WikiLeaks has condemned a British threat to raid the Ecuador embassy in London where its founder is holed up as a "hostile and extreme" assault on asylum-seekers.
"WikiLeaks condemns in the strongest possible terms the UK's resort to intimidation," it said in a statement.
"A threat of this nature is a hostile and extreme act, which is not proportionate to the circumstances, and an unprecedented assault on the rights of asylum-seekers worldwide."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian national, has been in the embassy since June in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over sex assault claims.
The Australian fears Stockholm will turn him over to the United States where he could face espionage and conspiracy charges over revelations by his website.
Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino earlier said Britain had threatened to "storm our embassy if Ecuador does not hand over Julian Assange".
WikiLeaks said the embassy was currently surrounded by police "in a menacing show of force".
"Any transgression against the sanctity of the embassy is a unilateral and shameful act, and a violation of the Vienna Convention, which protects embassies worldwide," it said.
"This threat is designed to preempt Ecuador's imminent decision on whether it will grant Julian Assange political asylum, and to bully Ecuador into a decision that is agreeable to the United Kingdom and its allies.
"We remind the public that these extraordinary actions are being taken to detain a man who has not been charged with any crime in any country," it added.
A British Foreign Office spokesman has said police were ready to arrest Assange for breaching the terms of his bail granted in 2010.
"The UK has a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sexual offenses and we remain determined to fulfill this obligation," the spokesman said in London.
WikiLeaks noted that the tougher stance by London coincided with British Foreign Secretary William Hague standing in for Prime Minister David Cameron while he was on vacation.
It claimed Hague's department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had overseen the negotiations to date with Ecuador.
"If Mr Hague has, as would be expected, approved this decision, WikiLeaks calls for his immediate resignation," it said.
Assange's mother earlier Thursday claimed the United States was behind the British threat.
"What the US wants, the US gets from its allies, regardless of if it's legal or if it's ethical or in breach of human or legal rights," she told reporters in Australia.
Patino said Ecuador "has made a decision" on whether to grant Assange asylum and would announce it at 1200 GMT Thursday.
Source: Times Live
Showing posts with label Julian Assange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julian Assange. Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Bradley Manning defense files motion to dismiss charges over pre-trial abuse
The defense attorney of accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning filed a 110-page motion on July 27 requesting that all charges against the soldier be dismissed. The motion was made on the basis of Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which bans “punishment or penalty other than arrest or confinement upon the charges pending against [a detainee].”
Manning’s lead attorney, David Coombs, wrote that “[t]he defense does not believe that there has ever been such an egregious case of unlawful pretrial punishment in Army history. This court needs to send a message that an unlawful order to keep a pretrial detainee in the equivalent of solitary confinement for almost nine months cannot—and will not—be tolerated."
Article 13 states that unnecessary pre-trial punishment is grounds for dismissal of charges.
Coombs also filed a motion of continuance based on the government’s withholding of 84 emails that reveal high-ranking Armed Forces complicity in ordering the mistreatment of Manning. The emails reveal that at least one three-star general specifically ordered Manning’s unbearable conditions, which some argue violate the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
As Coombs points out in his continuance filing, government officials withheld the emails until 9:15 p.m. on the night of July 26—less than three hours before the deadline to file an Article 13 motion—despite the court’s previously elaborated requirement that all documentation that is “obviously material to the preparation of the defense” be made available.
The military judge overseeing the hearings will almost certainly not dismiss the charges. Regardless of legal precedent, the Obama administration is determined to ruin Manning’s life for helping make public over 700,000 files that serve as evidence to the crimes of US imperialism.
The force with which the government is attacking Manning expresses its nervousness, as well as its resolve to prevent future leaks that may jeopardize attempts to maintain and expand its geo-political domination. Prosecutors are seemingly using any archaic, anti-democratic charge on the books in an attempt to destroy the young man.
The 34 counts being brought against Manning read as a laundry list of state despotism, from “treason”, “aiding the enemy” and “embezzlement and theft”, to “sedition”, and “espionage”. Government prosecutors are backing up these absurd claims with some of the most anti-democratic legal precedents of the past century, including the Espionage Act of 1917, the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the PATRIOT Act.
All the while, Manning remains in military custody. Though it has been over two years since he was arrested in May, 2010, the court has denied previous motions filed by the defense claiming that Manning’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been violated.
The Article 13 motion filed in July highlights the terrible conditions Manning has faced while in military custody.
The motion quotes UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, who strongly criticized the US government’s treatment of Manning in an interview with the Guardian in March. “I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement,” Mendez said, “…constitutes at minimum cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of Article 16 of the [UN] Convention Against Torture.”
Mendez was referring to the nearly one year that Manning spent in Quantico, Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011. During this period, Manning was kept in a six- by eight-foot cell for 23 to 24 hours a day.
Forced by guards to stay awake between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. each day, Manning was also denied the right to exercise in his cell, use the cell walls as a backrest, or lie down at any point during the daytime.
For six months, Manning was given only 20 minutes of “sunshine call” per day, during which time he was told to walk in lace-less shoes, with shackles on his ankles and wrists and a guard’s hand on his back.
Manning was also forced to sleep naked and to stand naked in front of multiple guards at parade rest position. Guards sometimes took away Manning’s glasses and forced him to reply in the affirmative when they “checked on him” at five-minute intervals.
Manning’s overseers justified this cruel treatment as necessary to prevent Manning from inflicting harm upon himself or others. This argument carries no weight, as several military psychologists and hundreds of law professors have explained.
The Article 13 motion highlights the baseless nature of this claim by quoting interactions between psychiatrists and military officials.
When military psychiatrists recommended better treatment for Manning, an official reportedly replied, “We’ll do whatever we want to do. You [the psychiatrists] make your recommendation and I have to make a decision based on everything else.”
The psychiatrist responded, “Then don’t say it’s based on mental health. You can say it’s MAX [maximum] custody, but just don’t say that we’re somehow involved in this,” to which the senior officer said, “That’s what we’re going to do.”
Multiple military psychiatrists had been recommending that Manning be downgraded from POI [prevention of injury] status for months, according to the motion. Psychiatrists tried to explain to overseers that “[Manning] did not present a risk to himself and that the POI status was actually causing PFC Manning psychological harm.”
Furthermore, there is little legal framework to support Manning’s POI status, according to a letter written by 300 law professors in 2011.
“The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates,” the letter states. “Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.”
The trial has been wrought with possible grounds for dismissal of charges. In April of 2011, president Obama made comments that provided grounds for dismissal based on Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which protects against Unlawful Command Influence.
The president, revealing his disdain for the legal process, explained to a crowd that he did not need to wait for the verdict to pronounce guilt: “We’re a nation of laws,” the president said. “We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate… [Manning] broke the law.”
The comments are not only hypocritical coming from a president that has established his “right” to indefinitely detain and assassinate anyone, including American citizens, without a warrant. They may also serve as a basis for an argument for dismissal of charges against Manning.
