Wikileaks documenten #20: Stratfor Leaks

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List of documents > for release Syria Files shed some light on how Blue Coat technologies ended up in Syria

Thursday 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files – more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012. This extraordinary data set derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those of the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture. At this time Syria is undergoing a violent internal conflict that has killed between 6,000 and 15,000 people in the last 18 months. The Syria Files shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy, but they also reveal how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another.

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Anti-WikiLeaks hackers claim responsibility for DDoS attack on RT website

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The RT.com website went down for hours worldwide on Friday after a massive DDoS attack, with the hacker group calling itself AntiLeaks claiming responsibility.

“Yes. We are behind the DDoS attack on #RT_com,” AntiLeaks wrote on Twitter.

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The hackers that attacked RT.com put a #FreePussyRiot hashtag in the end of their tweet, expressing their support for the three alleged members of punk band Pussy Riot who are currently on trial in Moscow.

The DDoS attack disrupted RTs extensive reporting on the final day of Pussy Riot trial. RT has been following the bands case on a daily basis since their infamous 'punk prayer' at Russias Christ the Savior Cathedral in February.

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Op zondag 19 augustus 2012 16:49 schreef Robmeister het volgende:
Deze spion wordt verdacht van verkrachting. Zweden heeft dan ook alle recht om deze man voor de rechter te krijgen in eigen land.

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Op zondag 19 augustus 2012 17:00 schreef Robmeister het volgende:
Doe jij nu verkrachters

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het handje boven het hoofd houden

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omdat ze toevallig geheimen staatdocumenten gepubliceerd hebben?

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Assange dient zich gewoon te verandwoorden voor een rechter zoals iedereen die verdacht wordt van verkrachting. Of begrijp je niet wat hem ten laste is gelegd.

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Dus misschien kan je beter zelf opflikkeren, of je haalt jezelf door de papierversnipperaar.

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Eight BIG PROBLEMS with the “case” against Assange (MUST-READ by Naomi Wolf)

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Now that Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project, has confirmed Karl Rove’s role as an advisor to the Swedish government in its prosecution of Julian Assange on sexual misconduct charges, it is important that we note the many glaring aberrations in the handling of Assange’s case by the authorities in Sweden.

Dr. Brian Palmer, a social anthropologist at Uppsala University, explained on Kreig’s radio show last month that Karl Rove has been working directly as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party. Kreig also reported, in Connecticut Watchdog, that the Assange accusers’ lawyer is a partner in the law firm Borgström and Bodström, whose other name partner, Thomas Bodström, is a former Swedish Minister of Justice. In that office, Bodström helped approve a 2001 CIA rendition request to Sweden, to allow the CIA to fly two asylum-seekers from Sweden to Egypt, where they were tortured. This background compels us to review the case against Assange with extreme care.

Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law, and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters, I can say with certainty that this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. New details from the Swedish police make this quite clear. Their transcript of the complaints against Assange is strikingly unlike the dozens of such transcripts that I have read throughout the years as an advocate for victims of sex crimes.

Specifically, there are eight ways in which this transcript is unusual:

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Op maandag 20 augustus 2012 00:45 schreef oompaloompa het volgende:
Hij is niet officieel verdacht omdat het Zweedse systeem anders werkt. BInnen dat systeem kunnen ze iemand niet als officiele verdachte aanmerken zonder diegene officieel gesproken te hebben.

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An Unethical Record – Stratfor & the New York Times

Three months after WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files — more than 5 million e-mails from the private intelligence gathering company Stratfor — New York Times London Bureau journalist Ravi Somaiya told his readers “WikiLeaks has not released any significant material for more than a year.” (“Deportation Decision Awaits WikiLeaks Founder,” May 29, 2012, NYT) Yet on the day The Global Intelligence Files were released (February 27, 2012) WikiLeaks conveyed that Stratfor has paid diplomatic sources; advocated for the psychological and material mistreatment of at least one informant; sought to utilize early access to intelligence for a strategic investment fund by creating a vehicle (StratCap) that would “trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds”; monitored activists, including for its client Dow Chemical; and engaged in secret deals with media organizations. Somaiya’s dismissive superciliousness of The Global Intelligence Files is indicative of the Times’ treatment of WikiLeaks.

Through NYT eXaminer’s (NYTX) participation in an investigative partnership organized by WikiLeaks we have had access to The Global Intelligence Files and found material that the Times should find significant. The material shows that Times journalists rely on Stratfor despite the company’s interests in advancing U.S. corporate and government dominance at home and abroad, enhancing government secrecy and eroding civil liberties. In addition, Stratfor maintains a perverse relationship with its informants, which is incongruent with the Times’ own standards for the treatment of sources. The Global Intelligence Files also highlight examples of Stratfor employees consciously manipulating journalists at the Times — some of whom seem all too willing to be led by the inauspicious Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company.

