Recently in Communications Traffic Data Category

Even though Julian Assange could very well be extradited from the UK to Sweden next week, to face non-wikleaks related sexual offences allegations

https://twitter.com/#!/JudiciaryUK/status/129846526171287552

Julian Assange appeal against extradition - the High Court will hand down judgment on Wednesday 2 November.

10:06 AM Oct 28th 2011

he has announced a new, re-engineered WikiLeakS.org submission system to be launched on November 28th 2011.

https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/128455207490293762

@wikileaks WikiLeaks
Assange: On November 28th WikiLeaks will launch new generation submissions system http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18082417

1:58 PM Oct 24th 2011

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18082417

Julian Assange speaking at the Frontline international press club in London, on Tuesday 24th October 2011

Approx 1 hour 5 minutes near the end of the video clip:

The fallout from that was the we viewed that our submission system could not be trusted any more

So did everyone else with any clues about computer security and anonymity, including Daniel Domscheit-Berg and the "Architect", which is partly why they left in the first place.

As a result we have had to completely re-engineer, from scratch, a new generation submission system.

On November 28th, the one year anniversary of CableGate, we will

Now, wikileaks has never had only the one submission system. We've received information in a wide variety of means, just like intelligence agencies and professional, mainstream media organisations, receive their information from a wide variety of means.

It has been important to us, to always have a wide variety of means, so no one mean becomes the sole, the sole subject of infiltration or investigation.

However, for the last, for the last 12 months, for the last 12 months, you haven't been able to go through the front door to submit wikileaks sensitive, information

You've had to establish, contacts, with the organisation and transmit us the material through other mechanisms.

Is Assange claiming that people have actually been stupid enough to submit sensitive material to him in the last 12 months, through other means ?

Why has he not bothered to publish any of this new, "non-Bradley Manning" sourced stuff then ?

How exactly are these "other means" actually Anonymous or Secure ?

Remember that wikileaks stopped publishing a PGP Public Encryption Key years ago and their incompetence in using PGP as a means of symmetric encryption and then stupidly publishing their CableGate archive online around the world and the re-using the same pass phrase with Guardian journalist David Leigh, was an

Similarly, they stopped publishing a Tor Hidden Service even before they stopped accepting new submissions.

On November 28th, the one year anniversary of CableGate, we will launch our new generation submission system.

That includes, not just, a public interface, but also several other mechanisms that are necessary to deal with an attack on the entire internet security system, that has been established over the last few years, by intelligence agencies and criminal groups.

Right now, it is not possible to trust any https:// connection on the internet.

Utter rubbish !

Even wikileaks.org itself has, at various times, published a Self Signed Digital Certificate and has published the MD5 and SHA-1 cryptographic hash fingerprints, without relying on any built in web browser trust of Certificate Authorities.

It is not possible your banking system, it is not possible to trust any, regular, web based secure encryption system

What about banks which use SSL v3 Client Side Digital Certificates for mutual client / server authentication, without the need for any external Certificate Authority ?

That is because, intelligence agencies have infiltrated , a number of Certificate Authorities. Certificate Authorities are those authorities which
sign the cryptographic keys that are used for secure internet communication.

On November 28th, we will release our alternative to that system, which is independent of all Certificate Authorities

Is the something which Julian and his cult have created from scratch, or will they just steal / borrow the work of Moxie Marlinspike and SSLLabs etc. with Convergence ?

Remember that SSL / TLS encryption only provides Secrecy about most of the contents of an encrypted session, it does not provide any Anonymity, and, may in fact provide less anonymity than a non-SSL connection via a shared proxy server.

A question from the floor:

"I understand that you may be limited in what you can say, but how have you manage to get around the fact, that in your eyes, Certificate Authorities can't be trusted, with this particular submission system ?"

01:08:57

We will give full details here, on a conference, on November 28th

Full details ?? Don't hold your breath.

Will they publish the source code of their system, or even a detailed security architecture of what is is intend to actually do and protect against ?

On past performance, this is extremely unlikely.

