Like other HN members, I'm also a Strafor subscriber and my details and credit card information were leaked, so I have a vested interest in this issue.
At first I was pretty supportive of Stratfor, and thought that Anonymous attacking Stratfor was completely stupid.
However, a couple of things from the news release caught my eye. I guess I was naive, but I believed that Strafor was more like a news agency, and they would do their best work to uncover information, analyze breaking situations, and supply information to its members.
However, from reading the news release from Wikileaks, I get the vague sense that maybe Stratfor was gathering a lot more information than I thought, using it to their advantage, and then throwing a bone to its subscribers every now and then, just enough to keep them subscribing and generating income.
It certainly seems like there's a lot more going under the covers than I anticipated. The comment about "Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase." makes it seem like Friedman is more than willing to make anyone their pawns, including subscribers.
Also, the idea of their StratCap Fund really kind of makes me question exactly what they are. I thought their motivations were really about analysis and information, but I kind of don't believe that now. At first, I didn't think the emails themselves were important, but now I'm definitely going to be keeping a close eye on whatever gets turned up from this point on.
I used to be a corporate subscriber (tens of thousands a month) and personal subscriber (a hundred or so a year). Some of the intel I commissioned at corporate worked its way into retail analysis; this was their policy.
STRATFOR is getting heat since they're well known in the public because of their philosophy that everyone should have access to top-grade intelligence. I don't understand how attacking the guys who find secret information, analyse it, and sell it to businesses, governments, and the public promotes an open society.
Now we have shifted our business to Kroll and Dilligence and similar firms. They are stoutly anti-public. Not coincidentally their IT security is also top-notch. What was once public will now be very, very secret (Kroll has a 30-day email full deletion policy).
I worked for an investment bank. Found their idea of a STRATFOR hedge fund funny, but not evil. Another way to woo colleagues over from the public side while giving themselves a marketing tool against finance firms by being able to point to a performance trail. Mis-guided, perhaps, but given that Google basically runs a prop desk off its cash pile and has no problem with it (many corporate treasuries operate for profit)suggests it may not be an end-of-the-world conflict of interest.
Note: I hold no bad blood for Wikileaks; they're informatior brokers. But I do judge the guys who hacked them. Though I judge STRATFOR as well for being so cavalier with their security.
> I don't understand how attacking the guys who find secret information, analyse it, and sell it to businesses, governments, and the public promotes an open society.
I believe the issue is more to do with their information gathering practices (bribery and questionable links to individuals in government agencies are alleged in the article, amongst others) and the ethics of making money from that.
Put another way, it's a sustainable Wikileaks (sustainable because it is self-financing and can attract talent, albeit evidently not IT).
If you read about a New York Times investigative journalist bribing their way into Libya, clinking drinks with dictators, etc. to get a scoop on what they're doing, would that be evil? Perhaps to some, but I value the information. It's a bit sleazy on the field, sure, but given that the information is known by intelligence agencies the next question is whether it is known to the public.
So the argument that you are making is that because some illegal acts may ultimately be used in a way that can be seen as positive (the journalist analogy), you see no problem with a company acting illegally ('sleazy') on a regular basis?
'Illegal' is regime specific. It's absurd to argue legality within a context of hacked emails. If we are being strictly legalistic we should discard this evidence as being illegally obtained.
So let's change your question to is it okay to gain intelligence by venality? My answer is it is a continuum. Would I advocate bribing North Korean officials to gain insight on what they're doing? Yes. For Germany? No. STRATFOR, through the incentives in our global political regime, snaps into public opinion modulated by the risk of getting caught (as any agent in a political society does).
Generalising this de-spirits the debate. The fact is this information is being collected and will continue to be collected because it has tremendous intrinsic value. The question is how widely available it will be. I can pay for it. I just thought people liked having access to it as well. I would understand, though, if people preferred pretending reality isn't as it is.
I agree on the continuum, and that there is no point pretending reality isn't as it is, but on the other hand is there not a case that actions being taken by organisations such as these may not actually be in the interests of the wider public, and thus they should have a degree of public oversight and/or transparency in their actions?
If we could multilaterally ban (and enforce a ban) on espionage, thus forcing diplomacy into the open, would I be opposed? No.
