To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.

I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.

You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense.

At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."

And this, for me, is one of them.

Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship.

If that's the case, if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?

This, I guess.

There are lot of communications in this bundle that are probably pretty mundane, sent and received by people who show up for jury duty and take traffic school when they run a red light. And it sucks that they've lost their privacy on this.

On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission, you can be almost certain that a handful of messages will reveal information where disclosing it is emphatically a public good. Will we find wrongdoing? Downright illegality? I'm not sure.

But I am pretty sure that actions like this are the last reasonably potent check on power we have left.

Cognitive dissonance overload!

"Anonymous"/"99%"/TPTB_NOT is correct (imo) in criticizing the TPTB's theory of 'suspended norms/ethos due to emergency' e.g. get ready to be groped by a uniformed servant from the margines. Good times.

Now we have supporters of anon/99/we-the-people's position asserting that the philosophy of "what is Right is what is convenient'/'end justifies the means' is in fact acceptable.

USA is saying "eh, fuck it" when it kidnaps, tortures, rapes (abu ..), terrorizes (same place), and holds in contempt (fuck it) the said "it": Our aspirations, our principles, our heritage, and our "fucking" way of life.

Simply based on that ideological finger print, I would certainly entertain the view that holds these groups and their shenanigans to be entirely the work of TPTB.

In the case of the government, they can't say “well we're watching everyone's conversations because so are the terrorists”. That makes their justification very different from the one in use here, and thus changes the equation a lot.

Slaying that dragon is a game changer; effectively random acts of cyber anarchy and antisocial behavior (people's CCs, for ex.) just raise dust and TPTB love occultation and delight in the demonstration of the emptiness of our "convictions" and "principles".

Have you ever considered that this is an intellectual/spiritual battle between a subset asserting superiority in every dimension of human endeavor that (literally) justifies their rule? If yes, then mind your "principles" and "convictions". That is the Human Front. Hold the line, please.

The dissemination of information? What's wrong with that?

Sure, some military and secret service personal were among the subscribers, but they are most likely among the subscribers of the Wired magazine as well. I am truly looking forward to the email leak and what kind of secret in formations they are able to reveal.

Think of it like this.

Say that, one day, all the pigs in town just disappear. Gone.

And everyone's like, "Hey. Where are all the pigs? This is crazy. Hey, Danilo, do you know where the pigs went?"

"Me? Uh, no."

But a few years later, the town librarian has all his emails leaked. And included among this is a brief exchange, a week before The Pig Event, wherein I ask "So, librarian, any advice on books for transporting livestock? Oh, could you set aside Pigs for Dummies for me?"

This message is now... pretty interesting.

Does it prove I'm a pig thief? Not necessarily, unless I get into more detail in other messages. It does suggest, though, that I might have known more than I did when the event happened. And that it's worth digging around for links between me and the pigs.

I don't feel sold on the merits of going after Stratfor - it's almost as if it was merely a convenient and vulnerable target. It's not too hard to envision just about any company or organization being targeted because of some vague affiliation or "interest".

How does stratfor get this intel to share with its clients? By tips provided by trusted sources in government. These people would probably lose their jobs if it was found out that they shared info with stratfor.

I would not be surprised if the USG infiltrated anonymous and did this attack as part of a campaign against whistleblowers.

...Nothing at all?

It's a simple matter of the type of information they disseminate. A type of information of particular interest to people with skin in the game of world politics.

That is, a guy on Stratfor's secret client list probably has much more interesting email to read than a guy working at a Radio Shack in Sarasota, Florida.

And that type of information is? You seem to be one of the people assuming Stratfor is some kind of Blackwater intelligence company. They aren't.

If you read it, what makes you think Dick Cheney would be involved? The book apparently contradicts everything the neocons stood for. Cheney would probably prefer that Stratfor were shut down, so that he could control the flow of information.

"No one is saying they're not allowed to do what they're doing."

Really? People are tossing around the word 'evil', but they should be allowed to keep doing it?

