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Anonymous Releases Law Firm Emails On Haditha

It's been a busy day for Anonymous, which in addition to publishing the FBI-London police telconference call, has hacked the website of the law firm Puckett & Faraj which represents Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the marine who recently got a sweetheart deal for his role in the Haditha killings. You can view Anonymous' message (not the e-mails) here.

The link to the e-mails was posted on Pirate Bay in the last hour. And no, I'm not reading them. I don't have a Torrent program to open them and I'm not downloading one. [More...]

Update from Gawker: Uh-Oh. Collateral damage already from the publication of the lawyers' emails.

That's unfortunate, but I always wonder why lawyers put everything in emails. Do they think their silly disclaimers will protect them? Whatever happened to fax machines, Fedex and the U.S. mail for sensitive material? Sensitive client affidavits and case discovery shouldn't be attached to emails in the first place. No wonder legal malpractice policies started including automatic riders for data breaches this year.

E-mail is not secure. It's how Anonymous learned of the FBI-UK police teleconference call in the first place. It's pretty obvious the Government is no match for Anonymous and Anonymous can hack anything. As they say, Expect Them. Better to stay on their good side. (So don't bother to put nasty comments about them here, I'll probably take them down.)

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    What most upsets me about this, (5.00 / 3) (#7)
    by Peter G on Sat Feb 04, 2012 at 01:02:36 PM EST
    is not that the lawyers put lots of stuff in e-mail that should be kept confidential.  Sorry to say that all lawyers do this (myself included).  What is bothering me is that the Anonymous hacktivists would seem to be blaming and attacking the lawyers for defending their clients (and getting a good result for them).  This is a very dangerous fallacy shared by all too many people.  The Anonymous folks are themselves under criminal investigation.  The lawyers representing them should not be assumed to be their clients' co-conspirators or even sympathizers. Unpopular defendants -- be they accused war criminals, rapists, drug kingpins, child molesters, dirty cops, white collar thieves, alleged terrorists, corrupt politicians, political activists of Left, Right and otherwise, copyright violators, and computer hackers -- all need dedicated, fearless, independent defense counsel when suspected or accused of a crime.  Our system of justice, flawed though it is, doesn't have a chance of operating halfway correctly without that.  A criminal prosecution system without a vigorous defense function is a hallmark of tyranny or dictatorship. How can these guys not understand that?

    the most damaging emails (5.00 / 1) (#8)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 03:46:14 AM EST
    according to what's been posted on pastebin, are emails that were wrritten not by the lawyers. but by members of a mass email group they were on. They are emails by former military that go out to about 10 people. None of the lawyers at this firm answered any of the emails that I can tell from Pastebin, but what is so troubling is the views of these ex-soldiers. Their views are toxic to our most fundamnetal principals.

    A few samplings: From Col. Jim Miles TXSG Ret.

    What in the hell is going on here - since when is it such a big deal when our troops, Marines, piss on a few dead Taliban? These are the same bunch of sorry, goat herdering, AHs who don't wear a uniform, kill and torture their own people, and torture and behead our troops and we're supposed to be shocked and feel sorry because we pissed on the dead SOBs? YGTBSM! We should be cutting off a few heads ourselves while we're at it. Except for keeping a few alive for intell purposes I think we should take any prisoners we capture, line them up against the wall, and shoot the SOBs. They don't want to wear a military uniform with rank and patches that identify them then they should be treated accordingly.

    If we had a CinC [Commander in Chief] in the WH [White House' with a pair of balls instead of a dipsh*t, Muslim/Marxist from Kenya we would have turned our troops loose early on to shot, bayonet, behead, bomb, blast with artillery, as many of the SOBs as they could - included going after them in Pakistan, Iran and any other place we could find the bastards. The damn war would have been over years ago. Instead of treating our Marines like criminals we should be passing out medals for killing the enemy.

    ....The mission of our military is to close with and destroy or capture the enemy - nothing has changed except the sorry AHs (As*sholes) running the country and the military won't let the troops do their jobs anymore. They're more interested in turning the military into a bunch of faggots and lesbians and women who like to act like men and to hell with the mission, good order and discipline. I've lost track of the number of "Kangaroo" courts set up to stab our combat troops in the back -

    From Don Greenlaw *From: "Don Greenlaw" <dgreenlaw@cox.net)<p>

    That's a technique. Since we all know that 'pigs/pork' are something they detest and a major insult and offensive to them.

    Do whatever you think is necessary. Put pig's grease on your bullets, dump pig's grease on the dead, chop 'em up and feed them to the local dogs.

    But don't put it on the internet. I think the ultimate 'insult' is a 7.62mm round to the forehead. "One shot, one kill".  What a great motto.

    From Al Otto:

    They should have discretely dumped a pan full of nice greasy pork chops on top of this the enemy and any other downed enemy instead of urinating on him.

    These are old guys that mostly served in Vietnam talking this way. You don't have to wonder where the young ones learned this garbage. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

     

    One would hope that (none / 0) (#9)
    by Edger on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 07:30:20 AM EST
    this kind of thing would be educated/trained out of people in the US military.

    Unfortunately, it's probably trained into them. And dismissing Wagnon's charges was the next best thing to giving him and anyone else contemplating doing what he did a stamp of approval and the medal that Col. Jim Miles wanted.

    Parent

    Holy Flick (none / 0) (#1)
    by Militarytracy on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 04:39:37 PM EST
    I don't have anything for Pirate Bay either.  Why did they upload them there?

