The Wikileaks Question

[JackRiddler]

.

The Intercept is rife with contradictions and problems. They hired Risen to do #Russiagate straight, and poorly, as a counterweight to Greenwald. They have a possible inside plant, the guy who burned Reality Winner (and who's name I keep forgeting). They're crapping out on the Snowden archive. But they put out a lot of excellent reporting from Lee Fang and others and I love what Scahill does with his show. At the back of the thing is still the highly suspect Omidyar, who obviously didn't just hand over a quarter-billion to Greenwald as some initially thought. He's in charge, it's his business. He managed to turn off Taibbi from running his own version of The Intercept -- I don't even know if any other First Look projects exist currently? Silverstein, who was also there and then quit, basically marks them out as a honeytrap (more moneytrap) for investigative journalism set up by some inside-intel crew, but he's also got serious personal issues, calling various principals "monsters" (Laura Poitras is a monster? Really?) or mocking their appearance, and to top it off his fuck-off to The Intercept was published in Politico -- one of the most obvious new spook propaganda vehicles in circulation, literally started from the inheritance of the owner of the CIA bank!!! (Riggs). Silverstein, like Sibel Edmonds taking on the same target, approaches it with overkill and the kitchen sink, doesn't care to focus on three solid points when thirty calumnies can be added.

I agree that Greenwald's work is unique and indispensable in the sense that no one else at that level of prominence is hitting this critique of the corporate media, usually thorough and pitch-perfect. Plus he's on top of the Bolsonaro death squad story, in fact near the center of it by virtue of his husband in the Rio city government.

Plus he's obviously the next dream target of those who seek Assange's extradition. If the motto of "two times is enemy action" applies, the Xeni Jardin tweet about GG being Putin's funnel for money to Assange (!!!) follows NPR's false introduction of Greenwald as one of Assange's associates, which he has never been (and they have of course at times attacked each other in public). As with Assange, a lot of people hate him (or have chosen to target him) for being him, matters of real personal failures, personality or style (including things about him I rather like, since he doesn't pretend he's not smarter than some very stupid people). This is always in lieu of avoiding what he does as a writer and reporter, which is what should matter. Of course it was what matters to those targeting them. The 2010 leaks for which Assange is actually indicted, the DNC leak for which Schumer thinks he was indicted, or the Vault 7 leak as Arkin would have it (very believably), are why Assange is targeted, no matter how much catshit he may have thrown at the embassy wall (which is bullshit, just adopting it as a metaphor).

Arkin is an interesting case of someone who genuinely reads like he's on that impossible middle ground (thanks for linking to his blog coverage, alloneword) but he understands the relative moral weight of accusations (say, serial war crimes by state forces, as opposed to anything claimed about Assange) and ends up at the right place anyway:

Is he guilty? I’ve been asked many times in the last 24 hours. My answer is yes, on these narrow charges, just like any protestor resorting to civil disobedience is guilty. But I say, more important than whether he is guilty and odious as an individual, he is also symbol of a bigger sickness, where we all consume today’s episodes and avoid the deeper issues of secrecy and perpetual warfare. In my mind, the mainstream news media, in not doing its job better, especially on national security, contributes to a lack of basic government accountability. That increases the power of the national security establishment – the bringers of this expulsion, arrest and indictment – a now so powerful and faceless officialdom that they have a greater vote in how, where and when we fight than does the chief executive or the Congress. Or the people.

There will be more Assange’s, more Snowden’s, more Manning’s, more assaults on the system by those radicalized by their frustrations with this state of affairs. The very people who serve as sources for my article are no different, and I applaud them. So I can’t also at the same time blithely condemn anti-secrecy activists and facilitators, not per se.

[cptmarginal]

Yeah, all good points you are making. It was satisfying to see that Risen's, cough, reporting was immediately and vigorously challenged in a prominent way right on the same outlet where his pieces were published. And the fact that he participated in an open and friendly debate on Mueller etc. was also a sign of journalistic health. It has been easy for me to view The Intercept very skeptically ever since its inception because of Omidyar and the money involved, but frankly I have too many important and useful bookmarks from them at this point. The TigerSwan reports and the leaked document about motorcycle gangs come to mind as particularly impressive.