But that's not the world we inhabit. Nation-states are perpetually insecure about the intentions of others. Hence, espionage will exist with states as the actors.
So the next level is how widely disseminated should this information be? The intel Kroll, Dilligence, Nardello, IGI, etc. provide will always be available in one form or another. And because it's very information dense people like me, who want to understand above all else, will bid up the value of that information.
I understand the public being uneasy with all of this. It's akin to pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. But it is how geopolitics works; we are shooting the messenger. It's a shame that Anonymous et Pals may have just severed the single link the majority of people had to this world. I, on the other hand, will only have to deal with one fewer information brokers.
There was an article on HN a day or two ago on how being pragmatic, even if it's sour, is better than being solely right. I think this is one of those cases.
> But that's not the world we inhabit. Nation-states are perpetually insecure about the intentions of others. Hence, espionage will exist with states as the actors.
I can see that it pretty point-of-view, but I don't agree with this. I think we live in the world that we make, nothing is 'perpetual', and that in Western countries especially we will gain in the long-run from ensuring our own ethical standards are high. This, from my point-of-view, is practical.
Put another way, it's a sustainable Wikileaks (sustainable because it is self-financing and can attract talent, albeit evidently not IT).
No, put another way, were Wikileaks is a robin hood (steal from the powerful, give to the public), they are a villain for hire -- and one that also has a super-boss at that.
No, it mostly has to do that they sell information to governments (mostly, the US and chose allies that the US gets a say to what they are given) and businesses (big corps). Thus, promoting both corporatism and imperialism against citizens, other/foreign businesses and sovereign states.
Plus, it's not like "information gathering" is a neutral process. What you select, what you report, how you frame it, is a standard method to promote the agenda of your backers. Their "customer", besides heavy backers like the US gov, is mostly a product for sale.
I guess the question that I have is: Is Stratfor shaping the information that it is supplying to its retail subscribers, for whatever reason (either for the benefit of their corporate subscribers, or for themselves)? It certainly seems like this is something that Friedman and Stratfor are capable of doing. Is it possible that they are employing propaganda techniques through their retail arm in order to get a desired response from the tens of thousands of subscribers that they have?
I don't have the answer to this question. Their hedge fund is a bit suspicious to me, and the fact that we are dealing with seemingly experts in propaganda might make me think twice about their motivations. I thought they were a news organization, but suppose I was wrong.
I'll still going to subscribe to them (when they begin their subscription service again), but I'll definitely be taking a lot of their information with a grain of salt... just in case they aren't who they say they are. At the very least, I've woken up to the fact that they aren't a news organization.
Friedman had an essay where he espoused on the differences between journalism and intelligence, namely, that the former needs hard facts while the latter tries to fill in holes with intuition and theory. It was a great read.
I don't see STRATFOR deriving much value from swinging its limited niche readership around à la Fox News. But their guiding premises are know your source, trust but verify, and think critically about everything.
I don't take STRATFOR intel at the same degree of confidence as say an Economist article or something printed in the Times. But I subscribed because they had a knack for casting light in places and on conflicts I wasn't aware of and by making speculative calls, sometimes right often off (e.g. Hamas will use the Egyptian revolution to gain a platform) but always thought provoking.
I don't see STRATFOR deriving much value from swinging its limited niche readership around à la Fox News.
Plus you have to consider, that those who would be most valuable to "swing" are most likely using Stratfor as just another piece in the puzzle.
I guess the question that I have is: Is Stratfor shaping the information that it is supplying to its retail subscribers, for whatever reason (either for the benefit of their corporate subscribers, or for themselves)? It certainly seems like this is something that Friedman and Stratfor are capable of doing.
In an era where Joe Public can be under GPS/Mail/whatever surveillance for whatever reason any in the government wants, do people believe that an entity like Stratfor would exist without the explicit consent and control of the government and/or secret agencies? And that they would NOT shape the information that they are providing to retail subscribers?
We're not talking tin-foil paranoia here, this is state politics 101.
I don't understand how attacking the guys who find secret information, analyse it, and sell it to businesses, governments, and the public promotes an open society.
Is it that opaque to you how attacking a company that finds and SELLS secret information to businesses and governments promotes an open society?
