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posted by hubie on Sunday January 22 2023, @11:49PM   Printer-friendly

Some people want to win arguments no matter the cost:

WTF?! Governments looking for classified documents on other nations' military vehicles might no longer require spies to get the job done; they can just check out the War Thunder forum. Once again, someone used the popular game's message board to post restricted military Intel—twice.

The first incident occurred earlier this week during a discussion about the F-16 Fighting Falcon, a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force. It was introduced in 1978 but is still used in active duty today.

Aerotime reports that during the lengthy conversation about the aircraft, a user called spacenavy90 wrote that he found something "interesting" during his research about AMRAAM missiles for the F-16. He proved this by attaching a document that contained export-restricted data.

[...] This is a familiar phenomenon for the War Thunder forums. Schematics for the Challenger 2 tank extracted from its Army Equipment Support Publication (AESP) were posted in 2021. This was followed a few months later by another leaked document, this one on the French Leclerc Main Battle Tank and its variants, prompting Gaijin to warn users against the practice as the team didn't want to "end up chained at the bottom of a disguised CIA cargo ship in international waters." The warning was ignored—classified documents relating to Chinese tanks were posted to the forum last year.

These documents are usually posted to win arguments. But even those that have been declassified fall under the jurisdiction of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which limits the disclosure of US weapons data. One has to wonder if proving you're correct is worth a potential ten-year prison sentence.

Obligatory XKCD


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:04AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @03:04AM (#1288477)

    Depends on whether the latter is part of the former. I'd say it was with encryption since you can't encrypt, if one side doesn't have access to the process at all.

    Nope. Irrelevant. Sure your AR15 needs to be fully assembled in order to work. But that doesn't mean the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to export your AR15 or parts of it to Russia so that it can be used there.

    You still haven't proven the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to export arms to a different country.

    You can still use the crypto stuff in the USA perfectly fine to maintain the security of a free state etc etc.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday January 25 2023, @04:35AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 25 2023, @04:35AM (#1288488) Journal

    Nope. Irrelevant. Sure your AR15 needs to be fully assembled in order to work. But that doesn't mean the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to export your AR15 or parts of it to Russia so that it can be used there.

    The obvious rebuttal is that encryption only works if all parties to the communication are using it. It's by necessity a collective munition. You can't properly bear encryption if nobody else can encrypt their messages for you or decrypt your encrypted messages.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @08:13AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2023, @08:13AM (#1288506)
      Disingenuous or stupid argument. You can still use that exact same encryption in the USA.

      The 2nd amendment gives you the right to bear arms in the USA. Just because you want to shoot people in Russia or export guns to them doesn't mean your wishful thinking magically makes the 2nd Amendment give you the right to do so.
      • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:54PM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:54PM (#1288522) Journal

        Disingenuous or stupid argument. You can still use that exact same encryption in the USA.

        Not when communicating with people outside the US. There's a lot of those people.

        The 2nd amendment gives you the right to bear arms in the USA. Just because you want to shoot people in Russia or export guns to them doesn't mean your wishful thinking magically makes the 2nd Amendment give you the right to do so.

        And my obvious rebuttal is that in order to bear arms you need those arms to work. A rifle doesn't require anyone else to use that same rifle in order for your rifle to work. Crypto is different.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2023, @01:40AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2023, @01:40AM (#1288625)

          And my obvious rebuttal is that in order to bear arms you need those arms to work.

          Most crypto works whether the other parties are in the USA or not.

          You insisting on the other parties being outside the USA is your own problem. Other people are free to use that same crypto to communicate with parties within the USA.

          The 2nd amendment gives you the right to bear arms, not the right to shoot/export arms outside the USA, nor for other parties to have the same right to bear arms outside the USA.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 26 2023, @03:25AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 26 2023, @03:25AM (#1288646) Journal

            Most crypto works whether the other parties are in the USA or not.

            How does that other party get their hands on the crypto application? It's illegal for me to share, remember?

            You insisting on the other parties being outside the USA is your own problem. Other people are free to use that same crypto to communicate with parties within the USA.

            It's my problem that 96% of the world is outside the US? Anything else I need to take the blame for?