U.S. Diplomatic Cables Leak / Cablegate

U.S. Diplomatic Cables Leak / Cablegate

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Added Sep 04, 2011 at 04:54PM EDT by Brad.

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Overview

United States Diplomatic Cables Leak refers to a series of events that took place after the whistleblower site WikiLeaks public disclosure of over 200,000 classified diplomatic cables originally issued by the U.S. State Department's 300 missions overseas.

Background

In June 2010, Wired Magazine reported that the U.S. State Department personnel have expressed concerns over a U.S. Army soldier named Bradley Manning, who was arrested and charged in May with unauthorized download of classified while serving his tour in Iraq. WikiLeaks rejected the Wired report as inaccurate. Later, it was revealed that the Army's discovery came after another computer hacker Adrian Lamo contacted the FBI regarding a suspicious chat he had with Manning in May 2010.


SNITCH

On November 22nd, 2010, WikiLeaks[1] made an announcement via Twitter that the next release would be "7x the size of the Iraq War Logs." U.S. authorities and the media have speculated that they may contain diplomatic cables. Following a brief, unsuccessful exchange with the U.S. State Department about the impending media disclosure on August 28th, select excerpts of the cables were published through a number of renowned news publications including El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Guardian and The New York Times. The corresponding pages of source documents were simultaneously published by WikiLeaks on its website, a decision that was subsequently met by several distributed denial-of-service attacks as well as refusal of service by its financial partners like PayPal and Amazon.

Developments

Support for Bradley Manning

In June 2010, the Bradley Manning Support Network[10] was formed on Facebook by Mike Gogulski and Manning's friend David House, with coordinated assistance from Courage to Resist, a support group for war resisters within the military. With its advisory board joined by notable figures like The Pentagon Papers journalist Daniel Ellsberg, filmmaker Michael Moore, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and retired army colonel Ann Wright, numerous "Free Bradley Manning" rallies were held in North America and Europe throughout the year and by January 2011, the online donation campaign for Manning's defense had reached over $400,000, according to the organization.


l AM BRADLEY ANNING BRADLEY ANNING agon I WAS BRADLEY MANNING rad le anni PENTAGON PAPERS 1971 i am Bradley We are all Bradley Manning I AM LSTAND FOR TRUTH AM Brodly Manning NO, IAM BRADLEY MANNING ALL Upload your photo at iam.bradleymanning.org to support accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning

Other Facebook groups and online campaign sites soon followed, such as the Facebook page Save Bradley Manning[11] and the single topic Tumblr I Am Bradley Manning.[12] Beginning in October 2010, a number of Anonymous-affiliated channels began publishing video communiques under the campaign banner "Operation Bradley Manning,"[13] which sought vengeance by targeting government web sites. In March 2011, the hacker group Anonymous threatened to disrupt activities at Quantico by cyber-attacking communications and exposing information about personnel, calling it "Operation Bradical."



News Media Analysis

The sheer volume of diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks led several newspapers to launch column series in analyzing the text and their implications. The content was covered extensively by The Guardian[4], Der Spiegel[2], El Pais[3] and The New York Times[5], accompanied by visual timelines, geographical charts and infographics. As the news coverage continued, the event also became widely known as Cablegate.