Plus, the part about making information available to "the public" is laughable.
The public does not "buy" information from them. What little they make available to the general public (subscribers etc) is not at all the same stuff they sell to governments and corporations.
And the plural "governments" is also crap -it's mostly the US government, first and foremost.
Maybe being a macro derivatives trader at an investment bank with a multitrillion dollar balance sheet put me on STRATFOR, Kroll, IGI, Dilligence and Troika's (Russian) default-to-dumbass lists, but the information STRATFOR released to subscribers was on par with what we commissioned, the only difference being I could commission research as a corporate customer while as a personal subscriber it's a one-way relationship.
Every potential conspiracy need not be one. If STRATFOR really didn't care about distributing its research it could do what the other private intelligence firms do and be client-only.
Just out of curiosity: What is the primary use for you guys of these geo intelligence services? Is it "just" regional risk assessment or what form of benefits do these providers offer to your investment decisions?
Two sides; the primary rationale is defensive. If we are making an illiquid investment in say China, having Kroll investigate who has beneficial ownership of the other 85% of the firm, who in the Party are they connected to, and if anything shady is going on is useful. Additionally, given the increasing salience of macro factors in the capital markets having awareness of areas like Greece or Iran which are economically insignificant but carry the ability to effect asymmetric damage on asset prices (which traders have traditionally labeled as "exogenous" or "fat tail" scenarios) becomes critical.
On the offensive side the edge mostly deriving most traders' view of geopolitics as an exogenous risk. We were favourably positioned for the fallout in Libya, culminating in a life-changing trade where we syndicated oil being sold by the rebels in Benghazi. The risks in that deal were too high if you approached it at day zero. We were willing to commit since we had been watching that market since January.
Maybe being a macro derivatives trader at an investment bank with a multitrillion dollar balance sheet put me on STRATFOR, Kroll, IGI, Dilligence and Troika's (Russian) default-to-dumbass lists, but the information STRATFOR released to subscribers was on par with what we commissioned
"on par with what we commissioned" maybe, but not on par with what they gathered.
Essentially, thet use your money to provide you with your results PLUS build a huge intelligence database with much more results (including things that come up during your commissioned search that are not for you to know) for government etc use. It's like you subsidy the CIA and get back some partial results on things you want to know.
Given that we often double-contracted with Kroll, in two cases a Russian security firm, and in one case directly commissioned a satellite feed (European/no down graining), I can call out your claim as being categorically false within the realm of my experience.
Note that STRATFOR isn't quite as badass as it's being painted - they aren't an ersatz intelligence agency. They're a team of analysts working through existing information networks. The deep dig intelligence consultants are at other firms.
The "control" quote is completely out of context and the whole dialog between Friedman and Bhalla is something very different. This is not something I expect Wikileaks to do.
I've read STRATFOR's intel summaries / newsletters for a while - and I generally support Wikileak's and Anonymous's goals, if not always their specific tactics. So this is grabbing my interest, both personally and professionally. If nothing else, it will be interesting to consider ways to apply their methodology to the sort of threat intelligence we work with in network security.
(Side note: it's entirely possible to support Wikileaks and still think Assange is kind of a jerk.)
The thing is, though I'm not saying that's true in your case, that many people's perceptions of Assange are entirely due to the picture the media has painted rather than things he has himself said or done.
Check out the disinformation campaign that's been going on in Sweden for example, propagated by tabloid press in releases oddly synchronous with statements by the prime minister concerning an upcoming 'smear campaign against Sweden'.
Which really makes you question just why the US is persecuting Wikileaks as vigorously as it is... until you notice that most of the dictators who have fallen and countries where rebellions occurred were US allies, or at least had close ties to the US. Even Gaddafi was cozying up to the west until things got hairy.
The truly sad thing is, we knew all this. We've known that supporting friendly but brutal and murderous dictators has been the modus operandi for the US for years. Despite the leaks and the Arab Spring, this will continue to be the case so long as it's easier to keep a friendly dictator in power than try and work with a democratically elected government of a country where the vast majority of people don't like you.
Technically, it only works because it looks very much like an accident. China and at least one dictator have accused the US of doing this on purpose, so the US has to prosecute and act all hot and bothered about it, otherwise it starts to look like an intentional leak.