(I still think Arkin's work on Top Secret America was just fantastic; we need an updated edition.)

[Sounder]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04- ... mperialism

Releasing footage of US military personal laughing as they slaughter dozens of clearly unarmed Iraqis civilians from the distant safety of an Apache helicopter is one of the strongest ways of showing how false, artificial and propagandistic the concept of “humanitarian war” and “responsibility to protect” (R2P) is.

In today’s communication age, that footage, those images, that laughter, are a very powerful antidote against the lies we are daily fed by our media corporations.

It's always about narrative control.

[alloneword]

What Greenwald referred to as 'some interesting points':

The Assange Indictment: Weak and Potentially Time-Barred

The most striking thing about the Assange indictment that the Justice Department did file is how thin it is, and how tenuous. Leaping years backwards, ignoring “collusion with Russia,” prosecutors allege a single cyber-theft count: a conspiracy between Assange and then–Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning to steal U.S. defense secrets. This lone charge is punishable by as little as no jail time and a maximum sentence of just five years’ imprisonment (considerably less than the seven years Assange spent holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid prosecution).

This is very peculiar. Manning, Assange’s co-conspirator, has already been convicted of multiple felony violations of the espionage act — serious crimes that the Assange indictment says WikiLeaks helped Manning commit . . . but which the Justice Department has not charged against Assange.

Why? Probably because espionage charges are time-barred. Which brings us to the possibility — perhaps even the likelihood — that Assange will never see the inside of an American courtroom.

As I pointed out on Thursday, the 2010 Assange-Manning cyber-theft conspiracy charged by prosecutors is outside the standard five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes: The limitations period was already exhausted when the indictment was filed in 2018. To breathe life into the case, the Justice Department will have to convince both British and American judges that this comparatively minor conspiracy charge is actually a “federal crime of terrorism,” triggering a three-year statute-of-limitations extension.

For some reason, the extension statute — Section 2332b(g)(5)(B) — makes the extra three years applicable to cyber-theft offenses under Section 1030 of the penal code, but not espionage-act offenses under Section 793. I am skeptical, though, that the Justice Department’s cyber-theft charge qualifies for the extension. Prosecutors haven’t charged a substantive cyber-theft violation under Section 1030; they have charged a conspiracy (under Section 371) to commit the Section 1030 offense. That is not the same thing. Typically, if Congress intends that its mention of a crime should be understood to include a conspiracy to commit that crime, it says so. It did not say so in the extension statute.

Why put all the prosecutorial eggs in such a rickety basket?



Protecting Mueller’s Russian-Hacking Indictment

England is a close ally, but getting its courts to extradite people for U.S. criminal proceedings is no lay-up. It is a laborious process, and the outcome, even in strong cases, is uncertain. The Justice Department knows this, yet in its indictment it elected not to charge the Russia conspiracy — a 2016 offense that has no statute-of-limitations problem. Why? If you want the Brits to transfer a defendant, you need to make a compelling showing. Why leave obvious, serious charges on the cutting-room floor? Mueller brought a dozen felony charges against the Russian operatives with whom, we’ve been told for over two years, Assange conspired. So why isn’t Assange charged with at least some of these felonies?

Some argue that the Justice Department is nervous that, as a pseudo-journalist, Assange may have First Amendment protection from such charges. But then why charge the Manning conspiracy? The theory of Assange’s guilt is the same in both the Russian-collusion and Manning-espionage situations: The WikiLeaks chief was not merely a journalist publicizing sensitive information; he was aiding, abetting, counseling, inducing, and procuring the theft of the sensitive information (to borrow the terms of the federal aiding and abetting statute). The Justice Department plainly believes that complicity in the theft shreds any claim to freedom of the press; there is no First Amendment right to steal information.

If this is the Justice Department’s position, then why not charge Assange with the 2016 “collusion” conspiracy, too? If I were a cynic (perish the thought!), I’d suspect that the government does not want Special Counsel Mueller’s Russian-hacking indictment to be challenged.