Where are the Wikileaks cables from? The Wikileaks data covers a specific chunk of leaked cables- it's not all cables sent over the period, but rather a selection. These are the top locations the cables were sent from 3,298 confidential The Moscow 4,043 unclassified First leaked cables from 2002 3,021 1,719 1,722 3,376 1,958 Tel Aviv Tokyo 3,297 ottawa 1,083 3,194 2,439 1,660 confidential 227 secret 3,810 unclassified First leaked cables from 2006 Tokyo 2,961 ng 3,775 5,697 Wa 6,677 Classification: ● Kathmandu 1,582 256 1,937 First leaked cables 3,116 2,278 ew 3,620 em Mexico 2,368 2,217 2,752 3,038 American Institute Taiwan, Taipei 3,456 2,285 Khartoum 1,675 2,890 1,686 3,078 2,941 2,325 Tegucigalpa 1,958 3,025 2,547 2,220 3,325 Caracas 1,984 ns Lagos 1,821 Quito 1,450 2,416 2,340 1,487 Addis Ababa 2,551 1,395 1,591 Rangoon 1,864 3,059 1,796 Madrid Classification: 898 confidential 103 secre 2,619 unc First leaked cables from 2004 Classification: 322 secret 1,853 unclassified First leaked cables 1,299 1,947 2,998 1,388 Pretoria 1,566 Classification: 4,127 c 1,158 secret 1,392 uncl First leaked cables from 2004 Classification: Santiago Buenos Aires 1464 2,233 1,726 c 421 secret 2,165 unclassified First leaked cables on 1,490 When were the Wikileaks cables sent? The selection of cables covers a period from the 1960s onwards but the bulk are from the last ten years 9/11 Invasion of Afghanistan 2000 2001 2002 How the Wikileaks cables were classified Keywords Every cable was tagged with relevant subjects. These are some of the top ones PREL (external political relations) 145,222 PGOV(internal government affairs) 122,954 ECON (economic conditions) Unclassified/ for official use only 49,016 Confidential Unclassified 58,095 11,322 PTER (terrorists and terrorism) 97,070 75,792 Confidential/ noforn 28,760 Secret/ETRD (foreign trade) forn 23,857 4,678 4,330 .35 PINR (intelligence) The WikiLeaks cables A look at the 251,287 U.S. embassy cables leaked recently: Few cables secretCable origin, top sources Confidential SecretConfidentialUnclassified State Dept., Washington, D.C U.S. Embassy, Ankara U.S. Embassy, Baghdad U.S. Embassy, lokyo U.S. Embassy, Amman U.S. Embassy, Paris Countries most discussed 101,748 8,017 7,918 Unclassified 133,887 Secret 15,652 6,677 5,697 . Time frame Oldest cable from 1966; newest, February 2010; most written in the past few years 4,312 3,775 Top subjects discussed External political relations Iraq 15,365 Internal governmental affairs Human rights Economic conditions Iran 10,093 Terrorists, terrorism Afghanistan 7,095 Source: WikiLeaks Graphic: Judy Treible © 2010 MCT El tamañio de los círculos esproporcional al número de cables enviados desde cada país. 10.000 5.000 1.000 100 Color de Hasta 3.000 los círculos Más de 3.000 Rusia 3.558 3.039 ESPAÑA 3.651 Francia 3.802 Turquía 9.562 China 9.300 apón 5.798 Embajada de Madrid 3.620 Irak 514 11.186 Italia 3.012 5.411 ait Egipt 4.164 India 3.906 EAU de Barcelona 31 Jordania 4.312 Tailandia 3.219 086 ● Nigeria Vietnam 3.102 4.521 án 3.078 Sri Lanka 3.325 Indonesia 3.226 LAS EMBAJADAS QUE M CABLES ENVIARON Fuera de EE UU S ENVIO DE CABLES DESDE MADRID La mayoríafueron enviados entre 2004y 2010. 928 7.918 6.677 753 766 5.697 4.312 3.775 3.717 3.620 3.456 3.376 3.325 391 384 311 76 Ankara Bagdad Tokio Ammán París Kuwait MADRID American Moscú Colombo Institute (Rusia) (SriLanka) 1966-85 1986-03 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 (Turquía) (rak) (Japón) (Jordania) (Francia) Taiwan (China) Secretary of State Embassy Ankara Embassy Baghdad Embassy Tokyo Embassy Amman Embassy Paris Embassy Kuwait Embassy Madrid American Institute Taiwan, T Embassy Moscovw Embassy Colombo Embassy Beijing Embassy Tel Aviv USUN Neww York Embassy Khartoum Embassy Jakarta Embassy New Delhi Embassy Abuja Embassy The Hague Embassy Harare Embassy Kabul Embassy Bangkok Embassy Rome Embassy Cairo Embassy Kinshasa Embassy Abu Dhabi Embassy Ashgabat Embassy Bogota Embassy Beirut Embassy Caracas Embassy Hanoi Embassy Mexico Embassy Kathmandu Embassy Buenos Aires Embassy Islamabad Consulate Jerusalem Embassy Tegucigalpa Embassy Ottauwa Embassy Brasilia ass Embassy Nairobi Embassy Manila

The Washington Post reported that it requested permission to see the document, but was rejected by WikiLeaks for undisclosed reasons. Other major U.S. news organizations like CNN and The Wall Street Journal were also denied advance access after refusing to sign a confidentiality agreement with WikiLeaks.