China's case is particularly interesting. It's nearly impossible to criticize them directly for anything, since they just deny it, mirror the same criticism back, and then threaten some kind of economic retaliation for it. Their playbook is clear, and effective.
But this accidental Wikileaks release allowed the US to publicly say to the world all sorts of stuff about what our government really thinks about the Chinese government, and there's nothing they can do in response. It was an accident, US is embarrassed and pissed off, but it just so happens the collateral damage to Chinese government's PR machine (and various dictators and whatnot) was worse.
Don't you think it also works the other way around? The majority of people don't like you because you support a violent dictator that's clearly bad for them.
It's a ratchet effect. Population are not particularly interested either way; government tells US government they're not going to put US interests ahead of their own people's, gets overthrown and replaced with a brutal dictatorship, population gets distinctly unfriendly, democratic government replaces dictator after revolution, opposes US interests as it plays well with population.
Hey, that sounds kind of familiar... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Pahlavi_dynasty_.281925.E2...
"But we must acknowledge that this incident would not have been possible if Stratfor had implemented stronger data protection mechanisms - which will be the case from now on. Indeed we will immediately move to implement the latest, and most comprehensive, data security measures."
Seriously? These people were emailing what they considered the most sensitive information straight out of their organisation, the only "security" being a caveat in the subject line. I wouldn't trust them with a cookie jar let alone preventing leaks ;)
How is Stratfor fundamentally different from Wikileaks? They both obtain leaked information, often by methods of questionable legality. Stratfor uses the information to make reports and newsletters they sells to governments, businesses, and ordinary curious members of the public, whereas Wikileaks releases it for free but in ways that seemed designed to promote Assange, but I wouldn't say these are fundamental differences.
If Wikileaks were truly about bringing secret information to light, wouldn't they be protecting other leak organizations, rather that exposing their sources?
"How is Stratfor fundamentally different from Wikileaks? They both obtain leaked information ..."
That's like asking "How are the Crips different from the LAPD? They both drive around Los Angeles and carry guns ..." In the case of Stratfor and Wikileaks, one group finds secret information and makes it public, the other group takes secret information and sells it back to the same secret community from where the leaks originate.
"I wouldn't say these are fundamental differences."
> "How are the Crips different from the LAPD? They both drive
> around Los Angeles and carry guns ..."
... and they both enforce laws, and they both initiate the use of force against peaceful citizens, and they both take funding from unwilling people by the threat of violence.
I'm not sure you're making the point you intended to make, unless you're an anarcho-capitalist like me ;-)
That's exactly my point. Between any two groups, you can cherry pick lots of things that they have in common. So yeah, the Crips and the LAPD both wear "uniforms" and money is a big driving force yada yada. But at the end of the day, one group has a mission that is sanctioned by the overwhelming majority of the community and the other group absolutely doesn't. And I'm sure there's lots to be said about how the gangs and the LAPD are co-dependent but that doesn't make them the same.
I think Stratfor is an example of this trend of for-profit private outsourcers of things which used to be government-only functions.
Political science types are fond of saying "government must have a monopoly on the use of XYZ", but apparently now if you put the right retired government people on your payroll it's legit.
Military intelligence, international informant "asset" management? Good grief, this is some scary stuff.
I think the only thing political scientists say government should have a monopoly on is violence and national security. Anything beyond that and you enter a fractious field.
even there, the monopoly on both these things is mighty narrow. For example, how many political scientists would say that the state should have such a monopoly on violence that there should be no recognition of a right to defend oneself and others?
However international informent asset management? Does it impinge on the government's necessary monopoly on national security and violence? Two for two, I'd wager.....
That's funny, because the way I read the analogy, Stratfor was the Crips, gathering information and using it for private gain, and Wikileaks was the LAPD, using it for public good. Now clearly the LAPD is probably nearly as corrupt as the Crips, just in different ways-- so I'm not sure far this analogy holds, for that reason and many others. Still very amusing.
To a large degree I agree with this standpoint.
The problem with the Stratfor case is, that it was by and large a private research company who's only "crime" so far was selling information for money. And the idea of running an investment fund based on geo political informations seems a pretty smart idea. But what investment fund doesn't want to consider potential problematic externalities in their investments?
