Wikileaks documenten #19: Langzaam het nieuwe jaar in

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http://www.citizenvox.org(...)orate-whistleblower/

In The Insider, Russell Crowe stars as a tobacco industry scientist turned corporate whistleblower. The Hollywood thriller was based on the true story of Jeffrey Wigand. While not always quite so dramatic, there are real risks to “doing the right thing.” Ralph Nader experienced this firsthand when he was targeted by automaker giant GE in 1965. Though decades have passed since GE hired a private investigator to unearth unflattering information about Nader, standing up to corporate power continues to take courage. Most recently, Public Citizen President Robert Weissman was profiled on a powerpoint presentation by the HBGary Group, a firm of computer hacks paid by the federal government with tax payer dollars to develop cyber spying mechanisms, which they in turn proffered to the law firm of the Chamber of Commerce to use against groups like Public Citizen. See DailyKos.

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has just released, The Corporate Whistleblower’s Survival Guide. The guide details key strategies for effectively blowing the whistle, common “pitfall” practices to avoid, and key survival tips when considering exposing wrongdoing at a company.

This evening, April 21, GAP and Georgetown University’s Law School will be hosting an online event featuring a discussion between the authors and noted whistleblowers. Among those participating will be Wendell Potter, noted health insurance company whistleblower who authored Deadly Spin and exposed health care insurance strategies in putting profit over people’s lives. Additionally, Dr. Janet Chandler, who earned a Supreme Court landmark victory against hospital fraud with help from her then-lawyer Barack Obama, and Larry King, Three Mile Island cleanup whistleblower, will speak.

The event can be watched live by clicking here, starting at 5:15 p.m. EDT this Thursday, April 21. Call-in questions will be taken from around the country for this event. To call in to the event, dial 1-888-757-2790 (password: 871514).

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WikiLeaks-documenten over Guantánamo-gevangenen

Verschillende kranten hebben afgelopen nacht gepubliceerd over geheime documenten over de (ex-)gevangenen in de Guantánamo Bay-gevangenis. De Amerikaanse regering is ongelukkig met de publicatie.

De zevenhonderd bestanden, waar WikiLeaks gisteren beschikking over kreeg en waar onder meer The Washington Post onmiddellijk over publiceerde, bevatten nieuwe informatie over gevangenen in Guantanamo Bay.

Informatie over gevangenen

De bestanden, zogenaamde DAB’s (Detainee Assessment Briefs) beschrijven de mate waarin een gevangene over waardevolle informatie beschikt en of die gevangene een gevaar voor de Verenigde Staten zou vormen als diegene zou worden vrijgelaten.

Tot op dit moment zijn er 604 gevangenen vrijgelaten uit Guantánamo Bay, terwijl er nog 172 vastzitten. Hoewel de informatie in de DAB’s wellicht munitie kan vormen voor mensenrechtenorganisaties die altijd hebben beweerd dat er mensen met gebrek aan bewijs in ‘Gitmo’ worden vastgehouden, blijkt toch vooral dat een aantal gevangenen veel gevaarlijker is dan tot nu toe door verschillende media werd aangenomen.

Brein achter 9/11

De bestanden bevatten onder meer informatie over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, naar wordt aangenomen het brein achter de terroristische aanslagen op 11 september 2001, en over Abd al-Rhim al-Nashiri, die in de documenten opschept dat hij inmiddels als gevaarlijker werd gezien dan Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

NRC-correspondent Titia Ketelaar in Londen schreef veelvuldig over Guantánamo Bay. Volgens haar versterkt de vrijgekomen informatie het beeld dat we al hadden van de situatie.

Sommige gevangenen zitten daar al sinds februari 2002 vast, zonder rechtszaak. De weinige informatie die we tot nu toe hadden kwam bijvoorbeeld uit FBI-dossiers die een paar jaar geleden lekten. Daaruit bleek vooral hoe de gevangenen werden behandeld. Verder heeft persbureau AP in 2006 via de rechter voor elkaar gekregen dat de namen van de gevangenen bekend werden gemaakt. Sindsdien is wel gezegd wie er zijn opgepakt, maar niet wie er werd vrijgelaten: daar hebben we nu ook een beter beeld van.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-lift-lid-prison

• Innocent people interrogated for years on slimmest pretexts
• Children, elderly and mentally ill among those wrongfully held
• 172 prisoners remain, some with no prospect of trial or release
• Read the original documents

More than 700 leaked secret files on the Guantánamo detainees lay bare the inner workings of America's controversial prison camp in Cuba.

The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how, alongside the so-called "worst of the worst", many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment.

The 759 Guantánamo files, classified "secret", cover almost every inmate since the camp was opened in 2002. More than two years after President Obama ordered the closure of the prison, 172 are still held there.

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

The old man was transported to Cuba to interrogate him about "suspicious phone numbers" found in his compound. The 14-year-old was shipped out merely because of "his possible knowledge of Taliban...local leaders"

The documents also reveal:

• US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

• Almost 100 of the inmates who passed through Guantánamo are listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strike or attempted suicide.

• A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton, Jamal al-Harith, was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques. The US military tried to hang on to another Briton, Binyam Mohamed, even after charges had been dropped and evidence emerged he had been tortured.

• US authorities relied heavily on information obtained from a small number of detainees under torture. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated.

The files also show that a large number of the detainees who have left Guantanamo were designated "high risk" by the camp authorities before their release or transfer to other countries.

The leaked files include guidance for US interrogators on how to decide whether to hold or release detainees, and how to spot al-Qaida cover stories. One warns interrogators: "Travel to Afghanistan for any reason after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 is likely a total fabrication with the true intentions being to support Usama Bin Laden through direct hostilities against the US forces."

Another 17-page file, titled "GTMO matrix of threat indicators for enemy combatants", advises interrogators to look out for signs of terrorist activity ranging from links to a number of mosques around the world, including two in London, to ownership of a particular model of Casio watch.

"The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bombmaking training courses in Afghanistan," it states.

The inclusion of association with the ISI as a "threat indicator" in this document is likely to pour fuel on the flames of Washington's already strained relationship with its key regional ally.A number of the detainee files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting al-Qaida.

Obama's inability to shut Guantánamo has been one of the White House's most internationally embarrassing policy failures. The files offer an insight into why the administration has been unable to transfer many of the 172 existing prisoners from the island prison where they remain outside the protection of the US courts or the prisoner-of-war provisions of the Geneva conventions.

The range of those still held captive includes detainees who have been admittedly tortured so badly they can never be successfully tried, informers who must be protected from reprisals, and a group of Chinese Muslims from the Uighur minority who have nowhere to go.

One of those officially admitted to have been so maltreated that it amounted to torture is prisoner No 63, Maad al-Qahtani. He was captured more than nine years ago, fleeing from the site of Osama bin Laden's last stand in the mountain caves of Tora Bora in 2001. The report says Qahtani, allegedly one of the "Dirty 30" who were Bin Laden's bodyguards, must not be released: "HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies." The report's military authors admit his admissions were obtained by what they call "harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention". But otherwise the files make little mention of the widely-condemned techniques that were employed to obtain "intelligence" and "confessions" from detainees such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold and loud music.

The files also detail how many innocents or marginal figures swept up by the Guantánamo dragnet because US forces thought they might be of some intelligence value.

One man was transferred to the facility "because he was a mullah, who led prayers at Manu mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan … which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban". US authorities eventually released him after more than a year's captivity, deciding he had no intelligence value.

Another prisoner was shipped to the base "because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver".

The files also reveal that an al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years, partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.

His dossier states that one of the reasons was "to provide information on … the al-Jazeera news network's training programme, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network's acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL".

The Guantánamo files are among hundreds of thousands of documents US soldier Bradley Manning is accused of having turned over to the WikiLeaks website more than a year ago.

The documents were obtained by the New York Times and shared with the Guardian and National Public Radio, which is publishing extracts, having redacted information which might identify informants.

A Pentagon spokesperson said: "Naturally we would prefer that no legitimately classified information be released into the public domain, as by definition it can be expected to cause damage to US national security. The situation with the Guantánamo detention facility is exceptionally complex and releasing any records will further complicate ongoing actions."

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Guantánamo files: US agencies fought internal war over handling of detainees

Professional investigators who deplored torture were repeatedly sidelined as CIA and soldiers with little training took harsh steps

One of the biggest and most explosive clashes at Guantánamo Bay has been fought not between guards and prisoners but between US interrogators, the leaked files reveal.

It was a fundamental clash of cultures: between those who stuck rigidly to US law and those who, in the frightening post-9/11 world, adopted techniques from a US manual detailing psychological and physical torture used by China during the Korean war.

In theory there was – and still is – a simple command structure at Guantánamo, run by the commander of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO in military jargon). But in reality there were lots of agencies at the naval base in Cuba, sometimes working together but more often at odds and at times barely speaking to one another.

On the ground alongside the JTF GTMO interrogators were the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), an elite unit, many of whose members had a law enforcement background and opposed the use of harsh methods.

Also in the mix was the CIA, which George Bush made the lead agency in spite of its failure to stop 9/11. Jostling for a piece of the action were the FBI and the Behavioural Science Consultation Team, a group of psychiatrists and psychologists set up by the defence department.

The files confirm that interrogators were also present from foreign intelligence services.

The battles being fought on the ground mirrored the debate and power plays in Washington, as figures such as Bush, his vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell argued over the ethics and legality of what was happening at the naval base.

The first detainees arrived at Guantánamo on 11 January 2002. Rumsfeld ordered the US Southern Command – based in Miami and responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean – to take responsibility for guarding the detainees and oversee interrogation. Southern Command on 16 February gave this role to JTF-170, which eventually became JTF GTMO.

Evidence of the in-fighting among the agencies can be found towards the end of the detainee reports, in which the camp commander assesses the risk posed by a prisoner and his intelligence value. The commander makes a recommendation whether to release, keep in detention or send to another government for imprisonment.

The final paragraph deals with "co-ordination" between the agencies and it is here that the friction surfaces. The commander often reports that CITF "defers" to JTF GTMO. "Defers" sounds dull and bureaucratic but it is a loaded word in the context of Guantánamo, reflecting a profound difference in interrogation techniques and conclusions.

Typical is a report on Saleh Abdall al-Oshan, a Saudi who was among the first to arrive at Guantanamo, in 21 January 2002. The JTF GTMO assessment, written in 2004, was that "this detainee is a member of al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network". But the commander added: "CITF assessed the detainee as a low risk on 22 March 2004. In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO's assessment that the detainee poses a medium to high risk."

Time and time again CITF is at odds with JTF GTMO but forced to defer.

CITF, whose members are drawn from the army, navy and air force, is part of the defence department and is based at Fort Belvoir, near Washington. Its approach to interrogation was to try to befriend prisoners, chat to them over tea, win their confidence and build up information gradually. Some members of the team eventually went public, in television interviews and Senate hearings, saying that harsh interrogation techniques made cases unprosecutable and were counterproductive in any case, pushing detainees into cocoons of silence.

By contrast, JTF GTMO is made up of troops from a traditional military background. They saw their mission as primarily intelligence-gathering rather than constructing a legal case. Again, in the case of Oshan, the commander's report emphasises he was transferred to Guantánamo in hopes of providing intelligence. "Detainee may provide information on the refugee camp outside Spin Buldok, AF(Afghanistan), and Islamic presence in the Philippines," the report says.

Over and over again the stress in the reports is on intelligence-gathering.

Some of the troops transferred to JTF Guantánamo had no background in interrogation. Among the first were a group from Fort Huachuca, Arizona. They had had six weeks of training in how to withstand torture – very different from conducting interrogations.

The military used harsh techniques abhorred by the CITF and the CIA went even further. It was responsible for one of the most notorious cases at Guantánamo, the waterboarding of the self-confessed al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The CIA had relative independence. It ran a secret camp, Camp Seven, whose existence only became public late on, in 2008.

Also operating on the island was the FBI, which approached interrogations in much the same way as the CITF and opposed waterboarding and similar methods. Jane Mayer, in her book The Dark Side, records one interrogation in which the FBI claimed to have been getting "phenomenal" information, only to be pushed out by a CIA team. The FBI, fearful of being implicated in something potentially illegal, fled the scene.

The role of psychologists and psychiatrists has raised medical ethical questions, given that some participated in interrogations. One of the files shows a behavioural science team winning a rare victory over the JTF GTMO in December 2003. The behavioural team assessed a detainee as "high threat" while the JTF GTMO had him as "medium threat". JTF GTMO deferred to the behavioural team.

As if the mix was not volatile enough, also on the island base at various times were intelligence officers from other countries. One of the files records that "from 3 to 10 August 2002 Pakistani intelligence officers interrogated" a detainee. Adding to the confusion, another file claims that another detainee, described by JTF GTMO as a "high risk", was also a Pakistani intelligence agent.

The early JTF GTMO commanders included Major General Michael Dunlavey and Major General Geoffrey Miller, whose names appear at the bottom of many of the detainee reports. They came under a lot of pressure from Washington to produce results after a first year that yielded little intelligence.

