Sophos Cloud Optix
Everyone out there – consider yourselves on notice about privacy, secrecy, security, encryption, data leakage prevention, and the rest of it.
It’s not the data which WikiLeaks leaked, it’s the leak of the WikiLeaks data.
Sean Richmond and I explain why, and what that means for you and your business in this podcast:
(10 December 2010, duration 9:25 minutes, size 9.0MBytes)
The podcast is also available as a transcript.
Paul, what is this sound gadget you're using on the site?
Thanks
jan
It's a sound-playing widget (implemented as an SWF – see page source) provided by WordPress.com VIP, which powers this site.
How about a transcript? Not all of us are always able to or willing to use audio/video.
Now available – see link in the article.
It's the content of the leaks that is important, with the exception of this little area of concern regarding online security. It's more important that America take a hard look at at the atrocities for which US government and multinational corporations are responsible than it is to plug the leak and continue to look the other way. It seems you have been trivializing WikiLeaks documents the last two or three days.
I appreciate all your work in keeping people aware of the real dangers on the internet.
"15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time"…
What the f*** is up with this analogy? Could it at least be "15 fat women trying to get through a revolving door at the same time"??? Or that wouldn't be politically correct?
My studies in the subject have all involved fat men. Specifically 14 fat men, a revolving door, and me.
There are no fat women at Sophos to conduct an experiment with.
Can I have a job at Sophos please, if all the men are fat (and therefore ugly), and all the women are slim (and perforce beautiful)?
http://www.sophos.com/careers
Good luck!
No idea. That analogy doesn't appear in this article or in this podcast. The focus is on data leakage prevention and encryption. Revolving doors aren't mentioned at all…
I'm pretty sure most people have been aware, long before the wikileaks cables, that absolutely nothing can, or should be considered 'private' or protected from access via the internet, this podcast doesn't reveal anything new but is simply hijacking a high profile topic to emphasise an age old point. I wonder many security software companies are going to jump on this bandwagon to promote their firewalls?
In many countries – including the US, UK, AU and many others – businesses which collect personally identifiable information (PII) are _required_ to "protect it from access via the internet". And quite right too.
There are things which jolly well ought to be kept private and protected on the internet – like the taxation records Sean mentions in the podcast – and so I stand by my claim that most businesses have more to learn from what went wrong in the latest WikiLeaks story (from a State Dept. perspective, namely that no-one noticed the data being stolen) that what went right (from a WikiLeaks perspective, namely that the data was 'liberated').
If you think it's an age-old story that privacy is so eroded on the internet that we have none left, as Scott McNeally famously remarked last century, then you've already capitulated. All I can say is, don't give up!
Wrong! Julian Assange has not been charged with anything. He is being held for questioning over an alleged incident in Sweden. He offered on several occasions while in Sweden to be interviewed. The police were not interested until he left Sweden and the State Dept documents began to be published.
Now! they were interested in the allegations.
I concur with Tims closing remarks. Thanks for your excellent security letters.
My words were, "[Julian Assange has] also got into trouble with some criminal charges in Sweden". He might not have been charged yet, but he's on remand in the UK pending an extradition hearing. If I understand correctly, he doesn't want to return to Sweden, and intends to fight against his extradition in a UK court. But if he is extradited, he'll be charged in Sweden, right? So he's certainly in hot water over criminal charges in Sweden, wouldn't you say?
As for your implication that the Swedish cops and judiciary have discovered their interest in the alleged offences for corrupt reasons, perhaps we might wait for some facts? Saying simplythat 'they didn't get interested until after the leak" is a bit of a _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ argument, isn't it?
Perhaps it could be said to be circumstantial? (A bit like the charges in Sweden?)
Thanks Paul for your lesson in logical fallacies never was my strong point in Practical logic 1. However not to labor the point too much I think from what he has said in his interviews is that he is worried that extradition from Sweden to the U.S is a possibility and that is why he no longer wishes to return. There is no surety he'll be charged in Sweden, once again, he is wanted for questioning on these matters.
I did not intend to detract from the main issue of the article. That is the leak of the wikileaks data. Please ignore my red herring (?)
Just a bit of information from Sweden:
The swedish justice seems to be quite a bit confused.
First a DA sent out an order to imediately arrest Assange for rape, about twelve hours later a higher DA said it's not rape and withdrew the order for his arrest. A few days later a third DA concluded that it's rape and sent out an international order for his arrest.
I don't know, but the handling seems strange. I believe that either the DAs want press coverage in a high profile case or there has been pressure from the US or maybe both. As far as I know, it's rare with this fast response with an international request for an arrest for a crime below murder.
The stated reason for that Assange doesn't want to be extradited to Sweden is that he's afraid that Sweden will extradite him to the US, apparently he trusts the english system more.
Government is a special case and have no right to privacy. Government has the power of force and cannot be stopped from abusing that power except at election time which is too long. No other entity has this power so EVERYTHING the government does should be open and available to the public and therefore you should not have to give them any info you don't want public. That means no income info for taxes, etc. Governments used be so small they could operate on import levies alone. We need to go back to that.