy of the US Military’s 2007 rules of engagement hosted on Wikileaks, Assange said: “We had the raw ingredients you needed to decide right there. Why didn’t they use them?

“No one can be bothered to look up the term ‘positive identification’ to see what it actually is.”

Assange argues that it is clear from the document that the Apache pilot broke the rules of engagement. He said journalism needed to work towards making more primary source material such as this available online, arguing that this was the standard process for scientific investigations and that it should be the same for journalism.

You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results, that should be the standard in journalism.

You can’t do it in newspapers because there isn’t enough space, but now with the internet there is.

Last week, Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, who is accused of leaking the video along with tens of thousands of classified State Department cables, was charged by the U.S. Army with mishandling and transferring classified information. Assange will not attempt to enter the US for fear he might be subject to a subpoena.

Citing another of the site’s leaks, concerning Carribean tax haven the Turks and Caicos islands, Assange praised the anti-corruption reporting of online-only, local news outlet the Turks and Caicos Journal, which he said was hounded out of several countries after law firms threatened its internet service providers (ISPs).

Warning of a new “privatised censorship”, he said that the Journal’s Googlemail account had been subpoened under US law and that Google agreed to surrender details of the news outlet’s account, at which point Wikileaks stepped in to provide a defence attorney.

He heavily criticised the search engine company for its behaviour in the TCI Journal case, and challenged the actions of ISPs in India, Japan and the US for allegedly agreeing to cut the Journal’s internet access rather than risk incurring legal costs. According to Assange, Googlemail is a completely insecure way of storing information. He claimed that the Guardian had recently transferred all of its internal email over to the Google service.

Alongside the TCI Journal there was praise reserved for Time magazine for publishing an extensive investigation into the Church of Scientology and defending its investigation at a cost of millions dollars, but with potential costs so high, Assange asked, “what are the incentives for publishers?” Wikileaks were themselves threatened with legal action by the Church after publishing secret documents relating to its “Operating Thetan Level” practices. The whistleblowing site responded by saying “in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week.”

Asked about Wikileaks’ funding, he said the site has so far raised $1 million dollars in donations but revealed it had had an application for a $650,000 grant rejected by the 2009 Knight News Foundation, despite being “the highest-rated applicant out of 3,000″, and heavily implied it was a politically-motivated decision.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks put forward a proposal in conjunction with Icelandic MPs to create a safe-haven for publishers – and their servers – in the country. Last month the proposal, known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), was passed by parliament and will change Icelandic law, aiming to increase the protection afforded journalists, sources and leakers.

Related posts:

IMMI 

Tragedies

Kenya

John Githongo. If you think we have problems in the West Indies, listen to the BBC’s Outlook story on John Githongo, anti-corruption commissioner of Kenya. Turn on your volume.

Whistle-blowing

“Whistle-blowing”. This term refers to the act of revealing to the appropriate authority or, failing such an institution, to the public, wrongdoing going on in one’s own department or company. Whistleblowers are an essential protection for those of us who are at the mercy of a secretive and oppressive government agency. Mind you, there is no suggestion that we have such an agency in Anguilla.

Nevertheless, it is apparent that there is a perception that we do have some government activity going on that needs the antiseptic qualities of fresh air and sunshine to ensure that there is no festering. It is only when public servants who have the information are willing to come forward and let the public know what is really going on, whether anonymously or taking credit, that the necessary fresh air and sunshine will bring the needed relief.

Any public servant contributing to this discussion has my assurance that I shall ensure that they remain secure and safe while they are engaged in this public service.

For those of you who missed the link to the updated article on the subject of whistle-blowing in the UK, it is here.

Recent Issues

Recent Interesting Issues on Which Correspondence Has Been Received:

(a) “Cocaine Distribution”. Correspondents are invited to send photos of the crack houses operating in each village. Photographs of the dealers outside our night spots equally welcome. Subject to confirmation, I shall consider posting them here. I have no obligation to inform the police. They already know who and where they are. They simply do nothing about them. Only the small boys are picked up.