According to Article 37 of UCMJ, “Unlawful Command Influence occurs when senior personnel, wittingly or unwittingly, have acted to influence court members, witnesses, or others participating in military justice cases. Such unlawful influence not only jeopardizes the validity of the judicial process, it undermines the morale of military members, their respect for the chain of command, and public confidence in the military.”
The court, however, has failed to dismiss charges based on Unlawful Command Influence.
Manning’s prosecution is being carried out in flagrant violation of basic constitutional rights and to legal precedent that does not serve the Obama administration. The information revealed in the Article 13 and continuance motions of July 26 serve as further proof that the minds of the decision makers have already been made up and that the trial is little more than an anti-democratic witch-hunt.
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Manning’s lead attorney, David Coombs, wrote that “[t]he defense does not believe that there has ever been such an egregious case of unlawful pretrial punishment in Army history. This court needs to send a message that an unlawful order to keep a pretrial detainee in the equivalent of solitary confinement for almost nine months cannot—and will not—be tolerated."
Article 13 states that unnecessary pre-trial punishment is grounds for dismissal of charges.
Coombs also filed a motion of continuance based on the government’s withholding of 84 emails that reveal high-ranking Armed Forces complicity in ordering the mistreatment of Manning. The emails reveal that at least one three-star general specifically ordered Manning’s unbearable conditions, which some argue violate the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
As Coombs points out in his continuance filing, government officials withheld the emails until 9:15 p.m. on the night of July 26—less than three hours before the deadline to file an Article 13 motion—despite the court’s previously elaborated requirement that all documentation that is “obviously material to the preparation of the defense” be made available.
The military judge overseeing the hearings will almost certainly not dismiss the charges. Regardless of legal precedent, the Obama administration is determined to ruin Manning’s life for helping make public over 700,000 files that serve as evidence to the crimes of US imperialism.
The force with which the government is attacking Manning expresses its nervousness, as well as its resolve to prevent future leaks that may jeopardize attempts to maintain and expand its geo-political domination. Prosecutors are seemingly using any archaic, anti-democratic charge on the books in an attempt to destroy the young man.
The 34 counts being brought against Manning read as a laundry list of state despotism, from “treason”, “aiding the enemy” and “embezzlement and theft”, to “sedition”, and “espionage”. Government prosecutors are backing up these absurd claims with some of the most anti-democratic legal precedents of the past century, including the Espionage Act of 1917, the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the PATRIOT Act.
All the while, Manning remains in military custody. Though it has been over two years since he was arrested in May, 2010, the court has denied previous motions filed by the defense claiming that Manning’s Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been violated.
The Article 13 motion filed in July highlights the terrible conditions Manning has faced while in military custody.
The motion quotes UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, who strongly criticized the US government’s treatment of Manning in an interview with the Guardian in March. “I conclude that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement,” Mendez said, “…constitutes at minimum cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of Article 16 of the [UN] Convention Against Torture.”
Mendez was referring to the nearly one year that Manning spent in Quantico, Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011. During this period, Manning was kept in a six- by eight-foot cell for 23 to 24 hours a day.
Forced by guards to stay awake between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. each day, Manning was also denied the right to exercise in his cell, use the cell walls as a backrest, or lie down at any point during the daytime.
For six months, Manning was given only 20 minutes of “sunshine call” per day, during which time he was told to walk in lace-less shoes, with shackles on his ankles and wrists and a guard’s hand on his back.
Manning was also forced to sleep naked and to stand naked in front of multiple guards at parade rest position. Guards sometimes took away Manning’s glasses and forced him to reply in the affirmative when they “checked on him” at five-minute intervals.
Manning’s overseers justified this cruel treatment as necessary to prevent Manning from inflicting harm upon himself or others. This argument carries no weight, as several military psychologists and hundreds of law professors have explained.
The Article 13 motion highlights the baseless nature of this claim by quoting interactions between psychiatrists and military officials.
When military psychiatrists recommended better treatment for Manning, an official reportedly replied, “We’ll do whatever we want to do. You [the psychiatrists] make your recommendation and I have to make a decision based on everything else.”
The psychiatrist responded, “Then don’t say it’s based on mental health. You can say it’s MAX [maximum] custody, but just don’t say that we’re somehow involved in this,” to which the senior officer said, “That’s what we’re going to do.”
Multiple military psychiatrists had been recommending that Manning be downgraded from POI [prevention of injury] status for months, according to the motion. Psychiatrists tried to explain to overseers that “[Manning] did not present a risk to himself and that the POI status was actually causing PFC Manning psychological harm.”
Furthermore, there is little legal framework to support Manning’s POI status, according to a letter written by 300 law professors in 2011.
“The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates,” the letter states. “Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.”
The trial has been wrought with possible grounds for dismissal of charges. In April of 2011, president Obama made comments that provided grounds for dismissal based on Article 37 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which protects against Unlawful Command Influence.
The president, revealing his disdain for the legal process, explained to a crowd that he did not need to wait for the verdict to pronounce guilt: “We’re a nation of laws,” the president said. “We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate… [Manning] broke the law.”
The comments are not only hypocritical coming from a president that has established his “right” to indefinitely detain and assassinate anyone, including American citizens, without a warrant. They may also serve as a basis for an argument for dismissal of charges against Manning.
According to Article 37 of UCMJ, “Unlawful Command Influence occurs when senior personnel, wittingly or unwittingly, have acted to influence court members, witnesses, or others participating in military justice cases. Such unlawful influence not only jeopardizes the validity of the judicial process, it undermines the morale of military members, their respect for the chain of command, and public confidence in the military.”
The court, however, has failed to dismiss charges based on Unlawful Command Influence.
Manning’s prosecution is being carried out in flagrant violation of basic constitutional rights and to legal precedent that does not serve the Obama administration. The information revealed in the Article 13 and continuance motions of July 26 serve as further proof that the minds of the decision makers have already been made up and that the trial is little more than an anti-democratic witch-hunt.
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, angering Britain
Ecuador granted political asylum to WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange on Thursday, a day after it said Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker. By Mohammed Abbas and Eduardo Garcia.
Britain has said it is determined to extradite him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.
Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt" media and U.S. "imperialism".
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.
Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.
"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.
Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate arrest by the British authorities.
"The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."
Hague said the impasse could go on for a considerable time.
Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.
WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.
In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".
"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation."
EMBASSY PROTEST
Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to remove the Ecuador embassy's diplomatic status.
The Ecuadorean government has bristled at the warning: its foreign minister said Britain was threatening Ecuador with a "hostile and intolerable act", comparing the action to Iran's storming of Britain's Tehran embassy in 2011.
"I don't think they will dare to infringe international law ... Diplomatic headquarters cannot be broken into, we can't imagine that happening," Patino told the state-run news website El Ciudadano after the announcement.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington did not intend to get involved in whether Assange should receive asylum in Ecuador.
"This is an issue between the Ecuadoreans, the Brits, the Swedes," she said. Asked whether Assange faced persecution in the United States, she said: "With regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely."
Outside the Ecuadorean embassy, supporters relayed the announcement about his asylum request over a loudspeaker to cheers and clapping from protesters.
A Reuters reporter saw at least three protesters being dragged away by police after tussles with police before the decision was announced.