Anonymous Operation: Avenge Assange

Following the expose of the diplomatic cables, the U.S. State Department criticized the WikLeaks founder Julian Assange and began pressing on the affiliates of WikiLeaks to halt their transactions with the Swiss-based website. As a result, WikiLeak’s server host Amazon dropped their service, while Mastercard and PayPal ceased all transactions of funds donated by the supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.


Operation Avenge Assange The first serious infowar is now engaged The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops." John Perry Barlow Julian Assange deifies everything we hold dear. He despises and fights censorship constantly. is possibly the most successful international troll of all time, and doesn't afraid of f------ anything (not even the US government). Now. Julian is the prime focus of a global manhunt, in both the physical and virtual realms. Governments across the world are baying for his blood. policians are up in arms about his recent leak, and even his own country has abandoned him to the wolves. Online, WikiLeaks is a focus of mass DDoS attacks, legislation and downright pandering to the corrupt incumbents which would silence this man. Therefore. Anonymous has a chance to kick back for Julian. We have a chance to fight the oppressive future which looms ahead. We have a chance to fight in the first infowar ever fought 1. Paypa is the enemy. DDoS'es will be planned, but in the meantime, boycott everything. Encourage friends and family to do so as well. 2. Spread the current leaked cables as much as possible. Save them to hard drives, distribute them on CD's, mirror them to websites and seed them on torrents. The end goal is a human DNS-something that can only be stopped by shutting off the entire internet. 3. Upvote Julian on the Times 2010 Person of the Year While this might not aid his cause. it will get him much needed public exposure. (http://tinyurl.com/2wb7ju8) 4. Get vocal! Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and other social networking sites are critical hubs of information distribution. Make sure everyone you know is aware of what is happening. If you can convince just one person to tell one other person every day. the spread of info will be exponential. 5. If you're up for it, print out cables which are relevant to your area and distribute them. Post them on bus stops. train stations, street lamps. Be creative and catch people's attention. Using graffiti to spread the WikiLeaks website is also a great idea. 6. Complain to your local MP. mayor. or whichever political figure you can contact. Ask him for comments about the leaks. Record every word that is said 7. Protest! Organise community marches. send around petitions. get active. This cannot happen without numbers. TL:DR Protest. Inform Enquire Fight The future of the internet hangs in the balance We are Anonymous We do not forgive: we do not forget Expect Us

In retaliation against the U.S.-led counter-measures and support of WikiLeak's editor-in-chief, an Anonymous contingent associated with Operation Payback launched several waves of DDoS attacks against various companies whom they perceived as enemies of Julian Assange that became known as Operation Avenge Assange.

September 2011 Leaks

In late August 2011, The Guardian reported that the complete archive of unredacted cables had been publicly available for months, citing internal security failures including the misplacement of the encrypted file by a WikiLeaks volunteer following the denial-of-service attacks in early November 2010.

The previously little known archive contains over 125,000 files including 34,687 on Iraq, 8,003 on Kuwait, 9,755 on Australia and 12,606 on Egypt. According to The Guardian, the set contains more than 1,000 cables containing the names of individual activists and around 150 identifying whistleblowers. Shortly after the media coverage of the unintended leak within WikiLeaks, the organization made available the unredacted archive on their website.

Global vote: should WikiLeaks release all US cables in searchable form? tweet #WLVoteYes or #WLVoteNo Why: http://t.co/GGON8cdless than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply


On August 31st, as news reports surrounding the previously unknown archives began to emerge, WikiLeaks asked the public to decide whether it should publish the rest of U.S. diplomatic cables archive in a searchable form, using the hashtags #WLVoteYes or #WLVoteNo. Meanwhile, Internet blog Gawker[10] criticized WikiLeak's decision to release the rest of diplomatic cables as "a desperate gimmick by Wikileaks to pretend it still has some control over the contents of the cables."

