20150531
Independent Lens: 1971
In 1971, long before Edward Snowden's revelations of NSA surveillance, a group of citizens broke into a small FBI office in Pennsylvania, took every file, and shared them with the public. Their actions exposed the FBI's illegal surveillance program of law-abiding Americans. Now for the first time, these anonymous Americans who risked everything share their story publicly...
20150529
Child abuse 'may well have been' covered up
Lord Tebbit told the Andrew Marr Show the culture at the time was to protect "the establishment" rather than delving "too far" into such claims.
His comments come after it emerged that the Home Office could not locate 114 potentially relevant files.
Current MP Keith Vaz said files had been lost "on an industrial scale".
The government has rejected calls for an over-arching public inquiry into the various allegations of child abuse from that era.
However, a new review, to be carried out by a senior legal figure from outside Whitehall, will look into a Home Office review last year of any information it received in the 1980s and 1990s about organised child sex abuse.
Home Secretary Theresa May will make a statement on the issue to the House of Commons on Monday...
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28182373
How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA
About a year ago, I wangled a media invitation to a “leadership dinner” in northern Virginia sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. INSA is a powerful but little-known coalition established in 2005 by companies working for the National Security Agency. In recent years, it has become the premier organization for the men and women who run the massive cyberintelligence-industrial complex that encircles Washington, DC.
The keynote speaker was Matthew Olsen, who was then the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He used his talk to bolster the morale of his colleagues, which had recently been stung by the public backlash against the NSA’s massive surveillance programs, the extent of which was still com-ing to light in the steady release of Edward Snowden’s huge trove of documents. “NSA is a national treasure,” Olsen declared. “Our national security depends on NSA’s continued capacity to collect this kind of information.” There was loud, sustained applause.
One of those clapping was a former Navy SEAL named Melchior Baltazar, the CEO of an up-and-coming company called SDL Government. Its niche, an eager young flack explained, is providing software that military agencies can use to translate hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Facebook postings into English and then search them rapidly for potential clues to terrorist plots or cybercrime.
It sounded like the ideal tool for the NSA. Just a few months earlier, Snowden had leaked documents revealing a secret program called PRISM, which gave the NSA direct access to the servers of tech firms, including Facebook and Google. He had also revealed that the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, had special units focused on cracking encryption codes for social media globally...
http://www.thenation.com/article/208481/how-private-contractors-have-created-shadow-nsa
20150519
Attack Scenario 404
Attack Scenario 404 *
How the Attack Might Have Been Engineered (But Probably Wasn't)
The case that the 9/11/01 attack was an inside job can be made quite apart from any specific theory as to how it was accomplished, by simply demonstrating that only insiders had the means and opportunity to execute key elements of the attack. The true nature of such an operation is undoubtedly hidden behind layer upon layer of cover story, and its details may never be discovered. Speculative theories of the operation, while not verifiable, nonetheless can be useful in answering important questions about the attack, such as the size of the conspiracy required to carry it out.
Attack Scenario 404 is such a theory. It shows that, although the attack employed a variety of sophisticated communications and weapons technologies, all of these technologies were available "off-the-shelf", having been developed by secret programs ostensibly for other purposes. Specific tasks required to fulfill the mission were outsourced to companies providing strict confidentiality and working on a need-to-know basis.
This scenario shows that, through their positions of access in the military command structure, a very small group of people would have been able to appropriate these technologies to carry out the attack. While the attack is engineered by a core of only a dozen people, vast numbers of people facilitate the attack and cover-up, for the most part unknowingly, by simply doing what they normally do in their positions: promote and protect their agencies and the status quo. The public at large participates in the cover-up by failing to question the attack and instead believing the relatively comforting myth of bin Laden.
This scenario contrasts with Professor A.K. Dewdney's Operation Pearl, which requires large numbers of insiders. One of the most persuasive arguments made by defenders of the official story is that an inside job would have involved a conspiracy too large to keep concealed. Attack Scenario 404 provides a counterexample...
http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/analysis/scenario404.html
http://www.another19.com/index.html/
How the Attack Might Have Been Engineered (But Probably Wasn't)
The case that the 9/11/01 attack was an inside job can be made quite apart from any specific theory as to how it was accomplished, by simply demonstrating that only insiders had the means and opportunity to execute key elements of the attack. The true nature of such an operation is undoubtedly hidden behind layer upon layer of cover story, and its details may never be discovered. Speculative theories of the operation, while not verifiable, nonetheless can be useful in answering important questions about the attack, such as the size of the conspiracy required to carry it out.