Miller is controversial, having served at Guantánamo from November 2002 to August 2003 before being was transferred to run prisons in Iraq. He has been accused of introducing tactics used at Guantánamo to Iraq, blurring the line between guard duties and interrogation, a move that could have contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The chain of command from Guantánamo to Washington is illustrated by a request sent by Miller's predecessor Dunlavey in 2002 which, according to a Senate investigation, asked for authorisation to use harsher interrogation techniques. It went first to General James Hill, the commander of US Southern Command, the recipient of the detainee reports. Hill forwarded it to General Richard Myers, who was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The chairman of the joint chefs is the highest-ranking military officer in the US and advises the president and defence secretary.

There was some resistance to such requests in Washington, from figures such as Powell and, to a lesser extent, Rice. But the dominant mood was in favour of harsh methods. Cheney is unrepentant: in a rare public foray he made a speech in 2008 in Washington denying that waterboarding constituted torture and insisting that the information obtained from interrogations saved lives. That line is repeated by Rumsfeld in his autobiography published this year, and Bush in his in November.

"No doubt the procedure was tough but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm," Bush wrote.

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Bradley Manning's jail conditions improve dramatically after protest campaign

Switch of WikiLeaks whistleblower suspect from maximum security jail means more rights and liberties in runup to trial

The conditions under which the WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning is being detained in military prison have vastly improved in the wake of a sustained campaign against his earlier treatment, which some said amounted to torture.

Since Manning was transferred from the Quantico marine base in Virginia to Fort Leavenworth on 20 April his detention regime has changed dramatically.

He has been switched from maximum security to medium custody, which affords him many more rights and liberties, and he is no longer being held under a prevention of injury watch that imposed harsh conditions.

The new regime has been revealed in a blog post from Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, who is handling the US soldier's forthcoming court martial.

The prisoner, who worked as an army intelligence specialist in Iraq, has been charged with multiple counts relating to the leaking of a huge trove of state secrets to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

Under the old prevention order, Manning was forced to strip naked and wear just a smock at night, he had no bedding and was not permitted any personal items in his cell. He was kept locked up in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in a windowless cell, and allowed only to walk in a yard on his own for that final hour.

In Fort Leavenworth, by contrast, he has a large window that lets in natural light. He has a normal mattress and bedding and his clothes are not removed at night.

Manning can have personal objects in his cell, including books and letters from family and friends, as well as legal documents relating to his case. He can write whenever he wants.

His new life of detention is also considerably less lonely. There are five other pretrial prisoners and Manning spends much of the day in their company. His cell is connected to a common area used by four of the detainees with a television and exercise machine, table and shower area.

The improvement in Manning's prison life is testament to the power of a sustained campaign by his supporters and politicians to end what was deemed virtual torture against him.

The Pentagon had been flooded with emails and lobbied by representatives such as Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman from Ohio who took up Manning's cause.

The UK embassy in Washington has also been involved after the Guardian revealed that Manning is a British citizen by dint of his mother being Welsh.

Kucinich said the lawyer's account of Manning's new conditions revealed a dramatic change "that can only be attributed to the public campaign that brought great pressure on the department of defence".

But Manning's more relaxed treatment also raises serious questions about why he was treated so brutally for the nine months in which he was held at Quantico. When Barack Obama was asked about the case in March, he said he had been assured by the Pentagon that Manning's treatment was appropriate.

Kucinich said he would continue to press through Congress for answers to a number of questions: "Why was Manning treated the way he was in Quantico that was similar to torture? Who was responsible for that treatment, and what's going to be done to ensure those individuals are held to account?"

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Julian Assange krijgt zelfde vredesprijs als Mandela en Dalai Lama

WikiLeaksoprichter Julian Assange heeft vandaag een prestigieuze onderscheiding ontvangen tijdens een ceremonie in Londen. De Australiër kreeg de gouden medaille van de Sydney Peace Foundation, een vredesprijs die de afgelopen veertien jaar pas vier keer werd uitgereikt.

Onder eerdere prijswinnaars waren de Zuid-Afrikaanse oud-president en anti-apartheidsactivist Nelson Mandela en de geestelijke leider in ballingschap van Tibet, de Dalai Lama.

Assange verzet zich op dit moment tegen een uitleveringsverzoek, dat is ingediend door Zweden in verband met een zedenzaak in dat land, waarin hij is aangemerkt als verdachte. De Verenigde Staten willen Assange ook, wegens de publicatie van honderdduizenden geheime overheidsdocumenten. Sommige Amerikaanse politici hebben ervoor gepleit dat WikiLeaks de status krijgt van een internationale terroristische organisatie.


Uitdaging
De jury prijst Assange en WikiLeaks juist omdat zij een uitdaging vormen voor 'eeuwenoude praktijken van geheimhouding door overheden' en door op te komen voor het recht van mensen om hier kennis van te nemen. 'Wij denken dat jij en WikiLeaks iets hebben voortgebracht, dat een waterscheiding inhoudt voor de journalistiek en in de vrijheid van informatie en in potentie van de politiek', zei professor Stuart Rees, directeur van de Sydney Peace Foundation, tegen Assange. De stichting wordt gesteund door de universiteit van Sydney en door het gemeentebestuur van deze miljoenenstad.

Rees uitte harde kritiek op de Australische regering en op Amerikaanse politici. Australië zou Washington steun geven terwijl de Amerikanen zich zouden gedragen als een 'totalitaire staat'. De jury van de vredesprijs is 'ontzet over het gewelddadige gedrag van belangrijke politici in de VS'.

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Op donderdag 12 mei 2011 10:15 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:
Assange wordt gekker en gekker:

[..]

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Why I blew the whistle about Palestine

Israel's attack on Gaza and the disastrous 'peace talks' compelled me to leak what I knew

Ziyad Clot
The Guardian, Saturday 14 May 2011

In Palestine, the time has come for national reconciliation. On the eve of the 63rd
commemoration of the Nakba – the uprooting of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948 – this is a long-awaited and hopeful moment. Earlier this year the release by al-Jazeera and the Guardian of 1,600 documents related to the so-called peace process caused deep consternation among Palestinians and in the Arab world. Covering more than 10 years of talks (from 1999 to 2010) between Israel and the PLO, the Palestine papers illustrated the tragic consequences of an inequitable and destructive political process which had been based on the assumption that the Palestinians could in effect negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation.

My name has been circulated as one of the possible sources of these leaks. I would like to clarify here the extent of my involvement in these revelations and explain my motives. I have always acted in the best interest of the Palestinian people, in its entirety, and to the full extent of my capacity.

My own experience with the "peace process" started in Ramallah, in January 2008, after I was recruited as an adviser for the negotiation support unit (NSU) of the PLO, specifically in charge of the Palestinian refugee file. That was a few weeks after a goal had been set at the Annapolis conference: the creation of the Palestinian state by the end of 2008. Only 11 months into my job, in November of that year, I resigned. By December 2008, instead of the establishment of a state in Palestine, I witnessed on TV the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army.

My strong motives for leaving my position with the NSU and my assessment of the "peace process" were clearly detailed to Palestinian negotiators in my resignation letter dated of 9th November 2008.

The "peace negotiations" were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, was instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions among Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the seven million Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months in Ramallah confirmed that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

Tragically, the Palestinians were left uninformed of the fate of their individual and collective rights in the negotiations, and their divided political leaderships were not held accountable for their decisions or inaction. After I resigned, I believed I had a duty to inform the public.

Shortly after the Gaza war I started to write about my experience in Ramallah. In my 2010 book, Il n'y aura pas d'Etat Palestinien (There will be no Palestinian State), I concluded: "The peace process is a spectacle, a farce, played to the detriment of Palestinian reconciliation, at the cost of the bloodshed in Gaza." In full conscience, and acting independently, I later agreed to share some information with al-Jazeera specifically with regard to the fate of Palestinian refugee rights in the 2008 talks. Other sources did the same, although I am unaware of their identity. Taking these tragic developments of the "peace process" to a wider Arab and western audience was justified because it was in the public interest of the Palestinian people. I had – and still have – no doubt that I had a moral, legal and political obligation to proceed accordingly.

Today, I am relieved that this first-hand information is available to Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, in Israel and in exile. In a way, Palestinian rights are back in their holders' possession and the people are now in a position to make enlightened decisions about the future of their struggle. I am also glad that international stakeholders to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can access these documents. The world can no longer overlook that while Palestinians' strong commitment to peace is genuine, the fruitless pursuit of a "peace process" framed according to the exclusive conditions of the occupying power leads to compromises which would be unacceptable in any other region of the globe.

Finally, I feel reassured that the people of Palestine overwhelmingly realise that the reconciliation between all their constituents must be the first step towards national liberation. The Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinians living in exile have a common future. The path to Palestinian self-determination will require the participation of all in a renewed political platform.

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Twitter users and the courts go to war over footballer's injunction


Social networks accused of making 'an ass of the law' as injunction spirals into online battle over freedom of speech

Attempts to identify a famous footballer hiding behind a privacy injunction have spiralled into an online battle over freedom of speech, as internet users responded to high court action by repeatedly naming him on Twitter.

The high court granted a search order against the US-based microblogging site on Friday as the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, warned that "modern technology was totally out of control" and called for those who "peddle lies" on the internet to be fined. The attempt to compel Twitter to identify those responsible for the breaches comes after a number of its users earlier this month purported to reveal the name of the player who allegedly had an affair with the model Imogen Thomas.

The footballer's legal team began its action in London on Wednesday. There is a suspicion that a media company may be linked to the postings on Twitter, which were put up nearly two weeks ago.

But the name of the footballer was spreading even more rapidly across Twitter in defiance of the court injunction, setting the stage for a confrontation between the judiciary and cyberspace.

Earlier Lord Judge – welcoming a juridical report on superinjunctions – said readers placed greater trust in the content of traditional media than those "who peddle lies" on websites.

He urged that ways be found to curtail the "misuse of modern technology", in the same way that those involved with online child pornography were pursued by the police.

"Are you really going to say that someone who has a true claim for protection perfectly well made has to be at the mercy of modern technology?" he asked.

The lawsuit lists the defendants as "Twitter Inc and persons unknown".

The "persons unknown" are described as those "responsible for the publication of information on the Twitter accounts".

Lawyers have applied for a court order that could force Twitter to hand over the name, email address and IP address of the person behind the account, the Guardian understands.

The orders – known as a Norwich Pharmacal orders – are commonly used in illegal filesharing cases.

The Guardian understands that the claim form, filed to the high court by the footballer's legal team, will not be made public until next week. Earlier this month, an unknown person or individuals published on a Twitter account the names of various people who had allegedly taken out gagging orders to conceal sexual indiscretions.

The account rapidly attracted more than 100,000 followers.

Twitter said: "We are unable to comment." The London-based law firm representing the footballer had also not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

Twitter and other social networks were accused of making "an ass of the law" by the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and politicians after a number of celebrities with injunctions were allegedly exposed online.

The socialite Jemima Khan was among those alleged on Twitter to have obtained an injunction.

Khan described as a "bloody nightmare" rumours suggesting falsely that she had obtained a gagging order to prevent publication of "intimate photos" of herself and the TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson.

Twitter has in the past said that it "strive[s] not to remove tweets on the basis of their content", but that it would remove "illegal tweets and spam".

Previous defamation claims against the search engine Google failed on the grounds that it is not a publisher and not responsible for the contents of the blogs and articles listed in its search results.

Richard Hillgrove, the owner of Hillgrove PR, which provides advice to celebrities, said that Twitter needed to be made as accountable as any other medium.

"It has gone from 'the back bedroom' to mainstream medium.

"Celebrities are being held to account if they Tweet commercial interests. It works both ways," he said.

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US put pressure on Saudi Arabia to let women drive, leaked cables reveal

Documents given to WikiLeaks show Obama administration pushed Saudis to give female citizens more rights

The Obama administration has been quietly putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to allow women to drive, according to leaked US embassy cables.

But the jailing of woman protester Manal al-Sharif after she posted an online video of herself at the wheel of a car in Khobar reveals the extent of US diplomatic failure regarding the ban.

The cables, part of the trove allegedly given to WikiLeaks by the US soldier Bradley Manning, reveal previously unreported clashes over women's rights.

Dispatches from Riyadh describe Saudi Arabia as "the world's largest women's prison". Those words are a quote from one female campaigner US diplomats have been in contact with, Wajeha al-Huwaider.

She too posted a video on YouTube in 2008 of herself driving. Saying millions of Saudi women were prisoners in their homes, she challenged male control over work and travel.

She regularly tries to take a taxi to neighbouring Bahrain: "Al-Huwaider is divorced which means under Saudi law her ex-husband or her father or a brother would need to give her permission to leave the country.

"Although she holds a valid passport, every time she tries to leave ... she is stopped at the border to Bahrain and turned around."

The billionaire tycoon Prince Waleed, a Saudi royal, assured a visiting Democrat congressman in July 2009 that King Abdullah did support women's rights, the embassy noted optimistically. The driving ban was reportedly about to be overturned.

Speaking at his 99-storey Kingdom Tower in Riyadh, Waleed said the ban was merely a "demeaning" tribal custom and that he "relished relating his run-ins with the kingdom's religious conservatives. He was involved with the first public showings of films in the kingdom in many years. His wife has openly requested that women be allowed to drive. He supports French president Sarkozy's campaign against women wearing coverings hiding their faces."

