Cryptome -The Google of Secrets

Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance—open, secret and classified documents—but not limited to those.

- From the site cryptome.org.

Privacy has gone the way of the dodo bird.  Extinct.  Kaput.  If the government wants to know what you've been up to, they will find out. Credit reports, bank statements, electronic tolls, debit cards, employment information, never mind the vast array of electronic surveillance techniques available to keep track of your every movement.  With the potential for abuse of these new surveillance powers, it's important that we have watchdogs, folks who will keep an eye on just what our government's been up to, but how far should those watchdogs go.

Meet John Young, a New York based architect, but better known as the controversial internet activist who created and maintains Cryptome.org.

Mr. Young also sells,

A Cryptome DVD. Donate $25 for a DVD of the Cryptome 10+-years archives of 39,000 files from June 1996 to December 2006 (~4.1 GB). Click Paypal or mail check/MO made out to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. Archives include all files of cryptome.org, cryptome2.org, jya.com, cartome.org, eyeball-series.org and iraq-kill-maim.org. Cryptome offers with the Cryptome DVD an INSCOM DVD of about 18,000 pages of counter-intelligence dossiers declassified by the US Army Information and Security Command, dating from 1945 to 1985. No additional contribution required -- $25 for both. The DVDs will be sent anywhere worldwide without extra cost.

Cryptome has been described as the google of national security and regularly publishes, arguably classified information on national security issues.  Leaks included.  As can be imagined, this has prompted quite a bit of outrage in the intelligence communities.  Yet if the 69 year old John Young can get this information it stands to reason anyone can.  Admittedly the information is sensitive; maps, aerial photographs and security details about everything from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a chemical weapons depot in Alabama to nuclear-weapons storage sites in Georgia and New Mexico can all be found on his site.

Young's philosophy is that the more information that's out there the better off we are as a society.  No surprise he was an early member of the cypherpunks, a group of mathemeticians and engineers working for the government that wanted a way to leak safely.  One of Young's fellow punks, Phillip Zimmerman, later produced the Pretty Good Privacy encryption software that, for the first time, made it possible for the average citizen to shield their communication from the government. Zimmerman was arrested and charged with weapons trafficking, although the charges were ultimately dropped.

"There's a massive organization of hundreds of thousands of people around the world totally counting on secrecy," he says of the intelligence agencies he covers. "They are the most 
unreliable people in the world. And it's corrupted our culture. There's nothing that should be secret. Period."

But even Young's admirers concede poor judgment on the part of Young. "I think it's irresponsible," says Aftergood director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "Publishing the home address of the Director of National Intelligence is not something I'd fight for. If an individual whose cover was exposed on Cryptome comes to harm, or if a facility that's highlighted—I can't even say it."

To Young, complaints about agents' safety is pure tradecraft. You can't argue with spies, because everything they say is a lie. Former covert operatives have told him as much, he says. "They say, 'Don't believe that, it's just standard fare. It's a ploy.' If you believe any of this, you don't understand how spies operate. They lie so much and run so many false operations and plant so many false agents. They expose their own agents so much—there's nothing you can do that they haven't already done. In fact, they hope you will do it. To muddy the waters."

     John Cook's Secret's & Lies,  RADAR Magazine 8/13/07

Posted by Garth Sullivan.