Iranian Coup Plotters Exposed By PDF File 328
Renfield writes: "Security Focus has the details on how the New York Times released a SECRET CIA report on the Agency-sponsored 1953 Iranian coup on their Web site as a PDF file, with the names of foreign agents covered up with black lines and boxes. It turns out the Times didn't merge layers, and John Young of Cryptome discovered that by freezing the rendering at the right time, he could view the edited text before the black boxes covered them. He's putting up the full, unedited document on his site now. The Times says he's endangering lives, but why, oh why, didn't they use eraser tool, and how many other PDF files, Word documents, etc., contain more than meets the eye?" I wonder if there are any "aggressive" pdf viewers built to scan for just such information, too.
Re:This is also importaant with word documents.. (Score:2)
Word (and most other Office apps) have a "Send as mail" option hanging off the File menu. If Microsoft were not evil greedy bastards, that option would pop up a warning telling the user that the receiver of the message might not be able to read it, and then give the user a choice of 'Convert to HTML' or 'Attach in Word format'.
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Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
At least until the competing office suites get a clue and realize that Office compatibility is the ONLY feature that matters. That should be the number 1 priority. It is absolute idiocy that import/export of Office is so brain-damaged in all these suites, after all this time (in WP's case). They should not put in one more feature until that is rock solid.
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Re:you don't need to freez (Score:2)
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Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Imagine a software engineer in Belarus Republic in 1993, graduated from university (6 years), working at governmental organization that among other things monitors post-Chernobyl radioactive contamination, as a programmer, sysadmin, admin of a "WAN" based on inadequate phone lines and the worst modems that they could find and local Novell-based LAN, getting for that a salary, not significantly above the poverty level. Add dealing with broken custom software, written in foxpro and sold to that organization by some lame company, owned by a bunch of local crooks. Add the fact that all promising jobs for a programmer are in communication, and infrastructure happens to be so underdeveloped, all positions are already filled. Add fluctuation of government that brought nationalists to power and army draft in the same year, and the fact that the engineer is jewish-ukrainian by origin. What the above mentioned engineer is supposed to do? Remaining in the country promises at least major suckage of life until economy improves and at most death in the army, as conditions there were closer to a jail than to anything else even before nationalists came to power. Moving to other country can be realistic, however only two choices are present -- US and Israel.
In Israel he can expect large number of people with exactly the same education that he got, not much of a software industry, language that he doesn't know and doesn't want to know, ideology that he doesn't share, war with Palestinians that engineer wants no part of and Judaism that engineer wants no part of either, being agnostic or atheist, depending on how you define it.
In US he can expect major humiliation, frightening corporate power, a position of non-citizen for many years, stupid politicians, yet almost guaranteed decent job for anyone who got his CS education in non-american school, and has some resemblance of programming talent.
What would the engineer choose?
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Yeah, I'll say. What the fuck was the US thinking, sending hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate France? All those white crosses at Normandy, that's a monument to American selfishness, right?
Invasion in Normandy happened at the time when Germany was if not dead but lethally wounded -- there was no possible turn of event could end with Nazi surviving (except, of course, an unlikely one in which US, the only country that was not weakened by a war, would switch sides and start supporting them). Until that point US didn't touch Europe, and the idea of "liberation" of France was a complete farce. At that point US was afraid of Soviet influence over Europe, not anything else.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:4)
The US bribed^H^H^Hpayed IRA and Ulster Union leaders to stop fighting in Northern Ireland (knock on wood).
It's still a question if the haste was worth the result -- both sides in Northern Ireland are in unstable position toward the political results -- fighting (actually random acts of terrorism) stopped at the price of bringing up all the political tension, and sides don't seem to be ready to come to the agreement, so it has all chances to resume.
They bribed^H^H^H^Hpayed Israel to find the peace process attractive.
Pressure on Israel government seem to have little effect on large (and vocal!) percentage of population that got kicked out of their homes, got their religious feeling insulted, or both. Again, fixing one problem, creating another. If Arabs didn't see Israel as being so dependent on US in everything they probably would be more willing to negotiate (plus see what I said in other message about Iran and religious bigotry).
They brought fragile but existing peace to Bosnia, and started the same in Kosovo. If you take the preservation of human lives as a universal standard, then there were less people killed in Kosovo this year than in a month (you pick the month) two years ago.
Maybe per month compared to situation in the middle of civil war, but not the total amount -- if left alone, fighting would cease earlier, without the amount of political complications that were caused by US/NATO bombing what they were supposed to protect and supporting every accusation against Serbs, valid or invalid one, thus fueling the hatred between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. If US wouldn't interfere, Serbs would defeat KLA (killing some but mostly frightening the rest, causing them to disband), keep the control over Kosovo, and would be forced to give some semi-autonomy to Kosovo, letting some Albanians into local governmental structures. US didn't like that, and needed a cause for military presence in Europe.
If there is a huge rock falling down towards 100 people and you have the option to push a button that redirects the rock to another group of 10 people, what would you do? Save 90 lives and become a killer (of those 10 people who would not have died otherwise), or let 100 people die but stay morally clean? If you have the power to actually *do something*, these are the questions you face every day.
US motivation never was to preserve anyone's lives -- it either was political, up to "those people are oppressed by their insufficiently democratic government -- let's kill or starve them all to death, so their evil government will be destroyed with them", or economical, up to "we need some cheap labor here and oil there".
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
so how about all those millions ppl that were sent to gulags in siberia...
The word "GULAG" has no plural. I refuse to discuss Russian history with a person that doesn't know why.
NYT stands on thin ice (Score:3)
mentioned, and they concern journalistic ethics.
In the first place, NYT reporter James Risen is essentially
taking this position when he claimes to John Young that the
families of those named may be at risk:
"You say that we have no clothes on. But unnamed, independent
Iran experts we consulted say that we do indeed have clothes on.
Therefore, if you assume that we are naked, you are responsible
for endangering the lives of others."
A complaint I lodged with Mr. Risen in the past suggests to me
that he is fully capable of spinning when he says that he
consulted independent Iran experts who told him that the
families of those named would be at risk. Indications are that
these so-called "independent" sources could well be connected to
the U.S. intelligence community -- the same people who use
classification and secrecy to cover up incompetence and/or avoid
accountability.
Therefore, I conclude that these families are not at risk, and
Mr. Risen is protecting his sources, or his career, for entirely
separate reasons. I asked him to put his experts on the record,
but he didn't respond so I have no idea who they are.
I consulted an Iran expert who says that Iran hardly needs to
read the New York Times to figure out what happened in 1953, and
that the report would probably strike them as boring.
A newspaper has no business playing redaction games for what may
be ulterior motives. I'd prefer that they skip the report
entirely rather than establish a redaction precedent for
journalism professionals. We'll eventually get the information
another way -- from Iran, if we have to.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Between 1950 and 1995 most such ventures were part of the not quite war between the US and USSR.
Actually that was used as a cause, but rarely was the reason. USSR avoided doing anything outside its borders unless was seriously threatened, and even US didn't actually threaten it to justify anything of the kind.
Perhaps you would rather the US and USSR had fought a pitched battle in Western Europe?
All european countries including USSR, avoided military conflicts after WWII -- and last time I checked, US is not located in Europe, so if a potential war between US and USSR would have any effect on Europe, it would only affect US missile bases there. However considering MAD, it wouldn't be possible, so it didn't happen.
Or maybe you would have liked eating lots of black bread and sending your tax returns to Moscow?
As a matter of fact, I like black bread (one made in Russia, not something I see in local stores that looks like clay with hay mixed in, and tastes like one, too). However the political situation at the time of Cold War reliably prevented direct military confrontation.
