Washington (CNN) -- U.S. officials at the Pentagon and State Department denied Friday knowing of any efforts to take down the WikiLeaks website or asking companies to do so.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/03/wikileaks.takedown/index.html
Andrew
Washington (CNN) -- U.S. officials at the Pentagon and State Department denied Friday knowing of any efforts to take down the WikiLeaks website or asking companies to do so.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/03/wikileaks.takedown/index.html
Yes, that is what both spokesmen literally did
"I am not aware of any conversations by the United States government" - said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
"I am not aware that the Department of Defense is behind any of the problems that WikiLeaks is experiencing," Col. Dave Lapan, Pentagon spokesman.
Not the Department, not the Secretary, not the Joint Chiefs, just the lowly old spokesman, all by himself, who is "not aware." A weaker and less convincing denial can scarcely be imagined this side of the divorce court.
And the CNN headline, while technical true :
U.S. officials deny they are urging technical takedown of WikiLeaks
would be more accurate as
Minor U.S. officials deny they are personally urging technical takedown of WikiLeaks
which would have not nearly had the same punch.
Regards
Marshall
Not the Department, not the Secretary, not the Joint Chiefs, just the lowly old spokesman, all by himself, who is "not aware." A weaker and less convincing denial can scarcely be imagined this side of the divorce court.
And the CNN headline, while technical true :
U.S. officials deny they are urging technical takedown of WikiLeaks
would be more accurate as
Minor U.S. officials deny they are personally urging technical takedown of WikiLeaks
which would have not nearly had the same punch.
Who cares ? we'll know what they actually said/did in the next batch
of stolen documents.
-J
Now Sarah Palin is suggesting Wikileaks are terrorists and should be taken
offline with technical capabilities
http://www.golem.de/1012/79848.html
or for anyone who can't speak German:
http://translate.google.ie/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2F1012%2F79848.html&sl=de&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
(The
translation is about as coherent as Sarah Palin herself).
Enough already...this is not a political list!
+1
++
<< (ie *2)
-J
However, given the political climate and general network cluelessness in the
government sector, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to spend an hour or so
thinking what you'd do if the humorless guys in dark suits and sunglasses
showed up with a court order to cut off your customer's access to Wikilieaks,
even if you aren't their upstream.
However, given the political climate and general network cluelessness in the
government sector, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to spend an hour or so
thinking what you'd do if the humorless guys in dark suits and sunglasses
showed up with a court order to cut off your customer's access to Wikilieaks,
even if you aren't their upstream.
If you get a court order I guess you have two choices, one is to
comply with it and the other get used to wear a nice pair of matching
bracelets until your attorney shows up.
-J
And enumerating some of those thoughts is Lauren Weinstein of Privacy Forum:
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000788.html
I don't always agree with everything Lauren says, but it seems to me he
has this one taped pretty well.
Cheers,
-- jra
> However, given the political climate and general network cluelessness in the
> government sector, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to spend an hour or so
> thinking what you'd do if the humorless guys in dark suits and sunglasses
> showed up with a court order to cut off your customer's access to Wikilieaks,
> even if you aren't their upstream.If you get a court order I guess you have two choices, one is to
comply with it and the other get used to wear a nice pair of matching
bracelets until your attorney shows up.
The land of the free; or so you keep telling everyone.
And if they come and ask the same but without a court order is a bit trickier
and more confusing, and this list is a good place to track the frequency of and
responce to that kind of request.
/kc
Except of course when you're "asked" not to share what has occured with
anyone. I hear that kind of thing happens today.
Adrian
It does. Hence, the Warrant Canary:
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/08/the-warrant-canary-in-2010-and-beyond.html
Cheers,
-- jra
No -- iin the U.S., if you even reveal that you have been served with a
National Security Letter [1], you are in violation of the FISA [2] court
under the Patriot Act.
"Ask" is not the word I would use.
Fun stuff, eh?
- - ferg
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/National_Security_Letter
[2]
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveil
lance_Act
Actually, my intuition is that warrant canaries are not a workable solution either. I would presume that a violation of a 'secret' court order or national security letter where you are expressly ordered not to divulge the fact that you have received it could be violated either by any 'action' or 'inaction'. So the 'inaction' of not updating the warrant canary would be a violation.
The interesting thing of course is that to avoid the 'inaction', and your regular process is to say update the warrant canary daily, you would be placed in the position where the government was asking you to lie to the public at large?
I have wondered about this for quite a while - has anybody on the list ever talked with an attorney with specific expertise in this area of law about this? I am not expecting formal legal advice by any means, just curious if anybody has done any research on this topic and could share what they discovered.
- Mike
P.S. - Intent here is not to drag out the wikileaks thread, but rather start a new thread on the more general topic of legal/policies and warrant canaries, which although not a purely technical discussions seems more on-topic for the nanog list. My apologies in advance if it is OT.