(b) “Ministerial Conflicts of Interest”. One correspondent writes: “My first issue would be conflicts of interest. Step number 1 in this connection, in my view, would be to get recognition from Government that the appearance of corruption cannot begin to be eradicated so long as government ministers and officials hold controlling positions in the banks and utilities. How to deal with that problem - e.g. whether the British system of blind trusts provides anything approaching a satisfactory solution - would be the next and very difficult step. But it seems to me that some recognition that the apparent absence of any concern whatever over conflicts of interest should at least be reflected upon would be a move in the right direction.”

(c) “Corruption”. Transparency International is an organization devoted to promoting good governance world wide. Their website is a mine of useful information. Their Americas page indicates that, as regards the Commonwealth Caribbean Countries, they deal only with the independent ones. The only CCC with a national chapter of TI is Trinidad and Tobago. I subscribe to their newsletter, and am often amazed at the ground covered by their intrepid secretary, Boyd Reid. They don’t appear to have a website. Several other Caribbean States were analysed in the latest Global Corruption Report for the year 2006. You can download it here. One correspondent [see the comment at article No 1] asked where we would rank Anguilla in terms of the Transparency International standard. I am not sure of the answer. We British Overseas Territories deserve to be studied as well as the independent ones. Perhaps you would like to respond to the question anyway.

(d) “Public Involvement”. One correspondent quite correctly writes, “Did you ever consider the thought: "Maybe I REALLY don't want to know"????” Another good friend writes thoughtfully but accurately, “It has become painfully obvious that your Garden is not providing enough stimulation; may I suggest sport drinking. Any continuation of this project will certainly guarantee that you never be elected for public office.”

(e) “Security Issues”. My security guru instructs me to remind you: “When you post documents that you are leaking, do not use your work computer. Delete the email, and empty your delete box.” Exercise all caution. Do not get caught.

Recent Issues

Recent Interesting Issues on Which Correspondence Has Been Received:

1. “Cocaine Imports”. Which Anguillian businessmen are the principal financiers? Photographs welcome, particularly if receiving or delivering a package.

2. “Cocaine Distribution”. Where are the major outlets? If they are so well known, why have they not been closed down? Photographs welcome.

3. “Dog Fighting”. Where are the most popular pits where dogs fight to the death? How is protection provided for the participants? Who arranges training? Is the ante still US$5,000.00 to put your dog in? Photographs would be appreciated. They will add a little colour.

4. “Prostitution”. Which are the houses that permit school girls to bring businessmen for paid sex? Which ones import girls from overseas? What keeps them from being closed down? Who controls immigration of the girls? There is only rumour, no evidence.

5. “Human Trafficking”. Is Anguilla Involved in Human Trafficking at this time, as one correspondent suggests? One way to get at an answer is to study an official definition of the term. We can start by looking at the following page taken from the website of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“From Himalayan villages to Eastern European cities, people - especially women and girls - are attracted by the prospect of a well-paid job as a domestic servant, waitress or factory worker. Traffickers recruit victims through fake advertisements, mail-order bride catalogues and casual acquaintances.

Upon arrival at their destination, victims are placed in conditions controlled by traffickers while they are exploited to earn illicit revenues. Many are physically confined, their travel or identity documents are taken away and they or their families are threatened if they do not cooperate. Women and girls forced to work as prostitutes are blackmailed by the threat that traffickers will tell their families. Trafficked children are dependent on their traffickers for food, shelter and other basic necessities. Traffickers also play on victims' fears that authorities in a strange country will prosecute or deport them if they ask for help.

Trafficking in human beings is a global issue, but a lack of systematic research means that reliable data on the trafficking of human beings that would allow comparative analyses and the design of countermeasures is scarce. There is a need to strengthen the criminal justice response to trafficking through legislative reform, awareness-raising and training, as well as through national and international cooperation. The support and protection of victims who give evidence is key to prosecuting the ringleaders behind the phenomenon.”

Another useful site is the web page taken from the website of the Administration for Children and Families

Trafficking in persons is to be distinguished from alien smuggling. See the very instructive web page on the website of the US Department of State.