Re:Belits is right!!! (Score:2)
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Are we talking about Chechnya here? Or Russia? I'm sure whatever "uncivilized" aspects of Chechen society have been cleansed by bombing the shit out of Grozny.
We are talking about early 19'th century, the last time when Chechnya was independent.
Re:Two things (Score:2)
You raise a very interesting and important point, and yes I have considered this in some detail. However it is somewhat tangential to my original post. Like you, I neither condone the activities of the U.S. or U.K. governments, nor do I believe that information like this should be kept from the people who make decisions, if even the decision on whom to vote for. I am merely pointing out that for whatever reason this information was classified Secret, which means that only a restricted body of individuals may access the information, and the information may not be shared among those who lack sufficient clearance. If this material still holds a Secret classification, then it is illegal to allow individuals to access this information. While we may debate whether the material was classified correctly, whether the public had a right to know this information, or even whether any organization should have the right to hide such information from the public, while it holds a Secret classification it needs to be protected in accordance with this classification level. Individuals who violate these laws go to jail, and I don't see why those who wear press badges are necessarily exempt.
The point of my post was the following apparent inconsistency: When one body misplaces Secret information we raise a huge ruckus, whereas when another body mishandles information with the same level of classification, then it's ok since "It is in the interests of the people." I would argue that for classification to have any meaning whatsoever, then leaks of classified information to the press must be prosecuted with the same intensity as what the New Mexico lab is experiencing.
Secrecy has few places in a true democracy or republic.
(A most curious stance on a site that champions privacy and the right to encrypt). Secrecy has its places, however it is dangerous to a democracy or republic to cede to secrecy too much power. I agree that the immoral acts of the U.S. and U.K. governments are disgusting and the public is better off knowing than not knowing about such things, however I also acknowledge that we have many secrets (e.g. biological weapons secrets) that are much better off being out of the public domain. As a consequence, I would argue that we should vigorously protect our national secrets as a point of principle, and we should call for reform to the classification system so that it cannot be abused.
And while you're at it, don't forget to run rough shod over the first amendment and freedom of the press.
I never called for anything of the sort; all I am advocating is that we hold journalists to the same laws as the rest of us.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
And there is no oil nor anything worth in Kosovo. No administration could have pulled a war like this off, and even this way the Clinton administration has the Republicans^H^H^H^Hwolves hanging off their throats for 'waste of taxpayer money'. Just look at the position of the GOP to see the selfish american politics that has dominated this land for such a long time. By the way, there is no oil nor anything worth mentioning in Kosovo, and there is much cheaper (and much more isolated and less militant and less organized) mass-labor force in Asia. Your suggestion is not credible, think for a moment. Dont you think that there is a tiny chance, just by the rule of big numbers, that the US sometimes does something good - just by accident? I mean, even assuming that the US was the evil, the US could make mistakes as well and do something good, occasionally, right?
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
so you wont discuss with me because i prooved to you that ussr did indeed harm its own citizens...
USSR harmed its own citizen -- as well as US and almost every country in the world. However I talk about using military force to do that, what was claimed in a previous post.
i am not native english speaker so thats why my english may be fucked up (bosnian/croatian/serbian is my native language) ... anyway gulag are nothing else than work camps for soviet ppl that didnt share same opinion as stalin did
"GULAG" is a Russian abbreviation for "State Department of [Penitentiary] Camps" -- camps themselves NEVER were mentioned as "GULAG" or "GULAGs", only a system as a whole. Therefore it couldn't be in plural in any language.
you don't need to freez (Score:4)
Re:What are you smoking? (Score:2)
To my knowledge, the US has never started a war by invading another country. Can you give an example?
Vietnam, Grenada, Panama to name a few most blatant ones that immediately come to mind.
America comes in to defend freedom.
Invading a sovereign country has nothing to do with "freedom", no matter what the invader thinks of himslef.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Bosnia was indeed 'left alone' as you say, and 200 thousand people died. 'Doing nothing' ('letting the rock fall') caused the death of tenthousand muslims in Sebrenica. Is that the kind of peace and sovereignty of nations you envision?
Actually yes. Conflicts like that, no matter how much third parties will try to suppress them, will claim their number of victims. There is no "good" way out for people involved, and suppressing conflict earlier will cause more deaths later -- perpetuating the hatred and making the end result worse.
And there is no oil nor anything worth in Kosovo.
There was however US influence in Europe that decreased because of the formation of EU. US needed to reaffirm its dominant position in NATO, establish presence in the Eastern Europe, and create a country (Kosovo is de-facto a colonized country now) dependent on US military force -- something that Europe never had before.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
The base at Quantanimo was established when Cuba was an ally of the US. We have a lease on the land where the base sits, paid with a token amount of money. When the current regime lead by Castro overthrew the previous regime, Castro decided to leave our base alone, and has refused to cash the checks we send the Castro goverment in lease payments as a form of protest.
Of course we're not giving up the base--after Castro tried to put nuclear warheads pointed at the US east coast on his territory, we sort of have a very strong interest in making sure Castro doesn't repeat that fairly serious mistake that almost plunged us into a nuclear war with the Soviets back in the 60's.
Better to invade a small country than to kill billions.
However, our relations with Cuba is the exception to the rule. Most of the places where the United States has a base, the host country has desired to have our base be there--in part because they see the presence of a US base as a stabalizing force in the region, and in part because they see us as helping foot part of the hosting country's defense bill.
Money talks in international relations.
Of course the United States is fairly well hated by most of the world--but that's in part because we tend to staff our overseas bases with testosterone-laden 19 year olds who have no respect for anything except their own penis, who then take R&R where they are stationed. And in part because of the fact that because it's so expensive for us Americans to go to a foreign country that is not Canada or Mexico, the people who do make the journey to Europe tend to be wealthy snobs.
And the best way to be universally hated is to have tourists who make the French seem exceedingly reasonable and respectful in comparason.
Re:Where's the "Information wants to be free" crow (Score:3)
"Information wants to be free," they chime.
Given this strange behavior to this story, I have to ask. Is it "information wants to be free, except when lives are at stake"?
If you don't see the difference between exposing a list of blocked sites and exposing a list of names which may endanger the lives of people, then you've a very warped sense of morality.
"Information wants to be free". What does that mean? An evocative phrase devoid of rational content... Freedom of information and the need for privacy have to be balanced.
Take this in Perspective (Score:2)
1) The Times acquires a document outlining the dirty particulars of a covert US operation. Parts of this document include name, places, and even possibly addresses, all of which could be harmful, to say the least.
2) The Times throws the digital equivalent of little bits of electrical tape over enough of the details to protect the individuals, leaving just enough to scandalize the reader and condemn the gov't for being bad, bad men. (Insert Fox Mulder and Whistling Theme Music.)
3) Our friend, the hacker, removes the pieces of tape, and posts it on his website, detailing how the act was done, and why the Times needs to be more careful when handling sensitive gov't documents.
First of all, the party
Posting the complete document on his website, was just nudging the last sheep out the door. Any foreign intelligence agency worth its dark sunglasses is likely capable of having done this, for themselves, if they really wanted the info. More than likely, they already have it. 1953 was a long time ago, in Intelligence years.
Re:Nobody is going to get SHOT from some spec info (Score:2)
File formats, other specs, or whatever, won't get anyone killed by it's release.
I won't bet on it -- people do a lot of awful things out of disgust.
Re:Where's the "Information wants to be free" crow (Score:2)
Exposing the story was one thing, and certainly merits CIA internal investigation. Putting individuals lives at stake to satisfy ego is another. There was no legitimate purpose in doing so. The hole in PDF could have been demonstrated in any other number of ways. The story itself was also already exposed. The only thing gained by the person who did this was a feeling of playing God with other peoples lives. It is not their place to have made that decision.