It was unclear how long Assange could stay in the small embassy - housed on the ground floor of an apartment block - which is under 24-hour surveillance by British police.
His mother, Christine Assange, told Reuters her son was "geared up for the fight". She said: "He knows that he's got justice and right on his side. He's done nothing wrong, nobody in the world has charged him."
Britain's threat to withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy also drew criticism from one of its own former diplomats.
"If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies, then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible," Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.
SEX CRIME ALLEGATIONS
Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks supporters in 2010 but have not yet charged him.
The lawyer for the two Swedish women who made the allegations said his clients deserved justice.
"It's an abuse of the asylum instrument, the purpose of which is to protect people from persecution and torture if sent back to one's country of origin," Claes Borgstrom told Reuters.
"It's not about that here. He doesn't risk being handed over to the United States for torture or the death penalty. He should be brought to justice in Sweden."
Assange says he fears Sweden could send him on to the United States. His supporters have said U.S. authorities want to punish him for publishing diplomatic cables which laid bare Washington's power-brokering across the globe.
"The reaction he has is that he wants to underline that this (asylum) is a measure that is aimed at the U.S. and not against Sweden," said Per E Samuelsson, one of Assange's lawyers.
"He has sought political asylum in order to eliminate the risk that he will spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States," he said.
Ecuador said it had tried to get assurances from Britain and Sweden that Assange could not be extradited to a third country but that no assurance was given. Under European law, neither Britain nor Sweden could extradite anyone to a country where they might face the death penalty.
Source: Daily Maverick
Britain has said it is determined to extradite him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.
Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt" media and U.S. "imperialism".
Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.
Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.
"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.
Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate arrest by the British authorities.
"The United Kingdom does not recognise the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."
Hague said the impasse could go on for a considerable time.
Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.
WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.
In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".
"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation."
EMBASSY PROTEST
Britain has said it could use a little-known piece of legislation from 1987, introduced in the wake of the shooting of a British police officer outside the Libyan embassy in London, to remove the Ecuador embassy's diplomatic status.
The Ecuadorean government has bristled at the warning: its foreign minister said Britain was threatening Ecuador with a "hostile and intolerable act", comparing the action to Iran's storming of Britain's Tehran embassy in 2011.
"I don't think they will dare to infringe international law ... Diplomatic headquarters cannot be broken into, we can't imagine that happening," Patino told the state-run news website El Ciudadano after the announcement.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington did not intend to get involved in whether Assange should receive asylum in Ecuador.
"This is an issue between the Ecuadoreans, the Brits, the Swedes," she said. Asked whether Assange faced persecution in the United States, she said: "With regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely."
Outside the Ecuadorean embassy, supporters relayed the announcement about his asylum request over a loudspeaker to cheers and clapping from protesters.
A Reuters reporter saw at least three protesters being dragged away by police after tussles with police before the decision was announced.
It was unclear how long Assange could stay in the small embassy - housed on the ground floor of an apartment block - which is under 24-hour surveillance by British police.
His mother, Christine Assange, told Reuters her son was "geared up for the fight". She said: "He knows that he's got justice and right on his side. He's done nothing wrong, nobody in the world has charged him."
Britain's threat to withdraw diplomatic status from the Ecuadorean embassy also drew criticism from one of its own former diplomats.
"If we live in a world where governments can arbitrarily revoke immunity and go into embassies, then the life of our diplomats and their ability to conduct normal business in places like Moscow where I was and North Korea becomes close to impossible," Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, told the BBC.
SEX CRIME ALLEGATIONS
Swedish prosecutors want to question Assange over accusations of rape and sexual assault made by two female former WikiLeaks supporters in 2010 but have not yet charged him.
The lawyer for the two Swedish women who made the allegations said his clients deserved justice.
"It's an abuse of the asylum instrument, the purpose of which is to protect people from persecution and torture if sent back to one's country of origin," Claes Borgstrom told Reuters.
"It's not about that here. He doesn't risk being handed over to the United States for torture or the death penalty. He should be brought to justice in Sweden."
Assange says he fears Sweden could send him on to the United States. His supporters have said U.S. authorities want to punish him for publishing diplomatic cables which laid bare Washington's power-brokering across the globe.
"The reaction he has is that he wants to underline that this (asylum) is a measure that is aimed at the U.S. and not against Sweden," said Per E Samuelsson, one of Assange's lawyers.
"He has sought political asylum in order to eliminate the risk that he will spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States," he said.
Ecuador said it had tried to get assurances from Britain and Sweden that Assange could not be extradited to a third country but that no assurance was given. Under European law, neither Britain nor Sweden could extradite anyone to a country where they might face the death penalty.
Source: Daily Maverick
Sunday, December 12, 2010
WikiLeaks Concern for South African Freedom of Information Activists
As WikiLeaks continues to release heaps of United States government secrets, freedom of information advocates in South Africa are concerned the controversy will spur the country’s parliament on to pass a controversial “Secrecy Bill” into law. “We’re concerned that the issues around WikiLeaks may drive the Ministry (of State Security) to suggest that even more information should be made classified,” says Alison Tilley, executive director of South Africa’s Open Democracy Advice Center.
ODAC’s website says it strives to “foster a culture of corporate and government accountability,” and seeks to achieve this “through realizing the (public’s) right to know.”
Earlier this year, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party introduced the Protection of Information Bill in parliament, and proposed the establishment of a “media tribunal” to “regulate” the country’s print media. The moves resulted in nationwide protests from human rights and freedom of expression groups, as well as the public, who remain concerned that they’re the first steps towards an ANC clampdown on media freedom and a new age of censorship in South Africa.
In recent years, the country’s media has exposed several scandals implicating top ANC officials – including President Jacob Zuma – and businesspeople close to the ruling party, in a variety of crimes - including massive corruption. The ANC denies it wants to curb media freedom, insisting its bill merely seeks to protect state secrets - the publication of which it insists could endanger South Africa’s security. But legal, constitutional and access to information experts say the bill’s definition of a “state secret” is so broad that it could allow the ANC to prevent the media from reporting on a wide range of issues embarrassing to the government – including corruption and even personal scandals.
According to the bill, the media would not be able to publish a story based on a “secret” document, even one that shows that a government minister has stolen taxpayers’ money. Instead, the person who leaked the document would be punished: the possession of such a document is a crime that could result in prison terms of up to five years – for the journalist and the whistle-blower who leaked the document.
Tilley says if the South African bill becomes law, a lot of people could end up in jail for possessing information such as that published by WikiLeaks. “Perhaps I went onto the website and downloaded information from the WikiLeaks website – that would make me liable; if I sent it to a colleague – that would make my colleague liable; if my colleague sent it to a newspaper – that would make the journalist liable. And presumably once the journalist publishes it and people buy and read the paper, it would make them liable too,” the lawyer explains. “The principle that we want to introduce in terms of the bill is that the only person who is liable is the person who’s actually professionally responsible for keeping that secret - that is, the member of the security agency, the person in national intelligence,” she maintains.