"Only that "trades emails with a private intelligence analysts" is probably going to be a pretty good proxy for "has interesting, secret shit to talk about.""

Ah, so you've gone from justifying it by saying they're evil and up to no good, to justifying it by saying they merely have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

Lots of people have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

So basically it's really just a voyeuristic thing for you and the moralizing is a pose.

Nothing. Good luck finding anything where I say "Dick Cheney is involved with the operations of Stratfor."

> Ah, so you've gone from justifying it by saying they're evil and up to no good, to justifying it by saying they merely have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

When I say interesting in the context of "how people are running the world," I mean interesting as in "lied to the public about an issue of global importance."

> So basically it's really just a voyeuristic thing for you and the moralizing is a pose.

Nope. I doubt I'm going to read any of what's leaked.

It's just my fervent hope that one of these days a leak can begin to remedy the sorts of injustice that only the well-moneyed and well-connected can perpetrate with impunity. Any entity that needs Stratfor's analysis of global events and decisions seems like a reasonable candidate to deliver an important payload in such a leak.

It's so secret multiple HN readers have said they subscribed. It's so exclusive that anyone can subscribe for a yearly price that is cheaper than cable TV, let alone secret publications like "Science" or "Nature".

You really seem to have the wrong end of the stick here, as in not-clear-on-the-concept of how Stratfor worked.

If you want to know if someone has "lied to the public about an issue of global importance", and think Stratfor holds the answer, you would subscribe to Stratfor and compare what Stratfor reported to what the public figure claimed.

You've bought into some kind of radical left fantasy of what Stratfor does, turning it into the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers.

"Any entity that needs Stratfor's analysis of global events and decisions seems like a reasonable candidate to deliver an important payload in such a leak."

See above about the Bilderbergers.

Say you're a company doing business with Turkey. Not a huge business, but you've got a lot riding on stability in Turkey. Maybe you import rugs. Maybe you do package tours of Istanbul. Maybe you have a team of developers there. Where do you go for good analysis of the situation there, given the history of military takeovers and whatnot?

The newspapers only cover it occasionally, probably too late to do you much good. MSNBC won't cover it at all on a weekend. FOX News would be all "OMG, Turkish Muslims! Threat or Menace?" and be useless. Turkish media might cover it, but not provide good analysis, and you don't know if the coverage is biased there, or if so, how.

So where do you turn? You could read the Economist, but that might not be good enough. Maybe you could buy some reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, or Jane's. Or you could subscribe to Stratfor, which is probably cheaper.

And you've gone to the zoo, friend. Almost to the point where I wonder if you're being deliberately obtuse to troll me. (Nice one, if so.)

Two things to note, here.

1. Stratfor has public products and private analysis services.

2. I'm not talking about what they've disclosed publicly.

You could substitute "Stratfor" with "The New York Times Company" in this scenario and I would take the same position. Papers rarely publish all they know, as sometimes it's a better bet to keep quiet on something juicy to avoid burning bridges. Papers are also routinely asked to sit on a story, or bury it outright, as a favor in exchange for access.

A leak of all New York Times emails would probably include a lot of the same sort of content and people I'm imagining in a Stratfor leak. The SNR wouldn't be nearly as favorable, since the Times has a much more public profile and a much broader scope than just global events. Stratfor's specific focus makes it much likelier that any given source, or any given chum of the CEO, has said something via email that could be pretty powerful, were it disclosed. I'd also wager that Stratfor content will be more candid, since it's a smaller world than mass market newspaper publishing.

Stratfor serves small and medium sized businesses with global operations.

Huge military-industrial operations like Halliburton get their intelligence from the CIA.

You don't know what Stratfor is. It's a niche news product, nothing more. Like any newspaper, they have secret sources.

But the news product and analysis services offered by Stratfor are extremely benign. Anon is targeting them for no other reason than that Stratfor is a small business who hired a shitty engineering firm with bad security practices.

Any script kiddie can go around finding non-technical businesses with poor security. Stratfor's 70-person staff is peopled entirely by nerdy writers with humanities degrees who spend all day compiling mostly-public information released by the world's parliament buildings and militaries.

