Glenn Greenwald's Partner Was Carrying A Stunning Amount Of Sensitive Documents When He Was Detained

[kpete]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by maddezmom (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Business Insider

Glenn Greenwald's Partner Was Carrying A Stunning Amount Of Sensitive Documents When He Was Detained



Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was carrying a stunning amount of government documents when he was detained by British authorities for nine hours earlier this month.

And a UK national security adviser said Friday that some of those 58,000 documents were extremely sensitive to national security.

The Daily Telegraph's David Barrett tweeted (***) out some of the details from the statement made Friday by Oliver Robbins, deputy national security adviser for intelligence, before UK judges.

Robbins was making the case that national security teams and police needed to investigate the material, which they seized earlier this month.




Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-miranda-glenn-greenwald-documents-national-security-2013-8#ixzz2dSYHyHYl

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-miranda-glenn-greenwald-documents-national-security-2013-8

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***UK Government: Greenwald’s Partner Had a Password Written on a Piece of Paper

David Barrett @davidbarrett

Statement from senior Cabinet Office civil servant to #miranda case says material was 58000 'highly classified UK intelligence documents'

2:58 AM - 30 Aug 2013

David Barrett @davidbarrett

Police who seized documents from #miranda found among them a piece of paper with the decryption password, the statement says

3:03 AM - 30 Aug 2013

David Barrett @davidbarrett

This password allowed them to decrypt one file on his seized hard drive, adds Oliver Robbins, Cabinet Office security adviser #miranda
3:05 AM - 30 Aug 2013

David Barrett @davidbarrett

The material contains personal information that would allow British intelligence staff to be identified, inc some overseas, it adds #miranda
3:09 AM - 30 Aug 2013

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42458_UK_Government-_Greenwalds_Partner_Had_a_Password_Written_on_a_Piece_of_Paper

[hobbit709]

1. The only thing stupider than writing down the encryption password on a piece of paper

would be voting Teabagger.

[joshcryer]

5. Only thing stupider is if it was the same pass as the Wikileaks insurance file.

Wow... the mind boggles.

[Stuckinthebush]

2. The plot thickens

Interesting.

[Coyotl]

3. "Police who seized documents ... found among them a piece of paper with the decryption password"

LOL. Not exactly a professional intelligence operative!

[joshcryer]

4. Password on a piece of paper? Are you kidding me?

Holy fucking shit. All the damn security culture GG was instructed to do and the password was on a piece of paper?

[snappyturtle]

6. What I find missing in the news, like this article, is that

the NSA was obviously incapable of securitizing its files.
Very lacking in security imho and yet there was this
tweet from Barrett:

The claimant & his associates have demonstrated very poor judgment in their security arrangements with respect to the material..."#miranda

To me, he is accusing Miranda and Greenwald for exactly what
the NSA has failed to do.

[Jefferson23]

8. Yep, my thoughts too...the irony thickens. n/t

[joshcryer]

9. GG was supposedly instructed by Snowden and Poitras.

The disclosure of "how they did it" went into extreme details about how they protected the data.

Yet the password was printed out?

Who gave that advice? Sounds more like a set up than anything else. "Deliver these files in person, oh, and print out the password on a piece of paper." Neither of those things were necessary at all. It could've all been done over the internet, securely, very securely.

[tridim]

11. Miranda was obviously used by his partner.

It makes me ill just thinking about what GG did to him, for money.

[joshcryer]

13. From the previous link:

Greenwald installed encryption software and began communicating with the stranger. Their work was organized like an intelligence operation, with Poitras as the mastermind. “Operational security — she dictated all of that,” Greenwald said. “Which computers I used, how I communicated, how I safeguarded the information, where copies were kept, with whom they were kept, in which places. She has this complete expert level of understanding of how to do a story like this with total technical and operational safety. None of this would have happened with anything near the efficacy and impact it did, had she not been working with me in every sense and really taking the lead in coordinating most of it.”

Relinking here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html

Poitras, of all people, should've known that printing out a password was the worst thing you could possibly do. The responsibility falls on her. It's possible GG was a patsy now that I'm looking at this. His own self-admitted ignorance of security culture just underscores it.

[Helen Borg]

7. If true...

"Police who seized documents from #miranda found among them a piece of paper with the decryption password, the statement says"
Then this was a serious mistake on their part. The only safe way was for Miranda NOT to have known any passwords, let alone have the password written down on a piece of paper. What were they thinking?

[NorthCarolina]

10. Perhaps their goal was to show exactly what info they had?

Seems like it was purposely done for some reason as yet unknown.

[Plucketeer]

18. WE don't know anything more than what we're told by the intercepting authorities

And wouldn't they have incentive to paint GG and his partner as rubes??? This could well prove to be incredibly stupid OR it could prove to be some savvy ruse.

[geek tragedy]

12. Incredibly stupid and reckless on the part of GreenSnow etc.

Imagine if the local cell from AQ had intercepted Miranda instead.

[Blue_Tires]

15. I was a little curious when Greenwald had his outrage meter instantly pegged to 11

I thought he was almost trying a little TOO hard...At least now I know why...

[caseymoz]

14. I don't believe any of it.

The intelligence community will say anything to discredit these guys. Of that much I'm certain. The Intel Community is also not known for honesty with people outside the IC, or honesty period.

If they discovered this, they would have never released Miranda. He would have been arrested and arraigned, and Greenwald would have had to put up a few hundred thousand pounds to get him released.

If they discovered this, we would have heard this story within three days. It wouldn't be like them in this climate to wait until it's no longer news to come out with this.

No, I think it just took them this long to sift through everything they found, discover it was not much they could crack, and put together this lie about it.

Come on, show a little healthy skepticism, people. These are guys who lie to you for a living.

[joshcryer]

16. GG is denying it and I think I know why.

According to this link only 75 files were fully decrypted so far. But they have proof that over 58,000 files are there.

I think that the files were originally on the laptop, copied to the flash drives, then deleted from the laptop.

Basically they did an undelete on Miranda's laptop and found the deleted files! The password was probably to a file within a file, which was intended to be used on the flash drives after they were opened!

The password on the paper was to the encrypted file on the laptop which was deleted after being copied to encrypted flash drives.

GG is doubling down because he doesn't know about the ability to undelete files (I think his knowledge of computers is highly inadequate for these tasks). He doesn't deny that there was a password with Miranda.

[KittyWampus]

17. interesting. my disadvantage is my knowledge of computers is so lacking.

[maddezmom]

19. Locking duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014580733