Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Ronald Zonca — Panama? Forget the reporter collective -- Who built the database?


The Panama papers raise more questions than they answer. Ronald Zonca asks some of the obvious ones.

Fort Russ
Panama? Forget the reporter collective -- Who built the database?
Ronald Zonca in Boulevard Voltaire, April 6, 2016
Translated from French by Tom Winter

6 comments:

MRW said...

Excellent point.

MRW said...

Oh-oh. Am I reading this correctly? Russia’s 9/11 classified docs would be interesting too.

From: Putin to Declassify Documents That Bear Some "Very Interesting Names”
Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
5th April, 2016
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/04/putin-to-declassify-documents-that-bear.html

Quote==========================

You brought it upon yourselves. [Emphasis in original.]

Yesterday's Panamanian crib notes immediately received a fitting answer. Guys who are receiving grants from Soros Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, their owners, and other interested parties were thinking that they were taking part in a hunt for the beast. Well, well. This time they were made to play ping-pong, but they didn't even notice it. So naive are they... They scattered the documents around 80 countries and 400 paid journalists to deducted names and addresses. Well, at least one of them was from the CBP (Foreign Intelligence Service) and a couple hundred from the GRU...And they've got their punishment, not them, of course, but their owners.

The Russian President said that he has decided to declassify many archival documents, and that he will sign the decree today. [That was yesterday, April 5th.] And it was signed. Here: http://kremlin.ru/ [Note: this link does not lead to the page, just the site, and I can’t find it easily; no time to translate every page.]

And he quietly added: "This, as far as I know, according to the information from archive agencies, concerns the period from 1930 to 1989. In these documents there are cases, excuse me, of snitches as well as the innocently repressed, with very interesting names, some documents will surprise society..."

In fact, what is happening is a test for society and the President. He passed an exam for the "leader of the nation", and society - for the "superpower". I have no doubt, personally, of the result. And also no doubt on the number of political cadavers that will appear soon in stupid Europe, which thought that she was taking part in the hunt for the beast, whilst the ambush was prepared for her.
End Quote==========================

Tom Hickey said...

Yes, I saw that. Should be interesting. The dirty laundry and skeletons in the closet are coming out all over the place.

MRW said...

Nothing like a geopolitical rout. Pass the popcorn, if it pans out. What fun.

Matt Franko said...

He's getting carried away here:

"The organization that produced the revelations has the capability to feed a database effectively, that is to say by spying and tapping, classifying billions of real-time data, and has powerful tools for extraction."

No way...

Ignacio said...

The guy is technically iliterate by making that assumption. I could do that job given enough time solo, it just requires some clever data mining scripting. Not saying is something that can be done in a few hours, but it could be handled easily by a small team of competent people with enough time and dedication. The tech you need to do it is even freely available on the internet as is the knowledge.

What "worries" me is how the data was managed after the extraction, it requires contacts usually to handle that kind of data successfully without ending at the bottom of a river.

So this was not ONLY some rogue IT guy, probably.