I would like to say, that in that, this problem has been brewing over a number of years, and we were aware of it before, back in 2010, and we had a number of mechanisms to ameliorate that, ahh, thousands of robots that went out over the internet, to simulate being sources, to check to see, whether these "men-in-the-middle" or fabricated certificates existed.

So we had a number of different mechanisms to try to ameliorate that problem, but it is our view that the problem has now gone so severe, that even those attempts to ameliorate it, can no longer be trusted to the degree, that our sources expect us, to be able to solve the problem

More nonsense from the deliberately deceptive Julian Assange:

"thousands of robots" ??

At the time they claimed that this was to provide "cover traffic" to help to confuse Communications Traffic Analysis and thereby to improve the Anonymity of the submission system

This could not and would not have tested for any SSL "man-in-the-middle" attacks on the Security / Privacy of submissions.

Neither could it have detected compromised Certificate Authorities around the world, especially in places where the Government also controls international internet access.

Even if it was meant to do so, they obviously failed to detect a single example of such an attack aimed at wikileaks, or if they did, they must have covered it up.

Regardless of the technical merits of this new submission system, any whistleblower with really sensitive, life threatening information to publish, would have to be suicidal to trust Julian Assange and his WikiLeakS.org cult followers with it.

Given the popularity of Peer to Peer (P2P) networks for file sharing and the close links between WikiLeakS.org original web hosts in Sweden and their former links with The Pirate Bay "The world's most resilient bittorrent site", WikiLeakS.org leaked documents have always been available on P2P networks.

The recent Bloomberg news agency story

WikiLeaks May Have Exploited Music, Photo Networks to Get Data

gives prominence to some dubious claims by a US based Peer to Peer Network spying company called Tiversa.

Bloomberg and Tiversa provide no evidence of any direct link between the alleged
appearance of the US Military files on incompetently configured personal computer systems running P2P software (in contravention of the applicable computer security policies) and the publication of re-named files on Wikileaks, months or even years later.

The Bloomberg article itself lists the months or sometimes years between the alleged appearance of a few US military documents on P2P networks open to the entire internet, and the publication of what is alleged to be copies of the same versions of those documents on the old, no longer functioning, WikiLeakS.org wiki system.

They cannot have it both ways.

Either it is legal for everyone, including firms like Tiversa to monitor such networks (for money) in bulk, in real time, all over the world, "1.8 billion times a day" by running "rogue" monitoring nodes joined to these P2P networks, or it is not.

To attempt to claim that just because they monitored "4 IP address in Sweden", that this is somehow evidence that WikiLeakS.org themselves were trawling for documents on P2P networks, is an incredible double standard, given the amount of such trawling which originates from the USA and even from Tiversa itself.

Tiversa's cause célèbre. was their discovery of the US Presidential helicopter documents, something which strongly implies that they themselves also downloaded copies of such documents, both from the useless US Defense Contractor and from the alleged computer in Iran.

Such activity is itself certainly illegal in many countries and would probably amount to espionage according to the evil Iranian authorities.

Remember there is no proof that the discovery of an alleged download by a particular computer IP address actually means that any human has even noticed or read any such documents, in all likelihood they have not, simply due to the volumes involved - see the various internet snooping projects derived from Echelon by intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ etc and their rivals.

Initially the WikiLeakS.org website just assumed that people would "seed" copies of their published documents into P2P networks. They later started to formally provided Magnet URI links to such documents on their download pages, but of course these are now no longer functional.

Perhaps OpenLeaks.org or any other successors to WikiLeakS.org, if they ever get off the ground, will also seed P2P networks and provide Magnet links as well.

There is a link on the current WikiLeakS.CH website and on its hundreds of risky mirror websites, to a compressed archive of BitTorrent index files, which can be used to download around 20,000 documents which have been published on WikiLeakS.org i.e. not the big "Bradley Manning" disclosures, which got their own dedicated web sites.

However, if you are planning to "research" these for your forthcoming blog or mainstream media article, tv documentary, book, film etc. remember your IP address will be tracked by Tiversa and other private sector and government spies.