Abdullah appointed the country's first woman deputy minister in 2009 and opened "with much fanfare" a mixed-sex science university, in front of foreign dignitaries including Prince Andrew.

The embassy noted approvingly "several subtle, symbolic gestures ... Saudi men and women, many of whom did not wear the face-covering niqab, mingled freely with international attendees throughout the ceremony. Male and female students stood side by side on stage for an emotive reading of a poem. The ceremony was interspaced with a movie showing (uncovered) young girls and boys studying together".

But there was an immediate backlash. Saad Nasser al-Shithri, a cleric from the council of senior scholars, appeared on the Saudi religious TV channel to defy the king.

He denounced "mixing of the sexes" and "the teaching of deviant ideas such as evolution".

Abdullah was forced to sack him, but embassy contacts warned privately that Al-Shithri was being regarded as a hero by unemployed young Saudis, who resented foreign students getting advantages, and by reactionary clerics who feared a plot to impose western values.

Another cleric, Sheikh Salman al-Duwaysh, publicly attacked "mixing with women on the basis of claiming to educate them and to open the field for them to undertake jobs for which they were not created".

He said such women had "abandoned their basic duties such as housekeeping, bringing up children ... and replaced this by beautifying themselves and wantonness".

The embassy was refused consent for a US "rhythm and oratory duo" called Teasley and Williams to play to a mixed audience at the university.

But the duo did appear at the Riyadh literary society before "an unprecedented mixed-gender audience (mixed by Saudi standards – the handful of women who attended sat in a screened-off block of seats across the aisle from the men). Nonetheless, the fact that women were even invited to a musical performance with men in Riyadh is remarkable".

Obama's envoy, Richard Erdman, privately scolded Saudi ministers to little effect.

He "pointedly" told the notoriously reactionary interior minister, Prince Naif, that "no nation could prosper without the intellectual contributions and talent of all its citizens ... (ie women)".

He said the same to the deputy foreign minister, who responded wryly that "customs were a hard nut to crack".

In a dispatch headed Women Need Not Apply, US diplomats recorded that US-educated Prince Mansur, the minister of municipal affairs, firmly rejected the notion that political development required the participation of women saying issues such as women driving were "not fundamental to our society".

According to the US diplomats, the driving ban is in fact something of a charade which "dates from a 1991 fatwa issued by the late grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Baz. The grand mufti claimed that allowing women to drive would result in public 'mixing' of men and women, put women into dangerous situations because they could be alone in cars, and therefore result in social chaos".

The cable continued: "Women drive anyway: there are, in fact, many instances in which Saudi women defy the prohibition.

"Women drive on private property such as desert farms or residential compounds beyond reach of police.

"Embassy contacts and media report that in rural areas women routinely drive out of necessity, without being stopped.

"Al-Hayat newspaper reported 16 February ... a woman driving in some Saudi villages is considered normal."

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW! The “Wikileaks Truck Driver” Clark Stoeckley – Creator of “Wikileaks Top Secret Mobile Collection Unit”

– Artist, Activist, Entertainer and Wiki-Prankster

“Though I am not connected to Wikileaks, I believe we are all Wikileaks.”

Wikileaks Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit

quote:

Assange leeft als 'een gekooid dier' (video)

Julian Assange leeft een sober en gecontroleerd bestaan. Hij wordt behandeld als een veroordeelde crimineel, vinden zijn sympathisanten. Zij maakten een video van zijn eerste half jaar onder huisarrest: 191 dagen zonder aanklacht.

Assange staat momenteel onder huisarrest in Groot-Brittannië. Daar buigt een rechter zich over een Zweeds uitleveringsverzoek. Justitie in Zweden verdenkt Assange van seksueel misbruik van twee vrouwen. Omdat hij geen vast adres in Groot-Brittanië had, nam de WikiLeaks-oprichter zijn intrek bij Vaughan Smith, een excentrieke Engelsman met een groot landhuis. Hij moet zich iedere dag melden bij het politiebureau in Norfolk nabij het landhuis, heeft dikke enkelbanden om die zijn bewegingen monitoren en hij moet iedere dag voor 22.00 uur terug in het huis zijn.

Impact
In een 5 minuten durende video, die de Britse krant The Telegraph gisteren publiceerde, is te zien hoeveel impact het op het leven van Assange heeft. Zijn assistente Sarah Harrison zegt: 'Ik ben Brits, en ben altijd trots geweest op ons rechtssysteem. Maar dit is gewoon verkeerd. Deze man is niet eens officieel aangeklaagd en wordt behandeld als een gekooid dier.' Joseph Farrell, ook betrokken bij WikiLeaks, zegt: 'Hij wordt behandeld als een veroordeelde crimineel.'

Op een gegeven moment willen ze filmen als het bedrijf dat de elektronische enkelbanden komt controleren. Hierop vertrekken de werknemers omdat ze niet willen worden gefilmd, en krijgt Assange meteen een waarschuwing via zijn advocaat.

Ook zijn er volgens Vaughan Smith nummerplaatcamera's bij de drie ingangen van zijn landhuis geplaatst, die er eerst nog niet waren.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange releases video blog of his house arrest

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Op dinsdag 21 juni 2011 17:28 schreef -Strawberry- het volgende:
Waarom komt wikileaks nooit meer in het nieuws? Er zou toch nog heel veel gelekt worden?

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Haiti: WikiLeaks reveals contractor 'gold rush' after quake

Disaster capitalists flocked to Haiti in a “gold rush” for contracts to rebuild the country after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, wrote the current US ambassador Kenneth Merten in a secret Febuary 1, 2010 cable obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Haiti Liberte.

“THE GOLD RUSH IS ON!” Merten headlined a section of his 6pm situation report ― or Sitrep ― back to Washington.

“As Haiti digs out from the earthquake, different [US] companies are moving in to sell their concepts, products and services,” he wrote. “President [Rene] Preval met with Gen Wesley Clark Saturday [on January 30] and received a sales presentation on a hurricane/earthquake resistant foam core house designed for low income residents.”

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One of WikiLeaks' greatest achievements has been to expose the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational corporations have over Washington's diplomacy.

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Haiti: Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army

Drawing on almost 2,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Haiti released by WikiLeaks, a partnership between The Nation magazine and the Haitian weekly, Haïti Liberté, exposes new details on how Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked with the United States to block an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, how business owners and members of the country’s elite used Haiti’s police force as their own private army after the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and how the United States, the European Union and the United Nations supported Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections, despite concerns over the exclusion of Haiti’s largest opposition party, Lavalas, the party of Aristide. We speak with the reports’ authors, longtime Haiti correspondent Dan Coughlin and Haïti Liberté editor, Kim Ives. [includes rush transcript]

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Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration

The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is. On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.

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2011-06-25 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases, #WikiLeaks & More

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update," constantly updated throughout each day. The blog tracks stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks but also follows stories related to freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, freedom of expression, and sometimes the national security establishment of the United States because each issue/topic helps one further understand WikiLeaks and vice versa. All the times are GMT.

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http://wlcentral.org/node/1962

02:20 AM 'What Wikileaks Reveals about Canadian and U.S. Efforts in Suppression and Surveillance of Indigenous Communities': a comprehensive selection of articles.

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WikiLeaks Intends To Sue Visa And MasterCard For Blocking Payment

WikiLeaks and its credit card processing partner Datacell have just announced their intent to file suit in the EU against credit card companies Visa and Mastercard for blocking donations to the service last year.

In early December the two payments companies cut off all payments to the relatively quiet as of late organization, with Mastercard citing that its “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” The legality of WikiLeaks itself is still a matter of debate.

However, Visa and Mastercard were not alone in withdrawing their support, as both PayPal and Amazon also pulled their services from WikiLeaks, which facilitates anonymous leaks of sensitive information including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks does not mention Amazon or PayPal in the suit.

WikiLeaks is holding that the PayPal and Visa blocks count as “anti-competitive” and violate Article 101 (1) and 102 of the EU competition laws, seeking to file a complaint in the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court. As of yet, according to the release, that complaint has not been filed.

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Here’s The Legal Complaint WikiLeaks Is Threatening To File Against Visa, MasterCard

More than six months have passed since Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and others cut WikiLeaks’ purse strings. And if that blockade lasts six more days, the secret-spilling group plans to take its financial fight to the courtroom.

If Visa Europe and MasterCard Europe haven’t re-opened payment WikiLeaks by next Thursday, the group and its payment provider DataCell plan to file a complaint with the E.U. Commission against the two companies as well as the Danish payment processor Teller, according to Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, the Icelandic lawyer for WikiLeaks and DataCell.

“They’re boycotting Datacell and Wikileaks without any objective justification,” says Sveinsson. “This is clearly an abuse of their market dominance.”

According to Sveinsson, the following complaint was sent to the two companies earlier this month, and will be filed with the E.U. Commission at an appointment Thursday if the situation isn’t resolved by then.

[Document te zien op de site]

The complaint argues that the three payment firms have violated Articles 101 and 102 of the E.U. Treaty, which deal with competition among businesses and forbid the creation of anti-competitive cartels. Article 101 prevents firms from creating partnerships for the purposes of price fixing, and Article 102 forbids firms in a “dominant position” from abusing that position.

Both Visa and MasterCard have claimed that payments to WikiLeaks and DataCell were suspended because they potentially violate the companies’ terms of service. MasterCard has gone as far explaining that it prohibits “customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” Visa has stated that it is investigating “the nature of [WikiLeaks] business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules.”

A Visa spokesperson told me earlier this month that the company would “respond in due course” to WikiLeaks’ threat of legal action. I’ve put out requests to both companies for further comment but haven’t yet heard back.

Teller has already completed an investigation into WikiLeaks’ legality, and in January stated in a report to Visa that it could find no proof that WikiLeaks had broken any laws.

WikiLeaks’ and DataCell’s complaint makes no specific claims of monetary damages. But a video released by WikiLeaks earlier this week implied that the termination of credit card payments to WikiLeaks has cost it $15 million.

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Cablegate: Visa and MasterCard face legal problems over WikiLeaks blockade

After more than six months of preparation, WikiLeaks and DataCell are moving forward with a lawsuit, looking to end the financial blockade brought by Visa and MasterCard. According to WikiLeaks, Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe, and Teller are the three businesses highlighted by the complaint.

“…U.S. influenced, financial blockade…”

On December 7, 2010, DataCell announced to the world that Visa Europe suspended their accounts due to them processing donations to WikiLeaks. They were asked to stop processing donations in exchange for service restoration, but DataCell refused, explaining that the request to do so was based on untrue and unverified accusations.

A day later, DataCell’s payment processor, Teller, started suspending all Visa transactions through DataCell, on the request of Visa Europe. The reasoning behind Visa Europe’s request was to “investigate the case in order to protect the Visa brand name; and to make sure neither payment processor nor Visa Europe is doing illegitimate transactions to fund the WikiLeaks website.”

For those same reasons, Teller suspended DataCell’s MasterCard account as well. The block on DataCell has prevented them from collecting WikiLeaks-related donations, as well as collecting payments via credit card for other services, including their primary business as a data center and hosting provider.

“… [Visa] is clearly an attempt trying to undermine WikiLeaks through financial mean. This is not about the Visa brand name. This is about politics. Visa should not be involved in it (sic),” DataCell said in a statement.

In March, Teller said that they found nothing wrong with DataCell’s processes within the legal framework governing the credit transactions. They asked that Visa Europe, as well as MasterCard Europe, allow them to reopen DataCell’s accounts. Visa Europe refused, and MasterCard’s stance is unknown, but it is understood that they were working with Teller on the matter.

However, the fact that DataCell was still unable to process payments led them to announce the hiring of a legal team in Iceland, Denmark, and U.K. “…to present our case in the courts.”

“Our goal is to get the justice fulfilled. We believe it's our right to conduct businesses in a legal way just like any other companies. The legal opinion we have got from our law firms and legal professors around the western world is, simply, Visa behaves like the worst kind of mafia with their behaviour…It's not in the hands of Visa to decide what is illegal and what's not.”

When speaking to Icelandic media, DataCell’s founder, Olaf Sigurvinsson, added to his company’s statements.

“…I can support Al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan, buy me a weapon, drugs and all kinds of porn with a Visa card…while I can not support human rights organization which campaigns for freedom of expression.”

quote:

is a different type of Distributed Denial-of-Service attack

In each example, the financial giants revoked access due to something that has never been proven in any court of law. To this day, most of the public and media has ignored the irony:

The moment they revoked financial access to WikiLeaks, these five organizations were starting their own DDoS attack against WikiLeaks.

This DDoS attack impacts the way WikiLeaks can collect donations, and like other forms of DDoS, it denies innocent consumers the ability spend their money as they wish. Given the freedom stripped from consumers, one would think this would be a rather large issue, but its gone ignored for the most part. Perhaps that is because WikiLeaks supporters are in the minority.

The issue is one of financial freedom. The world over, consumers will find it hard to use a debit or credit card issued from a bank without it coming from MasterCard or Visa. Unfortunately, when one signs the customer agreement forms, they agree to abide by the credit card companys terms. This means if Visa, MasterCard, or banks like BoA, wish to restrict how you can spend your money - as is the case here - they are well within their rights to do so. It is all in the fine print. The question is, do you as a consumer think this is fair?