How funny and sad. Now fire up Ghostscript. (Score:2)
PDF is completely, utterly unprotectable. If you can read it, you can dissect it.
Have a "locked" PDF? Run it through Ghostscript, convert it back to Postscript, and do whatever you want with it.
Have a PDF encrypted for use with one of those "secure" book readers, as was done with the recent Stephen King novella? Then just run the reader alongside a debugger and intercept the Postscript parsing code to reconstruct the original file. Oh! But that's in violation of the licensiung terms of the "secure" reader!
The only way to make a PDF or Postscript file like this "safe" is a simple one. You need to replace the critical text or images with those black boxes, not simply cover it up using PDF or drawing tools. The original snippet of text needs to be utterly absent from the resulting file. Period. And then don't kid yourself if you think you can restrict or trace redistribution. Lock it all you want; the source Postscript can be recovered with a copy of Ghostscript and twenty minutes with the documentation, or failing that, by a C programmer armed with a debugger.
Endangered Lives: A little History (Score:2)
But to the point; I agree that this action was irresponsable. I think the correct move would have been to notify the Times, as he did, make sure the oversite got corrected, and then drop it. Maybe write an article. But there is no need to personally reveal these names, once the nature of the security problem had been made public. If this had been some other document, there might be hell to pay here. If it had been some other document. But Mossadeq had absolutely nothing to do with the regime instituted by revolutionaries in 1978-79 under the influence of Ayatollah Khomeini. Therefore, it is kind of questionable who these people's lives would be in danger from. Mossadeq was part of the dynasty that was swept away by Khomeini and his ilk; he was a secularist of sorts, who advocated Iran taking control of its own affairs, but was not interested in the establishment of an Islamic republic. I am not sure what the view of Mossadeq inside the Iran of today is, but I doubt that there are many strong supporters of him around to make any moves against those who plotted against him. Also, keep in mind that the names of those on the CIA side involved in the operation have been available for years, people like Kermit Rosevelt, who was out in the streets of Tehran handing people 20 dollar bills to go protest against Mossadeq.
So I doubt that this document is going to make any revelations that will inspire action on the part of the Iranian people. For them, it will just be one more document proving that the United States can't be trusted. Like they neeed more proof.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
As an iranian (Score:2)
People think the iranian government is crazy, this isnt true. The iranian government has no power. The ayatolahs do and they are the crazy ones.
Re:Where is the FBI investigation of the NYTimes? (Score:2)
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
That's because most of the unsuccessful-at-home people who want to immigrate to the US are the most vulnerable to hollywood's propaganda machine.
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:word files and RISKS (Score:2)
it's been mentioned in comp.risks numerous times - ms word files by default are saved by revisions.
Tracking revision is not activated by default, although there may be an option to make it the default. A standard Word installation will have it off, however.
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Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Yeah? And what about the democratic/human rights situation in the early 19th century in the USA? Only landowners could vote, there was slavery...
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Special status of NYT? (Score:2)
What this comes down to is:
But, clearly, in some circles, there is some belief that the NYT is some impartial, competent institution that is in a privileged position to receive confidential information. For the reasons given above, I think this attitude is wrong. However, even if we admit the premise of a special status for the NYT, I think this blunder suggests that the NYT simply isn't competent to work responsibly in the on-line media.
As for me, I stopped reading the NYT for its informational content a few years ago. In the areas I know about, I found their articles to be too often poorly researched, factually inaccurate, and logically inconsistent, and I had to conclude that this was likely to be true for their articles in areas that I didn't know about.
But the NYT is clearly still of enormous influence in US society because of its readership, the access it is given in some circles, and the beliefs many people seem to have about the quality and integrity of their reporting. So, from that point of view, it is useful to have a rough idea of what they are writing. For accurate information and insightful analysis, however, I'd recommend going elsewhere.
(For some history of the media, including the NYT, I found the book "Life the Movie" by Neil Gabler very interesting.)
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
If "sane by a human points of view" means humane, then no, US foreign policy has not been humane since (or before) the Gulf War. There are numerous such examples (launching cruise missiles at medicine plants in Sudan, selling napalm to Turkey so it can kill Kurds, killing about a half a million children in Iraq according to UNICEF, etc...) but I'll stick with the stories you think pass for evidence as to the good intentions of the US government.
First off, I do grant you that the US government would like to see a long term ceasefire and some sort of peace in Northern Ireland. This is in the foreign policy interest of the US, so it's no surprise. As far as paying Israel for the "peace process" (which is really just setting up and formalizing an apartheid type system in Israel) that is totally incorrect. Israel was still the biggest receiptient of US aid when it was occupying South Lebanon (against the UN resolution for it to withdraw) from 1982 until just a few weeks ago. They weren't paid to get out, the war had no popular support in Israel and no strategic value anymore for Israel. Domestic pressure was probably the biggest factor, not US government money.
Furthmore the idea that the US went to war to save Kosovars is ridiculous. The US government and its allies could care less about them, look how few of them they were willing to take in significant numbers as refugees. Bombing exaceberated the situation in Kosovo (as admitted by the US general Clarke) resulting in more casualties and undermining all the efforts of domestic opposition groups inside Yugoslavia to get rid of Milosevic. The bombing certainly wasn't support by them, and they couldn't even begin to organize rallies against Milosevic until after the war was over. Bombing a country isn't the best way to affect social change, as should be obvious from dealing with Iraq.
All governments make up fairy tales as to why they are attacking another country, they must do for the war to be accepted by the public. It doesn't mean it is true. If you want to see some of the real motivations for US foreign policy, go to www.stratfor.com (private intellgience agency) or if you want to read a more radical critique try reading the Noam Chomsky archive at www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Re:This is also importaant with word documents.. (Score:5)
Why You Should Read the Risks Forum (Score:2)
The Risks forum should be read by:
- Anyone who uses or depends on computers in their daily lives
- Anyone who programs computers
- Anyone who makes policy decisions involving computers or software
- Anyone who ever depends on the correct functioning of computers for their lives or safety (flown on a modern airplane lately?)
- Anyone who operates computers that affect safety (piloted one?)
I think that includes most readers of Slashdot.You might think such spy stuff as this article is about is out of your realm, but consider this example which likely could have affected most of us:
Peter G. Neumann, [sri.com] moderator of the Risks forum, wrote a book called Computer Related Risks that draws on material from the forum and discusses it in more depth. It has ISBN 020155805X and you can purchase it from:- http://www.fatbrain.com [fatbrain.com]
- http://www.barnesandnoble.com [barnesandnoble.com]
- http://www.amazon.com [amazon.com]
- http://www.chapters.ca [chapters.ca] - in Canada
If you teach a course on programming, I suggest adding this to the recommended reading, and if you teach a course on fault tolerant or embedded computing, I urge you to include it in the required reading.That is not how I read what you wrote (Score:2)
Perhaps another basic civic lesson is needed. Do you know who Deep Throat [washingtonpost.com] was? He brought down the Nixon government. He changed the face of US politics. Nobody knows who he was.
The press has an obligation for full disclosure to the public and privacy for their sources. Beyond the need to reveal enough to let people check what they have to say, they have zero obligation to indicate who gave them the tip.
Regards,
Ben
What kind of standard? (Score:4)
You would be amazed at how well people react to being told that you are concerned about viruses...
Cheers,
Ben
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
If you weren't a complete idiot you would know that every single family in the USA at that time was touched by WWII. Many lost their sons to the war, others lost their neighbors.