The statement including $1,200 a month paid to the informant from the Wikileak's press release seems an almost ridiculously low amount, even when payed regularly, when in contrast other media outlets are paying thousands, and in some cases even millions for access to some temporary celebrities or access to other irrelevant banalities of public life.
I am a subscriber to Stratfor, because of their insightful analysis. It feeds my curiousity about why things they way the are, not not just what is happening (which is what you get from most news sources, if you're lucky). I haven't seen much in the way of leaked information in Stratfor's reports --- in fact, I can't think of any that I could identify as leaked information.
I remember them talking about their sources in the FSA when discussing Syria, etc. I still think targeting this was absurd; I lost sympathy for Anonymous after they attacked Stratfor.
One difference is one makes money doing it and the other loses money doing it. One silos information in order to extract wealth from people who are interested in that information. The other releases it for free. One in moving in the direction of more secrecy and information hiding. The other is moving in the direction of more openness and transparency.
I disagree that this is not "fundamentally different". It doesn't get much more "fundamental" than the ideological difference that drives the two organisations.
I'm talking difference, you go talking about good and evil.
Individual actions taken by people who may or may not be journalists could be good or evil, depending on the individual action.
Journalism paid for by advertisers cannot report on anything that is contrary to the interests of their advertisers.
Direct subscription journalism, like Wikileaks, Counterpunch, or to some extent Le Monde diplomatique is now essential to getting information on what global organisations are really doing (as opposed to what they advertise they are doing).
Stratfor sought to make a profit. Journalists seek to make a living. A lot of the journalists I know would be perfectly happy to work for a not-for-profit organization because they're in it for the work, not the money.
The news organisations seek to make a profit just as much as STRATFOR. When that interferes with their ethics you get News Corp. When it doesn't we have reputable journals.
The people at STRATFOR, similarly, could generally earn much more by working at macro hedge funds. Why they choose not to is their personal decision to make.
I'm not trying to tease out a nuance here, but simply demonstrate that a profit motive doesn't inherently corrupt information collection and analysis.
Sure, but there's a difference between journalists and news organizations. You were conflating them.
Also, I suspect you're wrong. Every serious journalism organization maintains Chinese walls between the journalists and the profit-seekers. I think that's because a profit motive does inherently corrupt in that it creates conflicts of interest.
That's a fine unbacked assertion, but it's wrong. Profit is a measure of a venture's gain beyond its expenses, nothing more. People are not businesses, and one's life is not measurable by a P&L.
That's a warm and fluffy thing to say, but it's not actually true: as an individual, you trade your time for wages, which you spend on first living, and then on living the lifestyle you desire. The latter is "wants", not "needs". It's possible to live a very, very nice lifestyle working for a "non-profit". Nothing wrong with that of course, but let's call a spade a shovel.
That is a modern American consumerist interpretation of the nature of life. P&L is a modern business invention; you can certainly try to interpret the world in terms of it, but it's a narrow and weak philosophy. E.g., what's the ROI on voting?
How is that relevant? We are talking about economic activity. Wanting to work for a "non-profit" is easy; being willing to work for no personal gain takes true commitment. One that you will find that very few of the "capitalism is bad" crowd actually have.
It's relevant because you're trying to view everything through the peephole of a P&L statement. "Everything is capitalism" is no more rational than "capitalism is bad".
That's like saying there's no difference between Applebee's and UNICEF. Yeah, they both give food to people. One of them does it to those in need to help them, the other to those that have money.
It's best to have both, competition, and have them expose each other as they do now. Unless it's a massive well organized public stunt, i think it benefits the public.
One of the more interesting things to emerge from this is Strafor's failed attempt to create a hedge fund that would use their intelligence to invest in government bonds, currency, etc.
Thank you for the reference - I agree, that's the most likely interpretation of the email. I wonder why this wasn't called out more strongly when the hedge fund was mentioned in the press release.
Anyone commenting about the supposed irony of Wikileaks putting an embargo on releasing this information before an agreed date is being naive.
At one point in time Wikileak's stated mission was just to leak information, and this was done without — comparatively — much fanfare.
What we see now is a change of tactics. If the ultimate goal is not simply to leak information, but to effect change, then what is the best way to do this?