Its a holiday weekend in the U.S., and spokespersons from the EU were unavailable at the time this story was written. Well update with new information on the lawsuit and any comments as we get them.

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Op dinsdag 5 juli 2011 14:58 schreef Sloggi het volgende:
Leeft Julien Assange nog?

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Op dinsdag 5 juli 2011 15:00 schreef Sloggi het volgende:
Hoe zit het met die aanklacht tegen hem? Loopt die nog of is die een stille dood gestorven?

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Navy medic detained for refusing training over WikiLeaks claims

Michael Lyons sentenced to seven months' detention after developing moral objections to Afghanistan conflict

A Royal Navy medic has been sentenced to seven months' detention for refusing rifle training prior to deployment in Afghanistan after developing moral objections, following revelations made by WikiLeaks.

Michael Lyons, 25, was found guilty of wilful disobedience of a lawful order at a military hearing in Plymouth on Tuesday. He had served in the navy since 2005 as a medial assistant submariner. He was demoted to the rank of able seaman and dismissed from the service.

Lyons's case was the first heard by the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objectors, which considers appeals to resign or retire on moral grounds from serving forces personnel, since 1996, and was one of only 37 cases considered by the committee in its 41-year life. The committee rejected Lyons's appeal for conscientious objector status in December 2010, leading to Tuesday's hearing.

The court martial, at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth, heard that on 20 September 2010, Lyons refused to train in the use of an SA80 assault rifle as part of pre-deployment training, repeatedly requesting to be assigned to a non-combat role.

Speaking in court, Lyons confirmed he had no physical or mental impairment preventing him following orders, but had chosen to disobey orders based on his personal convictions.

"My initial objections started with Afghanistan and I wanted to investigate the reasons why we were at war. At the time WikiLeaks came along and mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan. The reports said there had been some civilian casualties that nobody knew about and they were being covered up," he said. "After a lot of deliberation I decided I was a conscientious objector."

Lyons claimed he was told he would be barred from treating Afghan civilians, and this formed part of his objection.

He said: "We were put into scenarios and in one of these a family had been walking for two days to our base. The child had a birth defect that was causing it pain and the instructor asked us whether they would get treatment. I said we would offer them whatever we could, but I was shouted down by an officer who said it was a waste of resources."

Warrant Officer Robert Bainbridge, who issued the training order, told the court he spent several hours discussing Lyons's ethical objections.

"We spent six hours in my office talking about the issue. I told him that as a medic he is in a combative and non-combative role and had an inherent right to self-defence. He briefed me that he felt that the war in Afghanistan was unjust, but I told him I was not sending him to war, I was training him how to use a rifle."

Lyons was unable to speak publicly about his case, but his wife Lillian wrote in the Guardian that she felt Lyons's appeal for conscientious objector status was damaged because of his lack of religious belief.

"[Michael] was ordered to see a chaplain, even though Michael is an atheist, and the chaplain's statement implied Michael had a slight political reservation, not a moral objection," she said. "If Michael had been dishonest and said he was a committed Christian, and because of his faith he could not be part of war on moral grounds, perhaps this would have been over in an instant."

Emma Sangster, co-ordinator of pressure group Forces Watch, which has offered support to Lyons through his case, said Lyons's treatment highlighted a need for reform of the law around conscientious objection.

"The simple injustice of Michael's treatment illustrates how the government and the Ministry of Defence repeatedly fail to recognise conscientious objection in practice," she said. "We urge MPs to uphold the human rights of forces personnel by clarifying and strengthening the right to conscientious objection, and the procedures for it in the armed forces bill currently going through parliament."

The Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the case

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Sex, lies, no videotape and more lies. False accusations in the Assange case

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

A “ducktest” is a method to try to figure out the true nature of an entity by studying its identifiable character traits. A simple method to reveal that a subject is not what it purports to be.

Allegations of sexual abuse that bear all the signs of being fake and lacking credibility is almost certainly false.

In the Assange case it is obvious that a “ducktest” has not yet been made by police and prosecutors. It is easy to see. For had it been done it could be seen that one of the plaintiff’s, charges, Anna Ardin’s, against Julian Assange are almost certainly false.

The Assange case was handled strangely from the beginning. The lack of quality in the investigation is evident. What is perhaps most disturbing is that since September 1, 2010 the matter was handled by a “highly qualified investigative unit” under the direction of the superior prosecutor Marianne Ny. If this is the best that Sweden has to offer with regard to investigations of sexual abuse, we have a huge problem with getting justice for victims of sexual abuse. If police and prosecutors cannot distinguish between true and false reports, it becomes very difficult to prosecute the real perpetrators.

An aide to false allegations?

The Assange case brings another important issue into focus. What is the complainant’s counsel (“mċlsägarbiträde”, non prosecution lawyer representing and supporting complainants) task during the process? If a complainant’s counsel reasonably assumes that the plaintiff’s allegations of sexual abuse are false, what is that counsel supposed to do? It cannot be that a complainant’s counsel’s mission is to support a plaintiff’s false accusations and to help ensure that an innocent person is tried and possibly convicted. If the complainant’s counsel helps a plaintiff to make false accusations what is the responsibility of that counsel? Abetting false accusation is what it is. And it should of course be punished. But what does the law say? Is it a crime? And what does the Bar’s disciplinary body say? Claes Borgström’s conduct in the Assange case must be thoroughly examined.

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WikiLeaks MasterCard, Visa Donations Accepted Again

LONDON — WikiLeaks has again begun accepting credit card donations, a company affiliated with the secret-spilling site said Thursday.

Andreas Fink, the chief executive of Icelandic payment processor DataCell, told The Associated Press that Visa and MasterCard were again processing payments to WikiLeaks after a seven month hiatus. Fink claimed the move was a tacit admission of guilt on behalf of the credit card companies, but it may well have been accidental.

Visa Europe spokesman Simon Kleine told AP that processing the payments was "not something that we've sanctioned" and that the company was investigating.

Both Visa and MasterCard pulled the plug on Fink's service in early December, shortly after WikiLeaks began publishing about 250,000 U.S. State Department cables. But Fink said Thursday that card services had been restored – saying that lawyers had made sure of it by making test donations.

An email and phone calls seeking comment from MasterCard were not immediately returned.

quote:

Anon_Central Anonymous Operations
Update 4:30 p.m. : Visa sent us this statement: "We have not reinstated DataCell and are looking into how transactions are being made." CNET

quote:

Visa Says It's Still Not Processing Transactions for WikiLeaks

Contrary to widely-circulated reports in the Associated Press and Forbes, Visa did not lift its financial blockade on WikiLeaks, a Visa spokesperson tells The Atlantic Wire. Earlier today, headlines splashed across the web "WikiLeaks MasterCard, Visa Donations Accepted Again" after Andreas Fink, the chief executive of DataCell, an internet hosting service in Iceland that helps channel money to WikiLeaks, posted a note on his company's web site saying, "DataCell is happy to report that we are now able again to process donations to Wikileaks." The AP and Forbes were careful to note that neither MasterCard nor Visa had confirmed the report. Now, Visa is making it clear: "We have not reinstated DataCell and are looking into how transactions are being made."

In his statement, Fink suggested that the credit card companies had made an about-face after his recent legal threats against the financial firms. "Last week, WikiLeaks and DataCell said they were preparing to take the credit card companies to court in Denmark," reported the AP. "On its website, WikiLeaks claims that the block placed on WikiLeaks by companies such as MasterCard and Visa have cost it more than 90 percent of its donations, or $15 million."

Fink's note said that its "payment gateway" to Visa and MasterCard provided by Teller A/S had been closed since December. He wrote, "today we have observed that an alternative payment processor that we have contracted with, has in fact opened the gateway for payments with Visa and MasterCard, and now also for American Express Card payments, which is an option we did not had before." He added a taunt: "DataCell is happy that our threats of legal action have had this effect."

As of late WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been doing everything he can to raise funds for his organization, including writing a book (a reported $1.7 million haul that is now being delayed) and raffling off seats at lunch with him and philosopher Slavoj Zizek.

We've reached out to MasterCard but have not heard back. We spoke with PayPal, another firm that imposed a financial blockade on WikiLeaks last December and the company said its position is unchanged. "There has been no change to PayPal's policy regarding donations to support Wikileaks. However, we are allowing payments for the Julian Assange legal defense fund via a facebook fundrazr app."

Update: DataCell CEO Andreas Fink sends an e-mail clarifying what his company observed:

Donations on https://donations.datacell.com are being processed.
I can confirm you that my own test got charged on my personal credit card statement.
I personally retested a minute ago and my donation went through without any problem (unless I messed up the expiration date or so).

Maybe Visa has no clue what their own payment processors are doing?

quote:

APNewsBreak: Visa again blocks funds for WikiLeaks


LONDON (AP) — Visa said Friday it has closed a donation channel to WikiLeaks after a payment processor briefly accepted money transfers to the anti-secrecy site.

Visa and MasterCard were two of several financial and Internet service companies that severed ties to WikiLeaks following its disclosure of thousands of confidential U.S. documents. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims the 7-month-long blockade has cost his online group millions.

But on Thursday both companies appeared to abruptly change course when WikiLeaks' payment processor, DataCell ehf, announced that donations to the site were again being processed.

That appears to have been an accident, at least as far as Visa Europe Ltd. was concerned. In an email to The Associated Press, the company said that one of its financial partners had "briefly accepted payments on a merchant site linked to WikiLeaks."

"As soon as this came to our attention, action was taken with the suspension of Visa payment acceptance to the site remaining in place," the company said.

It's unclear how many payments were accepted, or even if they were fully processed. DataCell Chief Executive Andreas Fink confirmed to the AP that credit card payments appeared to have halted, but said he couldn't know for sure why.

He added that he wouldn't know how many payments had been successfully made to WikiLeaks until technical staff examined the logs.

MasterCard did not return emails and phone calls seeking comment.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juli 2011 12:51 schreef Sloggi het volgende:
Voel je je niet eenzaam hier?

quote:

Anonymous threatens police over phone hacking and Julian Assange


Senior source inside hacker collective seeks to embarrass Metropolitan police and judges with 'explosive' revelations

Figures at the top of hackers' collective Anonymous are threatening to attack the Metropolitan police's computer systems and those controlled by the UK judicial system, warning that Tuesday will be "the biggest day in Anonymous's history".

The collective is understood to be seeking to express anger over News International's phone hacking and at the threatened extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A Twitter feed purporting to belong to Sabu, a senior figure within the group and the founder of the spin-off group LulzSec, which hacked a site linked to the CIA and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, promised two releases of information would be launched within a day.

"Everyone brace," he tweeted. "This will be literally explosive."

A follow-up message read: "ATTN Intelligence community: Your contractors have failed you. Tomorrow is the beginning."

The account, @anonymouSabu, has not been verified as belonging to Sabu – but it has over 7,700 followers and has been referenced by the "official" Anonymous @anon_central account on Twitter.

Sources close to the collective were unusually close-lipped about the targets of tomorrow's hack, but talk within chat channels has suggested several top-level members of Anonymous are eager to launch attacks based around Julian Assange's appeal hearing against extradition, which begins on Tuesday.

Others are also believed to have proposed targeting the Met in retaliation for alleged payments to police officers by News of the World reporters, and the general response to the phone hacking scandal.

Other speculation centres around material claimed to have been obtained last week from contractors relating to security and secrecy of "former world leaders", or plans to target a senior leaders' retreat at Bohemian Grove, California.

As is typical in the chaotic and occasionally paranoid Anonymous community, other sources close to the collective are warning some prominent members are probably engaging in "disinformation campaigns" ahead of any action.

Communication problems around the planned releases were compounded as the main chat channel used by Anonymous was offline for much of Monday, leaving even those close to senior members of the collective unable to verify rumours ahead of the release.

Rumours on Friday suggested that one Anonymous member had broken into the News International servers and taken copies of some internal emails which were being offered for sale or even ransom. However this could not be confirmed, and the Guardian has not seen any evidence that the claimed email stash is legitimate, although News International's site is understood to have been "probed" by members of Anonymous at the end of last week.

Last Wednesday, two days after the Dowler revelations, a listing of emails of NoW staff appeared on Pastebin, a favourite site for posting the results – or beginnings – of attacks against all sorts of sites by Anonymous and other hacker groups.

One source told the Guardian that News International's server had been probed for up to 30 minutes at a time last week by hackers using "proxy chaining" – a method of logging in via a number of remote computers – to disguise their identity. "Everyone thinks Interpol will get involved at some point," the source said.

The hackers' anger at the company was ignited by the revelation last week that a private detective acting for NoW had listened into voicemails on the phone of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler, which may have interfered with the police investigation to find her.

Anonymous has previously attacked PayPal and Visa over their refusal, following orders from the US government, to process donations for WikiLeaks. It has also carried out online attacks against the Church of Scientology over what is seen as suppression of information.

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Assange vecht morgen weer tegen zijn uitlevering naar Zweden

WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange staat morgenochtend weer voor de Britse rechter om tegen zijn uitlevering naar Zweden vechten. Assange wordt beschuldigd van verkrachting en aanranding van twee vrouwen.