From such study, we can conclude that if any Anguillian official received a financial reward to permit the Far East labour that has recently come to soujourn with us in the West End of the island, a high crime may well have been committed.

6. “How to Cover Your Tracks”. Two different correspondents point out that there are some additional precautions you should consider. They include:

(a) When retiring or resigning from a corrupt employer, photograph all the relevant documents relating to questionable transactions before you leave. It costs nothing, and you never know when you will need them! Make sure you do not get caught. Transfer any tape recordings to digital format, they are easier to store and last longer. Keep a back-up on a thumb drive in a secure location, like a safety deposit at your bank.

(b) “Recent File Lists” tell an employer what documents you have been recently working on.

(c) An employer can often tell when a “USB device” was connected to a computer by looking into the registry using forensic tools.

(d) Windows creates files called “prefetch” which can tell an employer when a programme was launched. This can include disk wiping tools. Tools like this are generally not installed as a matter of course. So, while he cannot ascertain what was deleted, he can know that someone was trying to hide something on the computer.

Whistle-blowing

• This very interesting UK article gives useful advice on whistle-blowing. It is a very technical paper, and difficult to understand and to follow. Much of the detail does not apply in Anguilla. Most of us would be unable to implement the relevant precautions. My advice to anyone reading this article and wishing to report on evidence of corruption or mal-administration in Anguilla would be to learn from it:
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• Spy Blog’s hints and tips for Home Office whistleblowers, UK political bloggers and the media