Attack Scenario 404 is such a theory. It shows that, although the attack employed a variety of sophisticated communications and weapons technologies, all of these technologies were available "off-the-shelf", having been developed by secret programs ostensibly for other purposes. Specific tasks required to fulfill the mission were outsourced to companies providing strict confidentiality and working on a need-to-know basis.
This scenario shows that, through their positions of access in the military command structure, a very small group of people would have been able to appropriate these technologies to carry out the attack. While the attack is engineered by a core of only a dozen people, vast numbers of people facilitate the attack and cover-up, for the most part unknowingly, by simply doing what they normally do in their positions: promote and protect their agencies and the status quo. The public at large participates in the cover-up by failing to question the attack and instead believing the relatively comforting myth of bin Laden.
This scenario contrasts with Professor A.K. Dewdney's Operation Pearl, which requires large numbers of insiders. One of the most persuasive arguments made by defenders of the official story is that an inside job would have involved a conspiracy too large to keep concealed. Attack Scenario 404 provides a counterexample...
http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/analysis/scenario404.html
http://www.another19.com/index.html/
The Means for Executing the 9/11 Attack
The Means for Executing the 9/11 Attack
The success of the 9/11/01 attack depended on each of the following five events happening as planned:
Four jetliners were taken over with no effective resistance.
Three of the four jetliners were flown into small targets, with the Pentagon strike involving extreme aerobatic maneuvers.
The air defense network froze for over an hour while the attack unfolded.
The towers self-destructed in a manner never before seen in any structure.
According to the official story, bin Laden got lucky in each case. The hijackers enjoyed phenomenal success in taking over each of the four planes, despite at least one Vietnam-era fighter pilot being among all four of the cockpit crews. The hijackers displayed miraculous skill in flying jetliners into small targets despite the fact than none had ever flown a jet. The Air Force and Air National Guard failed to put up any defense against the jetliners-turned-missiles, despite ample warning times and response options.
The Very Lucky Hijackers
Statistically speaking, the probability of the alleged perpetrators enjoying such a run of luck is vanishingly small. The probability that a mission would succeed can be calculated by estimating the probabilities of achieving each individual task required to fulfill the mission, and then multiplying those probabilities together. (This method of computing probabilities assumes that the individual events are causally independent. Since the success of each task was not strictly independent, the following computation is not statistically rigorous, but is provided only to illustrate a point.)
The success of the 9/11/01 attack depended on each of the following five events happening as planned:
Four jetliners were taken over with no effective resistance.
Three of the four jetliners were flown into small targets, with the Pentagon strike involving extreme aerobatic maneuvers.
The air defense network froze for over an hour while the attack unfolded.
The towers self-destructed in a manner never before seen in any structure.
According to the official story, bin Laden got lucky in each case. The hijackers enjoyed phenomenal success in taking over each of the four planes, despite at least one Vietnam-era fighter pilot being among all four of the cockpit crews. The hijackers displayed miraculous skill in flying jetliners into small targets despite the fact than none had ever flown a jet. The Air Force and Air National Guard failed to put up any defense against the jetliners-turned-missiles, despite ample warning times and response options.
The Very Lucky Hijackers
Statistically speaking, the probability of the alleged perpetrators enjoying such a run of luck is vanishingly small. The probability that a mission would succeed can be calculated by estimating the probabilities of achieving each individual task required to fulfill the mission, and then multiplying those probabilities together. (This method of computing probabilities assumes that the individual events are causally independent. Since the success of each task was not strictly independent, the following computation is not statistically rigorous, but is provided only to illustrate a point.)
The following table lists estimates of probabilities for each of several tasks critical to the success of the mission. In all cases we chose much higher probabilities than the facts would warrant, in order to give the official story the benefit of the doubt....
http://911review.com/means/index.html
http://www.another19.com/index.html/
http://911review.com/means/index.html
http://www.another19.com/index.html/
20150517
Outside the Box Video Series: The Power of Nightmares
Written and produced by Adam Curtis, The Power of Nightmares—The Rise of the Politics of Fear explores the similarities between the ascent of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the trajectory of radical, fundamentalist Islamism in three one-hour films.
More controversial, perhaps, than even this comparison, is the argument that the threat of radical Islamism—al-Qaeda in particular—has been exploited by politicians around the world, especially American neocons, in order to advance their own agenda.
Episode 1: Baby It’s Cold Outside
This episode traces the origins of pan-Arab Islamist ideology to its founder Said Qtub—an Egyptian student who studied in America and became incensed with American commercialism and its corrupting nature. It also details the work of Leo Strauss, a Platonic philosopher at the University of Chicago who was extremely influential over the growth of American neo-conservatism and emphasized deceit as necessary for elites to maintain control over an orderly society...