WikiLeaks publiceerde vorig jaar grote hoeveelheden geheime documenten over de oorlogen in Irak, Afghanistan en van het Amerikaanse diplomatieke verkeer.

Assange ontkent de beschuldigingen tegen hem en hij en zijn aanhangers suggereren dat de uitlevering van Zweden politiek gemotiveerd is. Het zou als doel dienen om hem uiteindelijk over te dragen aan de Verenigde Staten. De VS veroordelen het lekken van de gevoelige informatie die het land in verlegenheid heeft gebracht. De Zweedse autoriteiten ontkennen dat Assange uitgeleverd zal worden aan de VS.

Op 24 februari oordeelde de Britse rechter dat Assange uitgeleverd kon worden aan Zweden. De WikiLeaks-voorman ging in beroep en verblijft sindsdien onder huisarrest in een villa in Oost-Engeland.

Vorige maand klaagde Assange over de strikte voorwaarden van zijn borgtocht een avondklok, het dragen van een elektronische armband en dat hij zich dagelijks moet melden bij de politie. Naar eigen zeggen komt hij daardoor niet meer toe aan zijn werkzaamheden bij de klokkenluiderssite. WikiLeaks heeft sinds april geen nieuw materiaal meer gepubliceerd. Bovendien drogen de geldstromen op doordat VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union en Bank of America donaties aan Wikileaks blokkeren.

Als morgen de rechter besluit dat Assange uitgeleverd moet worden aan Zweden, zal hij naar het Britse Hooggerechtshof of het Europese hof voor de Rechten van de Mens stappen, meldt persbureau Reuters.

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Executive Order Responding to WikiLeaks Due Shortly

The Obama Administration is putting the finishing touches on a new executive order that is intended to improve the security of classified information in government computer networks as part of the government’s response to WikiLeaks.

The order is supposed to reduce the feasibility and the likelihood of the sort of unauthorized releases of classified U.S. government information that have been published by WikiLeaks in the past year.

According to an official who has reviewed recent drafts, the order addresses gaps in policy for information systems security, including characterization and detection of the insider threat to information security. It does not define new security standards, nor does it impose the security practices of intelligence agencies on other agencies. (“It doesn’t say, ‘go polygraph everybody’,” the official said.)

Rather, the order establishes new mechanisms for “governance” and continuing development of security policies for information systems. Among other things, it builds upon the framework established — but not fully implemented — by the 1990 National Security Directive 42 (pdf), the official said.

The order, developed on a relatively fast track over the past nine months, has already gone through two rounds of interagency coordination and is expected to be issued within a matter of weeks.

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WikiLeaks-onthulling brengt Bouterse in ernstige verlegenheid

De Surinaamse president Desi Bouterse had tot vijf jaar geleden nog innige banden met een grote transporteur van drugs in Zuid-Amerika. De drugsbaas, Eduardo Beltran, zou volgens de Verenigde Staten een belangrijke tussenpersoon in de regio zijn bij de smokkel van cocaïne uit onder andere Colombia.

Dit blijkt uit een geheim diplomatiek bericht uit juni 2006 van de Amerikaanse ambassade in Paramaribo. Het stuk is onlangs door klokkenluider WikiLeaks gepubliceerd.

Na veroordeling
De onthulling is een nieuwe aanwijzing dat Bouterse na zijn drugsveroordeling in Nederland mogelijk gewoon doorging met de handel in cocaïne. De oud-bevelhebber werd in 2000 door het Haagse gerechtshof tot 11 jaar cel veroordeeld voor een drugstransport van 474 kilo. De lading coke, verstopt in een zeiljacht, werd in 1997 onderschept in de haven van Stellendam in Zuid-Holland.

De Amerikaanse ambassadeur Marsha Barnes meldt de relatie tussen Bouterse en Beltran in een stuk van zeven pagina's. Het document gaat over de innige samenwerking van Bouterse met een andere drugsbaas, de Guyanese topcrimineel Roger Khan (39). Deze beruchte drugsbaron, ook wel de 'Pablo Escobar van Guyana' genoemd, werd toen door de VS gezocht wegens drugshandel.

Volgens Barnes zou Beltran opereren vanuit Venezuela. Vertrouwelijke bronnen meldden dat hij elke maand Suriname bezocht. Beltran, over wie verder weinig bekend is, wordt omschreven als een 'belangrijke regionale figuur als het gaat om de logistiek en transport van drugs.'

Niet ons probleem
De vicevoorzitter van het parlement, Ruth Wijdenbosch, vindt dat Bouterse snel met een verklaring moet komen. De Surinaamse regering weigert echter in te gaan op de jongste onthullingen in de WikiLeaksberichten. 'Het is niet ons probleem', aldus minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Winston Lackin.

'De president kan dit niet negeren', aldus Wijdenbosch maandag. 'Als persoon wordt hij genoemd. Hij moet naar het volk toe vertellen wat er precies aan de hand is. Al ontkent hij het, hij moet reageren want hij is nu president van Suriname.'

Bouterse was in 2006 parlementariër. Hij zou volgens drugsbestrijders in Paramaribo, die ervan uitgingen dat hij actief was in de drugshandel, sinds 2004 financieel flink zijn getroffen. In die twee jaar rolde de regering-Venetiaan diverse criminele organisaties op. Hierdoor zou de ex-legerleider volgens de Amerikanen 'gedwongen zijn geweest de hand te reiken naar nieuwe partners'.

Erstige verlegenheid
De onthulling over Beltran brengt Bouterse (65), die sinds 2010 president is, opnieuw in ernstige verlegenheid. Begin dit jaar bleek al uit uitgelekte WikiLeaks-berichten dat hij tot 2006 stevige banden had met Khan. Geruchten hierover doen al jaren de ronde in Suriname en het buurland Guyana. De voortvluchtige Khan werd medio 2006 in Paramaribo gearresteerd. Hij zit sindsdien een straf in de VS uit van 15 jaar.

De Amerikanen omschrijven het koppel Bouterse-Khan als 'partners in de drugshandel'. 'Khan helpt naar verluidt Bouterse met zijn financiële situatie door hem de mogelijkheid te geven zijn inkomen aan te vullen met de drugshandel', aldus Barnes.

Volgens de toenmalige minister van Justitie Chandrikapersad Santokhi, een jarenlange tegenstander van Bouterse, bezocht Khan Suriname 'regelmatig'. Hij zou toen op een stuk grond van Bouterse, bij het dorp Washabo aan de grens met Guyana, zijn gesignaleerd. Procureur-generaal Subhas Punwasi meldde de Amerikanen in een gesprek dat Bouterse ook een gesprek had met Khan bij een bevriend parlementslid thuis.

Vermoorden
'Hij voelt zich op zijn gemak in Suriname waar hij omgang heeft met Bouterse', meldt de Amerikaanse ambassadeur in Guyana, Roland Bullen, in mei 2006 Washington. Punwasi, die nog steeds in functie is, vertelt Barnes in januari in een vetrouwelijk gesprek ook dat Bouterse mogelijk plannen had hem en Santoki te vermoorden. President Venetiaan zou toen gegijzeld moeten worden.

Op deze manier wilde de ex-legerleider voorkomen dat hij gearresteerd zou worden na een veroordeling wegens de Decembermoorden van 1982. 'Bouterse zou naar verluidt Khan in de armen hebben genomen om huurmoordenaars te leveren voor de moorden', aldus een diplomatiek bericht van februari.

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Hoofd al-Jazeera weg na onthulling Wikileaks

Het hoofd van de Arabische nieuwszender al-Jazeera is vandaag afgetreden. Topman Wadah Khanfar was recent in opspraak gekomen door Wikileaks, dat een Amerikaans ambtelijk bericht had onthuld.

Volgens dat bericht was de topman ingegaan op een Amerikaans verzoek om bepaalde berichten op de website aan te passen en snel te verwijderen.

Al-Jazeera speelde een belangrijke rol bij de reeks revoluties in Noord-Afrikaanse landen.

De topman wordt opgevolgd door een lid van de koninklijke familie van Qatar, sjeik Ahmad bin Jasem bin Muhammad al-Thani.

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Banking Blockade

Created: 24th October, 1pm GMT

WikiLeaks has published the biggest leaks in journalistic history. This has triggered aggressive retaliation from powerful groups. Since 7th December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. The attack has destroyed 95% of our revenue. The blockade came into force within ten days of the launch of Cablegate as part of a concerted US-based, political attack that included vitriol by senior right wing politicians, including assassination calls against WikiLeaks staff. The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency. The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicized US finance companies continues regardless.

As a result, WikiLeaks has been running on cash reserves for the past eleven months. The blockade has cost the organization tens of millions of pounds in lost donations at a time of unprecedented operational costs resulting from publishing alliances in over 50 countries, and their inevitable counter-attacks. Our scarce resources now must focus on fighting the unlawful banking blockade. If this financial attack stands unchallenged, a dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic precedent will have been set, the implications of which go far beyond WikiLeaks and its work. Any organization that falls foul of powerful finance companies or their political allies can expect similar extrajudicial action. Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and other international NGOs that work to expose the wrongdoing of powerful players risk the same fate as WikiLeaks. If publishing the truth about war is enough to warrant such aggressive action by Washington insiders, all newspapers that have published WikiLeaks’ materials are on the verge of having their readers and advertisers blocked from paying for their subscriptions.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has openly criticized the financial blockade against WikiLeaks, as have the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. The blockade erects a wall between us and our supporters, preventing them from affiliating with and defending the cause of their choice. It violates the competition laws and trade practice legislation of numerous states. It arbitrarily singles out an organization that has not committed any illegal act in any country and cuts it off from its financial lifeline in every country. In Australia, a formal, US triggered investigation into our operations found that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange have no case to answer. In the US, our publishing is protected by the First Amendment, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by a wide variety of respected legal experts on the US Constitution. In January 2011 the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner, announced that there were no grounds to blacklist WikiLeaks. There are no judgements, or even charges, against WikiLeaks or its staff anywhere in the world.

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WikiLeaks onthult ‘wereldwijde spionage-industrie’ in Spy Files

WikiLeaks heeft vandaag de eerste 287 documenten uit een database van “honderden” bestanden gepresenteerd over wat de klokkenluidersite een “nieuwe industrie van toezicht en onderschepping” noemt. Er zouden 25 landen betrokken zijn bij het betwerk dat wordt onthuld via de zogenoemde Spy Files.

Julian Assange geeft op dit moment een persconferentie waarop geheimen van de betreffende industrie worden onthuld. Het lijkt te gaan om een wereldwijd netwerk dat zich richt op het bespioneren van bedrijven en mogelijk privépersonen. Volgens WikiLeaks is de “geheime industrie” opgestart na de aanslagen van 9/11 en is die sindsdien uitgegroeid tot een sector waarin jaarlijks miljarden dollars omgaan.

“Het klinkt als iets uit Hollywood maar massa-interceptiesystemen, gebouwd in opdracht van westerse inlichtingendiensten voor onder meer “politieke opponenten”, zijn per heden realiteit. (…) Surveillancebedrijven hacken computers en telefoons, ook iPhones, BlackBerry’s en Androids, en neme deze toestellen over. Ze registreren elke functie, aanslag, beweging en zelfs de geluiden en omgeving waar de telefoon zich in bevindt.”- WikiLeaks.

‘Gebruikers traceerbaar zonder dat ze mobieltje gebruiken’

De inlichtingendiensten, militaire divisies en politie zouden “onmerkbaar en massaal” telefoongesprekken onderscheppen en computers overnemen. Hierbij is de hulp noch de kennis van telecomproviders nodig. De exacte locatie van de gebruiker kan worden getraceerd indien deze en mobiele telefoon bij zich heeft, zelfs als deze er niet mee belt of berichten stuurt, aldus WikiLeaks via de SpyFiles.

Samenwerking met mediabedrijven uit diverse landen

Wikileaks zegt samen te hebben gewerkt met Bugged Planet en Privacy International. Maar ook met mediabedrijven uit zes landen zoals het Duitse ARD, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism uit het Verenigd Koninkrijk, The Hindu in India, L’Espresso in Italië, OWNI uit France de Washington Post.

Onduidelijk is hoe de informatie uiteindelijk bij WikiLeaks is terechtgekomen. The Washington Post schrijft dat het toezicht geen verschil maakt tussen “bad guys and good guys”. Veel bedrijven zouden betrokken zijn bij het verkopen van “geraffineerde instrumenten” die veel verder zouden kunnen gaan dan de conventionele spionagetechnieken.

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WikiLeaks: The Spy Files

Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries

It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for ’political opponents’ are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. Working with Bugged Planet and Privacy International, as well as media organizations form six countries – ARD in Germany, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK, The Hindu in India, L’Espresso in Italy, OWNI in France and the Washington Post in the U.S. Wikileaks is shining a light on this secret industry that has boomed since September 11, 2001 and is worth billions of dollars per year. WikiLeaks has released 287 documents today, but the Spy Files project is ongoing and further information will be released this week and into next year.