A coordinated, simultaneous release has a better chance of being noticed by more people and thus a greater chance of effecting some meaningful change.
We can disagree on tactics. Assuming you believe their goals are reasonable, what else could they do? I'm not suggesting there are not other options, but I rarely read any suggestions of a better way.
i'm not sure you can say that wikileak's goal is to effect change. their goal is to take information that was private, and make it visible to as many people as is possible. controlling the release furthers that goal. they don't seem to care what happens with the information once it is released, just that the release gathers notice. i don't think their goals have changed over time, they've just become more aware of the fact that releasing information is no good if there's no audience for the release.
Well, effecting change is their stated goal. Assange has spoken at length about the idea of exposing information in order to break down conspiracies which an informed public may consider corrupt. I think that Wikileaks is a long way from being able to do that yet — undermine the corruption/lawlessness in a govt to an extent where it's weakened — but I'm hopeful.
Their focus is not simply exposing private information. Again, Assange has repeatedly said that Wikileaks has no interest in violating personal privacy and has in fact explicitly said that an individual has a right to privacy.
Exposing all private information is a radical position, one for which they couldn't expect to gain popular support. In other words, that is not their goal at all. It's reductive to simply say that they want to destroy privacy.
>I think that Wikileaks is a long way from being able to do that yet — undermine the corruption/lawlessness in a govt to an extent where it's weakened — but I'm hopeful.
They were completely successful in Kenya and had a not-insignificant role in sparking the Arab Spring. They're not able to bring down powerful corrupt regimes, but they've certainly proven successful at effecting change in some of the smaller countries.
What in the world are you talking about? Politicians blackmailing each other for personal gain is unethical. And I'm pretty sure that "the electorate" doesn't qualify as a "governmental official".
"Is it not possible to profit by bribing/blackmailing a government official and benefit the public at the same time?"
The ethical content of an action is not determined by accidental effects. If I shoot a gun blindly into a street and accidentally save someone by shooting their attacker, that doesn't make my actions ethical. Bribing an official for information that you can then sell to the highest bidder is corruption. The intent matters.
"Please think these things through next time before you cathartically post that someone is "the enemy"."
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Did I imply in any way that such political misconduct was ethical? No. Did I suggest "the electorate" qualified as a "government official"? No.
I was simply impugning an absolute statement that blanketed a great number of honorable intelligence gathers as "the enemy", and promoted a great number of sketchy government officials as allies.
Corruption is paying an official to change or ignore a law to benefit you at the expense of others. Incentivizing an official to leak intelligence (most likely not constitutionally obtained in the first place) doesn't fit that definition. If it did, half of the New York Times' Washington bureau would qualify as "the enemy".
No, "cathartically" means what I think it does. I wouldn't call someone an enemy and really mean it unless that enemy was deliberately trying to harm me or my family. Any other use would be an attempt to invoke emotions.
"I wouldn't call someone an enemy and really mean it unless that enemy was deliberately trying to harm me or my family."
I didn't literally call them the enemy, I put it in scary quotes as a reply to the (IMO) naive sentiment of the OP that because they're "not the CIA", they're not a legitimate target of WikiLeaks.
Please ask for clarification next time before you cathartically lecture someone based on your own misunderstanding.
Well, that's a fair point and I'll ask for clarification when I see something in quotes next time. When a disqualifying statement (not "the enemy") is flipped like that and directly applied to something, it carries more weight, especially when a loaded term like "enemy" is used. Politicians get in trouble for "with us or against us" rhetoric all the time. Not everything is so black and white, unless you make a compelling case that it is.
"The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world." + "Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky" - from the link
In February 2009, before Wikileaks was well known, I listened to an interview (http://www.kuechenradio.org/wp/?p=366) with the back then German representative of wikileaks. Back then they had the problem that big media didn't care about anything that came out of wikileaks. They thought that part of the reason for the lack of attention was that no publication wanted to use a lot of pages for material that was accessible to their competitors as well. The practices Wikileaks employs today might be against the intended ethos, but have sure shown to be effective and are this way better for the cause.
"Denial Plan: Specific plan for managing security breaches. In some intelligence organizations, multi-volume regulations. In others, the plan consists of running around circles, waving your arms and blaming everyone else. Which one are we?"