Poor Americans -- lost their neighbors! What about being invaded by Nazi and losing 1/4 of population (Belorussia)? Compared to all other nations involved in WWII US suffered the least, unnoticeable compared to anyone else.
We'd probably have spent another 6 months to a year fighting our way north up the island. Russia would've invaded from the North from Mongolia and we would've ended up meeting somewhere in the middle.
Great knowledge of geography here -- probably a result of famous American education. I knew, there is something special about those maps with US in the center instead of Greenwich meridian, and my home city misspelled.
It would've been the same thing that happened with Germany.. North and South Japan. No, I'm sorry, thanks for playing. 2 A-Bombs were the best way to end an already too-bloody war. What was it.. 50 million people dead? It is pissant people like you who can sit back in your comfortable chair behind your computer 50 years later and monday night quarterback the whole war that really piss me off.
Great political thinking here -- we are afraid of Russians, let's first demand help from Russians, then kill more Japanese than there are Russians there. I hope, actual american generals didn't base their decisions on that idea -- otherwise I would be embarrassed to belong to the human race.
Read the US constitution (Score:2)
If you think that this is bad, read the thoughts 20 years later of the man who published the design of an H-bomb [fas.org].
Cheers,
Ben
Iranian coup plotters SHOULD be exposed (Score:4)
It's actions like this that make me question the deepest principles of our nation. In The Falcon and the Snowman [imdb.com] spy case, a loyal American from a military family became disenchanted when his security clearance allowed him to see that the CIA was conspiring to overthrow a liberal government in a foreign country, including fake demonstrations and planted violence in the trade unions. The country in question was Australia. Yes, this is true. A loyal ally
I have nothing but disgust for an operation supported by the United States that stole democracy from Iran for the next thirty years and handed it to, of all things, a king. How antithetical to American values is that?
Did you ever stop to think why the Iranians hated us so much they'd hold our people hostage for 444 days?
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Re:He's not endangering lives, they are. (Score:2)
The guys who were spying for us then are almost certainly dead by now: we're only protecting their tombs.
(The federal government has a serious problem with overclassifying documents; hell, there are still classified documents from *the spanish american war*. The whining by the CIA over the dangers of releasing this information is like the whining of the little boy who cried wolf).
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
I'm not arguing that Word is inferior to Wordperfect, only that the whole lump of thick GUI wordprocessors are deceptively intuative -- Word moreso than Wordperfect. It is purely subjective as to whether or not that is an advantage.
I would rather that we had ultra-simple wordprocessors, stripped throughly, people could then send their docs off to the local Word or Wordperfect expert in their group.
When I mentioned bloat it was in reference to data bloat from OLE. The problem I encounter in the field is end-users who cut and paste, only to have objects inserted in their documents... All they really want is CGMs. Most are happy after I explain to them what has happened to their document, and the difference between embedded objects and pasted graphics.
IMHO you are absolutely correct that you cannot pick particular features to remove from a wordprocessor in order to simplify things. But not everybody needs to have a wordprocessor.
I suppose my ideal would be a complex viewer alongside a simple wordprocessor. People could collaborate by sending people gently formatted rich text and in-line graphics (without layout information). For the mostpart simple rich text environments such as Lotus Notes are perfect for this sort of thing. People don't have to worry about page formatting, or even files.
The end result would hopefully be a workforce which respects that Word and Wordperfect are complicated programs and should not be used for hundred-page customer proposals by people who just "figure it out as they go". To stay on topic, they might even respect that erasing super-confidential information from a document might not be as intuative as it seems.
Japan already wanted to surrender (Score:2)
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
Presentation should be separate from content.
But in Word they are combined. You are thinking of things such as LaTeX in which presentation is separated from content. You can take the same LaTeX document and present it in any number of ways, simply by changing the style files you use it with. Most people who use Word do not use styles, and even if they did they view their documents with those styles applied; AFAIK there is no `view as plain text' option. One should not be concerned with the look of a document; mark it up properly and use a well-written set of styles; this guarantees excellent output.
Why do we need autoformatting? We convert plain text to...plain text.
Embedding? Why should a document need anything but pictures in it? Like it or not, the vast majority of documents will be printed, not viewed on-screen. If they are to be viewed on-screen, then use a computer-specific tool, not something which was designed to output printed text. Use the right tool for the right job.
Spell checker? This is the greatest nuisance in Word. I happen to use the (correct) British spellings for most words, and since the versions of Word at work do not have the International English dictionaries I am stuck. I turn it off. Spelling is not something which everyone agrees on; that's fine and IMHO as it should be. The idea that spellings should be standardised is very modern, dating as recently as the introduction of the printing press.
Master document? Most every text layout program I know of allows one to include other files within the main one.
Your problem is that you are looking for personal computer, WYSIWYG-type software when Unix has something far, far better, and has had for quite some time now.
I used LaTeX for all my papers my final year of college, and I noted that my grades were rather significantly better. People appreciate well-laid out text, not the ugly stuff spat out by Word.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:3)
So - going back a bit in history just to show the obvious flaw in your argument - Nazi Germany should have been left alone - they would clearly have stopped after some natural amount of time, after killing/gasing everybody not of arjan descent (including most of Russia).
First, US was an ally with Britain, France and Russia -- as opposed to KLA that was no one's ally -- formally was and remains a terrorist organization.
Second, Nazi Germany was left alone even though it invaded US allies, so actually US extremely poorly performed its own obligations as an ally. US participated in insignificant fighting in Africa, and other things that didn't significantly affect the events in Europe until it became absolutely clear that Russia will not be destroyed (all USSR territory was back in Soviets' hands), and Germany will be defeated, this way or another. Not until that happened, US started pulling its shit together to actually attack Germany in any meaningful way.
As I have said it many times, US behavior in WWII in Europe was extremely selfish, bordering on being a traitor to other allies.
practical reasons, not arrogance (Score:2)
But that's not behind the refusal of many people to read Microsoft Word documents they receive. The reason is much simpler: it's a nuisance and it's expensive.
At work, we have a site license for Word, but maintaining a separate computer just to read mail containing Word files is a lot of work and money. For private correspondence, I would have to buy my own copy of Word, which is more expensive than my whole computer. In addition to all that, I would have to spend time learning how to use Word, and I would have to live with the risk of computer viruses.
I consider sending Word documents around a sign of bad manners or ignorance on the part of the sender. It's roughly the equivalent of giving me a set of Porsche hub cabs for my birthday and expecting me to buy the Porsche to go with it.
I respond to such messages politely that I am sorry, but I cannot read them. Nothing more needs to be said; it's none of the sender's business why I can't read them, nor do I lecture them on Microsoft, Linux, or open source. I suggest plain text, HTML, or uncompressed PDF as alternatives that I can read. It's then up to the sender to decide whether they want to resend the message or not. If they don't, it can't have been that important.
NYT, Jim Young Not at Fault (Score:3)
If Jim Young hadn't published the information without the redactions, the information would still be there. Determined parties would still have that information. The only difference is that people would have (incorrectly) believed that the information was secure.
The argument is identical to disclosure of security holes. Someone (Jim Young) finds a vulnerability. He notifies the vendor (NYT) so that they can take action. When it becomes apparent that the hole is being exploited (others are publishing the names), secrecy becomes irrelevant, and the only issue is making sure everyone is aware of the hole ASAP, so Young published the names.
Does anyone think that if Jim Young hadn't published the names, Iranian intelligence wouldn't be able to get them out of the file?
Does anyone think that if it hadn't been widely publicized, Iranian intelligence wouldn't have eventually found out about the problem?
Blaming the NYT or Jim Young is like blaming Cult of the Dead Cow for the lack of security in Microsoft products.
