3.3 million e-mails between the most powerful men are about to be released.

900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action.<p>To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.<p>I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.

I subscribed to Stratfor for a while and I thought I'd explain what the site is for anyone who's wondering. (And yes, my info was part of the leak, unfortunately)<p>It's basically a subscription news site ($100/year) that delivers focused international news. They usually stay away from trendy topics and party politics, which is pretty nice.<p>Despite their claims of having sources around the world, it's quite obvious that most of their information comes from other newspapers and just Googling around. It's infrequent that they would mention getting information from a source, and when they did, it was never anything more than an aside or a rumor. Certainly nothing of value.<p>That's why I seriously doubt that anything explosive will come from this email leak. People who have access to sensitive information leak it for two reasons: to spread their message to a wide audience (think Watergate and the Washington Post, or Bradley Manning and Wikileaks), or to swap it with other insider groups, in exchange for other information. Stratfor, with its small audience and utter lack of people on the ground, has neither.<p>Finally, I probably sound kind of negative about Stratfor, and while I no longer subscribe, they did have some really great, unique articles that you wouldn't find in any newspaper. Here's one example: <a href="http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645" rel="nofollow">http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=3645</a>

Well done, Anonymous. You've hacked into an independent online news service, destroyed their business, probably permanently shut them down, stole money from their readers and will now release all their correspondence with their sources. Fuck you. I was a subscriber - I suppose I should now go back to getting all my news from Murdoch.<p>This is a blow against the freedom of the press and a blow against a free and open society. There is a reason why we should as a society respect journalists and their sources. I hope the perpetrators are prosecuted and jailed.

Stratfor is not much more than a small news organization. Why would a news company have secret intelligence from the "world's most powerful men"?<p>They are in the business of publishing everything they know -- that's how they get paid! Their info is not secret. Anyone who emails them is trying to get info RELEASED, not hide it!<p>They certainly have secret informants, but why do you want to compromise informants who are willing to work with the press? What does that solve?<p>Dick Cheney does not send emails to Stratfor. He's not stupid!<p>This whole operation is just another demonstration that Anonymous only targets low hanging fruit. They tried hacking the NYT but their security was too good. They tried hacking the Pentagon but hopelessly failed. So they decided to hack a small (high-quality) news company with 70 employees, that reports exclusively on global affairs.<p>Now they are going to reveal Stratfor's sources and get people killed, just like they did in the Mexico affair.<p>This isn't an achievement, it's just showing off. I doubt they are going to find much and the victims of this release are not going to be anyone in powerful positions. Rather it will be informants like Gaddafi's Butler who will have their lives ruined.<p>For the record, I would support Anonymous if they actually bothered to hack the government and release those files. I would even support them if they hacked known bad guys like Halliburton or known propaganda networks like FOX.<p>But Anonymous is just picking low-hanging fruit and hyping it up to make themselves look good. The "top secret client list" is nothing more than a marketing strategy by Stratfor. Their client list is: people interested in global politics.

I have higher hopes for hacker news. There is more to this than the morality of publishing emails.<p><a href="http://pastebin.com/8yrwyNkt" rel="nofollow">http://pastebin.com/8yrwyNkt</a><p>Specifically, of interest (at least to me), as the post claims that Stratfor themselves said this (I haven't actually checked/found external verification, please post URL if you do): "In the past month Stratfor has drawn attention to a carefully assembled open-source report that asserted that last month's attack on Iraq wasn't intended just to punish Saddam Hussein for blowing off U.N. weapons inspectors. By sorting through thousands of pieces of publicly available data--from Middle East newspapers to Iraqi-dissident news--Stratfor analysts developed a theory that the attacks were actually designed to mask a failed U.S.-backed coup. In two striking, contrarian intelligence briefs released on the Internet on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Stratfor argued that Saddam's lightning restructuring of the Iraqi military, followed by executions of the army's Third Corps commanders, was evidence that the coup had been suppressed. Predictably, U.S. officials said the report was wrong."<p>Is everyone here happy with the claim that Anonymous hacked in and copied emails; is it too hard to imagine that it's a false flag op? Neither side can prove themselves, that is true, but there should be more trepidation before making claims or assuming we are being handed the truth.<p>Also, take a look at <a href="http://anonanalytics.com/" rel="nofollow">http://anonanalytics.com/</a> if you haven't, the PDF they published recently is a pretty good read. That's a faction of Anon that I have high hopes for.

Ugh.<p>Why does the title say 3.3 million e-mails? The pastebin claims 2.7 million.<p>Why did they feel the need to announce this <i>before</i> the wiki had all the data? Barrett just had to get extra PR time?<p>Why do all these releases sound like they're written by kids in tree forts with bed sheet capes on? Then again all self-righteous announcements kind of read the same way to me.<p>What's with their wiki? What is this shit? <a href="http://echelon2.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges" rel="nofollow">http://echelon2.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges</a><p>This whole thing is a big Anonymous waste of fucking time. Please flag this.

I've been in the financial consulting business for a while and I'm still sometimes stunned by the kinds of things clients will send me as unencrypted email.<p>What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?<p>My point being: wouldn't it actually be <i>better</i> in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore <i>no presumed privacy whatsoever?</i><p><i>Then,</i> say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.<p>EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.

Not to be a pedant, but it should be "among", not "between."

They should have used <a href="https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email" rel="nofollow">https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...</a>

Yeah, nobody messes with Doctors Without Borders.<p>In any case, I expect the emails to be a lot of subscriber list maintenance, back issues, UNSUBSCRIBE messages, maybe PDFs of scans of material that was either public at the time or became public since, that were sent in by contacts or sources.

I wonder how many marriages will be in tatters...

When are these getting released?

Where is WikiLeaks when its needed