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/16/outside-the-box-video-series-the-power-of-nightmares-2/
More controversial, perhaps, than even this comparison, is the argument that the threat of radical Islamism—al-Qaeda in particular—has been exploited by politicians around the world, especially American neocons, in order to advance their own agenda.
Episode 1: Baby It’s Cold Outside
This episode traces the origins of pan-Arab Islamist ideology to its founder Said Qtub—an Egyptian student who studied in America and became incensed with American commercialism and its corrupting nature. It also details the work of Leo Strauss, a Platonic philosopher at the University of Chicago who was extremely influential over the growth of American neo-conservatism and emphasized deceit as necessary for elites to maintain control over an orderly society...
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/16/outside-the-box-video-series-the-power-of-nightmares-2/
Congress Unites to Demand Answers on Deadly Incompetence of FBI
In a strongly worded letter, the GOP chairman and the ranking Democrat of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded answers from FBI Director James Comey regarding the recent revelations that the Bureau’s forensic “experts” made erroneous statements in an unfathomable 95% of trials involving microscopic hair analysis.
A “catastrophe”
“The scope of this catastrophe is almost impossible to believe,” Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote, noting that 35 of the defendants in the cases involving such testimony ended up receiving the death penalty. Nine of them have already been executed and five others died on death row. According to the FBI’s own internal investigation, errors were made in 94% of those cases.
“Our criminal justice system—and people’s very freedom—relies on the integrity of FBI analysts’ reports and testimony,” added the two lawmakers. “To learn that the FBI systematically provided erroneous information and biased report results in matters of life and death is shocking and obviously unacceptable.”...
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/05/13/congress-unites-to-demand-answers-on-deadly-incompetence-of-fbi/
20150516
UNDERHANDED CRYPTO CONTEST
We’d like to do the same for cryptography. We want to see if you can design a cryptosystem that looks secure to experts, yet is backdoored or vulnerable in a subtle barely-noticable way. Can you design an encrypted chat protocol that looks secure to everyone who reviews it, but in reality lets anyone who knows some fixed key decrypt the messages?
We’re also interested in clever ways to weaken existing crypto programs. Can you make a change to the OpenSSL library that looks like you’re improving the random number generator, but actually breaks it and makes it produce predictable output?
If either of those things sound interesting, then this is the contest for you..
20150515
The oddly beautiful and sometimes disturbing artistic talent of the nation’s drug cops
It looks like the type of scene you might see on a college dorm room poster celebrating drugs and the counterculture. But in fact, it's an embroidered uniform patch made for members of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dangerous Drugs Intelligence Unit, a group that monitors major drug trafficking organizations. And it's just one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of colorful and sometimes bizarre patches manufactured for various DEA divisions and task forces over the years.
Patches aren't unique to the DEA -- there are program and mission patches associated with many federal agencies and programs. One expert estimates there are 20,000 in existence today, some of which are historic relics and others in use. The most famous may be the patches made for NASA's shuttle missions. But in the universe of federal patches, the DEA's stand out for their outlandishness, as well as for showing a lighter, even flamboyant side of an agency that often presents itself as straight-laced and straight-edged...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/20/the-oddly-beautiful-and-sometimes-disturbing-artistic-talent-of-the-nations-drug-cops/
http://www.fredspatchcorner.com
The 10 biggest lies you’ve been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Today, the Senate makes a critical test vote on the Obama Administration’s trade agenda, kicking off a process that the White House hopes to end with the signing of an agreement between 12 nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In preparation for this vote, President Obama has been deliberately antagonizing his critics, mostly liberal Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren is “a politician, like everybody else,” Obama said Friday to Yahoo News, who has “got a voice that she wants to get out there,” framing her concerns as insincere self-aggrandizement. Those concerns, Obama added, are “absolutely wrong.”
This is not the first time that Obama and his aides have depicted opposition on trade as deliberate misinformation designed to stir up a left-leaning political base, or generate campaign contributions; my favorite is the claim that Warren is merely trying to energize a non-existent Presidential campaign.
It’s beneath the dignity of the Presidency to so aggressively paint opponents as not just wrong on the facts, but hiding the truth on purpose. Warren has responded without using the same indecorous tactics. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same self-control. So by way of response, here are ten moments where the President or his subordinates have lied – call it “misled” or “offered half-truths” or whatever; but I’m in an ornery mood so let’s just say lied – about his trade agenda:
1. 40 PERCENT: The President and his team have repeatedly described TPP as a deal involving nearly 40 percent of global GDP. This tells only part of the story. First of all, the U.S. by itself represents 22 percent of global GDP; a bill naming a post office would involve that much. Second, we already have free trade agreements with six TPP partners – Canada, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, Chile and Peru – and between them and us, that’s 80 percent of the total GDP in this deal. The vast majority of the rest is represented by Japan, where the average applied tariff is a skinny 1.2 percent, per the World Bank.