As I have explained previously, I accept the intelligence agencies’ conclusion, echoed by Mueller, that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic email accounts. Nevertheless, there is a big difference between (a) accepting an intelligence conclusion based on probabilities, and (b) proving a key fact beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case.

The intelligence assessment here may be sound, but the legal case Mueller would have to prove to a jury has problems. To state the most obvious: The Justice Department and FBI did not perform elementary investigative steps, such as taking possession of, and performing their own forensic analysis on, the servers that were hacked. Instead, they relied on CrowdStrike, a contractor of the DNC, which has a strong motive to blame Russia.

Mueller’s team knew that no Russian defendant would ever actually be tried in a U.S. court on the hacking allegations. The indictment was more like a press release than a charging instrument. It was meant to be the last word on hacking: An authoritative version of events pronounced by a respected U.S. prosecutor that would never be challenged by skilled defense lawyers. The point was to put to rest the nettlesome “How do we really know Russia did it?” question raised by some former intelligence agents and hardcore Trump supporters.

But now . . . here comes Assange. He has always insisted that Russia was not WikiLeaks’ source. I don’t believe him. I see him as a witting, anti-American tool of Moscow. But, to my chagrin, some in Trump’s base — not all, but some — have made Assange their strange bedfellow, just as many libertarians and leftists embraced him when he was exposing U.S. national-security programs, intelligence methods, defense strategies, and foreign-relations information. These Trump supporters have convinced themselves that raising doubt about Russia’s culpability exonerates the president — even though the special counsel has already cleared Trump, regardless of what Russia (and Assange) were up to.

Consequently, if Assange were charged with the Russian-hacking conspiracy that Mueller has alleged, and if he were ever brought to the U.S. to face trial, he would maintain that he did not get the Democratic emails from Russian intelligence. Remember, a defendant does not have to prove anything: It would not be Assange’s burden to establish Russia’s innocence; the Justice Department would have to prove Russia’s culpability.

Assange’s fans would give lots of sunshine to his effort to exculpate Moscow. Indeed, even without Assange mounting a challenge to Mueller’s Russian-hacking indictment, some Trump supporters have tried to cast doubt on Russia’s guilt (see, e.g., here and here). And a group of dissenting intelligence-community veterans will continue arguing that CrowdStrike’s analysis is flawed.

To sum up: If the Justice Department had indicted Assange for collusion, Mueller’s Russian-hacking indictment would no longer stand unchallenged. Assange would deny that Russia is behind the hacking, and prosecutors would have to try to prove it, using hard, admissible courtroom proof — not top-secret sources who cannot be called as witnesses without blowing their cover, or other information that might be reliable enough to support an intelligence finding but would be inadmissible under courtroom due-process standards. If the prosecutors were unable to establish Russia’s guilt to a jury’s satisfaction, it would be a tremendous propaganda victory for the Kremlin, even if — as I believe — Russia is actually guilty.

This is part of why it was a mistake to indict the Russian intelligence officers. An indictment is never an authoritative statement; it is just an allegation, it proves nothing. We didn’t need it to know what happened here. The indictment says nothing significant that we were not already told by the intelligence agencies’ assessment released to the public in January 2017.

Adversary countries are a security challenge, not a law-enforcement problem. Because they don’t have to surrender their officials for an American trial, an indictment is a pointless gesture. But now, having with great fanfare filed charges against Russia that implicate Assange, the government shrinks from lodging these same charges against Assange — who, unlike the indicted Russian officials, may be in a position to put the government to its burden of proof. This just makes Mueller’s indictment of Russians look more like a publicity stunt than a serious allegation. If the government is afraid to try the allegations against Russia in court, people will naturally suspect the allegations are hype.

Meanwhile, let us remember: Despite a dearth of evidence that he was complicit in Moscow’s hacking, President Trump was forced by the Justice Department and the FBI, urged on by congressional Democrats, to endure a two-year investigation and to govern under a cloud of suspicion that he was an agent of the Kremlin. Now we have Assange, as to whom there is indisputable evidence of complicity in the hacking conspiracy, but the Justice Department declines to charge him with it — instead, positing the dubious Manning conspiracy that may very well be time-barred.

