30 January 2013 Stealing Secrets Stealing Secrets Series: http://cryptome.org/steal-secrets.htm Stealing secrets is huge business worldwide, not only by government spies but by other government agencies, corporations, non-profits, religious and educational institutions, mercenaries, hackers, informants, private investigators, lawyers, architects (mea maxima culpa), doctors, therapists, professionals of all stripes, and innumerable individuals usually not suspect. Alex Gibney's inadvertently self-confessional documentary "We Steal Secrets - The WikiLeaks Story," deftly portrays, and itself demonstrates, a small sampling of the burgeoning business and has been pilloried by WikiLeaks and it followers as if stealing secrets is not exactly what WikiLeaks does and promotes others to do under guise of public service, the very same disguise worn by official spies and others claiming to serve the public by prying into private and privileged stashes. Not incidentally another of Gibney's films, "Mea Maxima Culpa," is self-confessionally titled. Come on now, all disclosure sites steal secrets, Cryptome steals secrets, Gibney steals secrets , journalists, writers, documentarians, filmmakers, artists and scholars and freedom of information activists steal secrets, every web site operator steals secrets -- don't believe log files are never kept. Privacy policies were invented and ingeniously legally-laundered to steal users' secrets. Anybody or institution which denies stealing secrets is lying -- a habitual and ancient tradition. Journalists are taught in universities to steal secrets by lying, flattery and promises. So too priests and psychiatrists and "helping" professions. Data gathering is stealing secrets, bigger the data bigger the theft -- and bigger the lying about it. The Internal Revenue Service is the greatest thief of secrets in the United States, uniquely privileged and empowered by law to gather the most intimate information about tax payers, tax avoiders, births and deaths, jobs and expenditures, relatives and write-offs. If you want to experience near-waterboarding try an IRS audit, then expect several more dousings for lying. And IRS is able to do all this far beyond what spies and corporations can legally and illegally do. If you believe IRS data remains secret, well, think again about what IRS employees, temps and frequent turnovers, variable contractors, hackers, leakers and dot-connectors know about you you thought was kept secret. Second in this thieving capability is the Justice Department. Competing and always winning for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on for capability, is the military and national security agencies, armed magnificently with weapons and presidential orders to assure information stealing dominance. No institution benefits more from stealing of secrets than legislatures, judges, justice and law enforcement systems, military and elected leaders which pass laws and enforce them to generate funding for government, and erect prisons, punishments and military action for violators of official secrets. This is true for every government in the world no matter democratic, socialist, communist, tyranny, despot or religious-faith based. And with governments are those privileged by government exceptionalism, religions topmost for willing complicity of covert exploitation of belief in separation of church and state, but not far behind are those given special protection to steal secrets by hook and crook, the dealers in information, name your favorite sanctimonious outlet. In response to this preferred and promoted model any sensible person steals secrets, promises to keep secrets, promotes others to do the same and sanctimoniously denies doing this. Hey, it's patriotic, heroic, award-winning, acclaimed, family-protective and profitable, and best, backed by the history of ever-duplicitous humanity. Secrets were invented and inflated in importance to be stolen, not that many are worth the effort, the mostly worthless sells as well as the over-celebrated family jewels.