Stratfor deals in the analysis of public information for the benefit for private parties. No government agency relies on them, though they may subscribe, Stratfor will not be their primary source.

The people who rely on Stratfor are companies too small and inconsequential to get CIA-access.

Anyway I support the mission of Anonymous to hack the government and hack evil big corporations but Stratfor is not part of that complex and no juicy information is going to come out of this leak. It's going to be extremely mundane stuff and will probably get a few innocent cab drivers in 3rd world countries murdered.

The only thing preventing my using this line to justify the publication of internal emails between the 5 people who run my competitor is a thin, grey line that you seem to be drawing and redrawing continually. This is an intellectually and morally bankrupt idea you've got here, it hardly suffices for a proper argument as to why this is legitimate action.

You feel as though "things like the Pirate Bay" are run by people who are so wealthy and powerful that they've completely subverted criminal justice and international law?

I had no idea Dick Cheney was running torrent sites. The bit where he sent those stooges to sit in a Swedish court was a nice touch, I guess.

No one is doing TPB any favors. If anything, it gets more negative attention than it (legally) should.

That seems slightly unfair. Unless of course you've performed a comprehensive background check on danilocampos' comment history. But I bet you haven't ;)

If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.

Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.

In normal circumstances I would agree with what you say, any sane person would agree with you actually, but these are not normal circumstances, what with all the TSA crap, the Iraq war that was started based on a huge LIE by the US Government and happily backed by the British, and I could go on and on.

At some point, better sooner rather than later, we the citizens of democratic countries should realize that our Governments are not there to rule over us, they have no special privileges, they have been chosen by us just to be mere executors of statutes and laws. They're not there to (tacitly) rewrite the Constitution and take away our rights (see the Guantanamo debacle in the United States), if they start doing that we as citizens have every right in our power to take actions against our fellow citizens who don't respect the fundamental laws of our countries (what most of them call a Constitution).

Stratfor is not Halliburton. It's sort of the opposite. While mainstream media propaganda spins bullshit about the Euro crisis, Stratfor gives straight-to-the-point, honest reporting and is only concerned with accuracy.

Basically Anon is trying to destroy one of the highest quality news sources available online. This isn't noble.

If they hacked FOX, the NYT, lobbyist emails, the MPAA, or even something like Facebook, I would probably congratulate them for helping humanity.

But not in this case.

I'm all for government transparency, however I believe the media has the right to privacy as they alone seem to do the work of keeping the government transparent. All the Anons are doing is fuelling fires that will allow the government more secrecy and ratting out the whistle blowers isn't going to help anybody.

If people would actually READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE instead of spouting off about governments hypocrisy to defend an attack against a news company.

Bravo forensic, you seem to be one of the few capable of looking at the evidence on this issue.

How ridiculous. You can use that to justify absolutely any action that you deem fit. Who's to decide what's acceptable in these "not normal circumstances"?

We already are, the government has made it fairly clear that they have the "right" to read anyone's emails they please due to their bullshit "war on terror", its about time we get the same chance to do it to them

The allowable exemptions -- and penalties for non-compliance -- vary wildly from state to state.

Stratfor has sources whose anonymity (like with Wikileaks) is important.

If indeed the breach does reveal people who have helped Stratfor obtain information for its stories, it will be akin to if the group had hacked Wikileaks and outed Bradley Manning before he was caught by the government.

But, Manning got caught b/c he bragged to someone who turned him in. I don't think Wikileaks was hacked.

2) An another Anonymous group says it's not them and they don't support it because Stratfor doesn't appear bad

3) That same other Anonymous group also warned that these are probably hacker [agent] provocateurs because it may just as well expose honest people who are exposing problems to Stratfor. The original aim was to expose the crimes of the government(s) and corporations by looking at the exchanges between contacts.

4) I tend to agree with you.

And non-profits, and NGOs, and humanitarian organizations, who need or want information about places that don't get much coverage in the New York Times until the shit has already hit the fan. Places where maybe they have people working.

