emptywheel

Some more links. Bellingcat broke the Discord server story 5 days ago[1]. The Washington Post has a stunning story, including barely obscured video (unaltered voice) from a teenager who was active in the group and considers himself a good friend of the leaker[2]. The Guardian story cites and quotes extensively from the WP story, so that should be considered the original source, but does add more context. Emptywheel (who has been pretty consistently excellent when it comes to leaks and the like) has more analysis[3]. [1]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/04/09/from-discord-to-4chan-the-i… [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/04/12/discord-documents… [3]: https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/13/bear-versus-pig-on-the-thug-shak…

This is a complicated story that's been made murkier by politics, I'm honestly not sure where the best starting place is. Marcy Wheeler is has been researching and documenting a whole cloud of related stories. These two are probably no worse than others as starting points. https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/04/why-was-gru-using-open-source-to… https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/03/28/what-was-the-relationship-betwee…

With the proviso that she's coming at this from the opposite political slant (the link above being a hard-right, pro-Trump account), journalist Marcie Wheeler (https://www.emptywheel.net/) has been extensively reporting on the trial; her assessment, conversely, is that the prosecution scarcely has a case, though the FBI also doesn't come off as either effective or coordinated in her opinion.

I tend to defer to Marcy Wheeler when it comes to evaluating this stuff; she spends a lot of time actually looking at primary source material (court filings, etc.), AND she called out the dossier as likely Russian disinformation back in 2017. https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/11/the-democrats-newfound-love-for-… (2017) https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1460514005672419328 https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/11/12/source-6a-john-durhams-twitter-c…

Yes, and someone who's followed the case pretty closely agrees with you: > Except, Siggi retracts nothing substantive that is alleged in the indictment, so this drama is instead a demand that you accept the word of a liar rather than read the documents to show that the liar’s claims are irrelevant to the charges against Assange. https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/06/27/wikileaks-and-edward-snowden-cha… (I really don't know anything about the case so I don't have an opinion, other than to be reflexively skeptical of sweeping claims of conspiracy)

Examples here: https://www.emptywheel.net/ Well researched, endless detail, often leading to no resolution.

Anyone still following along here may be interested in Marcy Wheeler’s close examination of the article under discussion, and how it relates to the Assange indictment: https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/06/27/wikileaks-and-edward-snowden-cha…

https://www.emptywheel.net/, though just the posts written by Marcy Wheeler, a.k.a. emptywheel, herself. > Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. > Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.

I think this is because OP simply copy/pasted the title. having an all uppercase title is annoyingly common especially in pdf's. seen this on some websites too which have uppercase head styling and you have to dig out the normal format from the open-graph header (or add it to buffer which is the same). Noticed some sites that do have all upper have JS to convert the to lower when copying the text (example: https://www.emptywheel.net/) I guess it could be solvable by adding some conversion on the HN submit form.

I'm shocked that this story seems to be upvoted less than the Gimli Glider story which has been on the front page for more than a day. One would think that the recent allegations of Russian hacking [0], as well as these allegations, would be of interest to the HN community. Whether either of the allegations is well-founded or not, they need to be investigated and understood by the public. It's worth noting that the President spent a great deal of his final press conference discussing the Russian hacking issue [1]. Why is this not bigger news, especially here? [0] http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/19/politics/russian-election-hacking-podest… [1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/12/18/obamas-response-to-russias-hack-…

Shane Harris' looked at ISIS' use of Telegram in the Daily Beast a few days ago. [1] And Marcy Wheeler's post yesterday [2] relates John Brennan's complaints about the challenges encryption is causing for law enforcement "especially in Europe". Marcy writes: "If terrorists were using WhatsApp (which a lot of the fearmongering focused on), the metadata, at least, would be available via Facebook. But since Telegram is not a US company, it cannot be obliged under Section 702 of FISA, and that surely creates just the kind of gap Brennan was talking about." [1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/16/this-is-isis-new-favo… [2] https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/11/18/brennan-was-probably-talking-abo…

It is uncontroversial to state that corporations and special interest groups frequently lobby in public for a position and in private against a position. Frequently you know this only through un-attributable information passed to you. Advocacy organizations are not journalists. They don't need to cite their sourcing before making claims they believe are true. The purpose of calling out Facebook is an attempt force them to align their public and private positions if they differ. As usual, Marcy does excellent analysis about what information NSA will be able to collect, analyze and disseminate under CISA.[1] [1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/10/26/two-intended-consequences-cisa-s…

John Oliver shows why we can't rely on surveys to show whether people support mass surveillance or not. Most don't even seem to know who Snowden is, let alone understand what the government is actually doing. At best most of their minds are made up by what they see on TV (where the networks hardly did Snowden and his revelations any justice). Also, relevant: https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/04/04/section-215s-multiple-programs-a… It's very likely that even if the government "backs down" on some surveillance programs from the Patriot Act, they will try to replicate them in other bills, such as CISA or other future ones. They've done that before, too. So we need to be very vigilant about it.