• July 23rd, 2006 by irdial
• If you are leaking to the press or broadcast media, they invariably want some documentary proof of what you are telling them, e.g. a document or memo or advance copy of a report, or an email. etc.
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• Do not use your @homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk email address from work to pass on whistleblower material to politicians, journalists or bloggers. The Home Office, as your employer, is perfectly within its rights to analyse the log files of its own email systems. They do not need to wait for a “serious criminal investigation” which would require a warrant signed by, wait for it, the Home Secretary, or as recently delegated under the Terrorism Act 2006, any nameless offical that the Home Secretary delegates the renewal of long running intelligence agency or electronic interception warrants, which almost certainly include the “protection” of the Home Office IT systems themselves.
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• If you are relatively IT literate, you may be able to master how to send an email through a Mixmaster Anonymous Remailer chain , but, we suspect that the number of people who are confident enough to do this currently working at the Home Office and who might become whistleblowers is very small.
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• Similarly, a whistleblower could use Pretty Good Privacy public key encryption, but again, this requires some effort to install the PGP software, on your own PC (not on your Home Office workstation !). PGP encryption will protect the content of of your correspondence with whoever you are whistleblowing to, but not the fact that your are in communication with say, David Davis, or ther Sun newspaper or even a political blog. Unfortunately it is only Spy Blog and a few other technical security and privacy related blogs which publish a PGP Public Encryption Key, something which we encourage other bloggers, journalists and members of Parliament to do as well. - Spy Blog PGP public encryption key
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• PGP also does Disk Volume Encryption, which may be of use to a whistleblower’s home PC.
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• A good compromise for the non-technical civil servant who wants to be a whistleblower could be a Hushmail account. This has the advantage of being based in Canada, Ireland and the tax haven of Anguilla, and is a web based email system which uses the SSL/TLS encryption used to protect credit card and internet banking transactions from snoopers. You may have to install the Sun version of Java if you have a recent version of Windows XP which no longer supports Java by default.You can sign up for a free, anonymous Hushmail account, (with 2Mb of storage space) which needs to be accessed at least every 3 weeks to keep it active . You can pay $30 a year for a full account. Hushmail to Hushmail traffic is strongly encrypted, but using Hushmail to say, email your Member of Parliament will be plaintext like other emails.Hushmail do have a “pre-shared secret” challenge/response email system called Hushmail Express which can be useful for non-hushmail replies, but it is a bit less secure.
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• Do not use your Home Office landline telephone or fax machine for the same reasons as above.
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• Do not use your normal mobile phone to contact a journalist or blogger from your Home Office location, or from home. The Cell ID of your mobile phone will pinpoint your location in Marsham Street and the time and date of your call. This works identically for Short Message Service text messages as well as for Voice calls.Such Communications Traffic Data does not require that a warrant be signed by the Home Secretary, a much more junior official has the power to do this, e.g. the Home Office Departmental Security Unit headed by Jacqueline Sharland.
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• Buy a cheap pre-paid mobile phone from a supermarket etc. Do not buy the phone or top up phone credit using a Credit Card or a make use of a Supermarket Loyalty Card. Do not switch on or activate the new mobile at home or at work, or when your normal mobile phone switched on (the first activation of a mobile phone has its physical location logged, and it is easy to see what other phones are active in the surrounding Cells at the same time. Do not Register it. Do not store any friends or familiy or other business phone numbers on this dispoable phone - only press or broadcast media or blogger contacts. Set a power on PIN and a Security PIN code on the phone. Physically destroy the phone and the SIM card once you have done your whistleblowing. Remember that your DNA and fingerprints will be on this mobile phone handset.
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• Do not be tempted to re-use the SIM in another phone or to put a fresh SIM in the old phone, unless you are confident about your ability to illegally re-program the International Mobile Equipment Electronic Identity (IMEI).
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• Just in case you think this is excessive paranoia, it recently emerged that journalists in the USA and in Germany were having their phones monitored, by their national intelligence agencies, precisely to try to track down their “anonymous sources”,
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• Why would this not happen here in the UK? See Computer Encryption and Mobile Phone evidence and the alleged justification for 90 days Detention Without Charge - Home Affairs Select Committee Oral Evidence 14th February 2006
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• Choose your photcopier carefully. Some of the newer, high end photcopiers, especially colour ones, have built in anti-counterfeit US currency routines in the software. Some combined photocopiers and printers are capable of printing tiny yellow seral numbers (e.g. Canon) on each sheet or a special series of dots (e.g. Xerox DocuColor, which makes tracing which machine was used to help to “leak” a document, if the original printout or photocopy is seized, quite a bit easier. Many typewriters, computer printers and photocopiers do leave characteristic wear and tear imperfections on the documents they produce, which a forensics laboratory may be able to match to a machine a work or your personal machine at home, if it is ever seized as evidence in a “leak inquiry”.
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• Redaction or censorship. Adobe .pdf documents have been published online, where some of the personal details e,g, email addresses have been “blacked out” using Adobe .pdf software , which has effectively simply put an extra layer on top of the supposedly censored words. Simply copying and pasting into say Windows Notepad or Wordpad or Word etc has revealed the hidden data. Anybody publishing such stuff online needs to be aware of this, to protect their Home Office or other sources.
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• Similarly Adobe .pdf documents or Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. may well have Meta information (see the Document Properties) showing the author of the leaked document (which may in turn lead back to the “leak source”).