International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. This industry is, in practice, unregulated. Intelligence agencies, military forces and police authorities are able to silently, and on mass, and secretly intercept calls and take over computers without the help or knowledge of the telecommunication providers. Users’ physical location can be tracked if they are carrying a mobile phone, even if it is only on stand by.

But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about ’good Western countries’ exporting to ’bad developing world countries’. Western companies are also selling a vast range of mass surveillance equipment to Western intelligence agencies. In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last ten years systems for indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm. Intelligence companies such as VASTech secretly sell equipment to permanently record the phone calls of entire nations. Others record the location of every mobile phone in a city, down to 50 meters. Systems to infect every Facebook user, or smart-phone owner of an entire population group are on the intelligence market.

Selling Surveillance to Dictators

When citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices from Gamma corporation of the UK, Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp of China monitored their every move online and on the phone.

Surveillance companies like SS8 in the U.S., Hacking Team in Italy and Vupen in France manufacture viruses (Trojans) that hijack individual computers and phones (including iPhones, Blackberries and Androids), take over the device, record its every use, movement, and even the sights and sounds of the room it is in. Other companies like Phoenexia in the Czech Republic collaborate with the military to create speech analysis tools. They identify individuals by gender, age and stress levels and track them based on ‘voiceprints’. Blue Coat in the U.S. and Ipoque in Germany sell tools to governments in countries like China and Iran to prevent dissidents from organizing online.

Trovicor, a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. He was shown details of personal mobile phone conversations from before he was interrogated and beaten in the winter of 2010-2011.

How Mass Surveillance Contractors Share Your Data with the State

In January 2011, the National Security Agency broke ground on a $1.5 billion facility in the Utah desert that is designed to store terabytes of domestic and foreign intelligence data forever and process it for years to come.

Telecommunication companies are forthcoming when it comes to disclosing client information to the authorities - no matter the country. Headlines during August’s unrest in the UK exposed how Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the Blackberry, offered to help the government identify their clients. RIM has been in similar negotiations to share BlackBerry Messenger data with the governments of India, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Weaponizing Data Kills Innocent People

There are commercial firms that now sell special software that analyze this data and turn it into powerful tools that can be used by military and intelligence agencies.

For example, in military bases across the U.S., Air Force pilots use a video link and joystick to fly Predator drones to conduct surveillance over the Middle East and Central Asia. This data is available to Central Intelligence Agency officials who use it to fire Hellfire missiles on targets.

The CIA officials have bought software that allows them to match phone signals and voice prints instantly and pinpoint the specific identity and location of individuals. Intelligence Integration Systems, Inc., based in Massachusetts - sells a “location-based analytics” software called Geospatial Toolkit for this purpose. Another Massachusetts company named Netezza, which bought a copy of the software, allegedly reverse engineered the code and sold a hacked version to the Central Intelligence Agency for use in remotely piloted drone aircraft.

IISI, which says that the software could be wrong by a distance of up to 40 feet, sued Netezza to prevent the use of this software. Company founder Rich Zimmerman stated in court that his “reaction was one of stun, amazement that they (CIA) want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work.”

Orwell’s World

Across the world, mass surveillance contractors are helping intelligence agencies spy on individuals and ‘communities of interest’ on an industrial scale.

The Wikileaks Spy Files reveal the details of which companies are making billions selling sophisticated tracking tools to government buyers, flouting export rules, and turning a blind eye to dictatorial regimes that abuse human rights.

How to use the Spy Files

To search inside those files, click one of the link on the left pane of this page, to get the list of documents by type, company date or tag.

To search all these companies on a world map use the following tool from Owni

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'Nederlandse bedrijven verkopen spionagesoftware aan dictators'

Westerse bedrijven, waaronder ook Nederlandse, verkopen op grote schaal spionagesoftware aan landen die dictatoriaal worden geleid. Dat zegt klokkenluiderssite Wikileaks. De site toont tientallen documenten als bewijs, meldt RTL Nieuws.

Oprichter Julian Assange signaleert dat waar spionagediensten zich vroeger richtten op individuen en hun directe omgeving, nu massaal digitale gegevens worden verzameld en verwerkt.

In de nu vrijgegeven documenten zijn drie Nederlandse bedrijven te vinden, te weten Group 2000, Pine Digital Security en Fox-it.

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Cellebrite Denies WikiLeaks 'Spy Files' Claims, Defends UFED Mobile Forensic Technology

Mobile forensic specialist Cellebrite has strongly denied claims made in a recent WikiLeaks release dubbed 'The Spy Files' which referred to it as part of the "global mass surveillance industry."

Following on from the Carrier IQ controversy, whistleblowing site WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released details of companies responsible for what he claimed was government led monitoring of mobile phone communications, including the interception of voice calls and text messages.

"Who here has an iPhone? Who here has a BlackBerry? Who here uses Gmail? Well, you're all screwed," Assange frothed at a press conference announcing the release. "The reality is, intelligence contractors are selling right now to countries across the world mass surveillance systems for all those products."

Cellebrite, one of the companies named in WikiLeaks' 'Spy Files,' has come forward to deny that it has any hand in government monitoring, instead claiming it offers forensic analysis tools to help in the recovery of evidence during criminal investigations.

"We absolutely refute the WikiLeaks 'Spy Files' claims," the Sun Corporation-owned company explained in a statement to press issued late last night. "Even a cursory glance at our company material will make it quite clear that Cellebrite is not involved in the surveillance or cyber-spying of citizens in any way whatsoever.

"Cellebrite develops, manufactures and markets the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), which empowers law enforcement authorities around the world to extract and gather evidentiary data from mobiles devices, which will stand up under scrutiny in a court of law."

Co-chief executive officer Yossi Carmil added his own comments to the announcement, claiming to be "proud of the role [Cellebrite] plays in fighting crime. We have been instrumental in helping solve cases of child abuse, drug dealing, tax evasion, anti-terror activities and more. The UFED has been recognised as a powerful tool to extract valuable information from a wide range of mobile devices, suspected of being used in or facilitating the commission of a crime."

The company has admitted, however, that 'certain models' of UFED are designed to pull personal data from handsets - including, but not limited to, contact databases, saved messages, images, videos and stored GPS location fixes - but claims that this can only be achieved once the handset is in the possession of the investigating officer as part of the chain of evidence.

"UFED cannot be used to observe and monitor the movement and activities of citizens - criminal or not. Neither can it be used to 'hijack' someone's iPhone, implant viruses or to 'bug' phones and other mobile devices in use and still under control of their owners," the company concluded.

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Web Surveillance Software and Jobs

The article "Document Trove Exposes Surveillance Methods" (page one, Nov. 19) will have a negative effect on job creation in the U.S. as attention of this kind makes U.S. manufacturers gun shy about developing, and eventually exporting, anything that can remotely be used to support government surveillance.

Based on our work with customers from around the globe, we expect that most countries outside the U.S. and Western Europe will begin to place intercept mandates on social networks, especially following the Arab Spring. This would give U.S. companies an opportunity to develop such tools and thus create jobs.

We are concerned that the article and others like it contribute to an atmosphere where Congress isn't likely to pass an updated lawful-interception law. The law would require social-networking companies to deploy special features to support law enforcement. Without the update, the opportunity for U.S. companies to develop and launch intercept products domestically for eventual export will be greatly curtailed.

Additionally, in some countries U.S. companies are already refusing to provide intercept support and are banned from doing business. But Chinese equivalents, with lawful-intercept features, crop up in their absence. Like it or not, many countries will adopt the Chinese model, leaving U.S. companies and job growth behind.

Tatiana Lucas

World Program Director

Intelligence Support Systems

McLean, Va.

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Arab Spring. The people are fighting for freedom - against repression. Wikileaks and ZAPP disclose how German spyware have helped the regimes to suppress political opponents.

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WikiLeaks: A tale of two worlds

WikiLeaks, 4Chan and Anonymous are examples of how rogues can thrive against the will of empire.

Melbourne, Australia - There is something eerie about the WikiLeaks logo (see above). It works as a sort of graphic manifesto, an image of dense political content stating a notion of ample consequences. A cosmic sandglass encloses a duplicated globe seen from an angle that puts Iraqi territory at the centre.

Inside this device the upper and darker planet is exchanged, drip by drip, for a new one. The power of the image lies in the sense of inexorability it conveys, alluding to earthly absolutes like the flow of time and the force of gravity: a bullish threat that grants the upper world no room for hope. The logo narrates a gradual apocalypse, and by articulating this process of transformation through the image of the leak, WikiLeaks defines itself as the critical agent in the destruction of the old and the becoming of the new world.

What has become manifest since late November 2010, with the release of what is now known as "The US Embassy Cables", is that the narrative implicit in the WikiLeaks logo, that of a world disjunct, describes a greater struggle against the global power held diffusely by transnational corporations and enforced by governments around the world. This power is under attack by a relatively new actor that can be called, for now, the autonomous network.

The conditions that allow the network to challenge the power of governments and corporations can be traced to the origin of the Internet and the Cold War zeitgeist that made the network we know possible. It was only because Cold War strategists had to narrate to themselves the unfolding of convoluted thermonuclear apocalypse scenarios, a dark art that peaked with Herman Kahn's surreal book On Thermonuclear War, that a computer network with the characteristics of the internet was implemented.


"I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early Internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense. "

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak

The idea of imminent apocalypse was so extraordinary that it allowed for the radical thinking that over a decade evolved into the TCP/IP computer protocol suite, a resilient network protocol that makes the end user of the network its primary agent. The design philosophy of the internet protocols represents a clean break from the epistemes and continuums that had historically informed the evolution of Western power, as traced by Foucault and Deleuze from sovereign societies to disciplinary societies to societies of control.

Steve Wozniak has written, "I was also taught that space, and the moon, were free and open. Nobody owned them. No country owned them. I loved this concept of the purest things in the universe being unowned. The early internet was so accidental, it also was free and open in this sense".

To produce a commons is indeed an accident for Empire. Dismissed as a never-meant-for-the-masses autonomous zone, by and for the military and academia, it was allowed to evolve out of control. But this accident that happened because of daydreaming an extreme future never stopped happening.

It evolved.

At some point it gained an accessible graphic interface, and spilled all over the globe. By then it was too late to disarm what is now the increasingly contentious coexistence of two worlds, as the WikiLeaks logo registers. One world is a pre-apocalyptic capitalistic society of individualism, profit and control; the other a post-apocalyptic community of self-regulating collaborative survivors. The conflict arises from an essential paradox: Because the web exists, both worlds need it in order to prevail over the other.

The "cyber war" announced so spectacularly (in the Debordian sense) in the days following WikiLeaks' US Embassy Cables release is not really about the DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service), "denial of service" attacks that barely obstructed access to the MasterCard website for a few hours. If anything, the ephemerality of the disturbance leaves the sensation that Anonymous, the group that launched it, is far from being a structural threat. What journalists around the world have failed to narrate is the tale of a network that increasingly challenges, bypasses and outcompetes the global corporate-government complex. This is a struggle about the obsolescence of the very idea of the nation-state, and an almost unanimous coalition of governments, led by the US, fighting furiously to regain control by exerting legal, financial, symbolic and, perhaps most concerning, technical violence on their adversary.

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Op woensdag 14 december 2011 13:15 schreef Thomas B. het volgende:
Enkele cables hebben misschien voor wat rode koontjes gezorgd in sommige regeringshuizen, maar mijns inziens heeft het niet tot structurele veranderingen geleid. Mijn vraag aan jullie: vinden jullie dat Wikileaks de wereldpolitiek heeft veranderd? Zo ja, hoe?

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Op woensdag 14 december 2011 16:36 schreef Thomas B. het volgende:
Goede analyses. Hier kan ik wel wat mee. Papierversnipperaar, kun je die tweede nog even toelichten? Wat is de invloed van Wikileaks en Anonymous geweest op de Tunesische revolutie?

From the Tunisian citizens to Anonymous. "Thank you" - Translation below

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Hoe is het met Wikileaks-helper Bradley Manning?

Na ruim anderhalf jaar (eenzame) opsluiting verschijnt oud-militair Bradley Manning, die Wikileaks voorzag van duizenden geheime diplomatieke berichten, aanstaande vrijdag voor een militaire rechtbank om zijn verhaal te doen.

Dan begint een hoorzitting van - zo wordt verwacht - meerdere dagen waarbij duidelijk moet worden of Manning voor de Amerikaanse krijgsraad berecht zal worden.

De aanklagers hebben al laten weten niet de doodstraf te zullen eisen. Dat is de straf die staat voor de ergste misdaad waarvoor Manning aangeklaagd had kunnen worden: het helpen van de vijand. Maar advocaat David Coombs zal voldoende werk hebben aan de 22 andere punten waarop zijn cliënt is aangeklaagd.

Het belangrijkste bewijs dat de aanklagers in handen hebben is het transcript van de chatgesprekken die Manning voerde met Adrian Lamo, een hacker die hij in vertrouwen nam toen hij in 2010 in Irak als inlichtingenanalist gestationeerd was. Hij vertelde Lamo over de 260 duizend diplomatieke berichten die hij had doorgesluisd naar Wikileaks. Hij zei dat die aantoonden hoe de Eerste Wereld de Derde Wereld uitbuit. Ook hekelde hij tegenover Lamo de slechte beveiliging van de geheime documenten.

