(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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I doubt this was some teenager trying to win an argument, the sheer number of images to upload would dissuade most people from bothering and they don't just cover one topic. I strongly suspect it will be revealed that all these images were originally uploaded on someone's private Dropbox or Google account for work and it got hacked.
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# ? Apr 11, 2023 21:51 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 01:01 |
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They were originally posted to a white supremacist Discord channel, weren't they?
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# ? Apr 11, 2023 22:29 |
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Sergg posted:They were originally posted to a white supremacist Discord channel, weren't they? That's the earliest known spot, at least.
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# ? Apr 11, 2023 22:35 |
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For anyone who wants a quick rundown on what this leak is and where is comes from, I suggest checking out the bellingcat article. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/04/09/from-discord-to-4chan-the-improbable-journey-of-a-us-defence-leak/ quote:In recent days, the US Justice Department and Pentagon have begun investigating an apparent online leak of sensitive documents, including some that were marked “Top Secret”. Italics where I snipped out some details, click through the link to get the most information. Sorry for the somewhat wall of text, but this was the best summary I've seen so far, even if it has low confidence due to verification issues. Basically an incel/rightwing/gamergate/russian troll farm discord with supposedly ~20 users got a data dump of secret intelligence printout photos. This meandered around random discords until someone tried to win an argument on 4chan by posting them (that user's meltdown on twitter was kind of funny though). It begs the question, if the NSA isn't snooping on these types of discords, wtf is it even doing?
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# ? Apr 11, 2023 23:34 |
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ummel posted:It begs the question, if the NSA isn't snooping on these types of discords, wtf is it even doing? Much more targeted work against foreign militaries and state actors, or dragnets against entire capabilities?
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 00:02 |
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I suspect the NSA has bigger fish to fry than small 20-member discord servers.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 00:24 |
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So my understanding is that its cellphone photos of classified documents, correct?
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 00:58 |
Burns posted:So my understanding is that its cellphone photos of classified documents, correct? It's photos of some printouts, yes. You can just see them for yourself in a few tweets embedded earlier in the thread.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 08:22 |
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edit: oops
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 09:23 |
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ummel posted:It begs the question, if the NSA isn't snooping on these types of discords, wtf is it even doing? How would they even find them or suspect that it's some place worth putting resources on? Discord servers are ephemeral, can change names, and can be unsearchable. Some random 20-person private racist meme server is so far off the path that I can't imagine it being possible. The only reason it was traced is because people were willing to say where they saw it and the theoretically 'original' server doesn't even exist anymore.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:07 |
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Burns posted:So my understanding is that its cellphone photos of classified documents, correct? I guess the question I'm wondering is how will we even know if it's not actually a leak from say, the Russian intelligence services, of one of their spies in the Pentagon who's a janitor or something who takes photos on tables/from suitcases of documents they come across as part of their work? Obviously we can't one way or the other but it's interesting that there have been no arrests as of yet. It'd be kinda funny to see if some foreign intelligence services burned one of their well placed spies accidentally as a result of this leak.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:26 |
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I've heard it suggested that Pentagon documents can only be printed on special printers, and the documents from the leak looked like they were printed on a regular printer. This would mean someone's hacked Pentagon's proprietary file format and just printed them at home, as opposed to someone taking photos at work or bringing them home from briefings. Not sure if the proprietary format part is something that is widely known or something that the one expert I listened on the BBC Russia podcast imagines Pentagon's document flow to be like, though.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:33 |
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It’s been said before but it can’t be overstated how easy it is to get “secret” clearance in the US. Mine was dudes show up to the people I myself named, and then I get interviewed by another dude who is like “promise you don’t have any compromising drug addictions? I see that passport but you love our man B-Rock and not Hollande right? right? Eh checks out.” The leaker was almost certainly just some dumbass 19-year-old
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:46 |