Stratfor claims to be “objective” and “non-partisan” but Times Editors are not oblivious to the company’s motivations or the fact that they gather intelligence in unethical ways. In 2003 Times reporter Matt Bai met with Stratfor CEO George Friedman on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq for an auspiciously timed profile of the company. The profile highlighted Stratfor’s belligerent attitude towards human rights and international law. Bai reported that George Friedman could “live with” a “slaughter” of the Kurds “if that would enable the Americans to get to Baghdad quicker.” (“The Way We Live Now,” Matt Bai, NYT, April 20, 2003). Despite such crass overtures, the Times provide Op-Ed space for George Freidman and lends credence to Stratfor analysts. Further, George Friedman argued in his recent essay “The Geopolitics of the United States: The Inevitable Empire,” that the “final imperative” for the U.S. as a dominant power is to “keep Eurasia divided among as many different (preferably mutually hostile) powers as possible.” Eurasia comprises the continental landmass of Europe and Asia and contains more than 70% of the world’s population.

Three years ago — preceding Obama’s mission in Pakistan which led to the extrajudicial assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the president’s secret orders to send waves of cyberattacks against Iranian nuclear facilities and his “Secret Kill List” to assassinate human targets by drone warfare — the Times published George Friedman’s Op-Ed “Afghan Supplies, Russian Demands” (February 2009, NYT), insisting that the Obama administration should “rely less on troops, and more on covert operations like the C.I.A.” in Afghanistan. Friedman’s preference for covert operations is interesting as these operations often escape public scrutiny and accountability, erode civil liberties and make a folly of international human rights and humanitarian law. Stratfor’s cavalier contempt for transparency reveals un-democratic tendencies antithetical to the ideal of an informed civic with the capacity to participate freely and fully in society — enabling the free and equal practice of self-determination. Though, is perhaps unsurprising given Stratfor’s involvement in the TrapWire “counterterrorist” surveillance system used to monitor activists (Doc-ID: 5355966). (“TrapWire and Stratfor are business partners,” August 15, 2012, Darker Net)

Despite Stratfor’s (at best) ambivalence toward — and at worst support for — war crimes, advocacy for covert war, participation in the corrosion of privacy rights and cheerleading for Empire — often in the Times own pages — the e-mails obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that the Times Senior terrorism and national security writer Eric Schmitt (Doc-ID: 577559), London Bureau chief John F. Burns (Doc-ID: 501124) and others (Doc-ID: 12750) hold the information provided by Stratfor in high regard and value easy access to it. Many other Times journalists also hold accounts and their News Directors have sought Foreign Desk and bureau-wide access (Doc-ID: 620711). In 2009, Stratfor said they had 34 readers “with an @nytimes.com email address.” (Doc ID: 219254). Two Times journalists, Jane Perlez and Carlotta Gall, became close to the company following a meeting in Pakistan with Stratfor’s South Asia director Kamran Bokhari. The Times journalists sought and gained access to Stratfor intelligence and reciprocated by publishing Bokhari’s views six weeks later in “Rebuffing U.S., Pakistan Balks at Crackdown.” (October 14, 2009, NYT)

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http://falkvinge.net/2011(...)-copyright-monopoly/

Among the treasure troves of recently released WikiLeaks cables, we find one whose significance has bypassed Swedish media. In short: every law proposal, every ordinance, and every governmental report hostile to the net, youth, and civil liberties here in Sweden in recent years have been commissioned by the US government and industry interests.

I can understand that the significance has been missed, because it takes a whole lot of knowledge in this domain to recognize the topics discussed. When you do, however, you realize that the cable lists orders for the Swedish Government to implement a series of measures that significantly weakens Sweden’s competitive advantage in the IT field against the US. We had concluded this was the case, but had believed things had come from a large number of different sources. That was wrong. It was all coordinated, and the Swedish Government had received a checklist to tick off. The Government is described in the cables as “fully on board”.

Since 2006, the Pirate Party has claimed that traffic data retention (trafikdatalagring), the expansion of police powers (polismetodutredningen), the law proposal that attempted to introduce Three Strikes (Renforsutredningen), the political trial against and persecution of The Pirate Bay, the new rights for the copyright industry to get subscriber data from ISPs (Ipred) — a power that even the Police don’t have — and the general wiretapping law (FRA-lagen) all have been part of a greater whole, a whole controlled by American interests. It has sounded quite a bit like Conspiracies ’R’ Us. Nutjobby. We have said that the American government is pushing for a systematic dismantlement of civil liberties in Europe and elsewhere to not risk the dominance of American industry interests, in particular in the area of copyright and patent monopolies.

