Senate IP address vandalizes Wikipedia to scrub "torture" from CIA torture report

Here, FTFY, :wink:

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Yeah probably but maybe it wasn’t anybody in the senate. Maybe IP logging at wikipedia isn’t as secure as we assume, or that their network isn’t particularly secure.

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It is a bit of a rash assumption that these changes actually originated at the Senate, just because it was one of their IP addresses. You have to keep in mind the nature of the participants in this skirmish. Our Intelligence community can use their tap sites to originate or terminate connections from almost any US IP. Normally, they use this capability to mimic servers and insert attack traffic. But they can just as easily mimic clients. About the only group that could dismiss the possibility of the connections coming from an external mimic would be the Senate IT/Security staff. And it would take a day or so to be sure.

And, even then, the CIA repeatedly tampered with the computers of the Senate staffers that were working on the torture report. It is just a tiny step from there to compromising a Senate computer. On the gripping hand, there is also the possibility that the NSA might frame the CIA to keep the attention on the CIA.

This is why we REALLY need to swiftly purge the corruption, rehabilitate our Intelligence community and then look for ways to limit future corruption. Once our Intelligence community starts treating the public as enemies, there are no end to the ways we are screwed. They can easily create, alter, delete almost any electronic record. They can forge their own orders. They can tamper with evidence. They can create their own money. We can’t just wait and hope this problem miraculously clears itself up.

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You understand nothing about power, I see. The owners of the Senate would never allow such accountability.

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I don’t know what all this talk of Torture is; surely this was a case of “Enhanced Information Retrieval Procedure”, part of a “suite of techniques” aimed at “Improved Holistic Security Enablement”?

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Why attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by incompetence?

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Given that the context of the discussion is a (long delayed, watered down, and stalled every step of the way) report on how we set up a clandestine network of torture dungeons and gleefully indulged in a variety of abhorrent practices I find it pretty much impossible not to assume malice even while assuming incompetence(or anything else) at the same time…

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Totally Okay, Recognized Techniques Uniformly Reported Effective?

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Granted, but @dweller_below was implying malice on the part of a third party. I think it more likely that some Republican Senate staffer did, indeed, attempt the edits, and whichever Senator employing said staffer has no fucking clue how the internet or the Wikis work.

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who needs science when your reef is in tip top shape? those booky ready types, sheesh…

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While I suspect that there are enough CIA/torture supporters in the Senate or among Senate staffers that I don’t agree with your theory of mimicked clients (in this particular case), I just had to “like” your post because of your use of the phrase “on the gripping hand”.

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I agree with the principle behind that rule, but there comes a point…

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Likely not an actual senator, no. Half those dummies probably couldn’t use a computer to send an email on their best day.
Probably some poor schmuck staffer that was directed to do so.
Maybe Grandpa Inhofe was shown a printout and he got all riled up.

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I find the best way to make amends for mistakes I’ve made in the past is to remove any reference to them.

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I wouldn’t buy it at all. Winston Churchill was a Conservative MP in his 20s , Became a (classical) Liberal MP when he was 29 and only returned to the Conservatives when he was 49/50. The Liberal party only really switched to social liberalism when Jo Grimond became leader of the party in 1956, by which point Churchill had retired to the backbenches because he had a series of strokes which affected his speech.

This quote irritates me despite not identifying as conservative or either meaning of liberal, probably because I have often seen it used by conservatives when they want to say ‘if you don’t agree with me then you are an idiot, or too young to understand.’ I know that’s not what you meant though.

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Nothing to see here… move along…

I was probably not clear in my statement. What I was trying to say is that this is a dance for blood over unsheathed swords. Every step has to be carefully considered. Even ones as simple as attributing edits to Wikipedia.

Everybody who has read a fictional police procedural has heard that you have to weigh evidence and follow Motive, Means, and Opportunity. Lets try to follow those 3 here.

Motive: There appears to be sufficient motive for either somebody associated with the CIA, the NSA or the Senate to edit the Wikipedia article and remove all references to torture.

Means: Believe it or not, it is just as easy for somebody in the CIA or the NSA to do the edits and make it appear to come from a Senate IP as it is for somebody within a Senate office. Our Intelligence community has make it easy and simple for their operatives to generate network connections that appear to come from somebody else. Snowden’s disclosures have revealed that their internal controls and auditing used to be lax or easily evaded. They may still be lax and easily evaded. Or the edits may have been ordered by leadership.

Opportunity: Again, a CIA operative, a NSA analyst or a Senate staffer all have equal opportunity to do the edits and make it appear to be from the Senate.

Finally, we are sometimes guided by past behavior. We have frequently seen Senate IPs engaged in these kinds of edits. The CIA operatives repeatedly intruded on the computers used by the Senate people preparing the Torture report in order to eliminate incriminating evidence. However, we don’t have any evidence that the NSA has engaged in these kinds of manipulation.

So, on the face of it, based on what we know now, it is just as likely that the edits came from the CIA as they came from the Senate. As crazy as it seems that somebody at the CIA would be so stupid and petty, their behavior in attempting to block the Senate oversight committee from accessing the “Internal Panetta Review” after they had reviewed it is even more crazy. Their past behavior has been as stupid as stealing somebody’s house and then trying to convince them that it never existed.

We will not really know who did the edit, until all the evidence is carefully examined.

Our Intelligence agencies are so powerful, the only real controls on them are their own loyalty. Once they develop a private agenda, lots of bad things become likely. Our economy is almost entirely electronic. It is completely within their grasp. They can spontaneous cause money to appear. They can cause it to disappear. They can cause any one of us to spontaneously develop a history of child porn addiction complete with plenty of incriminating evidence. They can put us into debt. Then can eliminate our claims to property and citizenship. The possibilities are as endless as a CIA operatives imagination. We have to bring this under control immediately. Even if they do nothing, the fear and paranoia will drive all of us crazy.

The biggest war going on today is the war to control your perceptions, because what you think determines what you do. If you think something is bad, you are against it and support those who are against it. On the other hand, if you think something is ok, you are for it and accept the continuance of it.

It’s all about perception. If we see or hear the word “Torture”, we know that is a bad thing to do. But, if instead we use the perception-cleansed phrase: “Inhanced Interrogation”, the same physical act of torture becomes a good thing to do.

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I can vouch that Rand Paul can browse for (if not actually purchase) athletic shoes on the web.

who doesn’t love a zappos delivery?