Don't ask, don't tell
De chats geven inzicht in de motieven van Manning om de diplomatieke geheimen te lekken naar Wikileaks. 'Ik wil dat mensen de waarheid zien', zegt hij tegen Lamo. Maar er speelde meer. Manning zat op zijn zachtst gezegd niet goed in zijn vel. 'Ik ben een wrak', schreef hij aan Lamo. Hij zei te worstelen met zijn homoseksualiteit, zijn conservatieve opvoeding en met zijn positie in het Amerikaanse leger, dat met het 'don't ask, don't tell' beleid homo's ervan probeerde te weerhouden voor hun geaardheid uit te komen.

De advocaat van Manning zal het leger dan ook op dat punt proberen aan te vallen. Hij zal wijzen op de geestelijke en emotionele stress die Manning moest ondergaan en het feit dat er totaal geen controle was op het handelen van Manning. De aanklagers zullen moeten aantonen dat dit niet relevant is voor de misdaden die de oud-militair heeft gepleegd.

Isoleercel
De zaak-Manning kwam in de afgelopen anderhalf jaar regelmatig in het nieuws, vanwege de slechte omstandigheden waarin Manning gevangen werd gehouden. Hij viel onder het strengste gevangenisregime mogelijk. Omdat de Amerikanen bang waren dat hij zelfmoord zou plegen stond hij permanent onder toezicht. Hij verbleef 23 uur per dag in een isoleercel van 1,8 bij 3,6 meter. Het enige contact dat hij had was met zijn bewakers, die overdag om de 5 minuten vroegen of hij nog oké was. Als de bewakers hem 's nachts niet goed konden zien, maakten ze hem wakker om te controleren of hij nog steeds in orde was.

Dit ontlokte van verschillende kanten protest. De VN-rapporteur voor martelingen bekritiseerde de eenzame opsluiting van Manning en een woordvoerder van het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, P.J. Crowley, nam ontslag nadat hij de behandeling 'belachelijk en contraproductief' had genoemd. Ook kreeg president Obama een brief van vooraanstaande Amerikanen rechtsgeleerden die hem opriepen iets aan de zaak te doen. In april dit jaar werd Manning overgeplaatst naar een andere gevangenis in Fort Leavenworth, waar zijn detentieregime werd versoepeld.

Tussen april en december 2010 publiceerde Wikileaks ruim een half miljoen geheime documenten, met name over de oorlog in Irak en Afghanistan. Onder de door Manning gelekte documenten bevonden zich duizenden ambtsberichten, oorlogscorrespondentie over Irak en Afghanistan en een inmiddels beroemde video waarop te zien is hoe een lachende Amerikaanse militair elf mensen in Irak doodt door een precisiebombardement.

Volgens advocaat Coombs hebben de documenten de veiligheid van Amerika niet in gevaar gebracht, net zo min als de betrekkingen met andere landen. Ook zijn er volgens hem geen levens in gevaar gekomen door de vrijgekomen informatie.

Een speciaal fonds dat is opgericht ter ondersteuning van Manning heeft tot nu toe 400 duizend dollar verkregen van zo'n 5.000 donateurs. Het geld wordt onder meer gebruikt om de kosten van Mannings advocaat te dekken.

quote:

Op woensdag 14 december 2011 18:03 schreef Thomas B. het volgende:

[..]

Maar dit vond allemaal plaats nadat de die koopman zichzelf in brand heeft gestoken. Het causaal verband betwijfel ik. Niet zozeer dat er geen associatie is, maar ik kan alleen niet betogen dat Wikileaks de primaire oorzaak was. Heb het al wel in m'n essay verwerkt want er zit wel een steekhoudend argument in.

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Wikileaks-supporters krijgen taakstraf

Twee Nederlandse jongens van 17 en 20 jaar hebben vandaag taakstraffen gekregen van het Landelijk Parket, omdat ze eind vorig jaar onder andere creditcardmaatschappij Mastercard en OM.nl digitaal aanvielen. Dat deden de beide jongens uit sympathie voor Wikileaks.

Mastercard was het slachtoffer, omdat ze geen donaties meer toelieten aan Wikileaks. De jongen van 20 viel de site van het Openbaar Ministerie aan. Achteraf zegt die laatste dat dit een stomme actie was. Hij heeft er ook spijt van.

De Haagse jongen van 17 moet onder toezicht van de Kinderbescherming 26 uur werken. Hij heeft bekend dat hij Mastercard,Visa en betaalsite Paypal heeft aangevallen. De andere jongen van 20 uit Hoogezand-Sappermeer viel de site van het Openbaar Ministerie aan. Hij is veroordeeld tot een taakstraf van 80 uur. Ze hebben de relatief lichte taakstraf geaccepteerd omdat ze anders strafrechtelijk vervolgd kunnen worden door het OM. Ook trok het Landelijk Parket de tijd die ze in voorarrest hebben gezeten van de straf af.

De computers die bij beide jongens in beslag zijn genomen, zijn ze wel kwijt.

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Julian Assange defends release of Santa’s ‘naughty list’ on Wikileaks

Julian Assange has defended the release of a top-secret ‘naughty list’ on Wikileaks, insisting the contents are in the public interest.

Assange claims the list of names is one-half of a master document with details on most of the earth’s population, and originates from an eccentric recluse within the Arctic Circle.

The very existence of such a document raises serious concerns about data use in the private sector, particularly amongst the under-12s.

Speculation about the tin-whistle blower is rife. As a gaunt, elfin-like character with a shock of white hair and a grudge against authority, Julian Assange refused to be drawn on who gave him the list.

“The document came to us on a frost-damaged parchment, it’s hardly ‘present day’ technology”, claimed Assange.

“But whoever compiled it is a master of espionage. They know when you are sleeping, they know when you’re awake. And they have some strong opinions about whether you’ve been good or bad, based on outmoded ideals and capitalist dogma.”

Naughty List

The contents of the list have raised a few eyebrows. There are details of Occupy LSX campaigners who went home at night, and workers in the financial sector are named and shamed.

The CIA, Mossad, people who steal cables from railways and the entire population of Greece have also been pencilled in, along with most of the England rugby team.

The Murdochs top the list, Ricky Gervais is second and Silvio Berlusconi’s name appears no fewer than eight times. But so far, no mention of Bradley Manning has been discovered.

“The jury’s still out on him”, claimed Assange. “Not being classified as ‘naughty’ isn’t a guarantee that he’s been listed as nice, but it’s all a bit academic to Manning anyway.”

“There aren’t any chimneys in solitary confinement, and the guards have confiscated his stocking.”

Supporters of Wikileaks have been quick to act. Shadowy hackers ‘Anonymous’ have vowed to bring down the figure-head of the totalitarian regime at the heart of the list, if he doesn’t stray into North Korean airspace first.

As a spokesman for the group explained, “We think this list describes plans for a ‘denial of service’ attack, so we’re planning to combat it with a bit of ‘misinformation’.”

“By spreading a rumour that Santa only eats Heston Blumenthal’s new prune and fermented herring mince pies, we’re directly challenging his constitution. There’s a good chance he’ll be caught with his pants down.”

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Leaked cables confirm U.S. role in Somalia war

The Wikileaks website released cables showing that plans for the Kenyan military invasion of southern Somalia had been mapped out for nearly two years and refuting claims that the intervention was done without Washington’s knowledge. They showed that high-level meetings had taken place in early 2010 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which laid the ground work for renewed attempts to eliminate the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance movement that controls large sections of the Horn of Africa nation.

This secret plan, dubbed “Jubaland Initiative,” outlined the creation of an artificial state in southern Somalia in an effort to choke off Al-Shabaab from the border areas near Kenya. At the meeting in Ethiopia in January 2010, the Kenyan delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetang’ula appealed for U.S. support for the operation.

Other Kenyan officials in the delegation included Chief of General Staff Jeremiah Kianga, Defense Minister Yusuf Haji and Director of National Security Intelligence Services Maj.-Gen. Michael Gichang’i. This meeting in Addis Ababa was just one in a series of discussions designed to enlist U.S. support for the current military operations.

Operation Linda Nchi, the Kenyan invasion of southern Somalia, began on Oct. 16 and involved over 2,000 Kenyan troops. The war has become bogged down due to the lack of logistical coordination, the inclement weather and the formidable resistance to the intervention by Al-Shabaab and its supporters inside the country.

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Any for profit system is not going to have social or environmental goals as its mandate (even if it says it does) and a wage paying system is a for profit system. If profit were removed, all decisions would be made for social goals, prison systems would be trying to rehabilitate prisoners or study to find why they were in violation of the law instead of just warehousing as many as possible, medical research would be trying to improve health instead of selling pharmaceuticals, and agriculture would be devoted to producing the most nutritious food in the most environmentally responsible way. Removing profit would also remove a great deal of the reason for competitiveness, secrecy and spying within organizations, along with a great deal of the redundancy of competing companies providing identical goods and services. Removing wages attached to a specific system would give every individual the freedom to leave any system they did not agree with or that began to malfunction due to core team problems, a better alternative system or other.

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Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent. In that way, subsequent actions tend to reinforce and build on each other, leading to the spontaneous emergence of coherent, apparently systematic activity. Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents. - Wikipedia

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WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO after WikiLeaks banned from UNESCO conference on WikiLeaks

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wed Feb 15 17:00:00 2012 GMT

"#OccupyUNESCO"

WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO for banning WikiLeaks from conference about WikiLeaks (February 16-17, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris).

WikiLeaks denounced UNESCO for banning WikiLeaks from tomorrow’s international conference about WikiLeaks. The large two-day conference, which has 37 speakers listed, is to be held UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. US organizers have stacked the conference with WikiLeaks opponents and blocked all speakers from WikiLeaks, stating that the decision to censor WikiLeaks representation was an exercise in ’freedom of expression... our right to give voice to speakers of our choice’.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denounced the conference: ’UNESCO has made itself an international human rights joke. To use "freedom of expression" to censor WikiLeaks from a conference about WikiLeaks is an Orwellian absurdity beyond words. This is an intolerable abuse of UNESCO’s Constitution. It’s time to occupy UNESCO.’

WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed consternation in a letter to UNESCO about the exclusion: ’UNESCO has a duty to assure that fairness and balance is secured in important discussions carried out under the banner of the organization. It is obvious that this will hardly be the case, given the selection of speakers. This is both a disgrace to UNESCO and potentially harmful to WikiLeaks.’

Julian Assange calls for an immediate investigation "UNESCO must conduct a full, frank and open investigation as to how its constitution, which tasks it to promote freedom of expression, freedom of information and freedom of communication, has become a blunt instrument of censorship. UNESCO must demonstrate that cold-war style power-plays, by the United States, or indeed any other country, are no longer acceptable."

The following hash tag may be used to follow the story: "#OccupyUNESCO"

Full details and a longer explanatory article follow.

Conference Details: - Livestream: The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World 09:00-16:45, 16-17 February 2012 mms://stream.unesco.org/live/room_4_en.wmv

- Conference URL: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-...

- Venue: UNESCO Headquarters 7 place de Fontenoy , 75352 Paris, France https://maps.google.com/maps/place?...

UNESCO Constitution: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-...

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: http://www.udhr.org/UDHR/ART19.HTM

WikiLeaks refused participation at UNESCO WikiLeaks conference

When WikiLeaks became aware that a two day conference about WikiLeaks’ impact was being hosted by UNESCO, WikiLeaks expressed its consternation that no-one from WikiLeaks had been approached to participate - and requested that WikiLeaks be given access to meaningful participation at the conference.

UNESCO forwarded WikiLeaks’ letter to Ronald Koven of the "World Press Freedom Committee". The WPFC is based in Reston, Virginia, in the United States. UNESCO lists the organizers as the U.S. "World Press Freedom Committee" (WPFC) in cooperation with the UNESCO Communication & Information Sector. The WPFC board (http://is.gd/1bF0N3 ), is comprised of Washington insiders, cold war ideological allies (such as Freedom House and the disgraced IAPA) and U.S. mainstream media groups.

Although WikiLeaks has over 90 partner organisations and despite numerous other books having been published on WikiLeaks, UNESCO and the WPFC decided to exclude WikiLeaks and stack the UNESCO conference with a "who’s who" of WikiLeaks opponents and critics, no matter how insignificant or poorly informed. This includes speakers who are not merely critics, but four who have active legal conflicts with the organization. Tellingly, the key note is by a journalist who serialized her failed anti-WikiLeaks book in a U.K tabloid as "The WikiFreak: In a new book one author reveals how she got to know Julian Assange and found him a predatory, narcissistic fantasist".

Ronald Koven is the WPFC’s spokesman on ’press freedom concerns’ at UNESCO. Koven has been monitoring UNESCO for the U.S. organizations for over 30 years. In recent years he has been a U.S. Embassy informant and is mentioned in WikiLeaks’ cables. Koven refused WikiLeaks participation due to what can only be interpreted as political considerations:

"I can only share in your attachment to freedom of expression. It must include our right to give voice to speakers of our choice."

Koven went on to justify the exclusion:

"The main focus of this conference is not about WikiLeaks as such but about the implications of its actions for the future of professional journalism."

