Won’t Be a Ghost
Scene 6
MANNING
Hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time…and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do? …things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people. Say… a database of half a million events during the Iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… Or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?
LAMO
What sort of content? brb cigarette. keep typing <3
MANNING
I need one myself. uhm… crazy, almost criminal political back dealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises… uhm… all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR that the US is sending aid to Pakistan includes funding for water/food/clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of Americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis. There’s so much… it affects everybody on earth… if it’s a country, and it’s recognized by the US as a country, it’s got dirt on it…. there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed… It’s open diplomacy…world-wide anarchy in CSV format… It’s beautiful, and horrifying…
and… it’s important that it gets out… I feel, for some bizarre reason. It might actually change something. I just… don’t wish to be a part of it… at least not now… I’m not ready… I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as a boy…
LAMO
Are you on Facebook?
MANNING
Sort of. You can’t find me. Hold on, need to change my privacy settings.
LAMO
You’re kind of cute. Are you seeing anyone in the military?
MANNING
Ew, no. I dated once… having two paranoid people doesn’t work. But Don’t Ask Don’t Tell isn’t really enforced. Top interrogator here has a civil union in NJ…. Half the S2 shop was at least bi.
LAMO
You know this personal-like? ; )
MANNING
It was all female.
LAMO
Ah.
MANNING
I got sick of these dykes and their drama… it was worse than “The L Word”…Our Counter Intelligence officer was a lesbian interrogator who was more worried about the drama than the exfiltration of classified information. Funny thing is… we transferred so much data on unmarked CDs…Everyone did… videos… movies… music. All out in the open.
LAMO
Is that how you got the cables out?
MANNING
Perhaps. I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing
LAMO
And odds are, they never will. From a professional perspective, I’m curious how the server they were on was insecure.
MANNING
You had people working 14 hours a day… every single day… no weekends… no recreation…people stopped caring after 3 weeks. Everyone just sat at their workstations… watching music videos / car chases / buildings exploding… and writing more stuff to CD/DVD… the culture fed opportunities. Hardest part is arguably internet access… uploading any sensitive data over the open internet is a bad idea… since networks are monitored for any insurgent/terrorist/militia/criminal types.
LAMO
Tor?
MANNING
tor + ssl + sftp
LAMO
Not quite how I might do it, but good.
MANNING
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 Eye.”
LAMO
Oh, those NSA guys. Pffft.
MANNING
Don’t judge, he actually kept up with that stuff.
LAMO
Clearly not enough.
MANNING
So… it was a massive data spillage… facilitated by numerous factors… both physically, technically, and culturally. Perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC. I listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history. Pretty simple, and unglamorous. Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis… a perfect storm. Sounds pretty bad huh?
LAMO
Kinda. I mean, for the military.
MANNING
Well, it SHOULD be better. I mean what if I were someone more malicious? I could’ve sold to Russia or China and made bank.
LAMO
Why didn’t you?
MANNING
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 do the public good, rather than some slimy intel collector. I’m crazy like that.
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