But all of a sudden, there it was, in black on white. It takes the description so far that the civil servants in the Justice Department, people I have named and criticized, have been on the American Embassy and received instructions.

This will become sort of a longish article, as I intend to outline all the hard evidence in detail, but for those who want the executive summary, it is this: The Pirate Party was right on every detail. The hunt for ordinary Joes who share music and movies with one another has been behind the largest dismantlement of civil liberties in modern history, and American interests have been behind every part of it.

At the middle of this, we find the US cable Stockholm 09-141, recommending Sweden to not be blacklisted by the US on the so-called Special 301 list, and outlines why. The Special 301 is a list that the United States compiles every year that names and shames countries that haven’t been friendly enough to American industries. A majority of the world’s population is on the list, Canada and Spain among them. It’s quite nice company to be in, actually.

Since the 1980s, the US has aggressively threatened trade sanctions against countries who don’t give American companies sufficiently large competitive advantages — this is described in detail in the book Information Feudalism about the origins of the TRIPs agreement and WTO, for those interested in gory details. In practice, it works like this: industry associations in the US go to the Trade Representatives, who go to the myriad offices dealing with Foreign Policy, who go to the embassies, who talk to national governments (including the Swedish one) and demand changes to national law to benefit American corporations.

This sounds like fiction, right? But here are the documents. This document comes from the copyright industry’s trade association IIPA, mainly consisting of record and movie companies. They have listed six demands on the Swedish Government, which stand to find in the linked document:

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Julian Assange rejects 'Perfil' Freedom of Expresion award:

Statement by Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks:

"I note that Argentinian journalist Herman Schiller has rejected the award, under the basis that the award is abusing my good name to promote U.S. funded attacks on the government of Ecuador. This year Perfil concurrently awarded the director of the media lobby group 'Fundamedios'.

I have researched the issue and discovered that the director of 'Fundamedios' has previously denounced my work and that of WikiLeaks.

Fundamedios specializes in savaging the Ecuadorian government's attempts at breaking up Ecuadorian media ologopolies. Most of these ologopolies have traditionally been close to the U.S. government and have engaged in frequent acts of journalistic corruption. Ecuadorian media diversity reforms have been mandated by national popular referendum.'Fundamedios', which is also funded by these same ologopolies, simply has little credibility. While no government should get a free pass in media reform, 'Fundamedios' is not an example to be followed.

According to U.S. embassy cables released by WikiLeaks the director of 'Fundamedios' has been a U.S. embassy informant and according an interview with U.S. ambassador Adam Namm in el Telegrafo earlier this year, 'Fundamedios' receives more than $25,000 a month from USAID and other U.S. government bodies.

I will join Herman Schiller in rejecting the Perfil award this year."

http://andes.info.ec/english/6401.html
http://www.perfil.com/contenidos/2012/09/23/noticia_0015.html
http://www.telegrafo.com.(...)em_id=47247&Itemid=2

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/jdcs0a

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I am Kristinn Hrafnsson, official spokesman of Wikileaks. I'm here to answer any question you have to the best of my ability.

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What is the biggest mistake Wikileaks and Julian Assange have made in the site's existence?

In my view, and I have only been with the organization for two and a half years, our biggest mistake was to have too much confidence in the main stream media and not understanding, fully, the limitations of even established media powerhouses as the New York Times are operating under. For me as a jounalist for 25 years, it was a shock and a surprise to witness first hand how a prominent media house as the NYT had become subservient to the administration. We've come a long way from the Pentagon Papers and taking on Nixon.

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WikiLeaks reveals General Motors' suspected Russian Mafia ties

With one tweet Saturday night, WikiLeaks and its supporters simultaneously took on the Russian Mafia, General Motors, the Guardian newspaper, and also implicitly the U.S. government.

“Censored by MSM: Russian mafia suspected of having ‘sizable investment’ in General Motors,” the official account of Cabledrum.net announced on Twitter, linking to a Spanish Embassy cable detailing Spain’s strategy for combatting the Russian mob.

Cabledrum.net is a site that exists to facilitate easy searching the enormous cache of documents from Cablegate, WikiLeaks’ breakthrough leak of thousands of diplomatic cables. They particularly highlight cases where the mainstream media has posted redacted versions of the cables for reasons other than protecting the defenseless. This appears to be one such case.

On its FAQ page, CableDrum explains, “Sadly, this process was misused by several media partners for redactions that have nothing to do with the protection of endangered individuals. On cabledrum all cables are available both redacted and unredacted."