What is going on here?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/ ... th-russia/

[Karmamatterz]

The Intercept is rife with contradictions and problems.

Even with contradictions I'll take the Intercept any day over NYT or Wapo. Greenwald (and Poitras) had the courage to go after and then publish the Snowden story. Lifetime achievement award.

It is funny though how Greenwald seems at times more miffed that MSNBC won't have him on for interviews any longer. Why would they? He doesn't fit their agenda and goes off script.

The M5M has to feed it's engine, Assange is just another to go into the news hopper. That is just one tiny angle. M5M doesn't give a shit who gets chewed up by the machine, as long as someone does.

This whole thing smacks of many things. Another is that it would seem Hillary might finally be left out hanging after this. If enough comes out she will be chewed up like fodder. At the very least they will make sure she can't run for prez in 2020.

Where are all the people who were standing up for journalist rights when Trumpy Dumpy was bashing them? There was an UPROAR from the left about this, but now that it's just Assange it's okay to drag a journalist out of an embassy and dump him in prison?

[stickdog99]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-14/julian-assange-guilty-only-one-thing-revealing-evil-soul-us-imperialism

Releasing footage of US military personal laughing as they slaughter dozens of clearly unarmed Iraqis civilians from the distant safety of an Apache helicopter is one of the strongest ways of showing how false, artificial and propagandistic the concept of “humanitarian war” and “responsibility to protect” (R2P) is.

In today’s communication age, that footage, those images, that laughter, are a very powerful antidote against the lies we are daily fed by our media corporations.

It's always about narrative control.

And the real crime is telling the truth about the crime, whether it is you, me, Wikileaks, or evil Russian hackers.

[stickdog99]

The Intercept is rife with contradictions and problems.

Even with contradictions I'll take the Intercept any day over NYT or Wapo. Greenwald (and Poitras) had the courage to go after and then publish the Snowden story. Lifetime achievement award.

It is funny though how Greenwald seems at times more miffed that MSNBC won't have him on for interviews any longer. Why would they? He doesn't fit their agenda and goes off script.

The M5M has to feed it's engine, Assange is just another to go into the news hopper. That is just one tiny angle. M5M doesn't give a shit who gets chewed up by the machine, as long as someone does.

This whole thing smacks of many things. Another is that it would seem Hillary might finally be left out hanging after this. If enough comes out she will be chewed up like fodder. At the very least they will make sure she can't run for prez in 2020.

Where are all the people who were standing up for journalist rights when Trumpy Dumpy was bashing them? There was an UPROAR from the left about this, but now that it's just Assange it's okay to drag a journalist out of an embassy and dump him in prison?

Petty tribalistic squabbles Trump greater principles, from the SCOTUS all the way down to Joe Sixpack and Jane Fitbit. If you have to love America-hating Wikileaks, K Street lobbyists, rampant kleptocracy, voter suppression, rigged elections, family farm bankruptcies, rampant environmental destruction, slower download speeds, worse public schools for your kids, insane college debt, the completely unnecessary loss of government services you depend on, higher personal income taxes, and even the loss of your own healthcare insurance to support your chosen Fuhrer, well, that's just the small cost of rooting for your tribe, If you have to take a dump on the First Amendment, pray to Republican lawyers to deliver you from evil, and embrace your side's torture, war crimes, censorship, privacy invasions, illegal renditions, collateral drone strike homicides, environmental destruction, war on whistleblowers, and revocation of informed consent and due process, well that's just the small cost of rooting against their tribe.

[JackRiddler]

Very interesting piece by McCarthy, who shows his legal chops, and note: is very right-wing and an anti-Muslim GWOT hardliner; writing in National Review and on the anti-Trump side. Also he is clearly a believer in Russia as "antagonist," Wikileaks as bad guys, and in the national security ideology. But in this article his analysis is compelling, not mere propaganda.