Thus, according to ODAC, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, should not be charged with any crime linked to the publishing of the US government secrets. Only his alleged source – US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning – should be held responsible for the leak. “Once the information is leaked, we think it’s completely wrong to try and criminalize everyone down the chain,” Tilley tells VOA. “That’s what the (South African) legislation does as it’s currently tabled.”
Experts who’ve analyzed the South African bill say the fact that it doesn’t contain a “public interest defense” holds extremely serious consequences. This means that whistle-blowers and reporters can’t argue in court that the “secret” information they’ve revealed is in the public interest – even if such information shows evidence of damage to the environment or theft of taxpayers’ money, for examples. “The Secrecy Bill says that in fact it doesn’t matter whether information’s in the public interest or not, it doesn’t matter what the (confidential) documents reveal - it could be anything up to genocide and you still would be criminally liable if you made the documents available in the public interest,” says Tilley.
Activists in South Africa argue that the South African government’s main motivation in drawing up the Bill is to prevent certain politician’s crimes from being exposed. Tilley says the instinct of security and intelligence agencies across the globe, including in South Africa and the US, is to try to keep increasing amounts of information secret. This is dangerous, she says … as Washington has discovered via WikiLeaks. “We think that would be a very wrong analysis of what WikiLeaks should mean to security agencies,” she stresses. “We think what it means is that you must narrow your focus, and concentrate only on that information which it is absolutely essential that you keep secret because lives are at risk. Then you secure that information as completely as you can.”
ODAC’s stance is that governments should keep as few secrets as possible, and strive for “openness and transparency.” “We think it improves decision-making; we think it allows people to participate in government more effectively; it allows them to advocate on issues more effectively; it allows better decisions around resources,” says Tilley. “The more transparency, the better the decisions that are made – both by people in power and by people who seek power.” She adds, “The instinct of security agencies to try to keep more and more information classified simply means that there are more people in the tent. And the more people there are in the tent, the more difficult it is to keep information secure, and the more likely it is that there’s going to be a security risk, there’s going to be a leak, and somebody’s going to let slip the information.”
Tilley and ODAC are not suggesting that governments don’t have a right to keep certain information hidden from the public. She says, “Governments do have secrets that they should legitimately keep. They keep those secrets in the interests of their citizens. They generally relate only to narrow security issues. If we have undercover policemen, for example, working in gangs to try and end gang violence or trying to end organized crime, we would accept that those identities need to be kept secret. This would benefit the public, in that criminal activity would be stopped.”
But Tilley says the “problem” is that once governments are entitled to keep secrets entirely at the state’s discretion “it seems to know no end” and is open to great abuse. “(In South Africa), we have documents that go in front of local government (municipalities) that are automatically marked ‘secret,’ simply because they’re being dealt with by an executive committee in local government. That’s clearly wrong,” she says.
Tilley says in South Africa, officials – using the excuse that certain information should be kept secret in the interests of the state – have tried to keep tender documents secret. “We’ve had people tell the Public Protector, she’s not entitled to documents because they’re classified so she can’t investigate corruption,” she says. “That’s precisely the misuse of classification which is problematic, and which we think will be probable – given the scope of the Secrecy Bill.”
South Africa’s Public Protector is appointed by the president to investigate complaints from the public against government agencies or officials. Tilley hopes South Africa’s government, as it continues to try to limit access to information, learns some lessons from the leaking of more than 250,000 US government secrets to WikiLeaks. “It shows that it’s very difficult to keep secrets – whatever you think about whether they should or shouldn’t be kept. The fact is that America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a very extensive network of specialists trying to keep secrets secret, has found that it can’t be done.”
Source: Voice of America
ODAC’s website says it strives to “foster a culture of corporate and government accountability,” and seeks to achieve this “through realizing the (public’s) right to know.”
Earlier this year, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party introduced the Protection of Information Bill in parliament, and proposed the establishment of a “media tribunal” to “regulate” the country’s print media. The moves resulted in nationwide protests from human rights and freedom of expression groups, as well as the public, who remain concerned that they’re the first steps towards an ANC clampdown on media freedom and a new age of censorship in South Africa.
In recent years, the country’s media has exposed several scandals implicating top ANC officials – including President Jacob Zuma – and businesspeople close to the ruling party, in a variety of crimes - including massive corruption. The ANC denies it wants to curb media freedom, insisting its bill merely seeks to protect state secrets - the publication of which it insists could endanger South Africa’s security. But legal, constitutional and access to information experts say the bill’s definition of a “state secret” is so broad that it could allow the ANC to prevent the media from reporting on a wide range of issues embarrassing to the government – including corruption and even personal scandals.
According to the bill, the media would not be able to publish a story based on a “secret” document, even one that shows that a government minister has stolen taxpayers’ money. Instead, the person who leaked the document would be punished: the possession of such a document is a crime that could result in prison terms of up to five years – for the journalist and the whistle-blower who leaked the document.
Tilley says if the South African bill becomes law, a lot of people could end up in jail for possessing information such as that published by WikiLeaks. “Perhaps I went onto the website and downloaded information from the WikiLeaks website – that would make me liable; if I sent it to a colleague – that would make my colleague liable; if my colleague sent it to a newspaper – that would make the journalist liable. And presumably once the journalist publishes it and people buy and read the paper, it would make them liable too,” the lawyer explains. “The principle that we want to introduce in terms of the bill is that the only person who is liable is the person who’s actually professionally responsible for keeping that secret - that is, the member of the security agency, the person in national intelligence,” she maintains.
Thus, according to ODAC, Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, should not be charged with any crime linked to the publishing of the US government secrets. Only his alleged source – US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning – should be held responsible for the leak. “Once the information is leaked, we think it’s completely wrong to try and criminalize everyone down the chain,” Tilley tells VOA. “That’s what the (South African) legislation does as it’s currently tabled.”
Experts who’ve analyzed the South African bill say the fact that it doesn’t contain a “public interest defense” holds extremely serious consequences. This means that whistle-blowers and reporters can’t argue in court that the “secret” information they’ve revealed is in the public interest – even if such information shows evidence of damage to the environment or theft of taxpayers’ money, for examples. “The Secrecy Bill says that in fact it doesn’t matter whether information’s in the public interest or not, it doesn’t matter what the (confidential) documents reveal - it could be anything up to genocide and you still would be criminally liable if you made the documents available in the public interest,” says Tilley.
Activists in South Africa argue that the South African government’s main motivation in drawing up the Bill is to prevent certain politician’s crimes from being exposed. Tilley says the instinct of security and intelligence agencies across the globe, including in South Africa and the US, is to try to keep increasing amounts of information secret. This is dangerous, she says … as Washington has discovered via WikiLeaks. “We think that would be a very wrong analysis of what WikiLeaks should mean to security agencies,” she stresses. “We think what it means is that you must narrow your focus, and concentrate only on that information which it is absolutely essential that you keep secret because lives are at risk. Then you secure that information as completely as you can.”