The cable itself describes an interview with Spanish National Court Prosecutor Jose "Pepe" Grinda Gonzalez on January 14 of 2010, in which he reviews his belief that Russia has become a kleptocracy run by organized crime linked to Russian PM Vladimir Putin. The cables were published by the Guardian in the UK, Le Monde in France, and El País in Spain.

They were, however, significantly different from the original, significantly less embarrassing to the U.S. government, which had just given General Motors a $50 billion bailout the year before. The American government is the largest single shareholder of GM stock, and as the Wall Street Journal reports, is under pressure from the company to sell its entire stake at a loss of at least $15 billion.

But who would buy it?

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US brands Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ‘enemies of the state’ (VIDEO)

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been declared enemies of the United States. Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents reveal that military personnel contacting WikiLeaks may face execution for "communicating with the enemy."

­The documents, which have been released under American Freedom of Information laws and published by WikiLeaks, were originally classified as secret and not releasable to non-US nationals.
Julian Assange said that the documents have been released just recently because of their sensitivity for some of the people involved in the investigation.

With these documents the “unusual position” and “difficulty” Assange and his organization face turn completely absurd.

“For example, that the US military should designate me and all of WikiLeaks as the enemy in its formal investigation, an investigation that carries a death-penalty offense into a person who was alleged to have come to my extradition hearing,” he said. “And in the same document it speaks about the victim being that of society, when there is no allegation that any documents have been released or published by us.”

The report exemplified the "absurdist, neo-McCarthyist fervor that exists within some of the government departments in the US,” Assange said.

Enormous wheels have been set in motion, with over a dozen different US intelligence and investigative organizations turning through this, Assange said. “Everyone sees that it is completely absurd and counter to the values the United States should be trying to present to the world,” he said, urging everyone to read the files.

The files covered a counter-intelligence investigation into a UK-based cyber systems analyst who allegedly supported WikiLeaks. The probe was trying to determine whether the analyst had disclosed any classified data to an "anti-US and/or anti-military group." She was suspected of breaching article 104-D of the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, which outlaws military personnel “holding intercourse with the enemy.”

The probe, however, was closed as the investigators failed to prove the analyst had leaked any information.

But US Army Private Bradley Manning was not so lucky, as he could face execution – though prosecutors have said they won't seek it – to be decided by a military tribunal, as officials allege that he aided al-Qaeda by releasing classified documents through WikiLeaks.

And the fact that WikiLeaks was treated as an enemy of state would have serious implications in case Assange is extradited to the US, as he is likely to face military detention.
“It appears that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the 'enemy,'” Michael Ratner, Assange's US attorney, said. “An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc.”

Assange was once labeled a "high-tech terrorist" by American Vice President Joe Biden in December 2010, and a number of top US officials have openly called on the authorities to hunt the whistleblower down.

The diplomatic cables released over the past months reveal the true scale of the US Justice Department investigation targeting both Assange and WikiLeaks. Assange himself called the investigation "unprecedented."

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation … now has, according to court testimony earlier this year, produced a file of 42,135 pages into WikiLeaks, of which less than 8,000 concern Bradley Manning,” Assange said in an address to a panel of UN delegates.

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Police stakeout bill for Assange tops £1m as it costs £11,000 a DAY to ensure he doesn't flee Ecuadorian Embassy

The police bill for staking out the embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is evading justice has already reached more than £1million.

Scotland Yard confirmed it is costing £11,000 every day to ensure the Australian does not flee his bolthole at the Ecuadorean Embassy.

The final bill could be much more as the 41-year-old continues to defy extradition to Sweden where he is suspected of sexually assaulting two women.

Officers have been watching the property in Knightsbridge, west London, since Mr Assange breached his bail and claimed asylum in June. They have been told to arrest him if he puts ‘one toe’ outside.

Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Pinto has warned Mr Assange he could be in the embassy for a decade if he is not allowed to leave Britain.

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Assange wil premier Australië aanklagen om laster

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Op maandag 8 oktober 2012 04:26 schreef LangeTabbetje het volgende:
Misschien een domme vraag, maar de VS wil hem uitgeleverd zien, (logisch denk ik dan vanuit hun oogpunt), maar waarom geen arrestatiebevel uitgegaan en Groot Brittanie gevraagd ?

Waarom zouden ze het zo ingewikkeld en raar via Zweden spelen ?

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WikiLeaks GI Files Presidential Campaign Release

Today, Wednesday 10th October, WikiLeaks begins releasing over 200,000 Global Intelligence Files (GI Files) relating to the U.S. presidential elections. Each week day we will release thousands of emails referring to Obama, Biden, Romney and the Republican and Democratic parties. Today we will publish over 13,734 emails referring to republican(s), Romney, RNC and/or GOP, ranging from 3rd January 2011 to 19th December 2011.

