Twitter poll on release comes after site publishes 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables with almost no redactions WikiLeaks is conducting an online poll of its Twitter followers to decide whether the whistleblowing site should publish in full its unredacted cache of US diplomatic cables. The site last week released more than 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables, with almost no redactions to protect the identity of informants and other individuals. The huge scale of the release, compared with 20,000 cables disclosed in the past nine months, prompted fierce criticism from the Australian government and former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley. WikiLeaks appeared likely to use the Twitter responses, which it said favoured disclosure at a ratio of 100 to one, to pave the way for imminent disclosure of the remaining material from its cable archive. The majority of cables published in the past week by WikiLeaks were unclassified but the site released the full archives, including confidential and secret cables, from Sweden and Australia. The Australian cables, which unlike previous releases were not apparently redacted, included a document identifying 23 Australians alleged to have links with al-Qaida, prompting an angry response from Robert McClelland, Australia’s attorney general. “On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk. This has not occurred in this case.” “The publication of any information that could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats, is incredibly irresponsible,” he said. In a lengthy statement posted online, WikiLeaks said publishing its full cache of cables was necessary because an encrypted file containing the whole database was available online, and the password was in the public domain. It said the Guardian was responsible for this security breach, due to a password published in the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published in February 2011. The Guardian urged WikiLeaks not to publish the unredacted documents or to release any further details pointing to where they might be found, and denied involvement in their publication. “The Guardian calls on Wikileaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible,” it said in a statement. “The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables. The Guardian’s book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months.” The statement added that WikiLeaks had contacted the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, within the last month about future projects – despite the site’s claim that it had been aware of security concerns for at least that long. Rusbridger and Assange met on 4 August, the statement reveals. “The two-hour meeting, which was filmed by Assange’s colleague, was cordial. Not only did Assange never mention the supposed security leak, he proposed working with the Guardian again on specific future projects. “The Guardian and its partners went to great lengths to protect potentially vulnerable sources identified in the WikiLeaks documents throughout their collaboration with the organisation. WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.” WikiLeaks’ allegations centred on details of how the Guardian’s investigations editor, David Leigh, obtained the cache of cables from Assange. The Guardian book revealed the diplomatic files were placed by WikiLeaks on a secure online server in July 2010, which it was agreed would only be online for a matter of hours. This server held a heavily encrypted file containing the unredacted embassy cables database. Assange had given Leigh the password to unlock this file once he had obtained it, and this password was included in the book – seven months after the temporary file was taken offline. No trace could be found through web links or Google’s archives of this file ever being visible through this secure server. However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange’s arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of “taking precautions” in the event of anything untoward happening to him. This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks’s security breach with a small group of journalists. Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts. However, the file was not discovered or downloaded by the public. By 10am on Thursday it had been accessed once in the previous 31 days, despite mounting speculation about its existence. Initial news stories did not give details of the location of files or of passwords. Later, WikiLeaks and some of its supporters published a series of hints about the passwords and files. At about 11pm on Wednesday an anonymous Twitter user discovered the published password and opened a separate file – not the one shared with the Guardian – that had also been circulating on file-sharing networks for several months. There was no evidence that any member of the public had sufficient information to find and decrypt the files even hours before their discovery. In the hours immediately before the document cache was unencrypted, the WikiLeaks twitter feed urged users to download a different encrypted file from BitTorrent, without giving any details as to its contents or password. WikiLeaks The Guardian Julian Assange Alan Rusbridger Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers The US embassy cables United States Twitter US foreign policy US national security Australia Sweden Europe Internet James Ball guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Twitter poll on release comes after site publishes 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables with almost no redactions WikiLeaks is conducting an online poll of its Twitter followers to decide whether the whistleblowing site should publish in full its unredacted cache of US diplomatic cables. The site last week released more than 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables, with almost no redactions to protect the identity of informants and other individuals. The huge scale of the release, compared with 20,000 cables disclosed in the past nine months, prompted fierce criticism from the Australian government and former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley. WikiLeaks appeared likely to use the Twitter responses, which it said favoured disclosure at a ratio of 100 to one, to pave the way for imminent disclosure of the remaining material from its cable archive. The majority of cables published in the past week by WikiLeaks were unclassified but the site released the full archives, including confidential and secret cables, from Sweden and Australia. The Australian cables, which unlike previous releases were not apparently redacted, included a document identifying 23 Australians alleged to have links with al-Qaida, prompting an angry response from Robert McClelland, Australia’s attorney general. “On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk. This has not occurred in this case.” “The publication of any information that could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats, is incredibly irresponsible,” he said. In a lengthy statement posted online, WikiLeaks said publishing its full cache of cables was necessary because an encrypted file containing the