The "gate" part of #Russiagate was the idea that the Trump campaign conspired with the alleged Russian effort to hack Clinton and the Democrats, turn the election in Trump's favor, invent polarization and divisiveness in US society, etc. etc. The "gate" part has now been reduced to the Wheelers and Abramsons egging on their fandom and dwindling audience to never stop believing in the ninth inning two outs down-by-ten-runs Triple Grand Slam resurrection of the St. Mueller Salvation. The Russia part very much remains. We've had so much fun with the IRA Facebook ads and Twitterbots nonsense and the Hamilton 68athon and the idea that RT is such an exceptionally manipulative and evil (and powerful!) propaganda outlet compared to the "privately owned" ATT-CNN-Disneyfoxetcetc complex.

But the core or "real" Russian plot, the part that now remains broadly accepted, was always the alleged hacking conspiracy. THat now also stands out as the most important Mueller indictment, the one actually related to the original charge of investigating Russian influence. (With the exception of the IRA spam-farm indictment, also of Russians, it's the only one, actually, since Flynn and Manafort and others all went down on perjury or money-crime unrelated to #Russiagate).

Anyway, here are some key documents of the official story on the Mueller indictment of 13 Russians, alleged to be the GRU operatives who pulled off the highly technically sophisticated Podesta phishing spam mail (this is sarcasm) and the DNC-DCCC e-mail capture (hacks, supposedly), set up the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks, and then funneled the motherlode to Wikileaks in time for the Democratic National Convention.

Indictment of 12 Russian nationals, unsealed 13 July 2018
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper ... d/full.pdf

The 27 page appendix to the 6 January 2017 DNI report on the Russian hack (longer than the main report), in which the case was first adopted and published by the government.
Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

Accompanying NY Times story on indictment
12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation Video
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/p ... cking.html

WaPo set of talking points relating to the case.
A broad debunking of Trump’s claims about Russian interference and the Mueller investigation
By Philip Bump
June 28, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pol ... stigation/

Why the physical DNC server wasn’t investigated by the FBI. We’ll use an imperfect analogy here.

When investigators go to a crime scene, they use a technique to dust for fingerprints, which results in a reproduction of the contours of the tip of a suspect’s finger. It’s that reproduction that is used to find a match against a database of fingerprints; FBI investigators don’t have to take the safe with them to constantly recheck the original print. They use the copy.

That is essentially what the FBI did with the DNC server: The bureau was provided with copies of the data on the server, like duplicating your own hard drive. Had Russians accessed the physical server after breaking into the DNC, the physical server itself might have been useful. Instead, they were given the server’s fingerprint, so to speak. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the DNC and by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony.

“Best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves,” Comey said in March 2017, “but this — my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.”

One reason the fingerprint analogy is imperfect, incidentally, is that a duplicate of the data on the DNC server is a perfect copy. A lifted print is not.

We all know that a mirror can be a perfect copy. But this implies one contestable assumption, and begs a second. It implies the assumption that there was a hack from outside the network, and not a physical presence at the server itself (here conceived only as possible if it was a Russian break-in). More importantly, however, it altogether begs as unquestionable the assumption that the DNC, their contractor Crowdstrike, and the FBI investigators are all honest actors (unlike the "Russian" conspirators) who would have no incentive to portray the capture of their e-mails as the result of a Russian hack; that, for example, Crowdstrike's initial investigation and analysis (and whatever else happened in late May/early June 2016) was not a clean-up job to establish a false "Russian" trail and fix up the server so that a "perfect" copy of it would tell that story to the FBI.

.

[alloneword]

My folks tell me... that the notion that the image of a hard drive can yield the same information under forensic testing as the actual physical drive is complete and utter bullshit.

Anyway... comedy break time:



The gist: If clowns like Dore and Carlson can get it right, why can't anyone else?

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Why the physical DNC server wasn’t investigated by the FBI. We’ll use an imperfect analogy here.