That is a reflection of the community this was posted in (/r/WikiLeaks). If you look at the other Stratfor discussions on reddit they tend to be more balanced.

in other words: you're assuming that rich people are wonderful and that criticism is therefore unfair; others are sceptical that the wealth and privilege is justified and so feel that the criticsm is fair.

so the difference is political. labeling it "tall poppy syndrome" is a framing technique to "smuggle in" the assumption that wealth is deserved.

and to answer the question of "where it came from" - questioning the right to wealth is not a new idea. if you think it's something specific to reddit then you might consider learning more about alternative political viewpoints.

If you write anything in a business email you should assume that it may become public at some point in the future. Both your employer and the recipients employer have the right to read it, as does any company that acquires either party.

The email may also be demanded by the government for a variety of reason or by a court in pursuit of a civil case.

Business emails have much weaker privacy protection than personal emails because it's assumed that from the very beginning that any privacy arises from the commercial implications of the contents rather than the inherent privacy that you have when two private individuals are discussing a personal matter.

Was it distasteful to leak the 44,000 emails acquired? If so, was the important information gleaned from the emails exposing all manner of shady dealings in the white hat industry[1] not enough to vindicate the attacks?

[1]http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked...

P.S: I consider publication of information about war cruelty and international political pressure as benefiting for mankind, ethically good and thus conforming to the "hacker ethics".

Bradley Manning posted two types of information. War Footage and Diplomatic Cables. The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention to Iraqi Civilian Casualty Numbers). As such no change has been made by the government.

The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm. The whole point of diplomacy is to avoid war. Manning leaked info (such as state department officials' personal opinion of other world leaders) that made it harder to deal with them. Hence making diplomacy harder and war more likely.

I think the larger point with the Stratfor hack and Manning's actions is it's dumb to release indiscriminately. Good reporting has always involved inside sources but those reporters targeted the actual corruption and only released that.

> The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention [...])

It generated mass media attention and thus had an impact on previously uninformed people.

> The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm.

It also made transparent how governments followed US pressure secretly, lying to the people, and they are said to have had an influence on the Arab spring.

Private actors, whether they be firms or well-connected individuals are (and always have) attempted to influence those holding power. It is in the public interest to expose power and influence-mongering. Government, by virtue of its power over individual citizens needs to be held to a higher standard of openness. Private parties should be held to the same standard, when they choose to deal with the government in a manner that may influence its actions.

But Stratfor? One of the highest quality unbiased news sources available to the public? One of the only news outlets free from mainstream media spin, with a fanatical devotion to a just-the-facts reporting style?

What do you mean, "if" the tables were turned?

Having said that, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Stuff like this does have potential to create anarchy, which doesn't benefit anyone.

I would have more of a issue if this was personal correspondence but this is dealing with large US institutions and people that deal with policy.

For fuck's sake! You people are truly clueless!

"Policy makers" get their intelligence from the CIA. Duh! No government relies on Stratfor, it would be grossly irresponsible.

Stratfor makes most of its money from corporations that operate in foreign countries and are not large enough or important enough to have CIA-access.

This means corporations OUTSIDE the military-industrial-security complex. Anyone inside this complex uses Stratfor for light reading at most. The real intelligence is classified and is available to megacorps that collaborate with the CIA.

Well one thing is clear, whatever kind of opposite world you live in large corporations don't have any influence over government policy.

There is no one on that client list who deals with anything policy related at all! The interesting things about company emails is that they tend to not communicate to the outside world.

Yes "Policy Makers" only get intelligence from the CIA. Since out of the huge intelligence budget the only agency we have that deals with matters outside of the US is the CIA.

Think tanks and other non governmental institutions are for people other than "Policy Makers"

I hope I'm keeping up the theme of saying completely backwards stuff!

Or that you just....clueless.

It's not a think tank! It's not a big corporation! Stratfor serves medium and small corporations!