whole database was available online, and the password was in the public domain. It said the Guardian was responsible for this security breach, due to a password published in the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published in February 2011. The Guardian urged WikiLeaks not to publish the unredacted documents or to release any further details pointing to where they might be found, and denied involvement in their publication. “The Guardian calls on Wikileaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible,” it said in a statement. “The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables. The Guardian’s book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months.” The statement added that WikiLeaks had contacted the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, within the last month about future projects – despite the site’s claim that it had been aware of security concerns for at least that long. Rusbridger and Assange met on 4 August, the statement reveals. “The two-hour meeting, which was filmed by Assange’s colleague, was cordial. Not only did Assange never mention the supposed security leak, he proposed working with the Guardian again on specific future projects. “The Guardian and its partners went to great lengths to protect potentially vulnerable sources identified in the WikiLeaks documents throughout their collaboration with the organisation. WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.” WikiLeaks’ allegations centred on details of how the Guardian’s investigations editor, David Leigh, obtained the cache of cables from Assange. The Guardian book revealed the diplomatic files were placed by WikiLeaks on a secure online server in July 2010, which it was agreed would only be online for a matter of hours. This server held a heavily encrypted file containing the unredacted embassy cables database. Assange had given Leigh the password to unlock this file once he had obtained it, and this password was included in the book – seven months after the temporary file was taken offline. No trace could be found through web links or Google’s archives of this file ever being visible through this secure server. However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange’s arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of “taking precautions” in the event of anything untoward happening to him. This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks’s security breach with a small group of journalists. Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts. However, the file was not discovered or downloaded by the public. By 10am on Thursday it had been accessed once in the previous 31 days, despite mounting speculation about its existence. Initial news stories did not give details of the location of files or of passwords. Later, WikiLeaks and some of its supporters published a series of hints about the passwords and files. At about 11pm on Wednesday an anonymous Twitter user discovered the published password and opened a separate file – not the one shared with the Guardian – that had also been circulating on file-sharing networks for several months. There was no evidence that any member of the public had sufficient information to find and decrypt the files even hours before their discovery. In the hours immediately before the document cache was unencrypted, the WikiLeaks twitter feed urged users to download a different encrypted file from BitTorrent, without giving any details as to its contents or password. WikiLeaks The Guardian Julian Assange Alan Rusbridger Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers The US embassy cables United States Twitter US foreign policy US national security Australia Sweden Europe Internet James Ball guardian.co.uk
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Education secretary seeks to stem ‘erosion of adult authority’ by recruiting former male soldiers to the classroom Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to “restore adult authority” in the wake of the riots in England. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display “both strength and sensitivity”. In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers’ judgment. He said: “So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, ‘sorry, we can’t physically touch the students’, then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed.” Gove said men considering teaching were deterred by a fear of rules that made contact between adults and children “a legal minefield”. The government was planning to start a programme this autumn encouraging former members of the armed forces to take up teaching, specifically to ensure more male role models, Gove said. In a speech that sought to address the causes of the riots in August, Gove began by making a moral distinction between what he called a “hard-working majority” and a “vicious, lawless, immoral minority”. But he went on to examine what he said were the policy failures that lay behind the creation of the “educational underclass”. He said: “To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background. It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities, and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority.” Gove said he was haunted by the thought that, if circumstances had been different, he might have been a part of this underclass. The education secretary highlighted his own family background. “I was born to a single parent, never knew my biological father and spent my first few months in care. “Thanks to the love of my adoptive mother and father, and the education I enjoyed, I was given amazing opportunities. So I know just how much the right parenting, the right values at home, and the right sort of school matter in determining a child’s fate.” Gove said there had been a slow erosion of adult authority, subverted by a culture in which young people felt able to ignore civilised boundaries. “The only way to reverse this dissolution of legitimate authority is step-by-step to move the ratchet back in favour of teachers.” Gove also spoke of an “iron-clad link” between illiteracy, disruption, truancy, exclusion and crime. More than 430,000 children were absent for 15% of school time, and more than a million pupils missed 10% of the academic year, he said. He added that only a third of those students who missed between 10% and 20% of school got the “basic minimum” of five good GCSE passes. The government is asking Charlie Taylor, a headteacher and Gove’s adviser on behaviour, to look at improving “alternative provision” units for children with behavioural problems. Taylor will be asked to work with Lord Harris of Peckham, who sponsors academies, to speed up the ability of those entities to create provision for excluded and disruptive pupils. