New evidence emerged hours ago that implies a personal link between Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking the war logs – among other classified military information – to whistleblower organization WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, the embattled spokesman thereof. This poses a problem for WikiLeaks; if it can be proven Assange or an associate intentionally helped Manning violate secrecy laws (and indeed, their own privacy protocols) they are open to prosecution.

Please read:

Assuming this isn’t a set-up, this story disappoints me in two ways. First, the super-smart and fastidious image of WikiLeaks has been effectively shattered. All the talk of encrypted phones and special security measures may be true but when they are so casually discarded they are practically useless. This is exactly the kind of loss-of-confidence the naysayers have been praying for. Second, this makes an AMAZING case for disc encryption and proper log wiping/disabling. I don’t have everything encrypted myself (might after this wakeup call!) but if I were the guy who leaked a bunch of  classified material I would hope to have the good sense to plan for the worst beforehand.

Ironically, Assange once contributed to the Rubberhose filesystem, an exercise in Deniable Encryption and precursor to StegFS that probably would have served its purpose excellently in this case.

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