ODAC’s stance is that governments should keep as few secrets as possible, and strive for “openness and transparency.” “We think it improves decision-making; we think it allows people to participate in government more effectively; it allows them to advocate on issues more effectively; it allows better decisions around resources,” says Tilley. “The more transparency, the better the decisions that are made – both by people in power and by people who seek power.” She adds, “The instinct of security agencies to try to keep more and more information classified simply means that there are more people in the tent. And the more people there are in the tent, the more difficult it is to keep information secure, and the more likely it is that there’s going to be a security risk, there’s going to be a leak, and somebody’s going to let slip the information.”
Tilley and ODAC are not suggesting that governments don’t have a right to keep certain information hidden from the public. She says, “Governments do have secrets that they should legitimately keep. They keep those secrets in the interests of their citizens. They generally relate only to narrow security issues. If we have undercover policemen, for example, working in gangs to try and end gang violence or trying to end organized crime, we would accept that those identities need to be kept secret. This would benefit the public, in that criminal activity would be stopped.”
But Tilley says the “problem” is that once governments are entitled to keep secrets entirely at the state’s discretion “it seems to know no end” and is open to great abuse. “(In South Africa), we have documents that go in front of local government (municipalities) that are automatically marked ‘secret,’ simply because they’re being dealt with by an executive committee in local government. That’s clearly wrong,” she says.
Tilley says in South Africa, officials – using the excuse that certain information should be kept secret in the interests of the state – have tried to keep tender documents secret. “We’ve had people tell the Public Protector, she’s not entitled to documents because they’re classified so she can’t investigate corruption,” she says. “That’s precisely the misuse of classification which is problematic, and which we think will be probable – given the scope of the Secrecy Bill.”
South Africa’s Public Protector is appointed by the president to investigate complaints from the public against government agencies or officials. Tilley hopes South Africa’s government, as it continues to try to limit access to information, learns some lessons from the leaking of more than 250,000 US government secrets to WikiLeaks. “It shows that it’s very difficult to keep secrets – whatever you think about whether they should or shouldn’t be kept. The fact is that America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with a very extensive network of specialists trying to keep secrets secret, has found that it can’t be done.”
Source: Voice of America
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Information is the Antidote to Fear: Wikileaks, the Law, and You
When it comes to Wikileaks, there's a lot of fear out there on the Internet right now. Between the federal criminal investigation into Wikileaks, Senator Joe Lieberman's calls for companies to stop providing support for Wikileaks and his suggestion that the New York Times itself should be criminally investigated, Senator Dianne Feinstein's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and even the suggestion by some that he should be assassinated, a lot of people are scared and confused.
Will I break the law if I host or mirror the US diplomatic cables that have been published by Wikileaks? If I view or download them? If I write a news story based on them? These are just a few of the questions we've been getting here at EFF, particularly in light of many US companies' apparent fear to do any business with Wikileaks (with a few notable exceptions).
We unfortunately don't have the capacity to offer individualized legal advice to everyone who contacts us. What we can do, however, is talk about EFF's own policy position: we agree with other legal commentators who have warned that a prosecution of Assange, much less of other readers or publishers of the cables, would face serious First Amendment hurdles ([1], [2]) and would be "extremely dangerous" to free speech rights. Along with our friends at the ACLU, "We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea."
Even better than commentary, we can also provide legal information on this complicated issue, and today we have for you some high quality legal information from an expert and objective source: Congress' own research service, CRS. The job of this non-partisan legal office is to provide objective, balanced memos to Congress on important legal issues, free from the often hysteric hyperbole of other government officials. And thanks to Secrecy News, we have a copy of CRS' latest memo on the Wikileaks controversy, a report entitled "Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information" and dated this Monday, December 6.
Like this blog post itself, the CRS memo isn't legal advice. But it is a comprehensive discussion of the laws under which the Wikileaks publishers — or anyone else who obtains or publishes the documents, be it you or the New York Times — might be prosecuted and the First Amendment problems that such a prosecution would likely raise. Notably, the fine lawyers at CRS recognize a simple fact that statements from Attorney General Eric Holder, the Senators, the State Department and others have glossed over: a prosecution against someone who isn't subject to the secrecy obligations of a federal employee or contractor, based only on that person's publication of classified information that was received innocently, would be absolutely unprecedented and would likely pose serious First Amendment problems. As the summary page of the 21-page memo succinctly states:
Hopefully, this information will help counter much of the fear that our government's so-called "war" against Wikileaks has generated. Meanwhile, we will continue our effort to oppose online censorship and provide additional news and commentary on the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, which is shaping up to be the first great free speech battle of the 21st century. We hope you'll join us in the fight.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Will I break the law if I host or mirror the US diplomatic cables that have been published by Wikileaks? If I view or download them? If I write a news story based on them? These are just a few of the questions we've been getting here at EFF, particularly in light of many US companies' apparent fear to do any business with Wikileaks (with a few notable exceptions).
We unfortunately don't have the capacity to offer individualized legal advice to everyone who contacts us. What we can do, however, is talk about EFF's own policy position: we agree with other legal commentators who have warned that a prosecution of Assange, much less of other readers or publishers of the cables, would face serious First Amendment hurdles ([1], [2]) and would be "extremely dangerous" to free speech rights. Along with our friends at the ACLU, "We're deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea."
Even better than commentary, we can also provide legal information on this complicated issue, and today we have for you some high quality legal information from an expert and objective source: Congress' own research service, CRS. The job of this non-partisan legal office is to provide objective, balanced memos to Congress on important legal issues, free from the often hysteric hyperbole of other government officials. And thanks to Secrecy News, we have a copy of CRS' latest memo on the Wikileaks controversy, a report entitled "Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information" and dated this Monday, December 6.
Like this blog post itself, the CRS memo isn't legal advice. But it is a comprehensive discussion of the laws under which the Wikileaks publishers — or anyone else who obtains or publishes the documents, be it you or the New York Times — might be prosecuted and the First Amendment problems that such a prosecution would likely raise. Notably, the fine lawyers at CRS recognize a simple fact that statements from Attorney General Eric Holder, the Senators, the State Department and others have glossed over: a prosecution against someone who isn't subject to the secrecy obligations of a federal employee or contractor, based only on that person's publication of classified information that was received innocently, would be absolutely unprecedented and would likely pose serious First Amendment problems. As the summary page of the 21-page memo succinctly states:
This report identifies some criminal statutes that may apply [to dissemination of classified documents], but notes that these have been used almost exclusively to prosecute individuals with access to classified information (and a corresponding obligation to protect it) who make it available to foreign agents, or to foreign agents who obtain classified information unlawfully while present in the United States. Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it. There may be First Amendment implications that would make such a prosecution difficult, not to mention political ramifications based on concerns about government censorship.The report proceeds to discuss the Espionage Act of 1917 and a number of other potentially applicable statutes, followed by an extended discussion (at pp. 14-20) of how the Supreme Court's First Amendment decisions — and in particular the Pentagon Papers case — could complicate such a prosecution. For anyone interested in or concerned about the legality of publishing the Wikileaks documents and the legal and political challenges to a successful prosecution, this CRS memo is an absolute must-read.