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Paladinus posted:I've heard it suggested that Pentagon documents can only be printed on special printers, and the documents from the leak looked like they were printed on a regular printer. Does that really mean anything? My professional office printer in a large workplace, and my home printer, print out equivalent quality documents that look like the leaked ones. I don't imagine the Pentagon is using 9000 dpi super mega printers for making printouts for Major Super General McMalcolm's desk, and I don't know how you can tell anyway from cell phone photos of them. E: I also suspect that we will never find out who leaked it, since it will be extremely embarrassing to someone highly placed. Maybe you can read tea leaves by seeing which senator gets shuffled out of national security commissions and into like, department of agriculture related commissions. Given how many documents were leaked if there's not a watermark or some other way to determine who leaked it, then someone in US OpSec is doing an even shittier job than already proven. Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Apr 12, 2023 |
# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:47 |
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Fidelitious posted:How would they even find them or suspect that it's some place worth putting resources on? Discord servers are ephemeral, can change names, and can be unsearchable. Eh, this is all kinda true, but it depends on what exactly Discord Inc does. If I were the USA govt, I would definitely lean on companies like Discord and tell them to just store all data forever, so that even if a Discord server is "deleted" the data still remains somewhere, but is only available to Discord Inc and the feds. Heck, in case that costs too much money, just ask Discord Inc to automatically quietly copy all the data to NSA servers or whatever, NSA & other such orgs should have a decent budget for that kind of thing. Or if the volume truly is too high, at least store all the metadata, like file names, file types, dates, user names, user IP addresses & emails, etc etc forever. No idea how much of this was done though and how competently etc, and of course the feds will never comment on it, so (absent another Snowden-level leak) we might never find out the details.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 14:55 |
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jaete posted:Eh, this is all kinda true, but it depends on what exactly Discord Inc does. If I were the USA govt, I would definitely lean on companies like Discord and tell them to just store all data forever, so that even if a Discord server is "deleted" the data still remains somewhere, but is only available to Discord Inc and the feds. Heck, in case that costs too much money, just ask Discord Inc to automatically quietly copy all the data to NSA servers or whatever, NSA & other such orgs should have a decent budget for that kind of thing. Or if the volume truly is too high, at least store all the metadata, like file names, file types, dates, user names, user IP addresses & emails, etc etc forever. No, independent companies should definitely not do any of that poo poo unless ordered to by a judge and no judge should order for that to happen without people getting up in arms about it.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 15:24 |
I'm pretty sure Discord already retains data on their servers for their own purposes even through deletion of channels and user accounts. Data is worth more than literal money in this day and age, even if you don't know what you want to use it for yet, and nobody want to delete theirs short of being forced to by an official request under GDPR or something similar unless they are marketing themselves specifically on preserving user privacy.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 15:29 |
Saladman posted:Does that really mean anything? My professional office printer in a large workplace, and my home printer, print out equivalent quality documents that look like the leaked ones. I don't imagine the Pentagon is using 9000 dpi super mega printers for making printouts for Major Super General McMalcolm's desk, and I don't know how you can tell anyway from cell phone photos of them. I believe the suggestion is that the Pentagon prints stuff in away that's more obviously attributable by design. That said, this seems to be one guy's theory, so I remain similarly uninvested in the technicalities of printing my_crimes.pdf.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 15:41 |
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If the Pentagon works like every other defense company then they use pdf and docx files like everybody else in the world, and they have burn bins for people to toss in sensitive printed material, like every other company in the world. Those are just bins that are locked and presumably get incinerated at some point. e: Moving away from leak chat, I'm seeing headlines (CNN, BBC) suggesting that there are videos of Russians beheading a captured Ukrainian. Those links don't show the video and from a glance don't link to them so it should be fine to read. Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Apr 12, 2023 |
# ? Apr 12, 2023 15:46 |
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Store everything forever and find a use for it later. This is literally how data is treated everywhere today.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:05 |
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cr0y posted:Store everything forever and find a use for it later. This is literally how data is treated everywhere today. This is also how Russia treats its tanks.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:09 |
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Boris Galerkin posted:e: Moving away from leak chat, I'm seeing headlines (CNN, BBC) suggesting that there are videos of Russians beheading a captured Ukrainian. Those links don't show the video and from a glance don't link to them so it should be fine to read. Rusich circulated it on Telegram and it spread on Twitter from there (because no one moderates Twitter any more). Definitely turn off autoplay for videos if you look at Twitter today. I heard 1 second and it was enough. Zelensky already commented on it. quote:How easily these beasts kill. We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:14 |
