Showing posts with label leaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leaks. Show all posts

29 November 2010

Wikileaks: the Web Watches and Waits

It's clearly still far too early to attempt to assess the impact of Wikileaks' latest mega-leak, this time of US secret cables, which is certainly a biggie:

The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of "The Iraq War Logs", the world's previously largest classified information release).

The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.

On Open Enterprise blog.

23 March 2010

Big ACTA Leak: Full Consolidated Text

La Quadrature du Net has obtained another ACTA document - and it's a biggie, but at the moment only a 56-page PDF. You can help convert it into text.

But what's really striking to me, as someone who has been covering this area for 18 months now, is how the rate of leaks is increasing: the more leaks there are, the more we get. It's a bit like those slow-motion scenes in films where the dam begins to break slowly, and then more and more cracks appear until finally - transparency.

So, let's keep those leaks coming, please.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

08 May 2009

Oh Irony, Thy Name is Westminster

This is rich:


House of Commons officials have today called in the police to hunt down the mole who leaked details of MPs expenses.

The parliamentary officials spent the morning in talks with Scotland Yard, and made the decision this afternoon.

In a statement, officials said: "The House authorities have received advice that there are reasonable grounds to believe a criminal offence may have been committed in relation to the way in which information relating to Members' allowances has been handled.

Now, since said leak has shown probably several hundred "reasonable grounds" that fraud has been committed, might it not be a priority to investigate those first? And might it not look a little vindictive simply going after the leaker? And might not all this sorry saga be a rather strong argument for introducing a public interest defence for such leaks?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

13 February 2009

Leak of Classified ACTA Dox Reveals Dissent

There's a battle going on for the soul of ACTA, and Knowledge Ecology International has a leaked document that spells it out:

Classified negotiating proposals for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) obtained by Knowledge Ecology International and examined by Inside U.S. Trade reveal wrangling between Japan, the United States, European Union, Australia and Canada over issues of civil and criminal enforcement and how to apply border measures against infringing products.

The post contains the full details of what is known, but the following sections are of particular interest for EU citizens:

The section on empowering authorities to order infringers to provide information on other persons involved in their activities also appears in the Korea FTA and ACTA draft. In the document, the EU seeks to add language that would limit this provision so that it conforms with national laws such as those on personal data privacy.

...

In this section, the EU has sought a provision specifically designed to exclude non-commercial items in personal baggage, from the scope of the ACTA border measures. U.S. officials have said that the agreement would not lead to wholesale raids on laptops and iPods at airports, but the EU appears to be trying to make sure this is the case in this section.

If true, these are to the credit of the EU delegation, which is clearly trying to limit at least some of the most damaging aspects of ACTA. But other areas remain a concern:

The documents do not detail the subsection on Internet measures and these are known to be among the most controversial provisions.

Moreover:

Criminal trafficking in labels is defined as occurring even in the absence of willful piracy.

Which would seem to capture P2P sharing.

Although much remains shrouded in secrecy, it's good news that at least a little light is being shed on what is clearly a hugely important treaty. The fact that participants are still trying to negotiate it in secrecy so as to present a fait accompli is nothing short of scandalous.