Even wannabe spooks can be found.

“’I’ll suggest a name like “World Insurance Services Limited” or maybe “Universal Exports” after the company used in the early James Bond stories but I don’t know if we’d get away with that!” wrote one financier to Mossack Fonseca in 2010 on behalf of a client creating a front company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Universal Exports was a fictional company used by the British Secret Service in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

The files further show that Mossack Fonseca also incorporated companies named Goldfinger, SkyFall, GoldenEye, Moonraker, Spectre and Blofeld after James Bond movie titles and villains and was asked to do the same for Octopussy. There is correspondence from a man named Austin Powers, apparently his real name and not the movie character, and Jack Bauer, whom a Mossack Fonseca employee entered into the firm’s database as a client and not the television character after the employee “met him at a pub.”

But Mossack Fonseca’s connection to espionage is more often fact, not fiction.

Still firmly in the realm of the limited hangout because it's more of that "check out all these known bad dudes we found in the files" stuff with little new information. Still, if table scraps is all that's on offer, might as well take it

dipshit420 posted:

I definitely see the suspicion angle Petrol but I also think a truly ethical journalist may be concerned with blowback and innocents being caught in the crossfire in regards to releasing all information at once.

ethics in leaks journalism~

here's a mindblowing proposition: being a customer of the firm in question is prima facie evidence of being, at best, a tax dodging scumfuck; furthermore, Release the files.

Petrol posted:

littlegreenpills posted:

fwiw I think it's a real leak but the fact the raw data is not publicly available and the SZ is sitting on it is sketch af

i know the contemporary obsession with leaks qua leaks is basically assange's fault but the bar for what constitutes a 'real leak' has been curbstomped into the fucking gutter and personally i blame the suspiciously on-script libertarian edward snowden with his blather about 'responsible leaking' and leaving it to journalists to discern which data meet exacting neoliberal publication standards

i also find it suspicious that a compsci white dude dude who leaked a bunch of stuff over constitutional concerns is consistently libertarian

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

Petrol posted:

the suspiciously on-script libertarian edward snowden

i also find it suspicious that a compsci white dude dude who leaked a bunch of stuff over constitutional concerns is consistently libertarian

he consistently expounds a very specific politics more successfully than you would expect at first glance, briefly concerned that a trilby has fucked a piece of undercooked toast

Panopticon posted:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-says-the-panama-papers-leak-is-part-of-western-efforts-to-weaken-russia-a6972761.htmlclearly david cameron and hillary clinton's campaign chief inserted themselves into the leak to make the attack on putin more believable

totally acceptable collateral damage. there will be no consequences for clinton, and even if the current pressure on cameron forces him to resign, it gives the tories a much needed chance to reset and do their best to stave off the threat of corbyn (which, so we're clear, is a temporary threat to tory power, not a genuine threat to the neoliberal order)

MarianneSadd posted:

The best way to discourage or neutralize whistleblowers is to seize them in two ways. Either way discloses their identity, making the story more about the leaker themselves rather than the information they reveal. But, one way is to put them in prison forever, like Chelsea Manning. The other way is to make mad profit and clicks off whatever it is they are releasing, and release everything in a manner that is most profitable, which necessarily includes redacting material that actually challenges the hellscape these brave souls expose. Then, you just end up feeding billions of people the narrative that they live in a giant oppressive spy machine hellscape and they are unable to do anything about it but submit and obey.

uh everyone does live in a giant oppressive spy machine but that doesn't follow that all they can do is submit and obey

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

MarianneSadd posted:

the narrative that they live in a giant oppressive spy machine hellscape and they are unable to do anything about it but submit and obey.

uh everyone does live in a giant oppressive spy machine but that doesn't follow that all they can do is submit and obey

the narrative, mate. she's saying thats the narrative. and she's right