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Russia pretty good at solving any potential flagging Ukranian morale issues I see
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:51 |
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Fidelitious posted:How would they even find them or suspect that it's some place worth putting resources on? Discord servers are ephemeral, can change names, and can be unsearchable. PRISM didn't just magically disappear after Snowden leaked it. i wouldn't be surprised if NSA has a bulk collection system into place to collect everything on Discord for later search. Discord's normal access controls and search limitations wouldn't apply. Edgar Allen Ho posted:It’s been said before but it can’t be overstated how easy it is to get “secret” clearance in the US. Mine was dudes show up to the people I myself named, and then I get interviewed by another dude who is like “promise you don’t have any compromising drug addictions? I see that passport but you love our man B-Rock and not Hollande right? right? Eh checks out.” there's still need to know restrictions. why would we give the dumbass 19 year old who has a clearance so they can work on navy reactors or whatever all our Ukraine troop attrition info and intercept data from the Egyptian military? maybe some idiot young congressional aide for someone on an intelligence committee though. idk how we handle what they have access to
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:51 |
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:there's still need to know restrictions. why would we give the dumbass 19 year old who has a clearance so they can work on navy reactors or whatever all our Ukraine troop attrition info and intercept data from the Egyptian military? maybe some idiot young congressional aide for someone on an intelligence committee though. idk how we handle what they have access to That at least one leaked doc had the Top Secret marking as well.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 16:56 |
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WarpedLichen posted:That at least one leaked doc had the Top Secret marking as well. There was a statement from the FBI that less than a thousand people would have had access to all the documents.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 17:32 |
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The BBC have a new 1hr documentary out, Ready for War?. (VPN+Free account should work), following a group of Ukrainians through the five week training operation in the UK. It gives an insight in to what training they get, but mostly it's a fairly bleak, emotional gut wrenching story of people.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 18:10 |
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Boris Galerkin posted:No, independent companies should definitely not do any of that poo poo unless ordered to by a judge and no judge should order for that to happen without people getting up in arms about it. My man I have news for you about the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court quote:In June 2013, a copy of a top-secret warrant, issued by the court on April 25, 2013, was leaked to London's The Guardian newspaper by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. That warrant orders Verizon Business Network Services to provide a daily feed to the NSA containing "telephony metadata" – comprehensive call detail records, including location data – about all calls in its system, including those that occur "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls". This was 10 years ago. I absolutely believe that the NSA has near real-time access to every major US communications platform at this point, and that it retains full copies of all data.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 18:12 |
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What i find funny about Snowden is that had he stayed and faced up he wouldve likely already done his time and been a free man, likely earlier given the publicity and public opinion.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 19:10 |
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Burns posted:What i find funny about Snowden is that had he stayed and faced up he wouldve likely already done his time and been a free man, likely earlier given the publicity and public opinion. Hes living free in the utopia that is Putin Russia.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 19:34 |
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SixFigureSandwich posted:My man I have news for you about the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Since there's obviously been a crime the FBI can simply ask a judge for a warrant and take whatever they need. Boring I know but they probably already have logs of everyone who accessed any of those files and are working backwards through the ISPs now.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 19:36 |
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Boris Galerkin posted:No, independent companies should definitely not do any of that poo poo unless ordered to by a judge and no judge should order for that to happen without people getting up in arms about it. Discord attachment CDN is openly searchable to the point that is often used as a ransomware storage to grab payloads from.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 20:46 |
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cr0y posted:Store everything forever and find a use for it later. This is literally how data is treated everywhere today. That's a really bad idea. Source: Am an archivist Not saying it doesn't happen mind you.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 21:58 |
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Wagner apparently tried to buy weapons from Turkey from the leaked docs: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/12/politics/leaked-documents-wagner-group-turkey/index.html No evidence that the deal went through in the end, but makes you wonder who else they tried and who said yes in the end.