Hopefully, this information will help counter much of the fear that our government's so-called "war" against Wikileaks has generated. Meanwhile, we will continue our effort to oppose online censorship and provide additional news and commentary on the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, which is shaping up to be the first great free speech battle of the 21st century. We hope you'll join us in the fight.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
WikiWars
Across the Internet, activists, hackers, and general mischief-makers are deploying the tricks of their trade, either in support of Wikileaks' decision to publish classified U.S. diplomatic cables, or to bring Wikileaks and its allies to their knees. Using tactics such as"denial of service attacks", "Google-bombing" and others more arcane, partisans have turned the Web into a battlefield of sorts, as they debate and argue over the roles and responsibilities of journalists, online activists and governments in the digital age.
The battle may not have started with Wikileaks, but their actions have added hot fuel to the fight - and the rhetoric. "It is an ongoing act of war, of sabotage, against the United States," says Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. "That means that Wikileaks as an entity has to be declared a foreign terrorist organization, and all the people associated with it have to be treated as illegal enemy combatants." And from the other side, the rhetoric is startlingly similar. "The first serious infowar is now engaged," wrote John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
The opening shots in this fight came almost immediately after Wilileaks' co-founder Julian Assange announced the much-anticipated publication of unseen, sometimes classified U.S. diplomatic cables on his website. Critics of the release moved quickly, swamping Wikileaks' host computers with requests; in effect, creating a virtual blizzard of web traffic that, for a time, prevented anyone from accessing the site. Their victory, however, was short-lived. Anticipating the attack, Wikileaks began moving its site from host to host and domain to domain, switching web addresses and hop-scotching traffic across a tangle of hidden locations in an effort to elude future attacks. This virtual game of "Whack-a-Mole" continues to this day.
Soon a figure familiar to the "hacktivist" community who goes by the name "The Jester" began to take credit for knocking Wikileaks offline on several occasions - for what he claimed were patriotic reasons. The Jester vowed to fight as long as Wikileaks remained online. "This is not an unprecedented attack," says Hal Roberts, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Roberts has studied denial of service - or "ddos" - attacks around the world, particularly those launched from authoritarian regimes like Burma. The Wikileaks attacks, he says, are nothing new...and neither are the boastful claims of responsibility.
"The Jester" says he's responsible for knocking Wikileaks off the Internet. "Anonymous" say they're targeting MasterCard and PayPal as punishment for stopping transfers to the controversial site. Across the web, a war is waging between supporters and opponents of Wikileaks. Will it be enough to tear a hole in the Internet?
"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is Wikileaks." - John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Over 1,200 participants had gathered online at the impromptu website anonops.net and were already several hours into their massive cyber-attack on the MasterCard website. Calling themselves "anonymous", the hackers hoped to flood the company's pages with web traffic, crashing the site - or at least gumming things up enough to make life miserable for the credit card giant. The reason: "punishment" for MasterCard's decision to stop fund transfers to Wikileaks.
An hour later, the attacks seemed to be working. But already, "hacktivists" on the other side were planning a counter-strike against Wikileaks; a strike they hoped would once again take the secret-busting website offline and out-of-view.
Welcome to the WikiWars. Across the Internet, activists, hackers, and general mischief-makers are deploying the tricks of their trade, either in support of Wikileaks' decision to publish classified U.S. diplomatic cables, or to bring Wikileaks and its allies to their knees. Using tactics such as"denial of service attacks", "Google-bombing" and others more arcane, partisans have turned the Web into a battlefield of sorts, as they debate and argue over the roles and responsibilities of journalists, online activists and governments in the digital age.
The battle may not have started with Wikileaks, but their actions have added hot fuel to the fight - and the rhetoric. "It is an ongoing act of war, of sabotage, against the United States," says Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. "That means that Wikileaks as an entity has to be declared a foreign terrorist organization, and all the people associated with it have to be treated as illegal enemy combatants."
And from the other side, the rhetoric is startlingly similar. "The first serious infowar is now engaged," wrote John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
The opening shots in this fight came almost immediately after Wilileaks' co-founder Julian Assange announced the much-anticipated publication of unseen, sometimes classified U.S. diplomatic cables on his website. Critics of the release moved quickly, swamping Wikileaks' host computers with requests; in effect, creating a virtual blizzard of web traffic that, for a time, prevented anyone from accessing the site.
Their victory, however, was short-lived. Anticipating the attack, Wikileaks began moving its site from host to host and domain to domain, switching web addresses and hop-scotching traffic across a tangle of hidden locations in an effort to elude future attacks. This virtual game of "Whack-a-Mole" continues to this day.
Soon a figure familiar to the "hacktivist" community who goes by the name "The Jester" began to take credit for knocking Wikileaks offline on several occasions - for what he claimed were patriotic reasons. The Jester vowed to fight as long as Wikileaks remained online. "This is not an unprecedented attack," says Hal Roberts, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Roberts has studied denial of service - or "ddos" - attacks around the world, particularly those launched from authoritarian regimes like Burma. The Wikileaks attacks, he says, are nothing new...and neither are the boastful claims of responsibility. "Even though there's a specific person claiming responsibility for the attacks on Wikileaks, the actual computers that are being used to attack Wikileaks are computers of people who have no idea what's going on," says Roberts. "The Jester is claiming responsibilty for attacks on Wikileaks," he says. "On the other side we have what's not really an organization but a very loose movement that calls itself 'anonymous' which is really an emergent community that organizes itself on a variety of discussion boards online." The MasterCard attack was just one skirmish.
And while both sides may lay claim to some victories, Roberts says they employ very different methods. "The Jester uses clever tricks and apparently a small number of machines; by contrast anonymous uses mass numbers of widely-distributed hackers," he says. While this "hive-mind" tactic has been employed before - notably by hackers associated with 4chan - Roberts is skeptical the 'anonymous' attacks will have much of an effect.
That's a shame, says Glick, who advocates for a much more aggressive response by the U.S. government - both in the real and the virtual worlds. "This is an act of cyber-warfare against the United States, an act of information warfare against the United States," she says. "And I haven't seen the United States bringing to bear any sort of doctrine for defending itself against this kind of attack. And that's what's so startling."
Declaring Assange and Wikileaks as illegal enemy combatants and sabateurs, she says, would "...open up a whole host of actions that you can take against Wikileaks." Among those: banning the website, cutting off its funding, apprehending and interrogating Assange, and even loosing the considerable resources of the U.S. government to knock Wikileaks off the web for good.
Glick goes a step further, saying that those media outlets that received the cables - such as the New York Times and Der Spiegel - should be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. But, she adds, "I don't think under the current political climate in the Western world that it's possible to make the media pay a price for the kinds of things that they're doing."
She's not alone in invoking treason and punishment. California Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) has called for felony charges against Assange under the 1917 law, and Delaware Senator Joe Lieberman (I) has labeled the Australian national a traitor.
It's tough talk, and it comes as no surprise to John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. "This was gonna happen sooner or later," he says. "I actually thought it might happen before now, but this seems to be the opening salvo in what is going to be a protracted struggle."