The GI Files total over five million emails from the U.S. private intelligence firm Stratfor. Stratfor is a secretive multi-national private intelligence firm, providing services to large corporations, and government agencies. Despite providing the U.S. government with "global intelligence" services there is no public oversight of Stratfor. The emails highlight Stratfor staff’s revolving door with government offices; Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Although Stratfor boasts U.S. governmental sources and reports to have a lot of influence on western decision makers, their emails reveal poor working and security methods and show strong political bias within the organization.

This close connection to the U.S. government means that these GI Files releases will shed insight into key U.S. federal election players. The only legitimate government is one that is elected by an informed population. Through this release WikiLeaks aims to inform the U.S. electorate in an unbiased way through the release of source documents from one of the most oddly influential companies in the U.S. today. We call upon all people around the world to search the emails and publicise their findings using the hashtag #wlfindGI.

Whoever you elect into power, keep them accountable by supporting WikiLeaks - vote with your wallet, vote WikiLeaks.

GI Files: http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html
Vote WikiLeaks: http://wikileaks.org/donate2012/
Donate to WikiLeaks: http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate
WL Friends: https://wlfriends.org/

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Detainee Policies

WikiLeaks has begun releasing the ’Detainee Policies’: more than 100 classified or otherwise restricted files from the United States Department of Defense covering the rules and procedures for detainees in U.S. military custody. Over the next month, WikiLeaks will release in chronological order the United States’ military detention policies followed for more than a decade. The documents include the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of detention camps in Iraq and Cuba, interrogation manuals and Fragmentary Orders (FRAGOs) of changes to detainee policies and procedures. A number of the ’Detainee Policies’ relate to Camp Bucca in Iraq, but there are also Department of Defense-wide policies and documents relating to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and European U.S. Army Prison facilities.

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World Bank contract details to be published online in transparency push

Bank's capacity development arm promises to open its books on publicly funded contracts as part of global anti-corruption drive

Details of World Bank-financed contracts will be available online as part of a global initiative to fight corruption and get governments to disclose their deals with private companies.

Sanjay Pradhan, vice-president of the World Bank Institute – the capacity development branch of the World Bank – said the organisation would "walk the talk", ensuring its own contracts are disclosed while helping countries open their books. "We need to be credible partners to do this," he said.

The move will embolden the nascent Open contracting initiative, a global campaign to increase disclosure and participation in public contracting. Estimates suggest governments around the world spend $9.5tn (£5.8tn) a year contracting private companies to provide goods and services, but these deals are often shrouded in secrecy. In some developing countries, procurement can account for up to 70% of public spending.

Under the initiative, details and copies of contracts funded by public money will be online in a bid to reduce corruption and increase value for money.

"Corruption, opaque contracting processes and poor oversight of contract implementation are undermining results and citizens are paying the price in terms of schools not being built, environmental damage, bridges not fixed to standard and hospitals unable to offer necessary medicines," says the campaign, arguing that "creating a level playing field with transparent and fair contracting processes … benefits all of society – government, private sector and citizens."

Pradhan said the effort, which is backed by the World Bank Institute and the German government, fits into the bank's anti-corruption work and its broader "open development" agenda, both of which have support from the very top of the bank.

"It's inherent in our DNA that we cannot tolerate corruption, we cannot tolerate any kind of blemish to the reputation of the bank on the fiduciary side," said Pradhan. "It's a natural evolution for the World Bank and the bank needs to play a leadership role in this area."

The bank finances public contracts worth up to $13bn each year. It already publishes some information for its major contracts but would release further details under the Open contracting initiative, which aims for the disclosure of all relevant documents, from pre-award activities through to the awarding of contracts and the implementation of projects.

Pradhan said the bank would also disclose contracts for its central, corporate procurement and that the International Finance Corporation, the bank's private-sector lending arm, is phasing in new requirements to disclose contracts for extractive industries projects (video).

The initiative builds on recent efforts by some governments to increase transparency around contracts. Georgia, for example, publishes all information around public contracts, including correspondence around original bids and details of payments from the state treasury. This month the Afghan government disclosed hundreds of mining contracts online.

Yama Torabi, from Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an NGO that monitors reconstruction projects in the country, welcomed the move. "This is the first time we can see how our natural resources have been contracted to private companies. We can now look at whether this was done in the national interest, for the benefit of the people," he said.

Torabi, who was in Johannesburg this week for the first Open contracting global meeting, said it will take years to roll out the initiative, which must find a way to include information about sub-contracts. "We really need to see who's getting the money at the end of the chain," he said. He added that a lack of literacy skills, reliable electricity and internet access will in some areas limit the initiative's promise to strengthen public monitoring of contracts.