    Files aren't uploaded to Pirate Bay (none / 0) (#2)
    by Romberry on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 04:53:14 PM EST
    The actual files reside on the various computers of people who already have them and are seeding as well as on the computers of people who are simultaneously downloading (leeching) and uploading the various bits.

    As far as why the torrent files would be on Pirate Bay, I'd say the fact that the Pirate Bay is among the most widely used indexes of torrent files in the world likely has something to do with that. Pirate Bay no longer functions as a torrent tracker, just as an index.)

    Parent

    you are right (none / 0) (#3)
    by Jeralyn on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 04:59:43 PM EST
    and I just changed the post to read the link to the files was posted on Pirate Bay. You can download the files from the torrent link on Pirate Bay, but Pirate Bay doesn't host the files.

    Parent
    Any word yet on anyone (none / 0) (#4)
    by Militarytracy on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 06:17:23 PM EST
    Putting the files up, for people like me who don't know enough about torrents?  I'm too afraid of viruses.

    Parent
    It's easy to be safe with torrents (5.00 / 2) (#5)
    by Romberry on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 08:17:15 PM EST
    In answer to your question, no, I am not aware of any single source that has put these files up. There are apparently 3 gigabytes of them and the bandwidth costs could be considerable for hosting them if there is widespread interest. But I want to address your fear over viruses and torrents.

    The people that tend to get hit with viruses when downloading torrents are those who are going after pirated versions of installable software or operating systems. It's easy enough to be safe even there with a simple checksum/hash check of the downloaded file against the known checksum of the original. Other than those types of files (executables), viruses are pretty rare.

    Another thing that's a big help is that some torrent indexers (like the Pirate Bay for example) allow users to earn trusted status. If you download a torrent that was made available by a trusted source, you're pretty darn safe.

    Finally, there are indexers such as VerTor which verify torrents and check them for things like viruses, trojans, DRM, etc.  Not all the torrents are verified, but those that are verified are marked as such.

    Parent

    when your ox is gored (none / 0) (#6)
    by diogenes on Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 10:49:40 PM EST
    When hackers go into a right wing organization's database, everyone snickers.  When lawyers get hacked, my oh my.

    BitTorrent is not scary (none / 0) (#10)
    by hoopz on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 04:38:11 PM EST
    "I don't have a Torrent program to open them and I'm not downloading one."

    This sounds like fear and ignorance. Do you know what BitTorrent is and how it works? It's not scary.

    Imagine a budget-starved teacher needs to hand out notes for class, but can only afford one copy. The document is 10 pages long, and there are 10 students who each need a full set.

    The teacher could just give the notes to one student, and ask them to make all the copies, but that would just shift the burden, leaving them to pay for all 100 pages.

    Instead, the teacher hands page 1 to student #1, page 2 to student #2, etc. and tells each student to print 10 copies of their one page. At the next lecture, the students distribute them amongst themselves before class, and everyone has a full set. Nobody had to pay for more than 10 pages, i.e. their own set.

    In the middle of the term, a new student joins. She could borrow someone else's big pile of notes, and copy the entire stack of paper, but that would mean she would have to pay for it all, and she's on a budget too. Also, imagine she has a really slow printer.

    So instead, she just goes around and asks each student to print out a single copy of the pages they were assigned previously. The next week, she collects all the copies, and again has a full set. But now the there are more students, the teacher can now happily hand out 11 pages of notes instead of 10, and the system will still distribute the work load evenly. Or if the teacher doesn't add more pages, then in fact, one student gets a pass every week.

    Now imagine that students join and leave the class every single day, and the teacher isn't quite so organized. He just puts his big stack of notes on the desk, and tells everyone they can take any page they want, as long as they promise to immediately make copies for anyone who asks.

    That's BitTorrent, pretty much. For any given 'class'--i.e. a file that people are interested in--a cloud of 'students' forms--i.e. the 'peers' in the so called peer-to-peer network. The peers compare notes, see which pieces they are missing, and send a copy to the other person. Eventually, the teacher can leave, taking his original copy with him, and the system will keep working.

    It's pretty much the only way you can effectively distribute a massive archive of sensitive data to thousands of people, without incurring massive bills. You can't use free ad-supported services, as the content would get taken down instantly due to its sensitive nature. And you can't host it directly, as that would leave a trail pointing back to you.

    If you are a citizen of the 21st century, BitTorrent should be a tool in your belt to keep yourself informed, not a dirty word.

    thanks for the explanation (none / 0) (#11)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 05:21:00 PM EST
    I don't know anything about it, you're right. I do find it "scary" but I wasn't suggesting it was a "dirty word." It's just that the idea of taking something directly from someone else's computer or opening mine up to allow others to take something from it is something I'm not quite ready for. But I do appreciate the explanation and I'm not trying to discourage anyone else from using it.

    Parent
    That's not how it works (none / 0) (#12)
    by hoopz on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 06:41:33 PM EST
    The point is that bit torrent is not "opening up your computer for sharing" BitTorrent networks are formed on-demand to share on specific file (or an archive of files).

    Simply having the software on your computer isn't going to do anything. You need to go out and find the .torrent file for the specific thing you're looking for, and once you start 'torrenting' that, that will be the only thing you share.

    You can turn it off any time you like, on a per file basis.

    Parent

    ok so which program do you (none / 0) (#13)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Feb 05, 2012 at 10:24:34 PM EST
    recommend? Bit torrent or U Torrent or another one?

    Parent