Hack the CFR. Hack the Brookings institute. Hack the RAND corporation. Hack the DoD. Hack the Tavistock institute and the Club of Rome and the Heritage foundation. Hack the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller foundation and hack Harvard and hack Yale and hack the New York Times. Hack Monsanto and KBR and Blackwater and GM and GE and News Corp. Hack the RIAA and hack AIPAC. Hack Blue Cross and Pfizer. Hack Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geithner.

Stratfor does not fall into this category. They are an unbiased high quality news source that serves small and medium businesses. They are not directly attached to the military industrial complex.

What you're clueless about is Stratfor. It's a small business with 70 employees. It's not a think tank and it's work even exposes the influence of the megacorps that run your country. It exposed the influence that international finance was having on the Euro crisis in a completely unbiased way, for instance. The rest of the media wouldn't even touch the Euro crisis with anything resembling a realistic appraisal. Stratfor just cut right to the heart. High quality journalism for about the same price as The Economist.

Stratfor was on the good team. Anonymous just committed a friendly fire incident.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't live in the States, even though I am a huge admirer of how your political system was first set up (the Founding Fathers and all that), but all I want to say is that if you, as a citizen, have started to be afraid just at the mere mention of something possibly passing into "terrorism" territory only because one of your elected represantives hinted about that then it means they've already won.

My guess is that this is the root. It's unethical for you to walk into my house and read my mail regardless of whether I locked the door that morning or not.

I'm not losing any sleep over this particular leak, just saying, what I quoted is probably their beef.

But at it's simpliest core you argue that "Hey, you made it easier and the possibility exists..." It's the same way with rape. "Hey she was wearing a short skirt and was drunk, the possibility exists."

We should be able to to agree that because I make something easier for you to do that doesn't mean you are free and clear to do it.

If you want to have this debate it shouldn't be about the ease of which someone allows another to take a particular action. Instead, we should debate about if we believe we should secure in papers and from who. In a world in which non-political actors have more power than political actors that's an interesting question!

If you opened mail from my physical mailbox, you'd have committed the federal crime of mail tampering, which faces a fine and/or jail time. If you opened 3.3 million letters from my mail box, you'd probably be the first person to live the remainder of their life in jail for mail tampering... regardless of your age.

My mail is stored in an easily accessible box at the end of my driveway. If it has any form of lock, you're committing a much more serious crime. When you're hacking into a passworded system to steal email, your crime should be treated with just severity. Not only should it be regarded as committing a federal crime, but there should be charges for breaking the lock too (I'm against the DMCA's whole copyright circumvention bullshit, because it hurts the little guy. But no protection against email fraud hurts the little guy.)

> If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't view this as a valid moral claim.

If I fail to lock my door, it's still immoral to enter my property and steal everything. Just as it's immoral to enter my unlockable mailbox and steal my mail. If you don't find it immoral for someone else to read your mail then honestly you should have no qualms with posting the entire contents of all your email addresses online for us to scrutinize as well.

If there's no immorality about stealing a corporations emails, containing hundreds or thousands of peoples personal emails and information then you should have no morality problems about HN trawling your own emails.

Regardless of if I lock my door or not, I have a right not to have my property looted. Regardless of if I use a strong or weak password for my email, I have the right to not have my property looted.

My problem with this world is people like you, who will be the first to scream fucking murder when some trivial wrong happens to you but you claim everyone else has no moral claim for not doing everything you deem appropriate. Get off your fucking high horse and learn the god damn definition of morals because at least knowing the definition might help you find a set.

I'm giving myself a 99% chance of being down voted, but put your money where your mouth is. I want to see your goddamn emails.

Right, yes, it's illegal, but that's more an accident of legislature than anything else. Don't pretend that that gives it moral explanatory power one way or the other.

If I fail to lock my door, it's still immoral to enter my property and steal everything. Just as it's immoral to enter my unlockable mailbox and steal my mail.

I agree that theft resulting in exclusion of your access to your resources is very much unethical--copying mail does not result in this exclusion of access.

If you don't find it immoral for someone else to read your mail then honestly you should have no qualms with posting the entire contents of all your email addresses online for us to scrutinize as well.