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# ? Apr 12, 2023 23:03 |
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The citteam has jumped on the sitrep bandwagon and I've been liking the updates but this story from telegram is suggesting that recruitment of contract soldiers from the conscripts through dubious means is happening. https://notes.citeam.org/dispatch-apr-11-12 quote:The Astra Telegram channel reports that 500 draftees from different regions of Russia (mainly from the Moscow, Voronezh, and Tver regions) were sent by cargo aircraft from Kursk to Rostov-on-Don on Apr. 5. The servicemen were told they would have field training and be assigned to a local military unit. However, at night they were transported by trucks across the border to the Luhansk region to the Stakhanov Railway Car Building Plant in Kadiivka and their military IDs were seized. According to the draftees, the Wagner Group officers arrived and tried to force them into signing contracts under duress. "Volunteers" were supposed to form the Wolves group of mercenaries and be deployed to Bakhmut. After the servicemen refused to sign the contracts, the "ex-president" of so-called South Ossetia, Lieutenant General Anatoly Bibilov, arrived to break the draftees' skepticism. According to the servicemen, he hit a lieutenant colonel in the face for daring to stand up for them and saying that "the draftees should not be here." I have no idea what the Astra telegram channel is, anybody know?
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 00:56 |
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Bit of a longer write up in Foreign Affairs about prospects of the spring offensive https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/ukraines-best-chance quote:The West should have no illusions about what will be required of it on the military and economic fronts, even after the war. Although Kyiv has been grateful for Western weaponry, it has stressed repeatedly that much more is needed soon and indefinitely. If a Ukrainian victory seems nigh, U.S. and European policymakers will face urgent demands to boost their already substantial military support (even at the cost of diminishing their own military preparedness) to ensure that Kyiv clinches it.
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 00:57 |
WarpedLichen posted:The citteam has jumped on the sitrep bandwagon What do you mean? They've been doing them since last September, and have been cited repeatedly in this thread.
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 01:06 |
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cinci zoo sniper posted:What do you mean? They've been doing them since last September, and have been cited repeatedly in this thread. I've seen a lot of the volunteer summaries but I thought they've only been doing sitreps for the past couple months, my bad.
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 01:12 |
WarpedLichen posted:I've seen a lot of the volunteer summaries but I thought they've only been doing sitreps for the past couple months, my bad. Volunteer summaries and sitreps are different pieces of programming in their lexicon, just in case, and started around the same time on their Teletype blog (before that they were publishing stuff as well, just a bit less structurally). “Sitreps” are written by the CIT core team in Russian, focusing on combat action, and major headlines of immediate relevance to the combat. Someone translates them poorly into English, and someone else adds images to the English version of them. “Volunteer summaries” on the other hand are mobilization[, and censorship, and other wartime particulars] briefs for Russia, and are again written by the CIT core team in Russian, with the same uninspiring interpreter going over them afterwards. The reason they're called “volunteer summaries” is that CIT core members rely on local volunteers to gather mobilization news and similar, consequently not taking ownership of any serious errors or omissions like they do with sitreps.
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 01:32 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 01:01 |
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Ukraine isn't happy that the U.S. thinks fhey'll only make modest territorial gains in the counter offensive https://twitter.com/alexbward/status/1646213414329384979 How come it's expected that it won't be as big of a gain as Kherson or Kharkiv was despite Ukraine now having western tanks?
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# ? Apr 13, 2023 02:26 |