When investigators go to a crime scene, they use a technique to dust for fingerprints, which results in a reproduction of the contours of the tip of a suspect’s finger. It’s that reproduction that is used to find a match against a database of fingerprints; FBI investigators don’t have to take the safe with them to constantly recheck the original print. They use the copy.

That is essentially what the FBI did with the DNC server: The bureau was provided with copies of the data on the server, like duplicating your own hard drive. Had Russians accessed the physical server after breaking into the DNC, the physical server itself might have been useful. Instead, they were given the server’s fingerprint, so to speak. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the DNC and by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony.

“Best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves,” Comey said in March 2017, “but this — my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.”

One reason the fingerprint analogy is imperfect, incidentally, is that a duplicate of the data on the DNC server is a perfect copy. A lifted print is not.

We all know that a mirror can be a perfect copy. But this implies one contestable assumption, and begs a second. It implies the assumption that there was a hack from outside the network, and not a physical presence at the server itself (here conceived only as possible if it was a Russian break-in). More importantly, however, it altogether begs as unquestionable the assumption that the DNC, their contractor Crowdstrike, and the FBI investigators are all honest actors (unlike the "Russian" conspirators) who would have no incentive to portray the capture of their e-mails as the result of a Russian hack; that, for example, Crowdstrike's initial investigation and analysis (and whatever else happened in late May/early June 2016) was not a clean-up job to establish a false "Russian" trail and fix up the server so that a "perfect" copy of it would tell that story to the FBI.

My understanding is that the FBI never analyzed the DNC server itself -- not sure if the above makes this clear. If the "image" or "copy" is a forensic bit-by-bit capture of the server -- which is standard operating procedure for any/all forensic analysis -- then yes, it would be just as good as accessing the server itself. However, the above quoted article states, in part, "The bureau was provided with copies of the data on the server". Copies of the data can mean a number of things. How was the "copy" generated (via the fore-mentioned 'forensic imaging' process or some other, less sound, means? Was it a copy of ALL the data, or only select folders/files/directories)? Also: especially when analyzing servers, obtaining copies of various server logs are particularly important. These logs may be stored elsewhere -- not on the server itself -- depending on how the IT environment/server was initially set up and/or maintained.

The other key factor when performing analysis for an alleged hack is to obtain a memory dump from the server (not to mention ensuring the server is no longer accessed once a suspected breach has occurred). We don't know what actually happened in the immediate aftermath of (or even days after) this alleged incident, and never will, of course.

The storyline that the FBI -- and/or any other govt agency involved -- relied wholly on the analysis/reporting/findings of CrowdStrike without performing their own assessment/corroboration is, by itself, a telling sign of the farcical nature of this entire narrative.

The Guccifer 2.0 thread touches on this in greater detail.

My folks tell me... that the notion that the image of a hard drive can yield the same information under forensic testing as the actual physical drive is complete and utter bullshit.

Who are these folks? I can confirm that a forensic image of a hard drive -- if properly rendered using forensic tools, and the MD5 hash values (essentially, the digital fingerprint of a given device) of both the original drive and the image are verified as the same -- is indeed, a bit-by-bit duplicate of the original, and has exactly the same information as the original, down to the 1s and 0s.

[liminalOyster]

Marginally encouraging MSM coverage: https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-oliv ... of-reasons

[Karmamatterz]

This Stackexchange post explains some of this in very general terms. If done properly the previously deleted data can be cloned to a new drive. Forensic experts would know how to do that.

https://security.stackexchange.com/ques ... eir-traces

However, if you've breached a server and want to hide your tracks it's not terribly difficult to overwrite the trace fingerprint bits on the sectors with some new gibberish or something that looks legit. Essentially you could copy a bunch of files and fill the drive using up space to overwrite the latent fingerprints that showed what have been done before. All that is why log files are critical. Not just server logs, but routers and firewalls. A sophisticated operation would also alter the log files to corrupt or hide traces of logins and sources/paths of network traffic.

The storyline that the FBI -- and/or any other govt agency involved -- relied wholly on the analysis/reporting/findings of CrowdStrike without performing their own assessment/corroboration is, by itself, a telling sign of the farcical nature of this entire narrative.