Given the legally toxic nature of some of these WikiLeakS.org documents, depending on the legal jurisdiction you fall under, you may be breaking various laws by downloading or possessing copies of these documents e.g. government official secrecy, espionage, lèse majesté, copyright, contempt of court etc. . You should probably keep any files you download in an encrypted volume using, for example TrueCrypt

WikiLeakS.org has never bothered to provide any such warnings or advice to its readers.

About this blog

This blog here at WikiLeak.org (no "S") discusses the ethical and technical issues raised by the WikiLeakS.org project, which is trying to be a resource for whistleblower leaks, by providing "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis".

These are bold and controversial aims and claims, with both pros and cons, especially for something which crosses international boundaries and legal jurisdictions.

This blog is not part of the WikiLeakS.org project, and there really are no copies of leaked documents or files being mirrored here.

Email Contact

Please feel free to email us your views about this website or news about the issues it tries to comment on:

email: blog@WikiLeak[dot]org

Before you send an email to this address, remember that this blog is independent of the WikiLeakS.org project.

If you have confidential information that you want to share with us, please make use of our PGP public encryption key or an email account based overseas e.g. Hushmail

LeakDirectory.org

Now that the WikiLeakS.org project is defunct, so far as new whistleblower are concerned, what are the alternatives ?

The LeakDirectory.org wiki page lists links and anonymity analyses of some of the many post-wikileaks projects.

There are also links to better funded "official" whistlblowing crime or national security reporting tip off websites or mainstream media websites. These should, in theory, be even better at protecting the anonymity and security of their informants, than wikileaks, but that is not always so.

New whistleblower website operators or new potential whistleblowers should carefully evaluate the best techniques (or common mistakes) from around the world and make their personal risk assessments accordingly.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

The WikiLeakS.org Submissions web page provides some methods for sending them leaked documents, with varying degrees of anonymity and security. Anybody planning to do this for real, should also read some of the other guides and advice to political activists and dissidents:

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

Digital Security & Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual, by Irish NGO Frontline Defenders.

Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide (.pdf - 31 pages), by the Citizenlab at the University of Toronto.

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents - March 2008 version - (2.2 Mb - 80 pages .pdf) by Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics by Human Rights Watch.

A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns (v 2.6) (.doc - 62 pages), by experienced UK direct action political activists

Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress & Tor - useful step by step guide with software configuration screenshots by Ethan Zuckerman at Global Voices Advocacy. (updated March 10th 2009 with the latest Tor / Vidalia bundle details)

WikiLeakS Links

The WikiLeakS.org Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

WikiLeakS Twitter feeds

The WikiLeakS.org website does not stay online all of the time, especially when there is a surge of traffic caused by mainstream media coverage of a particularly newsworthy leak.

Recently, they have been using their new Twitter feeds, to selectively publicise leaked documents to the media, and also to report on the status of routing or traffic congestion problems affecting the main website in Stockholm, Sweden.

N.B.the words "security" or "anonymity" and "Twitter" are mutually exclusive:

WikiLeakS.org Twitter feed via SSL encrypted session: https://twitter.com/wikileaks

WikiLeakS.org unencrypted Twitter feed http://twitter.com/wikileaks

Internet Censorship

OpenNet Initiative - researches and measures the extent of actual state level censorship of the internet. Features a blocked web URL checker and censorship map.

Temporary Autonomous Zone

Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) by Hakim Bey (Peter Lambourn Wilson)

Cyberpunk author William Gibson

Campaign Button Links

Watching Them, Watching Us, UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

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FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Peaceful resistance to the curtailment of our rights to Free Assembly and Free Speech in the SOCPA Designated Area around Parliament Square and beyond

Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans
Data Retention is No Solution Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.

Save Parliament: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)
Save Parliament - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)

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Open Rights Group

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Tor - the onion routing network
Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor - useful Guide published by Global Voices Advocacy with step by step software configuration screenshots (updated March 10th 2009).

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Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign

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BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

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NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

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Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

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Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.

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Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

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Wikileaks.org - the controversial "uncensorable, anonymous whistleblowing" website based currently in Sweden.

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