This characterisation is at odds with the description of the aims of the conference on its website: "The conference aims to explore a wide range of new questions for traditional media and journalism posed by the WikiLeaks phenomenon" (that is, WikiLeaks).

WikiLeaks again contacted UNESCO’s Sylvie Coudray, who is in charge for Freedom of Expression, reminding UNESCO that it has a duty to ensure fairness and balance in conferences carried out under the banner of the organization, and in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNESCO’s legacy is at stake, and the political decisions driving this exclusion are yet another episode in the persecution of WikiLeaks.

UNESCO responded "We do not have intention to cause any polemic" and stated that WikiLeaks could attend the conference- as long as WikiLeaks did not demand to participate as speakers. She appears to deny WikiLeaks work as journalism:

"Mr Koven has already answered to some of your questions. May I underline that the conference is *about journalism* in light of the situations that occurred with Wikileaks and News of the World, and *not about the episodes themselves*."

The full correspondence between WikiLeaks, UNESCO and WPFC is available at the end of this document.

Although the conference is meant to be about WikiLeaks and freedom of the press, there is nothing about the most serious attack on WikiLeaks and freedom of expression everywhere. The extrajudicial attack has wiped out 95% of WikiLeaks revenues and has been the subject of wide-spread condemnation, including from the UN and the EU. Since Dec 2010, US financial giants VISA, MasterCard, The Bank of America, PayPal and Western Union have been involved in an economic censorship war against this organization. A formal U.S. Treasury investigation found there were no grounds for the US to blacklist WikiLeaks. Despite this, the unlawful blockade continues.

MasterCard, along with the U.S. State Department, sponsored the WPFC organized the 2011, so-called, "UNESCO World Press Freedom Day", during the start of the U.S. economic censorship campaign against WikiLeaks. It also conspicuously avoided discussion of extrajudicial banking blockade against WikiLeaks.

quote:

High spy: WikiLeaks accuses Swedish FM of spying for US

The world famous whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims it has documents exposing Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt as an American spy and is promising to publish them soon.

The documents prove that Bildt has been a US informer since 1973 and that he collaborated with the US government in ways that contradict Swedish law, the Swedish tabloid Expressen reports.

It also reports that publication of the materials will inevitably lead to the resignation of the foreign minister and the end of his political career. The Swedish Foreign Ministry said that it first needs to see the documents before issuing any comments on the case.

Bildt does not seem to be worried by the WikiLeaks announcement. On his blog page the minister wrote that as soon as the documents are published “this part of their [WikiLeaks] planned 'smear campaign' will quickly fall apart.”

Some say that WikiLeaks threats to Swedish officials are directly connected to the case of the website’s founder, Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden over rape and sexual assault allegations.

Assange is currently in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden. His supporters say that if he is sent to Sweden he will then be extradited to the US.

quote:

Manning formeel beschuldigd van ‘heulen met vijand’ WikiLeaks

Bradley Manning, de militair die wordt verdacht van het lekken van documenten van de Amerikaanse regering naar WikiLeaks, is voor een militaire rechtbank formeel in staat van beschuldiging gesteld voor onder meer het “heulen met de vijand”.

Dat meldt persbureau AFP. Bij een hoorzitting in de Amerikaanse legerbasis Fort Meade in Maryland las de militaire aanklager de 22 aanklachten tegen hem voor, waarvan de bovengenoemde de zwaarste is. Volgens de militaire aanklagers werkte de oprichter van de klokkenluidersorganisatie, Julian Assange, met “mol” Manning samen.

Manning wordt berecht voor het opzettelijk lekken van meer dan 700.000 geheime documenten naar WikiLeaks, waaronder diplomatieke documenten van Amerikaanse ambassades. De 24-jarige soldaat zou in chatgesprekken hebben toegegeven dat hij hiervoor verantwoordelijk is. Assange heeft nooit bevestigd of ontkend dat Manning de bron is geweest van de uitgelekte documenten.

Manning zat voorafgaande aan de militaire rechtszaak bijna twee jaar vast. Sinds zijn arrestatie in Irak in mei 2010 is hij verworden tot het symbool van de anti-oorlogsbeweging en voorstanders voor de vrijheid van informatie.

quote:

Op maandag 27 februari 2012 00:57 schreef Strani het volgende:
Er komt over vier minuten een persbericht aan over Wikileaks. Ik post 'm zodra hij publiek is. (Althans, Michael van Poppel post 'm, ik geef 'm hier door.)

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Op maandag 27 februari 2012 01:02 schreef Strani het volgende:

[..]

En de rest mogen jullie lezen op http://pastebin.com/D7sR4zhT

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WikiLeaks begins publishing 5 million emails from STRATFOR

LONDON--Today WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example:

"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

The material contains privileged information about the US government's attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor's own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees: "We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don't plan to do the perp walk and I don't want anyone here doing it either."

Stratfor's use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to "utilise the intelligence" it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS: "What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like". The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach's Morenz invested "substantially" more than $4million and joined Stratfor's board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff: "Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral... It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor... we are already working on mock portfolios and trades". StratCap is due to launch in 2012.

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and "other government intelligence agencies" in "becoming government Stratfors". Stratfor's Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department's Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates "without ideology, agenda or national bias", yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks' contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused "gravy train" that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures:

"[Is it] possible for us to get some of that 'leak-focused' gravy train? This is an obvious fear sale, so that's a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don't, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet... Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused' network security that focuses on preventing one's own employees from leaking sensitive information... In fact, I'm not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution."

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor's subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor's internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as 'alpha', 'tactical' and 'secure'. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as 'Izzies' (members of Hezbollah), or 'Adogg' (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s "Confederation Partners", whom Stratfor internally referred to as its "Confed Fuck House" are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.

WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor's list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant "Geronimo" , handled by Stratfor's Former State Department agent Fred Burton.

WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.


Public partners in the investigation:

More than 25 media partners (others will be disclosed after their first publication):

Al Akhbar – Lebanon – http://english.al-akhbar.com
Al Masry Al Youm – Egypt – http://www.almasry-alyoum.com
Bivol – Bulgaria – http://bivol.bg
CIPER – Chile – http://ciperchile.cl
Dawn Media – Pakistan – http://www.dawn.com
L'Espresso – Italy – http://espresso.repubblica.it
La Repubblica – Italy – http://www.repubblica.it
La Jornada – Mexico – www.jornada.unam.mx/
La Nacion – Costa Rica – http://www.nacion.com
Malaysia Today – Malaysia – www.malaysia-today.net
McClatchy – United States – http://www.mcclatchy.com
Nawaat – Tunisia – http://nawaat.org
NDR/ARD – Germany – http://www.ard.de
Owni – France – http://owni.fr
Pagina 12 – Argentina – www.pagina12.com.ar
Plaza Publica – Guatemala – http://plazapublica.com.gt
Publico.es – Spain – www.publico.es
Rolling Stone – United States – http://www.rollingstone.com
Russia Reporter – Russia – http://rusrep.ru
Ta Nea – Greece –- http://www.tanea.gr
Taraf – Turkey – http://www.taraf.com.tr
The Hindu – India – www.thehindu.com
The Yes Men – Bhopal Activists – Global http://theyesmen.org
Nicky Hager for NZ Herald – New Zealand – http://www.nzherald.co.nz

quote:

Op maandag 27 februari 2012 01:15 schreef Strani het volgende:

[..]

Dat is het misschien inderdaad waard, maar dat laat ik aan de vaste posters in dit topic over

quote:

Leaked Email Shows Stratfor CEO George Friedman Resigned Two Hours Ago Over Latest Breach

It is only somewhat appropriate that the announcement of the resignation of Stratfor's CEO would come in the form of a leaked email that once again was intercepted by Anonymous.

Via Anonymous:

From: george.friedman@stratfor.com

To: fred.burton@stratfor.com

Subject: Draft

Date: 2012-02-26 19:02:07

It is with great personal disappointment I have to inform you that I will resign from my position as CEO for Stratfor to immediate effect.

Please rest assured that this decision was not an easy. But in the light of the recent events, especially the release of our company emails by WikiLeaks, I have decided that stepping down is in the best interest of Stratfor and its customer base.

I want to emphasize that this will have no effect on Stratfor's business or its members and we will continue to provide state-of-the-art intelligence services.

Regarding the latest breach, Stratfor is fully in control of the situation However, while I cannot take any personal responsibility for this incident, I still have to admit that mistakes have been made on our side. To be clear: We certainly do not condone any criminal activities by groups like Anonymous or other hackers. This is theft and we will continue to cooperate with law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice. But we must acknowledge that this incident would not have been possible if Stratfor had implemented stronger data protection mechanisms - which will be the case from now on. Indeed we will immediately move to implement the latest, and most comprehensive, data security measures.

While I played no role in our technical operations, as the company's CEO I do accept full responsibility thus will resign from my position effective immediately.

Again, my sincerest apologies for this whole unfortunate incident.

Sincerely,
George Friedman

twitter:

Stratfor twitterde op maandag 27-02-2012 om 06:46:17 Contrary to information circulating on the Internet, George Friedman has not resigned and remains CEO of @Stratfor reageer retweet

quote:

The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms

Every profession and industry has its own vocabulary. Using baseball terms to
explain a football game is tough. These are some of the terms we use.

quote:

Blown Op
An operation that has been compromised to the opposition or publicly revealed. The blown op is followed by the impartial enquiry. The impartial enquiry is following by the execution of those least responsible for blowing the op.

quote:

Wikileaks Pairs with Anonymous to Publish Intelligence Firm’s Dirty Laundry

In an unprecedented collaboration between Anonymous and WikiLeaks, the secret spilling site began leaking Sunday night portions of a massive trove of e-mails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor that Anonymous obtained by hacking the company in December.

WikiLeaks did not mention the source of the reported five gigabytes of e-mails in its press release, but did say it has been working for months with 25 media outlets from around the world to analyze the documents.

The first batch of leaked e-mails purport to show that Stratfor monitored the political prankster group known as The Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical, which has been targeted by The Yes Men over the company’s handling of the Bhopal disaster. The e-mails also purport to show Stratfor’s attempt to set up an investment fund with a Goldman Sachs director to trade on the intelligence Stratfor collects, as well as give insight into how the private intelligence firm acquires, and sometimes pays for, information.

Stratfor, somewhat akin to a privatized CIA, sells its analyses of global politics to major corporations and government agencies.

Members of Anonymous with direct knowledge of the hack and transfer of data to WikiLeaks told Wired that the group decided to turn the information over to WikiLeaks because the site was more capable of analyzing and spreading the leaked information than Anonymous would be.

“WikiLeaks has great means to publish and disclose,” the anon told Wired. “Also, they work together with media in a way we don’t.”

“Basically, WL is the ideal partner for such stuff,” the anon continued. “Antisec acquires the shit, WL gets it released in a proper manner.” Antisec is the arm of Anonymous that is known for hacking into servers.

According to Antisec participants, Stratfor was targeted not just for its poor security, but also because of its client list, which includes major companies and government entities

“We believe police and employees who work for the most significant fortune 500 companies are the most responsible for perpetuating the machinery of capitalism and the state,” said one Antisec participant in December, “That there will be repercussions for when you choose to betray the people and side with the rich ruling classes.”

Anons also told Wired that future collaborations with WikiLeaks could involve a series of hacks that will be announced, one after another, every Friday for the foreseeable future. If that happens, the Stratfor e-mail release could be the first sign of a new, powerful alliance between the two groups, each of which has vexed and angered the world’s most powerful governments and corporations.

A document provided to Wired that could not be authenticated indicated that the media partners of WikiLeaks agreed to parcel out stories on the leaks over the coming week and a half. Those media partners do not include previous partners such as the Guardian and U.S. partners The New York Times and the Washington Post.

According to the document, e-mails about WikiLeaks and Anonymous will be disclosed Wednesday, followed by separate disclosures on Italy, the Middle East and then Asian countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, among others. The project, code-named Rock Guitar, is officially named “The Global Intelligence Files.”

When WikiLeaks received the documents on a server it controlled, it acknowledged the successful transfer with a coded, public Tweet, according to an anon with direct knowledge of the collaboration.

Stratfor had been aware that the e-mails would likely be published in some form by Anonymous, but said in January that the e-mails should not embarrass the company.

The collaboration between WikiLeaks and Anonymous is an odd couple pairing. WikiLeaks has largely crumbled over the last 18 months, due to internal disagreements over the management style and legal problems of its outspoken leader Julian Assange. By contrast, Anonymous is an amorphous group with no leadership structure.

If Anonymous continues feeding WikiLeaks with documents, the secret spilling site could return to a prominence that seemed lost due to technical difficulties, legal troubles, in-fighting and public fallings out with media partners in the wake of the site’s publication of a massive trove of U.S. documents in 2010 and 2011.

WikiLeaks’s alleged source for those documents, Pfc. Bradley Manning, is facing a U.S. army court martial and a possible sentence of life imprisonment.

As for how the collaboration between the two groups went, an anon with direct knowledge of it indicated that the new relationship had some tough moments.

“There were some natural tensions as usually can happen inside partnership,” the anon said. ”I hope this was only the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”