Barlow and the EFF have been at the forefront of numerous online freedom battles, and this one is no exception. "We support the right the right to know. We support the right of a populace in a democracy to be informed," says Barlow. While granting that some of the leaked information may be "hazardous" to some individuals, the EFF is generally supportive of what Wikileaks is doing. "EFF takes the position that Wikileaks, having acquired the information, has the right to disseminate it, and nobody has the right to shut them or anyone else down online."
It's a fairly robust position of support that few other organizations have taken publicly...in part, Barlow admits, due to the complicated nature of the issues, the Wikileaks organization, and co-founder Assange. However, keeping with the battlefield metaphor, he says sometimes you choose the fight, and sometimes it chooses you. "I can't say that Mr. Assange makes the absolutely perfect poster child, especially given these allegations in Sweden, and I also think that some of the things that were released are troublesome," admits Barlow. "But you take the battle that you've got."
There are growing, and unsubstantiated, rumors online that the U.S. government may have already engaged in this cyber-battle, asserting pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or firms like Amazon and PayPal that had provided Wikileaks support or host computers - but only for a while. And there are other rumors that perhaps activists like The Jester aren't working completly alone. "Sure there are hints," says Hal Roberts. "In this case you can certainly look at these attacks and say 'Hmm, it seems like it's in the interest of the U.S. government to have this site go down', and in fact many other governments around the world that don't want these cables released." However such hints are only suspicions and notoriously difficult to prove.
In the end, most observers believe Wikileaks will remain online and continue to publish secret documents, angering many in power around the globe. And the online activists - pro and con - aren't slowing their battleplans, either.
Source: Voice of America
The battle may not have started with Wikileaks, but their actions have added hot fuel to the fight - and the rhetoric. "It is an ongoing act of war, of sabotage, against the United States," says Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. "That means that Wikileaks as an entity has to be declared a foreign terrorist organization, and all the people associated with it have to be treated as illegal enemy combatants." And from the other side, the rhetoric is startlingly similar. "The first serious infowar is now engaged," wrote John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
The opening shots in this fight came almost immediately after Wilileaks' co-founder Julian Assange announced the much-anticipated publication of unseen, sometimes classified U.S. diplomatic cables on his website. Critics of the release moved quickly, swamping Wikileaks' host computers with requests; in effect, creating a virtual blizzard of web traffic that, for a time, prevented anyone from accessing the site. Their victory, however, was short-lived. Anticipating the attack, Wikileaks began moving its site from host to host and domain to domain, switching web addresses and hop-scotching traffic across a tangle of hidden locations in an effort to elude future attacks. This virtual game of "Whack-a-Mole" continues to this day.
Soon a figure familiar to the "hacktivist" community who goes by the name "The Jester" began to take credit for knocking Wikileaks offline on several occasions - for what he claimed were patriotic reasons. The Jester vowed to fight as long as Wikileaks remained online. "This is not an unprecedented attack," says Hal Roberts, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Roberts has studied denial of service - or "ddos" - attacks around the world, particularly those launched from authoritarian regimes like Burma. The Wikileaks attacks, he says, are nothing new...and neither are the boastful claims of responsibility.
"The Jester" says he's responsible for knocking Wikileaks off the Internet. "Anonymous" say they're targeting MasterCard and PayPal as punishment for stopping transfers to the controversial site. Across the web, a war is waging between supporters and opponents of Wikileaks. Will it be enough to tear a hole in the Internet?
"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is Wikileaks." - John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Over 1,200 participants had gathered online at the impromptu website anonops.net and were already several hours into their massive cyber-attack on the MasterCard website. Calling themselves "anonymous", the hackers hoped to flood the company's pages with web traffic, crashing the site - or at least gumming things up enough to make life miserable for the credit card giant. The reason: "punishment" for MasterCard's decision to stop fund transfers to Wikileaks.
An hour later, the attacks seemed to be working. But already, "hacktivists" on the other side were planning a counter-strike against Wikileaks; a strike they hoped would once again take the secret-busting website offline and out-of-view.
Welcome to the WikiWars. Across the Internet, activists, hackers, and general mischief-makers are deploying the tricks of their trade, either in support of Wikileaks' decision to publish classified U.S. diplomatic cables, or to bring Wikileaks and its allies to their knees. Using tactics such as"denial of service attacks", "Google-bombing" and others more arcane, partisans have turned the Web into a battlefield of sorts, as they debate and argue over the roles and responsibilities of journalists, online activists and governments in the digital age.
The battle may not have started with Wikileaks, but their actions have added hot fuel to the fight - and the rhetoric. "It is an ongoing act of war, of sabotage, against the United States," says Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. "That means that Wikileaks as an entity has to be declared a foreign terrorist organization, and all the people associated with it have to be treated as illegal enemy combatants."
And from the other side, the rhetoric is startlingly similar. "The first serious infowar is now engaged," wrote John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
The opening shots in this fight came almost immediately after Wilileaks' co-founder Julian Assange announced the much-anticipated publication of unseen, sometimes classified U.S. diplomatic cables on his website. Critics of the release moved quickly, swamping Wikileaks' host computers with requests; in effect, creating a virtual blizzard of web traffic that, for a time, prevented anyone from accessing the site.
Their victory, however, was short-lived. Anticipating the attack, Wikileaks began moving its site from host to host and domain to domain, switching web addresses and hop-scotching traffic across a tangle of hidden locations in an effort to elude future attacks. This virtual game of "Whack-a-Mole" continues to this day.
Soon a figure familiar to the "hacktivist" community who goes by the name "The Jester" began to take credit for knocking Wikileaks offline on several occasions - for what he claimed were patriotic reasons. The Jester vowed to fight as long as Wikileaks remained online. "This is not an unprecedented attack," says Hal Roberts, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Roberts has studied denial of service - or "ddos" - attacks around the world, particularly those launched from authoritarian regimes like Burma. The Wikileaks attacks, he says, are nothing new...and neither are the boastful claims of responsibility. "Even though there's a specific person claiming responsibility for the attacks on Wikileaks, the actual computers that are being used to attack Wikileaks are computers of people who have no idea what's going on," says Roberts. "The Jester is claiming responsibilty for attacks on Wikileaks," he says. "On the other side we have what's not really an organization but a very loose movement that calls itself 'anonymous' which is really an emergent community that organizes itself on a variety of discussion boards online." The MasterCard attack was just one skirmish.
And while both sides may lay claim to some victories, Roberts says they employ very different methods. "The Jester uses clever tricks and apparently a small number of machines; by contrast anonymous uses mass numbers of widely-distributed hackers," he says. While this "hive-mind" tactic has been employed before - notably by hackers associated with 4chan - Roberts is skeptical the 'anonymous' attacks will have much of an effect.
That's a shame, says Glick, who advocates for a much more aggressive response by the U.S. government - both in the real and the virtual worlds. "This is an act of cyber-warfare against the United States, an act of information warfare against the United States," she says. "And I haven't seen the United States bringing to bear any sort of doctrine for defending itself against this kind of attack. And that's what's so startling."
Declaring Assange and Wikileaks as illegal enemy combatants and sabateurs, she says, would "...open up a whole host of actions that you can take against Wikileaks." Among those: banning the website, cutting off its funding, apprehending and interrogating Assange, and even loosing the considerable resources of the U.S. government to knock Wikileaks off the web for good.