Re:word files and RISKS (Score:2)
how to turn off that "feature"? turn off "quick save."
kevin
Where's the "Information wants to be free" crowd? (Score:5)
This is not a flame.
It's amazing how many people are rushing to condemn the man who published the un-redacted file, and how many people are screaming to investigate the New York Times because they published the redacted file without understanding the file format, and how many people are crying foul because the CIA leaked the document in the first place.
Isn't this SLASHDOT?!
People here don't holler if Microsoft leaks proprietary technical specs... they laugh. People here don't whine if DeCSS circumvents runtime-redaction, they propagate the utility. People here don't find it immoral to expose CyberPatrol blacklists... they find it immoral to blacklist at all.
"Information wants to be free," they chime.
Given this strange behavior to this story, I have to ask. Is it "information wants to be free, except when lives are at stake"? Is it "information wants to be free, especially since beer isn't free"? Is it "information wants to be free, because I can't afford to pay programmers"? Or is it "information wants to be free, because Courtney Love teaches us how we gotta stick it to the man"?
Principles are principles.
If you don't believe "information wants to be free", then get off the pot and stop crusading. If you do believe it, then why are we worried here? The guy who finally published this unredacted form basically said he had two reasons,
force the hand of the State Department, letting these families know they may be in danger
force the review of critical information management within our own intelligence community
Both of these reasons focus on exposing more information than just this document. His tactics also demonstrate that information wants to be free. He also showed that releasing information was a powerful proactive strategy, not a secret reactive strategy. Releasing information doesn't mean giving up all your control. He took control when he showed his hand.
He was doing you a favor.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Do you have any evidence for this, or is it just blather? Since the Serbs had essentially forced all Albanians out of government structures *ten years before the war*, and had denied the peopel living there *the right to teach in their own language*, and had gone to great extents to drive non-Serbs out of the parts of Croatia and Bosnia under their control, I think the outcome you paint is unlikely.
More likely --- and what we were afraid of --- was the Serbs driving the Albanians out, causing a massive refugee crisis in Albania (a country which is *awash* in guns because of a brief civil war a couple of years ago which followed on the heels of the collapse of a popular pyramid scheme) and Macedonia, and destablizing both countries.
Yes, this is a modern-day domino effect. And it's reasonable to question if it would have happened that way --- certainly the refugee crisis which *did* happen failed to destabilize either country. But
You are wrong, I for one will continue complaining (Score:2)
I am also interested in getting work done. Having to reboot into Windows to read something that turns out to be a macro-virus prevents me from working, too.
"Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office..."
Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix.
"...people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs."
Ah, the old straw-man argument. Who said anything about "arrogant" and "asshole"? When I get Word documents (or requests for Word documents) and say "I'm sorry, I don't have access to Microsoft Word." Depending on the situation, I give a list of alternatives (plain text, html, etc). I am polite but firm. If asked why I can't read (or supply) a Word file, I use the (completely applicable) word "proprietary".
Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
--
Re:Why publish? (Score:2)
1) Since other people were unmasking the names, the information was no longer known to only him and the NYT, and was therefore in the public domain.
2) In the interest of security, he decided that by publishing the names, everyone would be on an even playing field, and any people involved in the operation would know that they had been exposed. (Rather than not knowing if they were named and if so, who had uncovered the names already.)
He had a hard decision to make, and I think he did the right thing. The moral questions of full disclosure get a lot hairier when it's potentially peoples' lives on the line, not just RealServer remote DoS attacks.
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
Does anyone use any formats other than .doc universally? No.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Dan, show our contestant the consolation prize...
There is one format which is universally used, which everyone connected to the Internet can read. That format is text. Over the last thirty years the text format has grown to encompass conventions for the enclosure of every form of content imaginable. Most users have multiple text readers on their machines: cat, less, more, Notepad, SimpleText, Eudora, MailSmith, Emailer, Netscape, IE, Opera, slrn, strn, NewsWatcher &c. ad infinitum.
There is no question that there is a benefit to a universal document exchange format that everyone understands.
You're right. We had one: text. It was used to exchange information--you know: data, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have .doc, which is used for the interchange of data covered in dressing, gravy and all the fixins. Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate secretary to use seven fonts in a purchase order?
to the tune of Oh Give Me a Home... Oh give me the days
Of the ASCII term haze
Where seldom was heard
A proprietary word
And the data flew swiftly all day!
Conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
Everything that happend in the real world changes what the "real world" is. Even this message where I call you a Microsoft sheep and one of major causes of the bullshit "proprietary standards" dominance, changes the "real world" toward more widespread understanding of it.
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
From a user perspective, printer independent printing can't be done on Unix in any practical sense.
That's odd, since for years the computer world exchanged, on Unix systems (and others), documents in a true printer-independent format: PostScript. Remember the days when we cursed our personal computers because we could just cat doc.ps > /dev/lpr? And for those of us with non-PS printers, there were all sorts of transparent filters. We were able to transfer documents, with layout and everything, exactly as written, if we needed to. Which was precious seldom...
Re:Where's the "Information wants to be free" crow (Score:2)
It's like the example of one's root password. That is information which must remain privileged. Same with spies, military plans &c.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
My experience says otherwise.
Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal.
All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US.
Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan.
Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating country in the world, has a US military base on its territory
Are you aware of the conditions under which that base came into existence? We fought a (probably unnecessary) war with Spain -- as a result of which we ended up with control of Cuba. Instead of turning it into a colony (which Spain had done), we made it an independant country, and leased the base from them --- and that government was quite happy about the arrangement.
It wasn't until after the government was overthrown that the base became an issue.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Do you have any evidence for this, or is it just blather? Since the Serbs had essentially forced all Albanians out of government structures *ten years before the war*, and had denied the peopel living there *the right to teach in their own language*, and had gone to great extents to drive non-Serbs out of the parts of Croatia and Bosnia under their control, I think the outcome you paint is unlikely.
That was going on-and-off over decades after WWII -- never reaching the extent of open war before Milosevic/KLA.
More likely --- and what we were afraid of --- was the Serbs driving the Albanians out, causing a massive refugee crisis in Albania (a country which is *awash* in guns because of a brief civil war a couple of years ago which followed on the heels of the collapse of a popular pyramid scheme) and Macedonia, and destablizing both countries.
That mostly started after US interfered. BTW, Albania was the worst place in Europe even in the time of peace.
Yes, this is a modern-day domino effect. And it's reasonable to question if it would have happened that way --- certainly the refugee crisis which *did* happen failed to destabilize either country. But ... there's *no* evidence at all that I can detect that the Milosevic government would have done *anything at all* to bring the Kosovars back into the government or give them back the autonomy which they had had until his government came to power.
US interfered at the time in the middle of civil war. Definitely Yugoslavian government was not in a position to do anything meaningful in Kosovo at the time. Common sense indicates that no country ever benefits from foreign involvement in its civil war.
That damn Word 'feature' (Score:2)
Of course, Word had done a partial save. And since my lecturer had made the mock exam by taking the real exam and modifying it, he had a heart attack when the student showed him his printout of the mock exam and said "this is different to another copy someone else printed."
The absolutely laughable thing is, my lecturer then experimented with the 'Fast Save' feature in his version of Word and discovered it did fast saves even when he told it not to.
As a result, nobody on campus spreads stuff around in Word documents anymore. Especially when they're sending their (judiciously censored) letter to the Vice-Chancellor...
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
All the while Word uses a cryptic, closed and proprietary document format. That is a huge negative. In the real world, I've seen hundred-page documents crash and burn because somebody tried to embed an object. Funny, Word was able to save the document, it's a shame it wasn't able to load it again.
