“Tor?”
“Tor + SSL + SFTP… I even asked the NSA guy if he could find any suspicious activity coming out of local networks. He shrugged and said, ‘It’s not a priority,’ went back to watching Eagle’s Eye. So, it was a massive data spillage, facilitated by numerous factors, both physically, technically, and culturally. Perfect example of how not to do Infosec … Listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history … Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis – a perfect storm. >sigh< Sounds pretty bad huh? … Well, it SHOULD be better! It’s sad. I mean what if I were someone more malicious? I could’ve sold to Russia or China, and made bank!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s public data. It belongs in the public domain. Information should be free. Because another state would just take advantage of the information, try and get some edge. If it’s out in the open, it should be a public good, rather than some slimy intel collector. I’m crazy like that. I’m not a bad person, I keep track of everything. I watch the whole thing unfold from a distance. I read what everyone says, look at pictures, keep tabs, and feel for them since I’m basically playing a vital role in their life without ever meeting them. I was like that as an intelligence analyst as well. Most didn’t care, but I knew I was playing a role in the lives of hundreds of people, without them knowing me. But I cared, and kept track of some of the details, made sure everybody was OK. I don’t think of myself as playing ‘god’ or anything, because I’m not: I’m just playing my role for the moment. I don’t control the way they react. There are far more people who do what I do, in state interest, on daily basis, and don’t give a fuck – that’s how I try to separate myself from my (former) colleagues … I’m not sure whether I’d be considered a type of ‘hacker’, ‘cracker’, ‘hacktivist’, ‘leaker’, or what. I’m just me, really … I couldn’t be a spy. Spies don’t post things up for the world to see.”
*
Right after Lamo denounced him, Manning was arrested, and flown out of Iraq to a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. A few weeks later, he was charged with “transferring classified data on to his personal computer and adding unauthorised software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007”, and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source and disclosing classified information concerning the national defence with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States.” Later, he was flown back to the US and has been imprisoned since at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, 30 miles south-west of Washington DC. Although he has not been tried or convicted, he is being made to suffer under harsh conditions. He spends 23 hours a day alone in a 6ft by 12 ft cell, with one hour’s exercise in which he walks figures-of-eight in an empty room. According to his lawyer, Manning is not allowed to sleep after being wakened at 5am. If he ever tries to do so, he is immediately made to sit or stand up by the guards, who are not allowed to converse with him. Any attempt to do press-ups or other exercise in his cell is forcibly prevented.
“The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is OK. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is OK. He receives each of his meals in his cell. He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow. He is not allowed to have any personal items.”
Manning’s friends say he is being subject to near-torture in an effort to break him and have him implicate Assange in a conspiracy charge. David House, one of only two people allowed to visit Manning, says he has witnessed the soldier’s deterioration, both mental and physical, over the months of incarceration. House says that every time he has seen Manning in the brig the prisoner has been a little less fluid in his speech, a little less able to express complex ideas and put them eloquently. “Each time I go, there seems to have been a remarkable decline. That’s physical, too. When I first saw him he was bright-eyed and strong like he was in early photographs, but now he looks weak, he has huge bags under his eyes and his muscles have turned to fat. It’s hard watching someone over the months sicken like that.”
The US army says that it prods him every five minutes for Manning’s own welfare. Because he is potentially suicidal, they say he has been placed under a prevention of injury order. Manning himself may well be recalling what he told his interlocutor in the chat logs: “We’re much more subtle, use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimise everything. It’s better than disappearing in the middle of the night, but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right.” He is allowed books, and late in 2010 asked to be sent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
CHAPTER 7
The deal
Hotel Leopold, Place Luxembourg, Brussels
9.30pm, 21 June 2010
“I felt this was the biggest story on the planet”
NICK DAVIES
Three men were in the Belgian hotel courtyard café, ordering coffee after coffee. They had been arguing for hours through the summer afternoon, with a break to eat a little pasta, and evening had fallen. Eventually, the tallest of the three picked up a cheap yellow napkin, laid it on the flimsy modern café table and started to scribble. One of those present was Ian Traynor, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent. He recalls:
“Julian whipped out this mini-laptop, opened it up and did something on his computer. He picked up a napkin and said, ‘OK you’ve got it.’
“We said: ‘Got what?’
“He said: ‘You’ve got the whole file. The password is this napkin.’”
Traynor went on: “I was stunned. We were expecting further very long negotiations and conditions. This was instant. It was an act of faith.”
Assange had insouciantly circled several words and the hotel’s logo on the Hotel Leopold napkin, adding the phrase “no spaces”. This was the password. In the corner he scrawled three simple letters: GPG. GPG was a reference to the encryption system he was using for a temporary website. The napkin was a perfect touch, worthy of a John le Carré thriller. The two Guardian journalists were amazed. Nick Davies stuffed the napkin in his case together with his dirty shirts. Back in England, the yellow square was reverently lodged in his study, next to a pile of reporters’ notepads and a jumble of books. “I’m thinking of framing it,” he says.
Just a few days earlier, Davies had been sitting peacefully in that study, glancing up from his morning paper to his garden and the Sussex landscape. Davies is one of the Guardian’s best-known investigative journalists. In a career spanning more than three decades, he has worked on many stories exposing the dark abuses of power. His book Flat Earth News was an acclaimed account of how the newspaper industry had gone badly wrong, abandoning real reporting for what he memorably dubbed “churnalism”.
Davies was currently embroiled in a long-term investigation into a phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World during the editorship of Andy Coulson. Coulson – who was as a result forced to resign in January 2011 as the public relations boss for Conservative prime minister David Cameron – denied all knowledge of his staff illegally hacking the phones of celebrities and members of the royal family.