I don't have to find it immoral; giving away that information freely is an act of charity I do not believe myself morally obligated to perform. Were you to come across it otherwise, I'd be a bit annoyed (as I would have to update various authentication mechanisms), but I wouldn't believe I ought to jail you or fine you or the like.

I make a bet, everyday, that the relative security of my systems is adequate for my needs. Some days I'm right, some days I'm wrong, and I bear no ill will for somebody that authenticates as me to that system--clearly, the error was in the system's scope and construction.

My problem with this world is people like you, who will be the first to scream fucking murder when some trivial wrong happens to you but you claim everyone else has no moral claim for not doing everything you deem appropriate. Get off your fucking high horse and learn the god damn definition of morals because at least knowing the definition might help you find a set.

I'm giving myself a 99% chance of being down voted, but put your money where your mouth is. I want to see your goddamn emails.

You know, if I could do so without giving away authentication credentials for other things, I would. That said, the cost-benefit isn't there. As I pointed out above, I don't have any moral obligation to provide you with information--if you gather on your own, hell, that's your business. As long as only copying has occurred, what does it matter?

So, the truly problematic part is the trespassing and/or burglary (illicitly entering a building, regardless of destruction or theft of property, meets the test).

The law around extracting information from a physical place is something I don't really know about.

But either way, we have a parallel in the unlawful access of shit that isn't yours.

Regardless of your argument, that's not what happened here.

They broke into the (secured) Stratfor servers, then decrypted the email using a key they stole.

At best the real analogy is picking the lock on your house, taking your spare car key and then stealing your car.

The whole "but nothing was destroyed" argument is a whole other argument, but equally as weak. The fact that exclusive access information has value has been long established, and there are numerous precedents in the physical world showing it. The best example is someone breaking into a commercial office, gaining access to private commercial documents which they can use in negotiations. Clearly harm has been done, as it has in this case.

So, lost profits due to being in a worse bargaining position is hardly a "harm". The company in question can either go through the negotiations in a weaker position, or they can walk away from the table. This is a case of better matching the (true) price of sale for the seller and consumer.

Ignorance is what allows large profits to be made, and as far as I recall unrealized profits shouldn't be claimed as harms.

You might not agree, but there is plenty of case law against you.

If you don't like that example, there are plenty of others showing the value of private information regardless of its destruction (for example, there is a whole genre of entertainment build around the spy novel|film).

The real issue is the fact you disagree with that, and are presenting your opinion as fact.

Nearly everyone in this forum opposes SOPA's attempt to shut down websites without a trial. Effectively subpoenaing private communication between suspected criminals without a court order and making those emails public requires much the same infringement of basic rights.

So you have to ask yourself, "Do I approve of private citizens and organizations taking actions such as these if they believe they're helping fight crime?" And then ask yourself whether you're talking about the release of these emails, or SOPA.

Crime? If every fringe nutcase gets to decide what is crime, and act on that, then it's likely you've committed somebody's idea of a crime, and so has everyone else.

So far the accusations of Stratfor's evil have been about as meaningful as the British people who threatened a pediatrician, ignorantly thinking she was a pedophile.

I don't see anyone railing against the crimes of Jane's, or the Economist Intelligence Unit. Probably because they know nothing whatsoever about the industry and don't even know those organizations exist.

There is no best case scenario from releasing this data. The point that even security companies can't guarantee security has been made, all that releasing the data can do is turn public sentiment against Antisec and towards "whatever it takes to stop this kind of thing".

But in their nerd rage tunnel vision they still haven't figured out that not all security is internet security, and not all security-related companies are internet security companies.

There are valid non-computer matters of security, such as "Is the Lord's Resistance Army active around this particular village at this time?" which would be crucial if, say, you're sending some doctors in to work in that village. Or "How active are the Maoist militants in India?"

Basically, the Anonymous people don't have the faintest clue what Stratfor does, or why you would turn to them or similar firms for information.

"It's a witch hunt."

And a publicity stunt.

It's basically a subscription news site ($100/year) that delivers focused international news. They usually stay away from trendy topics and party politics, which is pretty nice.