Other things to consider is that the vast majority of end users only use a minority of features. Most of the people in the real world whom I deal with barely know a tab from an indent from a clump of spaces. They're confused when they change printers and their documents reformat on them.
I would so very much rather give them something like Abiword or even Wordpad and let them write their docs and prepare their graphics, then have somebody who knows what they're doing sit down with the person for an hour and slam everything together.
I've seen sooo much wasted time from lousy features which are half-implemented.
Although Windows and Office have been getting better, I still have to tell people "The reason your document is 34MB, is because you were using cut and paste... that embeds objects by default. this is unreliable, unintuative, unstable and bloated. It's been that way since the feature was first implemented."
So what can Word and all other ridiculous wordprocessors do better than a feature stripped rich text editor?
For the computer literate, they let you mailmerge, save time with styles, create labels, import complex charts while producing professional looking results...
The computer illiterate however, can waste hours on unfriendly though deceptively intuative interfaces. It can also get people killed as critical information is leaked when people think something is deleted. Microsoft and the rest of the industry's philosophy towards user friendliness is inherently flawed. Precision first, user friendliness second... let people read the manual or be fired for their incompetance.
WordPerfect was great... people just had to pick up a manual. And please, don't compare Word 2000 to WordPerfect which hasn't significantly improved since version 6.0 Only recently has Word advanced to the point that I feel a little comfortable that I can trust the software to format my documents without relying upon reveal codes.
Don't kid yourself, the only reason Word is so successful is because of marketing and proprietary formats.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
I personally can well imagine the US being more afraid of Josif Stalin than of Hitler, at least until 1942. Stalin has already proven that he is capable of killing millions of people. It was not at all clear until last 1943 / early 1944 that Nazi Germany started the extermination of jews.
I can well imagine the US letting the USSR alone against Nazi Germany - that would have been a shame. Nevertheless the US did send supply to the USSR, which probably tipped the balance in favor of USSR troops in the Stalingrad battle. After Stalingrad all the production facilities in western Siberia (and probably even worse, the oil in the Kaukasus) would have been exposed to the germans. Nevertheless I agree with you that the hesitation of the US to enter the war did cost millions of lives in the USSR, and that cannot be forgiven.
France's participation in WWII was mostly symbolic, given that they were occupied during the decisive stage of the war, the real participants were USSR, US and Britain, against Germany, Italy and Japan. (sure there were other countries present as well, most of which participated in heroic and important battles.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
And also, when one gets screwed, he won't readily admit it, so they grin and bear it.
--
Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
This is also importaant with word documents.. (Score:5)
But I've found is more effective to also go int othe file with a text editor and extract bits of text which they've deleted, along iwth other information the user may no t want me to see.
Recently I received such a message from someone which handled PR for my particular section of the NI govt. There was some really dodgy info in there, and afdter returning it to the sender, the govt department got sent aplaintext policy document about not using MS Word or anything more complicated that
People should go looking at these files - there's a lot of info out there to be had
Re:you don't need to freez (Score:5)
No, that's not true (Score:2)
What I'm trying to accomplish is to get Slashdot readers to read the risks forum.
I feel that's very important.
I think the future of society is at stake if we programmers don't take heed to what's regularly discussed in risks.
If you look at the rest of my posts, you see I have no problem getting karma. It's just a matter of posting relevant, interesting, on-topic posts.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal.
If you are expecting irrational, cartoonish hatred, this is not what I am talking about.
Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan.
I an talking about a territory of Germany in any meaningful way, not diplomatic arrangements, fighting far away from both countries, selling weapons, bombing territory without attacking it and other peripherial activities.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2) by aphrael (burble@aphrael.org) on 11:00 AM June 25th, 2000 PDT (#262) (User Info) http://www.burble.org/aphrael I think it's just incorrect to say we're :"universally hated" My experience says otherwise. Could you share your experience with us? I've spent a significant portion of my life overseas, in just about every country in western and central europe (including Croatia); while I have percieved a great deal of frustration with American *arrogance*, I have met only one person that I thought blindly hated this country and its people. From what I can tell, it's *not* universal. All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US. Arguably Germany started a war with the US; it declared war as soon as we declared war on Japan. Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating country in the world, has a US military base on its territory ... Are you aware of the conditions under which that base came into existence? We fought a (probably unnecessary) war with Spain -- as a result of which we ended up with control of Cuba. Instead of turning it into a colony (which Spain had done), we made it an independant country, and leased the base from them --- and that government was quite happy about the arrangement. It wasn't until after the government was overthrown that the base became an issue.
So, some governments deserve sovereignty, some don't, and US is free to decide, which is which depending on how they support US? The world can't run on rules like this -- at least it will never be stable that way.
Fun with stereotypes (Score:2)
BTW, I for one agree with him posting the report on a 47-year-old event, because information wants to be free. So there.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Someone else has pointed out that there were years of planning for the invasion. But
* bombers capable of reaching New York and flying back to Germany
* guided air-to-air missiles
* short-launch helicopter planes
* stealth technology
Sure, their economy was wrecked and their infantry was lagging. But their *technology* was good enough that if the war had gone on six months longer they would have started to push back --- and if they'd been able to concentrate *all* of their military on Russia instead of dividing it on two sides, they would have been able to hold off the invasion. (Similarly, if Russia had sued for peace the way it did in 1917, and Germany had been free to concentrate all of its military on Normandy, the allies would have been pushed back into the water).
I'm aware that this contradicts what you learned in school. I've got a Russian friend (ethnic Russian, grew up in Moldova) who was *shocked* when I pointed out that Poland at one point had stretched as far east as Smolensk --- he wasn't taught *that*, either.
Re:US != THE WORLD (Score:2)
Microsoft strikes out again. (Score:2)
So why was it on by default?
What other security leaks do they have in there?
We know they're squirreling away in word files lots of identifying information about the people who create and those who edit the file. The whold WORLD found out after the the FBI used it to track down the author of a Word macro virus.
So obviously, if you're:
- a government functionary charged with keeping things secret,
- a businessman or office worker handling the trade secrets that give your company a competitive edge,
- a professional responsible for keeping your clients' business data, medical histories, or similar data confidential,
- a whistle-blower,
- a revolutionary writing a manefesto, or
- darn near anyone who has information to keep sectet
you should NOT be using Microsoft's tools.
I wonder how many more people will be harmed before the general public has this figured out?
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Re:NYT, Jim Young Not at Fault (Score:2)
I agree that, realistically, the CIA is at fault here. Not only did they goof and release information to the NYT that they should not have, but they did not adequately review what NYT ended up publishing.
If I were the CIA, I would have re-released to the NYT a document without the references I wanted removed. I would not rely on the NYT to do this deletion for me.
As far as the NYT being "trustworthy," nobody is saying that they were. The CIA offered information to the NYT, and then they said, "Oops, we goofed, would you mind destroying that last bit?" The NYT could either say, "Sure, Fred, just send me an updated copy, we all make mistakes," or, "Hell no, you evil capitalist swine! I shall sell this document to the highest bidder, THEN print it! Ah hahaha!" One of these two responses results in continued information flow, a continued job, continued freedom and quite a bit of gratitude on the part of the U.S. government. The other does not. If the NYT reporter refused or disclosed that information to other parties, the CIA would never share information with him (and perhaps the paper) again. It doesn't make good business sense.
So the NYT isn't so much trustworthy as they are realistic. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Re:This is also important with word documents.. (Score:2)
1.) Reality Master 101's comment was in no way "flamebait."