A bit from the definition of Passive Intelligence "...The flow of passive material decreases the cost of intelligence and increases the time for analysis. Problem-the same intelligence is available to everyone. Stratfor’s strength is efficient gathering of passive intelligence, rapid patterning, superb analysis. Or so we tell our customers. Better to have a few sources in your pocket as well."
Unfortunately, I don't see any timetable for release of the entire corpus; if they're going to release 167 emails per day, that's going to take 82 years.
hmm.. so no one commented on pastebin being used as a newsletter CMS. i guess this is common practice? i guess this is in tune with those stories about using git as publishing platform
I hope no one is surprised by this. If governments are willing to spend billions upon billions for intelligence, why wouldn't private corporations. Hell I've throughout of doing this a few times - then I think about the work it entails.
I bet there'll bee som interesting, actionable material in there.
The one issue concerning London Olympics is Dow Chemicals sponsoring it, but there has been opposition in India and NGO for their role in Bhopal Gas Tragedy in 1984.
If stratfor was gathering intelligence and buying silence for Dow, then it would be indictment and self implication
That's not particularly useful to people who want to rip through the entire corpus using standard textmining tools; we'd really rather a signed torrent of a compressed imap archive or something similar. Having all the headers in formats accessible to scripts to read and tag different emails, etc.
This is sort of like having to do research on an archive that's been photocopied onto kleenex. But, we'll suck it up, and write a scraper to turn it into what we need. But it means that some of the interesting stuff is delayed, because wikileaks is trying to get the most bang for the buck by dribbling it out.
Just to pick an example of what I mean by interesting; tag all emails that mention a country or city and see if there are correlations between who sent and received emails and the countries mentioned, or if informants are mentioned in connection with more than one country.
You misunderstand. Your email _address_ (and mine) have already been leaked, shortly before Christmas 2011. What WikiLeaks is now publishing is a list of actual internal emails, as in, the content of their internal, private communication. Unless you were a source for them, or a buyer of their more confidential information, you won't be directly affected by this leak.
I think the impact could be bigger than you suggest. Communications between Stratfor staff, clients, and sources are buried in this data dump. There is an entire spreadsheet of non-US media contacts who had agreements of some kind with Stratfor. There is correspondence between Stratfor executives and their attorneys that was most certainly subject to attorney/client privilege before it was posted. This only scratches the surface.
They don't really concern me. He made the choice to do it. I think he was probably aware of the risks and decided it was worth the punishment. If not then he made a huge mistake.
We are the rest of the world. We understand that you are embarrased, so are we. We understand that your experiment in government has slid towards fascism. Don't worry, you are not alone, it was a popular movement for Mussolini.
Do you realise that a vast majority of HN readers would support Manning's release? You're being downvoted because you come across as a young, annoying child, not because of your opinion.
Manning perhaps had the guts to remind you all of your constitution. If you are prepared to ignore your constitution then I will ignore all the things that make U.S.A. great.
> The material contains privileged information about the US government's attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor's own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks.
I'm getting tired of Wikileak's bullshit. Either you have proof about this and you should just publish it in a pastebin, or you shut up. You don't publish 5 million emails and hint that there is material in there that could take down governments.
At first I was pretty supportive of Stratfor, and thought that Anonymous attacking Stratfor was completely stupid.
However, a couple of things from the news release caught my eye. I guess I was naive, but I believed that Strafor was more like a news agency, and they would do their best work to uncover information, analyze breaking situations, and supply information to its members.
However, from reading the news release from Wikileaks, I get the vague sense that maybe Stratfor was gathering a lot more information than I thought, using it to their advantage, and then throwing a bone to its subscribers every now and then, just enough to keep them subscribing and generating income.
It certainly seems like there's a lot more going under the covers than I anticipated. The comment about "Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase." makes it seem like Friedman is more than willing to make anyone their pawns, including subscribers.
Also, the idea of their StratCap Fund really kind of makes me question exactly what they are. I thought their motivations were really about analysis and information, but I kind of don't believe that now. At first, I didn't think the emails themselves were important, but now I'm definitely going to be keeping a close eye on whatever gets turned up from this point on.