Agreed.

[alloneword]

..a bit-by-bit duplicate of the original, and has exactly the same information as the original, down to the 1s and 0s.

The techniques I'm referring to (along the lines of what was described by Gutmann 20-odd years ago) are concerned not so much with the "1s and 0s" as the "0.95s and the 1.05s". This information wouldn't be transferred (either by bitwise image or straight copy) to another medium.

Amongst other things, it has been argued that with the density of modern storage media, these sorts of techniques are no longer applicable. I've not yet come across any totally convincing argument as to exactly why that might be so.

We don't really seem to know anything about the server in question - it's physical location and characteristics, etc. If we're planning on starting WWIII or something over it, some details might be nice.

We do, however, know a fair bit about 'Crowdstrike'.

But I guess if you already know the 'findings' of your 'investigation' before you start, the details/forensics don't really matter.

/derail

Back to Assange... Did anyone catch the (lengthy) statement he made in November 2016? (pdf)

You have subjected me to six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge in prison, under house arrest and four and a half years at this embassy. You should have asked me this question six years ago. Your actions in refusing to take my statement for the last six years have been found to be unlawful by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and by the Swedish Court of Appeal. You have been found to have subjected me to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. You have denied me effective legal representation in this process. Despite this, I feel compelled to cooperate even though you are not safeguarding my rights.

Only 19 pages. Somehow I'd never read it, or may be I'd put it aside for later.

[stickdog99]

My folks tell me... that the notion that the image of a hard drive can yield the same information under forensic testing as the actual physical drive is complete and utter bullshit.

Anyway... comedy break time:



The gist: If clowns like Dore and Carlson can get it right, why can't anyone else?

Dore comes across as an honest, informed, well-meaning, middle left person of average intelligence reacting just as you would expect any honest, informed, well-meaning middle left person of average intelligence to react.

It is amazing how completely off the "liberal media" grid that makes him and his "radical" views on patently simple things that all honest, informed, well-meaning, middle left people seemed to agree on as little as just three years ago, such as our security state's pronouncements are not infallibly truthful and freedom of political speech is beneficial.

The Russiagate psyop strike me as a spectacular experiment in just how far you can get the most politically "active" people (in terms of their daily consumption of corporate news) to sell out their most fundamental values to root against "the other team."

"They" had already proven to themselves that Republicans don't actually care one bit about even their most core values such as "small government" just as long as their "side" is the one doing the expansion. I guess the next step was proving that middle left people are just as susceptible the negation of their most deeply held political convictions if enough talking heads conspire to tell them that doing so will help their "side" win.

[Belligerent Savant]

..a bit-by-bit duplicate of the original, and has exactly the same information as the original, down to the 1s and 0s.

The techniques I'm referring to (along the lines of what was described by Gutmann 20-odd years ago) are concerned not so much with the "1s and 0s" as the "0.95s and the 1.05s". This information wouldn't be transferred (either by bitwise image or straight copy) to another medium.

Amongst other things, it has been argued that with the density of modern storage media, these sorts of techniques are no longer applicable. I've not yet come across any totally convincing argument as to exactly why that might be so.

Without getting into a lengthy side-bar discussion about this, the link you provide references overwritten content on a hard drive and/or attempts to recover contents that have been deleted/overwritten, which is separate and apart from the topic of generating a forensic image of a hard drive.

Whether or not intel agencies can recover overwritten data is a topic for another time, but it does not discount - or address - the fact a forensic image is an exact replica of an original hard drive.

I'd be happy to dig deeper into this topic via a new/separate thread, but for now, back to the farce in question:

We don't really seem to know anything about the server in question - it's physical location and characteristics, etc. If we're planning on starting WWIII or something over it, some details might be nice.

We do, however, know a fair bit about 'Crowdstrike'.

But I guess if you already know the 'findings' of your 'investigation' before you start, the details/forensics don't really matter.

Quite right.


Empire can not have an Assange in the wild. An example must be made. Watch now, as most of his 'peers' in the press clamor to cheer on the Empire.