[Cryptography] "we need to protect [our dox] by at least encrypting them"

[ianG]

On 07/11/2016 18:57, Arnold Reinhold wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Nov 2016 14:29 IanG wrote:
>
>> with the news that 5 intelligence services were likely (99%)
>> to have hacked Hillary's private servers,
>
> This claim is based on a Fox News story
> http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/03/sources-99-percent-chance-foreign-intel-agencies-breached-clinton-server.html
> that has since been revised to say:
>
>    "Authorities are operating under the working assumption there is a
> high chance Hillary Clinton’s private server was breached, one source
> with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigation told Fox News – though
> there still are no digital fingerprints proving a breach.
>
>    The source said the server may have been hacked by up to five foreign
> intelligence agencies. While other sources believe this is probable,
> evidence has not emerged to confirm this.

Yes - it's a leak.  There is a rebellion going on in the FBI.

Of course, there is no evidence to confirm it.  Nor is there any 
evidence to confirm anything Snowden said about the NSA.  Nor has the 
White House confirmed that wikileaks maildrops are essentially accurate, 
or identified the ones that have been changed.  Nor has Sweden admitted 
that its case against Snowden is made up.  Nor nor nor.


>    When FBI Director James Comey publicly discussed the Clinton email
> case back in July, he also said that while there was no evidence hostile
> actors breached the server, it was ‘possible' they had gained access."
>
> That is a big difference; it now appears to be all speculation.

OK, so at this stage, James Comey is fighting a battle that means he 
will lie even when he's telling the truth.  Look at the stakes.  One has 
to weigh his situation with the context of the week.

Whatever he purports has zero meaning, against the stakes of the game 
he's in today, tomorrow.


> I still ask why, if her servers were hacked, haven’t at least some of
> the deleted emails been release through Wikileaks or some other source?

Wikileaks are releasing what they have, but it looks like they got it 
from another source.

The other intel agencies will not release it unless provoked.  They're 
intel agencies - their job is done in the shadows.  They got the 
product, the extracted, they fed up to their masters.  Now kicks in the 
next task - to make sure their tracks are covered.

No intel agency will admit to hacking, ever.  We're still waiting for 
the NSA to admit to spinning the centrifuges, right?  It makes zero 
sense for any intel agency to admit anything anytime anywhere.

> If the other leaks have indeed been directed by a state actor, likely
> Russia, as several intelligence agencies have concluded, why hold back
> before the election convincing evidence she was hacked?


Most or all intel agencies won't futz with the American election.  Most 
or all foreign governments will not have a preference for one or other 
candidate.  Most or all governments will recoil with horror at the 
accusation that they are interfering with the American election.

So, no, they won't release it.  Nor admit it.  Ever.


> And if you believe the other leaks were from insiders, not state actors,
> all the more reason that Hillary was wise to use a private server with a
> few hand-picked admins she trusted. We have been deluged with Secret and
> Top Secret documents purloined by Manning and Snowden. The handful of
> emails on Hillary’s server that the FBI says were or should have been
> classified seem to be among the few U.S. state secrets that the public
> has yet to see.

Unfortunately, the NSA, the FBI and the various other 
counter-intelligence agencies which are tasked at protecting the 
government are not going to see that as any more than self-serving 
bluster.  And in court - if it ever were to get there - it would be 
demolished.  That alone would send the perp to jail.  E.g., if the 
answer to a few upsets within is that we go it alone, that means every 
agency, every secretary, every sysadmin who thinks he can do better than 
the NSA ... has carte blanche.


iang