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• Microsoft Word Documents, especially draft documents worked on by several people, often have the Version feature enabled. Sometimes examining the changes made to a document, and by whom gives extra clues about policies or coverups etc. The same feature on a whistleblowe’rs own computer, could, of course betray their identity. By adding their default name propertiesit to any document which they edit or view, before passing it on.
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• Older versions of Microsft Word (and other Office products like Excel or Powerpoint) can also betray the MAC Address of the Ethernet card of the computer on which a document was created or edited on, as part of the Global Unique ID data, embedded in the document. Most people will not have changed the MAC addresses of their computers (often possible through software), and there are likely to be inventory records or network logfiles which will pin point which MAC address belongs to which computer either at work or at home. Microsoft do now make available some tools to remove such GUID and other hidden meta data, versios, comments etc from final published Microsoft Office products. e.g. the Microsoft Office 2003/XP Remove Hidden Data Add-in
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• Photo images. Your source or the “anonymous” publisher of a leaked document online may use a Scanner, but they may, nowadays use a Digital Camera. There is often camera make / model identifying Meta data embedded in the raw digital images taken by many types of Digital Camera. These may be used as “evidence” if your Digiital Camera is seized during a “leak inquiry” investigation.
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• You wish to blank out or censor items in .jpg or .gif or .bmp graphics image. Again, there is a temptation by the uninitiated to use, say, a Photoshop pixellation or motion blur special effect filter. Remember, that these standard filters effects can often be reversed.Since Digital Camera images and Scans of documents are usually much too large for web pages, you might want to reduce the number of colours and probably the size of the images, before publishing them as thumbnails and even as larger images on a blog or website. Remember to apply your Photoshop pixellation etc after reducing the image size and number of colors, ie, after you have thrown away some of the identifying data, so as to reduce the chances of the filter effects being reversed.
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• It is possible to literally cut and delete the words from an image or the identifying features of a face or address or car number plate etc in a photo image. There have been successful guesses / recovery of “censored” words, which have been cut and and deleted from graphics image files, but, not very well, leaving tell tale spaces between words and not completely hiding the presence or absence of the tops and bottoms of individual letters.
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• File deletions.Hiding incriminating evidence (either of your “leak” or of the actual malpractice, incompetence, corruption or other criminality which you are trying to draw public attention to) is not as simple as hitting the delete key on your computer keyboard.At a simple level, some people forget that file deletions can be recovered from the “wastebasket”, and with a hexeditor or recovery utilities, many files can be “undeleted”, simply by changing the first character of the deleted file name, provided that it has not yet been overwritten. ”Secure” deletion utilities repeatedly write binary patterns over the deleted filespace several times, to try to frustrate even the more sophisticated magnetic disk surface reading equipment, which can pick up the “shadows” of previous patterns of zeros and ones. However this does take quite a long time to do thoroughly.
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• Deleting corporate emails e.g. Microsoft Exchange is not a simple mayyer either. Very often deleted emails can be simply recovered from the “wastebasket” deleted folder. Anything that has remained on the system for more than a few hours, is likley to have been backed up to other backup storage media, and so may also be recoverable during a “leak inquiry” investigation.
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• Make sure that you delete the Browser History and Temporary Files (Tools / Internet Options / Delete Files / Delete all offline content and Tools / Internet Options / Clear History in the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser) - it is not just your internet browsing which is monitored, it is your intranet web browsing, search engine queries and document downloads which are potentially monitored.
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• USB keys and SmartMediaThese are useful to spies or to whistleblowers for smuggling out electronic copies of documents. Given the size of the memory capacity these days, which is often larger than hard disks of only a few years ago, a very large amount of data can be carried. They are small and easy to hide, and can also legitamtely be hidden in cameras or MP3 players etc.Some Government Departments e.g. the Ministry of Defence do tend to use modified operating systems software which controls access to floppy disk drives, CDROM, DVD or USB devices, either totally preventing their use, or logging all such uses to a central audit server.We suspect that not every desktop PC in the Home Office is protected in this way.However, if you are caught with a USB key or MP3 player or SmartMedia memory stick or card, which uses Flash Memory, they are nigh on impossible to securely erase, and there is a good chance that data on them , even if “deleted” can be foreniscally recovered.
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• If you decide to meet with an alleged “journalist” or blogger (who may not always be who they claim to be), or if a journalist or blogger decides to meet with an “anonymous source”, then you should switch off your mobile phones, since the proximity of two mobile phones in the same approximate area, at the same time, is something which can be data mined from the Call Data Records, even if no phone conversations have taken place. Typically a mobile phone will handshake with the strongest Cell Base Station transmitter every 6 to 10 minutes, and this all gets logged, all of the time.
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• Similarly choosing a suitable location for a meeting needs some care. Nipping down to a local pub near to to the Marsham Street Home Office complex may be convenient, but your presence and that of the journalist etc. is likely to be noted by some of your work colleagues.
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• This is not quite a comprehensive list of hints and tips to help with successful whistleblowing - do any of our astute readers have any other suitable hints and tips ?
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• We have kept a few techniques back (email us, using if you want to know more).
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• None of these tips really matter for a whistleblower, unless it is Top Secret stuff which is being passed on to a politician, journalist or blogger, but they might make it less likely that a whistleblower, or the publisher of their revelations, will be harassed by the Home Office (or other Government Department).
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