Sunday, October 16, 2016

HOT HOT Julian Assange Just Sent Out a Dead Man's Trigger

From Wikileaks:

Follow up comments:



UPDATE

Via Wikipedia:
 Precommitment is a strategy in which a party to a conflict uses a commitment device to strengthen its position by cutting off some of its options to make its threats more credible. Any party employing a Strategy of Deterrence faces the problem that retaliating against an attack may ultimately result in significant damage to their own side. If this damage is significant enough, then the opponent may take the view that such retaliation would be irrational, and therefore, that the threat lacks credibility, and hence, it ceases to be an effective deterrent. Precommitment improves the credibility of a threat, either by imposing significant penalties on the threatening party for not following through, or, by making it impossible to not respond.
For instance, an army can burn a bridge behind it, making retreat evidently impossible.... Alternatively, in the context of the Cold War, fail-deadly retaliation systems such as the Soviet Dead Hand make a response to a sudden attack automatic, regardless of whether or not anyone is left alive to make decisions.

(ht Smaulgld)

11 comments:

  1. So what exactly does this mean? Are they using this to delete all his files or something?

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    1. This looks like it could be a SHA512 hash key (or something similar). I'm guessing they have a cache of documents, and one of them, when hashed with SHA512 will have this key, and this is an indicator -- without possibility of ambiguity -- of which set to release.

      There are other possible uses for the key, though.

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    2. I should have said SHA256 instead of SHA512, but the gist is the same.

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  2. It means that Assange is worried he's not going to be alive much longer so is giving others a means to release the info if he cannot.

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  3. Earlier this year Assange released an encrypted "insurance policy", with the plan that if anything where to happen to him or anything happen that prevented wikileaks from making a planned statement, the encryption keys would be released. Hence dead man switch.

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  4. The going rumor is that Ecuador had caved in and decided to extradite Assange. Assange is showing to Kerry that he has info about him. This string of letters is a cryptographic hash of a document that is somehow damning to Kerry.

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  5. President Merkin Muffley: How is it possible for this thing to be triggered automatically and at the same time impossible to untrigger?
    Dr. Strangelove: Mr. President, it is not only possible, it is essential. That is the whole idea of this machine, you know. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the FEAR to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand... and completely credible and convincing.

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  6. Assange is a hero. This cloak and dagger shit is fascinating. Thanks for the free entertainment bro... Be careful though.

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  7. Julian Assange is a world wide hero. I hope he stays safe.

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  8. Guys, mexicans are digging tunnels miles long at their border to smuggles drugs, can we just gofundme some good mexicanos to smuggle an Assange?

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