Thoughtful people brave enough to blow whistles seem to be the greatest check on what looks like a secret, unaccountable, illegal centralization of power based on lies from the top of the government on down. Especially so when you see the oversight committee receive a bald-faced lie, where the leader of the Intelligence agencies lies to the American people by extension, since this is the only public oversight these programs receive. http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/10/james-clapper-hails-separation-of…

> But not convicted! Nah, they all determined he did it. Republican Senators like Lamar Alexander were all quoted saying that both times, they just went on to say they didn't care or they think he learned his lessons. > How many convictions have they gotten - after more than a year - of these "insurrectionists"? Zero. A few plea deals that are now unraveling. But sure, keep bang that "insurrectionist" drum. Over 150 by my count. The Oath Keeper who was Roger Stone's bodyguard that day pled guilty to actual sedition! It hasn't rolled up to Alex Jones and further up but it will, since he was intentionally leading people around to the east side for an attack on Pence by claiming Trump would "give a second speech" there. https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1503855795951312898 If you wanted to actually follow this, which is kind of a waste of time but might be educational(?): https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/04/04/the-evidence-needed-for-a-trump-…

Certainly seems odd, but it's not like the guy's dead or something. First, it was stored in a VeraCrypt encrypted container; if he believed only he had the keys, he may have thought it was safe. If he believes he was being framed for child pornography, I imagine he would shout it from the rooftops. Or at least try to shout it to the extent he could, to the point that there would probably be at least a little coverage of the framing allegation. Second, they found plenty of other things, too, (for example, the keys to various VeraCrypt volumes on his phone), so he clearly wasn't a total pro at wiping data. For the record, the original allegation [0]: >investigators discovered a single classified document as well as over 10,000 images and videos depicting child pornography including "sadistic and masochistic images and videos of children as young as a few years old who had been brutally sexually assaulted." The government found that Schulte had "neatly organized" this material "according to his preferences, and stored it for a period of years." More details here, including IRC chat logs: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscou… I'd recommend reading the whole criminal complaint. They'd really have to provide full, unedited chat logs in order to get a more holistic view, but from what they provided, it does seem somewhat ambiguous. Based on the chat logs and Google search results they found, it seems clear he did…

This is an incredibly backwards hot take. The media has made many mistakes and continues to do so. But in the opposite direction. In addition to the extraordinary number of people already indicted as part of the Special Counsel’s work, there is already ample documented public evidence of “russiagate.” Marcy Wheeler, the best reporter on this story, says “We know of at least five conversations at which various people entered into what I describe as a quid pro quo conspiracy.” 1 Russia and the Trump Campaign worked together to elect Trump as part of a quid pro quo conspiracy. The media’s error was in anointing Mueller and his report as the savior and sword that would slay our villainous leader. The media has failed to convey reality to the public: in addition to crimes related to Russia, the president and his family have been shown to be awash in many, many kinds of crimes. He cheated the non-profit system, lied about assets to secure loans, defrauded participants in his “university,” confessed on tape to a pattern of sexual assault corroborated by multiple credible first person accounts, committed tax fraud, helped his parents commit tax fraud, committed campaign finance violations, skirted White House anti-nepotism and ethics rules, publicly threatened witnesses, and has done many other things that are obviously disqualifying. The failure of the press to convey the extent of Trump’s prolific criminal behavior before and after the 2016 election is this generation’s War…

I might not have been clear enough -- Norton is the one claiming to have science and absolute truth on her side. It's brought up in The Atlantic article, and particularly in this blog/Patreon post: https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/26/we-have-to-build-the-future-out-… > I want people to reach out to the abusive toxic men and senior executive vice presidents in their lives, because it’s the most scientifically sound way that we fight bad ideas... > ...I have no need or desire to bring more hate and anger into this world. What’s more, I have science that can help me develop techniques to diminish the anger and hate that’s here now. Science, like all forms of truth, is a form of love. And to reiterate, I, and most of her critics, don't have a problem, in theory, with the idea of faithful redemption. But in her writing (and her tweets about this), Norton argues, essentially from a priori, that she knows her approach is right because it is true to her values/heart/whatever. She doesn't have a response to the concern about how she knows she's not being an enabler of (or otherwise suckered by) weev, or that she's not creating any unwanted second-order effects, such as inaderdently creating the appearance of normalizing weev, which helps weev in his mission to recruit toward his cause. Great Twitter thread here, in which Norton's friend says https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/968631133591109632 > We are arguing about tactics and approach, and I am suggesting…

According to this[1] it was more that the senate committee staffers found an internal CIA report (the 'Panetta review') that contradicted information CIA had made available to the committee (about their torture-enhanced interrogation practices, presumably, and their destruction of the video evidence on the same, under the rationale that transcripts in the cables provided sufficient detail so that the retention of the 'torture tapes' was unnecessary.) A tit for tat escalation then followed. As the article ([1]) puts it: > All of which is to say the SSCI busted the CIA for lying in their official response to the Committee. And as a result, CIA decided to start accusing the Committee of breaking the law. And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings. There's some other interesting reading at the same site[2] about acting General Counsel of the CIA, Robert Eatinger, who referred the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators for investigation by the DoJ and helped provide legal advice on the destruction of the 'torture tapes'. Even given this pretty lamentable story, it's still hard to understand Feinstein's new stance on privacy. Perhaps, as some have commented, it's all about getting the committee's report released in time for the elections? [1] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/05/operation-stall/ [2] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/11/robert-eatinger-lawyer-who-approv…