One of the biggest challenges in achieving full disclosure of contracts will be the resistance of companies that claim such moves violate commercial confidentiality. Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International, said that although companies have the right to secrecy when contracting with each other, "different rules have to apply" when a government is party to a contract. Eigen added that confidentiality clauses are often overprotective and "sloppily written", and must be subject to scrutiny.

Increased transparency alone is unlikely to satisfy critics of the World Bank, who say the lender's procurement rules favour big companies from industrialised and emerging economies. "A lack of transparency in tendering, tendering in large lots, and restrictive eligibility criteria make it difficult for small and medium enterprises from developing countries to compete against large multinationals," said a group of civil society organisations (pdf) last month.

This year, the bank launched a separate review of its procurement policies, which is expected to lead to new rules in 2014.

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European Commission enabling blockade of WikiLeaks by U.S. hard-right Lieberman/King, contrary to European Parliament’s wishes

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European Commission documents released today by WikiLeaks show that hard-right U.S. politicians were directly behind the extrajudicial banking blockade against WikiLeaks. In the heavily redacted documents, MasterCard Europe admits that Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Peter T. King both “had conversations” with MasterCard in the United States. Lieberman, the then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, boasted of instigating Amazon’s cutting of service to WikiLeaks – an action condemned by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 7 December 2011.

Senator Lieberman tried to introduce the SHIELD Act into the Senate and advocated for prosecuting the New York Times for espionage in connection with WikiLeaks’ releases. Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, tried to formally designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization, have its staff listed as ’enemy combatants’, and have WikiLeaks put on a U.S. Treasury blacklist. On 13 January 2011 the U.S. Treasury announced it would not do so because there was no evidence that WikiLeaks should be on such a list. While Lieberman and King were unsuccessful in these methods of legally cutting WikiLeaks from its popular donor base, they were successful in doing so extra-legally via VISA and MasterCard, which together hold a monopoly of 97 per cent of the market of EU card payments.

VISA Europe is registered in London and is owned by a consortium of European banks. MasterCard Europe is registered in Belgium and has similar ownership, but the Commission papers show that European control of VISA Europe and MasterCard Europe is a fiction. The papers reveal that the instructions to blockade WikiLeaks’ operations in Europe came directly from VISA and MasterCard in the United States. Ownership would normally imply control, but VISA and MasterCard Europe are essentially controlled by confidential contracts with their U.S. counterparts, a hidden organizational structure that the Commission calls an “association of undertakings”.

On Tuesday, 19 November 2012, the European Parliament took an important step towards safeguarding the economic sovereignty of all Europeans. In Article 32 of its resolution, the European Parliament expressed the will that the Commission should prevent the arbitrary refusal of payments by credit card companies, which economically strangles businesses and organizations, notably ours. The resolution is an important step to putting an end to the Lieberman/King blockade, which has wiped out 95 per cent of WikiLeaks’ revenues. The Lieberman/King blockade has been directly condemned by, among others, the UN Special Rapporteur of Freedom of Speech and the New York Times Editorial Board. The blockade is a direct infringement of the Article 19 right to receive and impart information, and threatens all donor-funded organizations and the freedom of the press.

It comes as a surprise, then, that the European Commission is taking the contrary view in its preliminary decision, of not opening a formal investigation into VISA, MasterCard and AmEx’s violations against DataCell, the company that collected donations to the WikiLeaks project until the imposition of the blockade in 2010. The Commission’s 16-page preliminary decision has been announced after 15 months of deliberations. The ’normal’ waiting time is four months. Yesterday, DataCell and WikiLeaks submitted detailed counter-arguments to the Commission’s preliminary decision.

Through the leaked documents we learn that VISA and MasterCard have used a false statement by the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to mislead the European Commission. The Prime Minister’s statement, which she later claimed was made in her "private capacity", was that the WikiLeaks publication of diplomatic cables was "illegal". This was declared to be false by a subsequent investigation by the Australian Federal Police, which declared that WikiLeaks had not broken any Australian law. Earlier this year, the Australian Senate passed a resolution demanding the retraction of the Prime Minister’s false statement.

The leaked documents reveal MasterCard’s political stance to our exposure of the crimes and horrors of military campaigns: “It is evident that any affiliation with an organisation causing damage to the national interests of several nations involved in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq... will be extremely damaging for the public perception of MasterCard”.

Julian Assange said: “There is no sovereignty without economic sovereignty. It is concerning that hard-right elements in the United States have been able to pressure VISA and MasterCard, who together hold monopoly over the European market, into introducing a blockade that the U.S. Treasury has rightly rejected. These unaccountable elements are directly interfering in the political and economic freedoms of EU consumers and are setting a precedent for political censorship of the world’s media.”