2.) One way to commit *nix advocacy is to send a reply email to the person who sent you the two megabyte Word file as follows:
"Please resend your letter of the 23rd in text format. Our mail system detected a macro virus attached to the email you sent and the antivirus program automaticallly deleted the attachment, so I got your email but the document was gone. FYI, our network manager told me that it was the particularly destructive W97M.Stand.c virus which silently installs itself in Microsoft Office and exactly two weeks later wipes out all data on infected systems all across the user's office network."
OK, so (someone will complain) that's dishonest. But it's funny too, and that's important. Anyway, in the long view, if you can help him break his habit, your little white lie could be doing a poor cruelly longsuffering MSOffice addict a big future favor. Because after all things like W97M.Stand [symantec.com] do exist.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
It's murder (Score:2)
As far as the times criticising anyone who scans their documents for security flaws, they should be whipped. the times should be heavily criticised for this failure to adequately insure the names were removed from the document. they should be thankful someone wrote in.
but for anyone to continue publishing the names...once the problem has been exposed...if that's not a crime, it should be.
incidentally, i did not see the list published, only that the times reporter was "angry" that someone exposed their failure to safeguard the names and emailed them (?!).
Re:He's not endangering lives, they are. (Score:2)
The CIA and the Times have already done the endangering. It seems like the Times has a lot to answer for in this. How the heck did they get the source of a 'secret' CIA document in the first place? Ultimately it has to be someone in the CIA who is responsible for this foul up.
It isn't a foul-up unless you believe that nothing the CIA has ever done is deserving of public scrutiny.
In fact, the CIA has been attempting to erase the record of its coup-related activities for several years. FOIA requests in 1997 revealed a number of "missing" documents.
[snip] This is simply amazing. I think the Times accusations have more to do with covering their own ass than concern for their unfortunate victims.
Well, it was a mistake, and clearly one they didn't intend to make. But I don't know that I consider the names in this list "victims".
----
Re:you don't need to freez (Score:2)
Re:What are you smoking? (Score:2)
Never?
I would argue that the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (which expelled the Khmer Rouge) was a great leap forward for freedom.
Re:Where's the "Information wants to be free" crow (Score:5)
How can you possibly draw a parallel between downloading mp3's and releasing secret information by the CIA on the names of their agents? How the f*ck are the two related? They're not! The information wants to be free crowd isn't a bunch of absolutists - we recognize that there must be limits. Some information shouldn't be free - you'll note I don't publish my root password.
By and far, this mandra is related to a subconscious counter-culture and anti-authoritarian attitude which has grown on us as a result of circumstances. Circumstances like watching our rights as "consumers" and citizens be systematically stripped away while calling it a "win in the battle for personal choice". We were taunted by our peers, ejected from our school system, for wanting to know how the system worked.
Yeah, there is some history here fella, and it would do you some good to talk to people on the other side of the fence before going off and trying to label everyone - something you'll find is usually met with freezing contempt amongst geeks.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
population.
Whereas the countries they're fleeing are marked by sweetness and light. Shiny happy Socialist dictatorships.
Some even think the Gulf war wasn't about oil.
Of course it was about oil.
But when the price of oil goes up, people die. It's that plain and simple, and I'm not talking about the people killed in the Gulf War.
The areas of this country that don't have abundant supplies of Natural Gas use that oil to heat houses. Every winter, people die because they can't afford to heat their homes.
When the price of gasoline goes up, small towns lose the ability to pay for proper ambulance service. Response times go up, people die.
--
It's a matter of balance... (Score:2)
I stuck a camera in your bedroom when you weren't suspecting it, and I vidcap'ed your masturbation technique. Yeah, I know--I shouldn't have tresspassed. And I'll own up to that part. But now I've digitized all this information--your hand movements, the naughty pictures you look at, the beastiality...
Digitized video images is also information. And information should be free, regardless of what that information is, right? Expect my anonymous posts to be put up on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.masturbation for all to see.
Don't worry--there was no camera. And there was no digitized video. But the above is ment to illustrate a point, which is that there is a balance point where information should and should not be free. Sometimes one's privacy is more important than the free flow of information about a person--or are you selectively reading only the articles on Linux and skipping the ones on Doubleclick?
What we're dealing with here is an example of the latter: the desire to preserve one's privacy for something they did 30 years ago (and which could get them killed) is greater than the need for the free flow of abstract, impersonal scientific or historical information. While the consequences are greater (they're getting killed is probably worse than the imbarasment you would feel if vidcaps of your masturbation made it on the alt.sex groups), the principle is the same: the need for privacy must outweigh the need for the free flow of information.
Voyeurism is not scientific inquiry.
Re:That is not how I read what you wrote (Score:2)
Re:Haven't you heard of the military-media complex (Score:2)
Maybe to report on it? Gee, I though that was what journalists in a country that prides itself on its "free press" (but really has a handful of megaconglomerates pushing their interests with their media possessions) were supposed to do.
Last time I checked, press is supposed to represent the public, not the government. Of course, adding corporations to "the public" already turns the whole idea into a farce, but having government agencies' interests secretly influencing it crosses the line.
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Then explain why we have one of the lowest EMMIGRATION rates in the world.
They get here, and now they see for themselves how we are compared to where they were.
And they stay. Over 800,000 more per year, and they stay. Even more want in, but are kept out.
Explain how your statement fits in with that fact.
--
Re:Iranian coup plotters SHOULD be exposed (Score:2)
It seems like the US's adventure-loving spy agencies might have gone on a bit of a spree - bombs and all - in Italy [guardianunlimited.co.uk], too. This hit the world news back in 1990 when the CIA's Operation Gladio [westnet.gr] was revealed in court, but since then it's kind of fallen into the oubliette, gee wonder why?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:What kind of standard? (Score:2)
If you don't use Windows, try that Perl script that converts
Of course, once the document starts using extremely Windows-specific embedded stuff, you're lost.
Re:You are wrong, I for one will continue complain (Score:2)
There are two types of information transfers: official and personal. Personal transfers are the business of the concerned parties, and hence not our concern. But official--business, gov't, educational &c.--transfers are. The purpose of these transfers is to exchange data in a usable form. It is not to be pretty or attractive. One does not dress up 30GB of atmospheric data with pictures of clouds.
The problem is that these transfers have not been computerised. Open, well-thought out formats should be proposed and used so that this information might be transferred in a comprehensible and portable fashion. Comprehensible, because if one cannot understand information, then it is garbage. Portable, because oen never knows what tomorrow may bring and what the requirements then will be.
It just so happens that we have the perfect format for data exchange of text: text. A purchase order should either be sent over a special Purchase Order Protocol ('cept POP's already taken), or sent as text. A paper--which needs formatting--should be encoded in such a way that presentation is seperated from content. A discussion among colleagues concerning the purchase of a new web server should be conducted over email, in text. Why add the useless overhead of Word? It slows things down, fills up disk space and is in many other ways sub-optimal.
Text can be made attractive as well as expressive: I can set my mail reader to use any font I desire; I can attach images in the appropriate places; I can use the ASCII notations for emphasis and the rest. But, unfortunately, that requires that my brain be engaged.
I handle the whole MS Word problem by silently throwing away Word documents I receive in my personal mail. When I send documents, they are either plain text or marked-up text; either is perfectly legible to the casual reader. Sometimes I use image files (PostScript, PDF, JPEG or PNG), if that is nec.
BTW, charts and diagrams should be images, in formats readable by anyone, or if important, they should be in the form of data, which can be easily interpreted by the user as he wishes. One of the things I hate is just getting a chart. I want the data, so I can look at it, analyse it and generate my own charts. You'd be surprised at how easy it can be to make a chart lie...