You can see this paragraph in graphic form here. The point is that saying TPP is about “40 percent of GDP” intimates that it would massively change the ability to export without tariffs. In reality it would have virtually no significance in opening new markets. To the extent that there’s a barrier in global trade today, it comes from currency manipulation by countries wanting to keep their exports cheap. The TPP has no currency provisions...
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/12/the_10_biggest_lies_youve_been_told_about_the_trans_pacific_partnership/
This is not the first time that Obama and his aides have depicted opposition on trade as deliberate misinformation designed to stir up a left-leaning political base, or generate campaign contributions; my favorite is the claim that Warren is merely trying to energize a non-existent Presidential campaign.
It’s beneath the dignity of the Presidency to so aggressively paint opponents as not just wrong on the facts, but hiding the truth on purpose. Warren has responded without using the same indecorous tactics. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same self-control. So by way of response, here are ten moments where the President or his subordinates have lied – call it “misled” or “offered half-truths” or whatever; but I’m in an ornery mood so let’s just say lied – about his trade agenda:
1. 40 PERCENT: The President and his team have repeatedly described TPP as a deal involving nearly 40 percent of global GDP. This tells only part of the story. First of all, the U.S. by itself represents 22 percent of global GDP; a bill naming a post office would involve that much. Second, we already have free trade agreements with six TPP partners – Canada, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, Chile and Peru – and between them and us, that’s 80 percent of the total GDP in this deal. The vast majority of the rest is represented by Japan, where the average applied tariff is a skinny 1.2 percent, per the World Bank.
You can see this paragraph in graphic form here. The point is that saying TPP is about “40 percent of GDP” intimates that it would massively change the ability to export without tariffs. In reality it would have virtually no significance in opening new markets. To the extent that there’s a barrier in global trade today, it comes from currency manipulation by countries wanting to keep their exports cheap. The TPP has no currency provisions...
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/12/the_10_biggest_lies_youve_been_told_about_the_trans_pacific_partnership/
20150511
The Killing of Osama bin Laden
The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’
This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden
20150510
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The following was written shortly after my arrest...
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
by
+++The Mentor+++
Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
_______________________________________________________________________________
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The following was written shortly after my arrest...
\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
by
+++The Mentor+++
Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
_______________________________________________________________________________
20150505
WikiLeaks: Sony Email Archives
Today, 16 April 2015, WikiLeaks publishes an analysis and search system for The Sony Archives: 30,287 documents from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and 173,132 emails, to and from more than 2,200 SPE email addresses. SPE is a US subsidiary of the Japanese multinational technology and media corporation Sony, handling their film and TV production and distribution operations. It is a multi-billion dollar US business running many popular networks, TV shows and film franchises such as Spider-Man, Men in Black and Resident Evil.
In November 2014 the White House alleged that North Korea's intelligence services had obtained and distributed a version of the archive in revenge for SPE's pending release of The Interview, a film depicting a future overthrow of the North Korean government and the assassination of its leader, Kim Jong-un. Whilst some stories came out at the time, the original archives, which were not searchable, were removed before the public and journalists were able to do more than scratch the surface.
Now published in a fully searchable format The Sony Archives offer a rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation. The work publicly known from Sony is to produce entertainment; however, The Sony Archives show that behind the scenes this is an influential corporation, with ties to the White House (there are almost 100 US government email addresses in the archive), with an ability to impact laws and policies, and with connections to the US military-industrial complex.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said: "This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there..."
https://wikileaks.org/sony/press/
In November 2014 the White House alleged that North Korea's intelligence services had obtained and distributed a version of the archive in revenge for SPE's pending release of The Interview, a film depicting a future overthrow of the North Korean government and the assassination of its leader, Kim Jong-un. Whilst some stories came out at the time, the original archives, which were not searchable, were removed before the public and journalists were able to do more than scratch the surface.
Now published in a fully searchable format The Sony Archives offer a rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation. The work publicly known from Sony is to produce entertainment; however, The Sony Archives show that behind the scenes this is an influential corporation, with ties to the White House (there are almost 100 US government email addresses in the archive), with an ability to impact laws and policies, and with connections to the US military-industrial complex.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said: "This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there..."
https://wikileaks.org/sony/press/
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