WikiLeaks will continue to fight the blockade, despite its limited resources, because it is fighting for its survival. Already there have been victories. In June 2012 WikiLeaks won its first court victory in Iceland against the Lieberman-King blockade. Last month WikiLeaks opened a new battle front by filing, together with its partner DataCell, a case against Teller A/S (VISA Denmark).

NOTE

The movement in Parliament and in the rest of Europe is to support WikiLeaks’ publishing rights. The German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung (WHS), which collected donations for WikiLeaks via PayPal had their donations account arbitrarily shut down. The tax-exempt status of the Foundation was challenged as well, as a result of political interference which was exposed this month in Der Spiegel (“Taxing Transparency”). Yesterday, WHS announced that, after almost two years of negotiations with German tax authorities, its tax exemption (charitable status) has been reinstated. Citizens of all EU Member States will now be able to donate to WikiLeaks’ operations through WHS and deduct the donation from their income tax.

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Syria Files, Wikileaks, Anonymous and dirty affairs

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Big outcry on Wikileaks that last week has published more that 2.4 million emails allegedly obtained from continuous hack against Syrian government and organizations connected to the regime.

The correspondence of “Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies” between August 2006 and March 2012 has been defined embarrassing for the government of Damascus and its allies, but the email also reveal uncomfortable truths on the West governments actions.

It’s the case of Finmeccanica affiliate Selex Elsag that sold to Syria its Tetra network for encrypted communications. The deal was made in 2008, before the beginning of the Arab Spring, but some emails leaked show ongoing relationship between the regime and the Italian company.

The email demonstrate the intermediary role of Greek company Intracom, an email dated February 2nd, 2012 discusses ”the arrival of Selex engineers in Damascus to train Intracom Syria technicians on Tetra technology, including at helicopter terminals. The email does not specify whether they are police or military helicopters,”

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Julian Assange: The Fugitive

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But the WikiLeaks chief advances a much more positive assessment of his circumstances, dismissing critics including Carr as "self-interested apologists for the US" and arguing WikiLeaks' and his own "trajectory over the past four months [have] been increasingly positive".

In defence of WikiLeaks' continuing relevance he points out his group continues to publish confidential material, with more than 1 million emails and documents in the course of this year, including major disclosures from the private intelligence company Stratfor and confidential Syrian government emails.

He also argues that considerable resources have been devoted to, and progress made in working around, the financial embargo imposed on WikiLeaks by major credit card and money transfer corporations.

However, it's Assange's continuing interest in playing a political role in Australia that may prove to be the main focus for him and WikiLeaks in 2013.

Assange says plans to form and register an Australian WikiLeaks party are now ''significantly advanced''.

He also intends to be a candidate for the Senate and says "a number of very worthy people admired by the Australian public" have indicated their availability to stand for the party.

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Swedish Pirate Party targets banks over WikiLeaks blockade

The Swedish Pirate Party has filed a complaint against the country’s banks over their involvement in the financial blockade of the controversial whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

­International payment companies refused to process donations to WikiLeaks in December 2010 after the site published confidential diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world.

The Swedish Pirate Party, which holds two seats in the European Parliament, has urged authorities launch a probe into the country’s banks. They claim the banks’ participation in the blockade violated their customers’ right, as well as Swedish law.

The complaint to the Financial Supervisory Authority, Sweden’s financial regulatory agency, was filed on Monday, local media reported.

“We believe it is worrisome that companies like Visa and MasterCard have so much power and can decide how we spend our money. You should be able to donate to any organization you want as long as it is within the law,” Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

The party has criticized the financial blockade as the precedent to serious threats to freedom of expression, complaint author Erik Lönroth said.

Swedish financial authorities will investigate the case and determine whether it has grounds to intervene, said Johan Terfelt, head of the Financial Supervisory Authority’s department for payment service.

“The law states, that if there aren’t legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed,” he said.

WikiLeaks says it lost about 95 percent of cash inflow after the blockade was imposed, shrinking its financial reserves and reducing its ability to publish new material. It blamed the US for the measure, which it called both ‘extrajudicial’ and ‘immoral.’

On Sunday, WikiLeaks announced an initiative aimed at beating the blockade: The Freedom of the Press Foundation will use donations to crowdfund journalism and transparency organizations. Donors may choose which organization they want to fund, out of a list that currently includes WikiLeaks.