On September 2nd, The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and Le Mond--five news organizations that have collaborated with WikiLeaks--issued a joint statement[5] condemning WikiLeak's decision to publish "unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk."

Feud with The Guardian Journalist

Amidst the mounting criticism over WikiLeak's internal security blunders, the whistleblower organization blamed the fault of negligence on Guardian's investigative editor David Leigh for publishing the password to unlock the archive in his book "Inside WikiLeaks: Julian Assange's War on Secrecy."

The file-decryption password was given to Leigh by Assange back in August 2010 while they were working together to publish the contents of the obtained U.S. diplomatic cables. In response to WikiLeak's public accusation and request to dismiss Leigh from his position at The Guardian, the UK-based newspaper denied any wrongdoing by stating:

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours."

On the same day, BoingBoing[6] reported that the passage from David Leigh's "Inside WikiLeaks: Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" has been publicly available via Google Books[7] since the date of publication.


Eventually, Assange capitulated. Late at night, after a two-hour debate, he started the process on one of his little netbooks that would enable Leigh to download the entire tranche of cables The Guardian journalist had to set up the PGP encryption system on his laptop at home across the other side of London, Then he could feed in a password. Assange wrote down on a scrap of paper: 13 8 THE CABLES ACollectionOfHistorySince_1966_TOTIe-Present Day#"That's the password," he said. "But you have to add one extra word when you type it in. You have to put in the word 'Diplomatic' before the word ‘History. Can you remember that?” "I can remember that." Leigh set off home, and successfully installed the PGP soft- ware. He typed in the lengthy password, and was gratified to be

DDoS Attacks

Between August 31st and September 1st, WikiLeaks announced via Twitter that the site was under heavy distributed-denial-of-service attacks. An online identity known as AnonCMD has since claimed the responsibility for the DDoS attacks via Twitter[8] and Wordpress[9], though it has been also met by heavy criticism from Anonymous supporters of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.



The U.S. Reviews Computer Security Procedures

On October 7th, 2011, President Obama issued an executive order to replace and improve the shortcomings in computer security safeguards that were first exposed by WikiLeak's release of classified State Department documents in 2010. According to the New York Times, the new directive comes after a seven-month long governmentwide review and discussion of policies related to handling of classified information and how to reduce the risk of breaches.

Since the unauthorized disclosure of U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010, the State Department stopped distributing its diplomatic cables over a classified e-mail system shared with other military agencies. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has disabled 87 percent of its computers to prevent people from downloading classified data onto external memory devices, such as memory sticks, CDs or DVDs.

Bradley Manning's Trial Begins

On December 16th, 2011, the pre-trial hearing for suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning's case began in the military tribunal at Fort Meade, Maryland. Having been under solitary confinement for over a year without any public appearance, Manning's pre-trial hearing instantly drew attention from the news media.



His first public appearance since arrest in May 2010, Manning sat calmly at the defense table, dressed in Army fatigues and prison-issue dark-rimmed glasses. On the first day of the hearing on December 16th, the attorney for Manning asked the presiding prosecutor Paul Almanza to step aside on the basis of conflicts of interest and bias. After a brief recess in considering the request, Almanza refused to recuse himself; Manning's attorney then moved to file a writ to stay the proceedings until a decision can be made regarding his request.


Free Bradley Manning leaks

Meanwhile, the Support Network held demonstrations outside Fort Meade on the day of the pre-trial hearing, as well as planning a larger march in Fort Meade on December 17th, the day of Manning's 24th birthday.

Search Interest

Search queries for "Cablegate" yield a high spike in the first two months of release in November 2010 and the ongoing event corresponds with the resurgence in September 2011. According to Google Insights' related news headlines, the term "Cablegate" has been used almost ubiquitously across various languages including Spanish, German and Japanese.


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