Thanks for the close reading. I guess it depends what you think "no domestic intercepts" excludes, and how much you believe that everyone in the NSA follows the rules. Even if most of them do, a few have the tools to become a very big problem --- and the rest of the organization wouldn't necessarily know, since in an organization like the NSA, people aren't supposed to know what's happening in the office down the hall. To start with the scope of what's available: it almost certainly includes data on US persons "incidentally" acquired in taps on an authorized target. I'm not aware of anything on DEA procedures there specifically, but as for the general rules, see here: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/11/08/the-intelligence-communitys-wide-… Of course, even if NSA analysts know that they have DEA "customers" (as they apparently call the recipients of their intelligence), it might be a breach of the rules to select overseas targets which would be likely to have domestic contacts of interest to the DEA. But given that knowingly breaking the rules in pursuit of an authorized goal seems to count in NSA audits as mere "lack of due diligence", and not classed as "abuse", I'm not sure how much comfort to take from that. Analysis of NSA audit data from Marcy Wheeler here: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/16/lack-of-due-diligence-the-nsas-th… ... with further notes on the audit process, and…

> Because the review panel is a joke. This is exactly right. This is a case of the government reviewing itself by packing the review board with insiders and sympathizers. Nobody who disagrees with the NSA's behavior has been selected for this panel. Blogger Emptywheel has been following this much more closely than the general media: Advocate of Secret Infiltration, Cass Sunstein, on Obama’s “Committee To Make Us Trust the Dragnet” [1] The No-Technologist Technology Review Panel [2] 3 Tech Issues the Non-Technologist NSA Technical Committee Needs to Address [3] [1] http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/22/advocate-of-secret-infiltration-c… [2] http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/27/the-no-technologist-technology-re… [3] http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/28/3-tech-issues-the-non-technologis…

More information about the DOJ's abusing customs summons on journalists at [1]. [1] https://emptywheel.net/2026/07/22/harmeet-dhillons-team-is-using-custo…

If you read Marcy Wheeler [1], she points out that the Trump administration just can't figure out how to negotiate. All three failed "deals": Harvard, Ukraine, tariffs.. there's just no ask there. You're going to start a hot war with China demanding....what? That they reload the container ships with Shein clothing? [1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/29/mr-art-of-the-deal-struggles-to-…

Even Vought & 2025 didn't expect such a blunt chainsaw approach, just firing any and everyone who technically could be fired without cause. But man they are still seemingly getting so much of the teardown of this nation that they wanted. There's still a huge amount of America alseep or worshipping those bringing the end of America, but my hope is still that eventually the endless lies and obfuscation wear thing. That we can conclusively see who the villains are. That was a huge part of Project 2025, and I think it was always a fantasy, that America abandoned our allies and starting trade wars and joining with the Russians isn't going to make us think the past was the villains here (you awful monsters). > Russ Vought Got His Trauma — But Not the Villains He Imagined https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/28/russ-vought-got-his-trauma-but-n…

https://itwire.com/business-it-news/security/infosec-researchers-slam-… https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/11/28/the-russian-metadata-in-the-shad…

The only White House request to censor was from Trump mad at being called a vulgarity by Chrissy Teigen. https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/02/20/james-comers-twitter-hearing-con… Being pressured to enforce your own terms of service by the government ain't censorship. Zuckerberg is a coward, afraid to stand up to Jim Jordan. What a pathetic letter

Nothing yet, but it’s a lot more then just the phone and it’s a huge mess. https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/08/04/its-a-tremendous-amount-of-infor…

Some starting points to some previous messes (just what was quick to find, not the most balanced sources): https://itwire.com/security/infosec-researchers-slam-ex-wapo-man-krebs… https://itwire.com/business-it-news/security/image-board-admins,-mods-… https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/11/28/the-russian-metadata-in-the-shad…

Here is one I saw wrt the Russia sanctions specifically that seems to be well-sourced and makes sense whilst being pretty terrifying for the Russian people[0]. TLDR; Russians are about to face mass shortages of basic goods at the same time their markets are crashing. This is going to cause major problems when people try to buy things like food and seed to grow more food. There's already a brain drain hitting Russia as these sanctions take effect, so the government may be forced to close the borders as well. 0: https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/03/04/world-war-of-economic-attrition/

Here's a critical look at the yahoo report for balance: https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/09/26/the-yahoo-story-about-all-the-th… >And then well past paragraph 100, Yahoo admits the plans to assassinate Assange went nowhere, in significant part because doing so would be illegal.