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Gove’s statement concerning the use of force against pupils. He said: “ASCL is delighted that the secretary of state has responded to our advice with the wise decision not to proceed with these regulations. The requirement would have imposed yet another bureaucratic burden that did nothing to improve discipline or safeguard children. “The use of physical restraint is thankfully required very rarely in schools. On occasions where it is needed, detailed guidance exists and staff fully understand the need to follow it to the letter. Schools already keep records of breaches of discipline.” Michael Gove Education policy Schools Academies UK riots Liberal-Conservative coalition Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Education secretary seeks to stem ‘erosion of adult authority’ by recruiting former male soldiers to the classroom Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to “restore adult authority” in the wake of the riots in England. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display “both strength and sensitivity”. In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers’ judgment. He said: “So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, ‘sorry, we can’t physically touch the students’, then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed.” Gove said men considering teaching were deterred by a fear of rules that made contact between adults and children “a legal minefield”. The government was planning to start a programme this autumn encouraging former members of the armed forces to take up teaching, specifically to ensure more male role models, Gove said. In a speech that sought to address the causes of the riots in August, Gove began by making a moral distinction between what he called a “hard-working majority” and a “vicious, lawless, immoral minority”. But he went on to examine what he said were the policy failures that lay behind the creation of the “educational underclass”. He said: “To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background. It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities, and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority.” Gove said he was haunted by the thought that, if circumstances had been different, he might have been a part of this underclass. The education secretary highlighted his own family background. “I was born to a single parent, never knew my biological father and spent my first few months in care. “Thanks to the love of my adoptive mother and father, and the education I enjoyed, I was given amazing opportunities. So I know just how much the right parenting, the right values at home, and the right sort of school matter in determining a child’s fate.” Gove said there had been a slow erosion of adult authority, subverted by a culture in which young people felt able to ignore civilised boundaries. “The only way to reverse this dissolution of legitimate authority is step-by-step to move the ratchet back in favour of teachers.” Gove also spoke of an “iron-clad link” between illiteracy, disruption, truancy, exclusion and crime. More than 430,000 children were absent for 15% of school time, and more than a million pupils missed 10% of the academic year, he said. He added that only a third of those students who missed between 10% and 20% of school got the “basic minimum” of five good GCSE passes. The government is asking Charlie Taylor, a headteacher and Gove’s adviser on behaviour, to look at improving “alternative provision” units for children with behavioural problems. Taylor will be asked to work with Lord Harris of Peckham, who sponsors academies, to speed up the ability of those entities to create provision for excluded and disruptive pupils. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Gove’s statement concerning the use of force against pupils. He said: “ASCL is delighted that the secretary of state has responded to our advice with the wise decision not to proceed with these regulations. The requirement would have imposed yet another bureaucratic burden that did nothing to improve discipline or safeguard children. “The use of physical restraint is thankfully required very rarely in schools. On occasions where it is needed, detailed guidance exists and staff fully understand the need to follow it to the letter. Schools already keep records of breaches of discipline.” Michael Gove Education policy Schools Academies UK riots Liberal-Conservative coalition Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The number of Americans making first-time claims for jobless benefits fell last week to 409,000, from 421,000 the previous week, the government said. Still, as long as the figure remains around 400,000, we’re unlikely to see a reduction in the broader jobless rate.
Continue reading …The number of Americans making first-time claims for jobless benefits fell last week to 409,000, from 421,000 the previous week, the government said. Still, as long as the figure remains around 400,000, we’re unlikely to see a reduction in the broader jobless rate.
Continue reading …New York City Mayor Miquelito Bloomberg is trying really hard, but his lumpy, clunky Spanish just doesn’t cut it. The spunky mayor took to repeating some of Hurricane Irene’s danger and evacuation warnings in Spanish at his press conferences, but they came out sounding like “El stormo grande is mucho…
Continue reading …Moammar Gadhafi’s most prominent—and possibly most deluded—son says his father is doing fine and Gadhafi loyalists are close to victory. “We would like to assure people that we are steadfast and the commander is doing well,” Saif al-Islam told a Syrian radio station, claiming to be speaking from…
Continue reading …A sex education teacher who moonlighted as a porn star, stripper, and naked butler can return to his day job, a British disciplinary committee has decided. Benedict Garrett—stage name Johnny Anglais—was suspended from his job as a high school’s head of personal, social and health education after teachers…
Continue reading …Dai Greene wins Britain’s first gold at world championships in 400m hurdles
September 1, 2011 No Comment
• Welsh hurdler leaves it late to seal victory in 400m hurdles • Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson takes silver, LJ van Zyl is third Dai Greene left it late in the 400m hurdles to seal Great Britain’s first gold of the world championships. The Welsh hurdler was fourth coming over the penultimate barrier of the race, but surged down the back straight to seal victory in the final few strides ahead of Javier Culson of Puerto Rico. South African LJ van Zyl was third. After a delayed start to the race in Daegu – the field were shown a green card due to a faulty start – Greene kept his cool and crossed the line in a time of 48.26sec. The 25-year-old adds the world title to his European and Commonwealth titles won in 2010, and could add more silverware to his collection in the 4x400m relay. Greene becomes Britain’s fifth medallist of the event, and his result lifts Team GB into fourth in the medals table behind the United States, Russia and Kenya. Mo Farah (10,000m), Jessica Ennis (Heptathlon) and Hannah England all secured silvers, while Andrew Turner took a bronze in the 110m hurdles, but on day six of the championships Britain finally struck gold for the first time. Men’s 400m hurdles result 1 Dai Greene GBR 48.26 2 Javier Culson PUR 48.44 3 L.J. van Zyl RSA 48.80 4 Felix Sánchez DOM 48.87 5 Cornel Fredericks RSA 49.12 6 Bershawn Jackson USA 49.24 7 Angelo Taylor USA 49.31 8 Aleksandr Derevyagin RUS World Athletics Championships 2011 Athletics World Athletics Championships John Ashdown guardian.co.uk
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