Glick goes a step further, saying that those media outlets that received the cables - such as the New York Times and Der Spiegel - should be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act. But, she adds, "I don't think under the current political climate in the Western world that it's possible to make the media pay a price for the kinds of things that they're doing."
She's not alone in invoking treason and punishment. California Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) has called for felony charges against Assange under the 1917 law, and Delaware Senator Joe Lieberman (I) has labeled the Australian national a traitor.
It's tough talk, and it comes as no surprise to John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. "This was gonna happen sooner or later," he says. "I actually thought it might happen before now, but this seems to be the opening salvo in what is going to be a protracted struggle."
Barlow and the EFF have been at the forefront of numerous online freedom battles, and this one is no exception. "We support the right the right to know. We support the right of a populace in a democracy to be informed," says Barlow. While granting that some of the leaked information may be "hazardous" to some individuals, the EFF is generally supportive of what Wikileaks is doing. "EFF takes the position that Wikileaks, having acquired the information, has the right to disseminate it, and nobody has the right to shut them or anyone else down online."
It's a fairly robust position of support that few other organizations have taken publicly...in part, Barlow admits, due to the complicated nature of the issues, the Wikileaks organization, and co-founder Assange. However, keeping with the battlefield metaphor, he says sometimes you choose the fight, and sometimes it chooses you. "I can't say that Mr. Assange makes the absolutely perfect poster child, especially given these allegations in Sweden, and I also think that some of the things that were released are troublesome," admits Barlow. "But you take the battle that you've got."
There are growing, and unsubstantiated, rumors online that the U.S. government may have already engaged in this cyber-battle, asserting pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or firms like Amazon and PayPal that had provided Wikileaks support or host computers - but only for a while. And there are other rumors that perhaps activists like The Jester aren't working completly alone. "Sure there are hints," says Hal Roberts. "In this case you can certainly look at these attacks and say 'Hmm, it seems like it's in the interest of the U.S. government to have this site go down', and in fact many other governments around the world that don't want these cables released." However such hints are only suspicions and notoriously difficult to prove.
In the end, most observers believe Wikileaks will remain online and continue to publish secret documents, angering many in power around the globe. And the online activists - pro and con - aren't slowing their battleplans, either.
Source: Voice of America
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Assange said to be hiding in Britain
An international manhunt is under way for WikiLeaks supremo Julian Assange, who is believed to be hiding in Britain. Interpol issued a “red notice” for the internet whistleblower who is wanted for questioning by police in Sweden after two women accused him of rape and sexual molestation. The 39-year-old Australian was added to the worldwide wanted list amid growing fury in Washington at the mass release of more than 250 000 classified US communiques.
Mark Stephens, Assange’s British-based lawyer, has questioned the timing of Interpol’s warrant, saying his client was being persecuted. But On Wednesday Scotland Yard launched a probe into the fugitive’s whereabouts after it was claimed he was holed up in a secret location in Britain. If he is held in the UK, he could face proceedings to extradite him to Sweden.
Assange lives a rootless life, has hardly any possessions and uses his Australian passport to stay with friends in various countries. Prosecutors in Sweden want to question Assange over alleged attacks on two women during a visit to Stockholm to give a lecture to the Social Democratic Party in August. He is accused of attacking one woman in Stockholm and then sexually assaulting another woman in the town of Enkoping, about 60km from the capital, three days later.
Stephens said his client had repeatedly offered to meet Swedish investigators either at the Swedish embassy in London or a UK police station. “The allegations against him are false and without basis,” he added. “In 28 years of practice I have never come across a prosecutor, whether in the third world or even in a totalitarian regime, where there has been such casual disregard by a prosecutor for their obligations. “Given that Sweden is a civilised country I am reluctantly forced to conclude that this is a persecution and not a prosecution.” He highlighted the fact that the Interpol alert was issued just two days after the WikiLeaks first release of US diplomatic cables.
An adviser to Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper has suggested Assange could be assassinated. Professor Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should “put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something” to rid the world of the Australian. Although he later rowed back from the remarks, it shows the growing anger in North America. Former US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Bradley Manning, the US army private thought to be behind the leak, should be executed. Manning is in military detention.
In other news, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit out at a “slanderous” leaked cable that described him as Batman and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as the comic book hero’s sidekick Robin. Putin - widely believed to be the real power broker in the Kremlin - took exception to America’s portrayal of him as being the one in the political tandem who called the shots. Speaking to CNN host Larry King last night, Putin said the caped crusader portrayal was “aimed to slander one of us”. It is the most high-profile condemnation of the leaks. The combative Russian leader hit back after one secret US document released by Wikileaks described him as an “alpha-dog” and another said Russia was a “virtual mafia state”. He said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was “deeply misled” in saying, according to the cables, that “Russian democracy has disappeared”.
Source: IoL
Mark Stephens, Assange’s British-based lawyer, has questioned the timing of Interpol’s warrant, saying his client was being persecuted. But On Wednesday Scotland Yard launched a probe into the fugitive’s whereabouts after it was claimed he was holed up in a secret location in Britain. If he is held in the UK, he could face proceedings to extradite him to Sweden.
Assange lives a rootless life, has hardly any possessions and uses his Australian passport to stay with friends in various countries. Prosecutors in Sweden want to question Assange over alleged attacks on two women during a visit to Stockholm to give a lecture to the Social Democratic Party in August. He is accused of attacking one woman in Stockholm and then sexually assaulting another woman in the town of Enkoping, about 60km from the capital, three days later.
Stephens said his client had repeatedly offered to meet Swedish investigators either at the Swedish embassy in London or a UK police station. “The allegations against him are false and without basis,” he added. “In 28 years of practice I have never come across a prosecutor, whether in the third world or even in a totalitarian regime, where there has been such casual disregard by a prosecutor for their obligations. “Given that Sweden is a civilised country I am reluctantly forced to conclude that this is a persecution and not a prosecution.” He highlighted the fact that the Interpol alert was issued just two days after the WikiLeaks first release of US diplomatic cables.
An adviser to Canada’s prime minister Stephen Harper has suggested Assange could be assassinated. Professor Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should “put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something” to rid the world of the Australian. Although he later rowed back from the remarks, it shows the growing anger in North America. Former US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Bradley Manning, the US army private thought to be behind the leak, should be executed. Manning is in military detention.
In other news, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit out at a “slanderous” leaked cable that described him as Batman and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as the comic book hero’s sidekick Robin. Putin - widely believed to be the real power broker in the Kremlin - took exception to America’s portrayal of him as being the one in the political tandem who called the shots. Speaking to CNN host Larry King last night, Putin said the caped crusader portrayal was “aimed to slander one of us”. It is the most high-profile condemnation of the leaks. The combative Russian leader hit back after one secret US document released by Wikileaks described him as an “alpha-dog” and another said Russia was a “virtual mafia state”. He said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was “deeply misled” in saying, according to the cables, that “Russian democracy has disappeared”.
Source: IoL
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