Pitstop (Score:5)
All rental IBMs at Kinkos have this plugin, so basically the Times PDF was vulnerable from the word Go. I'm sure that uber-intelligence agenices has already figured out how to remove the redaction long before Mr. Young posted his revelations.
Just open the file in Acrobat, click, click, delete... full disclosure.
Re:US foreign policy (Score:2)
Germans developed a lot of technology (I doubt about stealth though, as it would be extremely impractical at the moment), however it was nowhere close to being ready for production, given the state of German industry by then. Also the war was in the condition when no improvement to anything that files (bombers, missiles, helicopters, spaceships, bows and arrows, slingshots -- anything) will give any advantage to them unless it massively outnumbered anything that Russian had in the air or on the ground. Tanks could help, but there was no progress there, and there was a shortage of copper to make advanced things like electric transmission practical. So they were doomed in any case.
I'm aware that this contradicts what you learned in school. I've got a Russian friend (ethnic Russian, grew up in Moldova) who was *shocked* when I pointed out that Poland at one point had stretched as far east as Smolensk --- he wasn't taught *that*, either.
I don't know where he studied -- definitely not at the place where I did. The definition of "Poland" however is rather foggy over the all time when various stuff existed at its place.
I think you lack a sense of perspective (Score:2)
That is how serious the question was yet the government could do nothing about it.
Conversely the state secrets revealed by Deep Throat were of tremendous current interest. Did Deep Throat violate national security? No question! Yet the government simply does not have the right to investigate Woodward to find out his sources.
Let me throw another item in the mix. The Pentagon Papers [vietnamwar-reference.com]. The government knew that The Times had classified material. They even knew who it was from, and the approximate contents of said material. Yet they were not allowed to prevent the publication of said material, and they were not allowed to investigate which specific documents the press had.
That decision ultimately got the US out of Vietnam. Had it been done earlier tens of thousands of American lives (and many more Vietnamese ones) would have been saved. Conversely had it been done later, more lives would have been lost.
No, in this relatively minor case the FBI has no grounds to investigate any newspaper unless they have direct evidence that the Times was engaged in directly illegal activities such as breaking and entering. Sure, lives are at stake. Well lives were at stake when the US put a puppet regime in power, and lives were at stake when his brutal little dictatorship led to an extremist theocracy. Personally I think that the US should be turning over various people who set up other puppet regimes for war crimes. That will not happen, but don't expect me to shed tears if a few names escape the censors.
Freedom and human rights matters more than their petty dictatorships. If I felt otherwise then I would rather that the Soviet Union had won the cold war.
Regards,
Ben
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
I think it's just incorrect to say we're "universally hated";
My experience shows otherwise.
and as for showing basic respect for the sovereignty of other countries, you're right. To a point. We've gotten involved in some pretty shady dealings, which the Iranian incident is a perfect example of, but we also have a habit of not invading countries weaker than us, something which just about every major power in human history couldn't avoid doing.
What kind of world do you live in? All countries invaded by US in its history except Japan were weaker than US -- and only Japan happened to actually start a war with US.
Possibly one of the reasons a lot of countries don't mind hosting American military bases.
Considering that Cuba, the most US-hating counry in the world, has an US military base on its territory, I don't think that it can be considering as "not minding" American military bases. More likely treating US as "ridiculously overpowered character" in world politics.
Excel 95 leaks when you copy parts of a document. (Score:2)
We found this out in our organisation recently when accounts copied pieces out of a salaries spreadsheet to give to managers, thinking they were only sending out the details of each managers department, but in fact sending the whole spreadsheet with details of company wide salaries ! Fortunately nothing bad came of this, but yet another example of Microsoft not planning their products for privacy and security. One can easily imagine this having much more serious consequences.
My thoughts are if you have anything you want to send where leaked data may be an issue, save your Word Document or Spreadsheet as text, and then import it back in and reformat. This of course may not always be practical for 100 page documents or whatever, but you know you're safe.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Which begs a question that no-one here seems to be asking, which is "what is spying?"
In the 40's and 50's, long before the Internet and global reporting by media outlets, when even a simple road map of the highways in the Soviet Union were classified, "spying" was basically trying to go out and get an accurate picture of events in the world. It may sound odd to us, but much of that "spying" included things like making accurate road maps and getting an accurate report of events such as uprisings, troup movements, and to profile reasonably accurate psychological profiles of foreign world leaders so that we could try to second guess what these leaders would do. All stuff which we pretty much take forgranted thanks to CNN and the Internet.
By the way, I know about the road maps because my uncle's job in the 50's was to take U-2 pictures and produce accurate road maps of the Soviet Union. And yes, the very thing that we Americans take forgranted--road maps--were classified as a Soviet state secret.
Today's world is much different than the paranoid world of the cold war. With Moscow relying on tourism, maps are all over the place on the Internet. CNN's reach throughout the world is greater than the CIA in terms of reporting foreign events--why have a report from some mole suggesting troup movement when you can have live video from reporters on the field? And as far as figuring out the psychological profile of world leaders, which is more useful: second-hand guessing from people who may have never met a world leader, or an on-camera interview from a reporter from ABC News where they flat out ask the guy what he's thinking?
I've heard that today, many analysts for the CIA have CNN turned on in the background where they work. That's because more likely than not, CNN will scoop CIA's field spooks in reporting events in the field.
Obviously there are areas where the CIA's field reporting staff (or "spys") are useful: in countries who clamp down on the reporting of information (China, Libya, North Korea). And there is information that cannot be gathered by CNN that our government still needs (such as troup readiness and assessment of the current state of technology, as well as an assessment of what our allies and our enemies may be withholding from us). But by and large, the Internet, media news outlets such as CNN and the desire of closed countries such as China to open themselves to tourism will eventually make most of the spying the CIA performed in the 50's and 60's obsolete.
Re:Somewhat OT - PDF 'security' (Score:2)
Re:Endangering lives (Score:2)
Unfortunately they do.
And that should go a long ways in explaining why US foreign policy is as screwed up as it is.
word files and RISKS (Score:3)
the only time i've been a fan of ms products actually.
Why publish? (Score:5)
What I'm missing is the explanation why they changed their mind. It looks like they wanted to publish before someone else does.
I would like to know if they considered the timing of all this. For someone named in this report, a couple of hours to leave the country might make a big difference.
Families (Score:5)
He's not endangering lives, they are. (Score:4)
This is simply amazing. I think the Times accusations have more to do with covering their own ass than concern for their unfortunate victims.
US foreign policy (Score:5)
Do you agree that in the last 10 years (eg. starting _after_ the Gulf War) the US foreign policy was pretty sane from a human point of view?
The US bribed^H^H^Hpayed IRA and Ulster Union leaders to stop fighting in Northern Ireland (knock on wood).
They bribed^H^H^H^Hpayed Israel to find the peace process attractive.
They brought fragile but existing peace to Bosnia, and started the same in Kosovo. If you take the preservation of human lives as a universal standard, then there were less people killed in Kosovo this year than in a month (you pick the month) two years ago.
Yes, IMO this peace was worth those innocent ~400 lives caused by the air-raids (as counted by Yugoslav propaganda - not the tens of thousands they claimed initially), if you balance this against those many kosovoans *not* being killed now. The bosnian war took an estimated 200 thousands lives, so that was the prospective. If you are forced to pick between hundreds of lives and get your hands bloody, and thousands of lives but stay clean, which one would you pick?
If there is a huge rock falling down towards 100 people and you have the option to push a button that redirects the rock to another group of 10 people, what would you do? Save 90 lives and become a killer (of those 10 people who would not have died otherwise), or let 100 people die but stay morally clean? If you have the power to actually *do something*, these are the questions you face every day.