Despite their claims of having sources around the world, it's quite obvious that most of their information comes from other newspapers and just Googling around. It's infrequent that they would mention getting information from a source, and when they did, it was never anything more than an aside or a rumor. Certainly nothing of value.

That's why I seriously doubt that anything explosive will come from this email leak. People who have access to sensitive information leak it for two reasons: to spread their message to a wide audience (think Watergate and the Washington Post, or Bradley Manning and Wikileaks), or to swap it with other insider groups, in exchange for other information. Stratfor, with its small audience and utter lack of people on the ground, has neither.

Finally, I probably sound kind of negative about Stratfor, and while I no longer subscribe, they did have some really great, unique articles that you wouldn't find in any newspaper. Here's one example: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645

This is a blow against the freedom of the press and a blow against a free and open society. There is a reason why we should as a society respect journalists and their sources. I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted and jailed.

They are in the business of publishing everything they know -- that's how they get paid! Their info is not secret. Anyone who emails them is trying to get info RELEASED, not hide it!

They certainly have secret informants, but why do you want to compromise informants who are willing to work with the press? What does that solve?

Dick Cheney does not send emails to Stratfor. He's not stupid!

This whole operation is just another demonstration that Anonymous only targets low hanging fruit. They tried hacking the NYT but their security was too good. They tried hacking the Pentagon but hopelessly failed. So they decided to hack a small (high-quality) news company with 70 employees, that reports exclusively on global affairs.

Now they are going to reveal Stratfor's sources and get people killed, just like they did in the Mexico affair.

This isn't an achievement, it's just showing off. I doubt they are going to find much and the victims of this release are not going to be anyone in powerful positions. Rather it will be informants like Gaddafi's Butler who will have their lives ruined.

For the record, I would support Anonymous if they actually bothered to hack the government and release those files. I would even support them if they hacked known bad guys like Halliburton or known propaganda networks like FOX.

But Anonymous is just picking low-hanging fruit and hyping it up to make themselves look good. The "top secret client list" is nothing more than a marketing strategy by Stratfor. Their client list is: people interested in global politics.

http://pastebin.com/8yrwyNkt

Specifically, of interest (at least to me), as the post claims that Stratfor themselves said this (I haven't actually checked/found external verification, please post URL if you do): "In the past month Stratfor has drawn attention to a carefully assembled open-source report that asserted that last month's attack on Iraq wasn't intended just to punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed. Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong."

Is everyone here happy with the claim that Anonymous hacked in and copied emails; is it too hard to imagine that it's a false flag op? Neither side can prove themselves, that is true, but there should be more trepidation before making claims or assuming we are being handed the truth.

Also, take a look at http://anonanalytics.com/ if you haven't, the PDF they published recently is a pretty good read. That's a faction of Anon that I have high hopes for.

As opposed to a bunch of misguided, ignorant script kiddies thinking Stratfor is something it isn't?

Why does the title say 3.3 million e-mails? The pastebin claims 2.7 million.

Why did they feel the need to announce this before the wiki had all the data? Barrett just had to get extra PR time?

Why do all these releases sound like they're written by kids in tree forts with bed sheet capes on? Then again all self-righteous announcements kind of read the same way to me.

What's with their wiki? What is this shit? http://echelon2.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges

This whole thing is a big Anonymous waste of fucking time. Please flag this.

What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?

My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever?

Then, say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.

EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.

If only. That would be an improvement. As matters stand, they're much more poorly protected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_privacy

> After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[6] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[6] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.

If the line read "3.3 million e-mails between many of the most powerful men are about to be released." I would have grimaced and kept my piece.

In case they lose their smartcard or you need to recover their email for any other reason, keep a second copy of their key, password protected, offline, in a safe. Or alternatively encrypt all incoming email with a second master key, whos private key is offline, password protected, in a safe.

In any case, I expect the emails to be a lot of subscriber list maintenance, back issues, UNSUBSCRIBE messages, maybe PDFs of scans of material that was either public at the time or became public since, that were sent in by contacts or sources.