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New press freedom group is launched to block US government attacks

Nothing is more vital than enabling true transparency and adversarial journalism, and preventing further assaults on them

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Several weeks ago, I wrote about the steps taken by the US government to pressure large corporations to choke off the finances and other means of support for WikiLeaks in retaliation for the group's exposure of substantial government deceit, wrongdoing and illegality. Because WikiLeaks has never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime, I wrote: "that the US government largely succeeded in using extra-legal and extra-judicial means to cripple an adverse journalistic outlet is a truly consequential episode." At the end of that column, I disclosed that I had been involved in discussions "regarding the formation of a new organization designed to support independent journalists and groups such as WikiLeaks under attack by the US and other governments."

That group has now been formed and, this morning, was formally launched. Its name is Freedom of the Press Foundation. Its website is here and its Twitter account, which will be quite active, is @FreedomOfPress.

I'm very excited to have participated in its formation and will serve as an unpaid member of the Board of Directors, along with the heroic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, 2012 McArthur-fellowship-receipient and Oscar-nominated documentarian Laura Poitras, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow, the actor and civil liberties advocate John Cusack, BoingBoing co-founder Xeni Jardin, and several other passionate free press and transparency activists. Numerous articles have been written today about its launch, including from the New York Times' media reporter David Carr, the Guardian's Dan Gillmor, Forbes' Andy Greenberg, Huffington Post's media reporter Michael Calderone, FDL's Kevin Gosztola, and board member Josh Stearns.

The primary impetus for the formation of this group was to block the US government from ever again being able to attack and suffocate an independent journalistic enterprise the way it did with WikiLeaks. Government pressure and the eager compliance of large financial corporations (such as Visa, Master Card, Bank of America, etc.) has - by design - made it extremely difficult for anyone to donate to WikiLeaks, while many people are simply afraid to directly support the group (for reasons I explained here).

We intend to raise funds ourselves and then distribute it to the beneficiaries we name. The first group of beneficiaries includes WikiLeaks. We can circumvent those extra-legal, totally inappropriate blocks that have been imposed on the group. We can enable people to support WikiLeaks without donating directly to it by donating to this new organization that will then support a group of deserving independent journalism outlets, one of which is WikiLeaks. In sum, we will render impotent the government's efforts to use its coercive pressure over corporations to suffocate not only WikiLeaks but any other group it may similarly target in the future.

The second purpose is to ensure that truly independent journalistic outlets - devoted to holding the US government and other powerful factions accountable with transparency and real adversarial journalism - are supported to the fullest extent possible. Along those lines, we have selected three other organizations along with WikiLeaks as our initial beneficiaries:

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Following WikiLeaks' Playbook, BalkanLeaks Releases Insurance File With Its Spilled Secrets

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Earlier this month BalkanLeaks, an anonymous leaking site run by a pair of Bulgarian journalists, obtained and published a series of secret documents from Bulgaria’s country’s police archive showing that the country’s prime minister Boyko Borisov had been suggested by police as a possible informant against his alleged associates in the Bulgarian mafia. The 1997 file, which refers to Borisov under the codename “Buddha,” notes his “criminal orientation” and suggests “clarifying connections of the subject with people and businesses linked to criminal activities,” according to a translation by the English-language Bulgarian new site Novinite.

That Buddha file is just the latest scandal-stirring publication from BalkanLeaks, which over the last two years has released other documents through its news site Bivol that deal with alleged corruption in Bulgaria’s banks and claims of Borisov’s mob ties. But this time it’s accompanied its leak with a new defensive measure taken from WikiLeaks’ playbook: An encrypted insurance file with a key that will only be released if BalkanLeaks’ staff are arrested or feel that their lives are threatened.

“In response to threats made against its journalists, Bivol is now releasing this insurance file. The key will leak automatically if something happens to our staff,” reads a note posted to BalkanLeaks’ website. The note asks supporters to download the file and share it via bittorrent in order to make it more difficult to censor.

When I reached BalkanLeaks founder Atanas Tchobanov by instant message, he said the 86 megabyte, AES-encrypted package includes a collection of PDF and audio files, but wouldn’t offer details of their contents. Tchobanov explained that the threat of releasing the key for the data is intended to offer protection for him and the rest of BalkanLeaks’ staff; The release follows a series of anonymous threats posted to online forums and a cyberattack against the website that took it offline for 12 hours earlier this month. “We are up against a mafia-state nexus,” says Tchobanov. “We need insurance.”

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WikiLeaks publishes 1.7m US diplomatic records

Julian Assange says 1973-76 reports, including many by Henry Kissinger, show vast range and scope of US activity

WikiLeaks has published more than 1.7m US records covering diplomatic or intelligence reports on every country in the world.

The data, which has not been leaked, comprises diplomatic records from the beginning of 1973 to the end of 1976, covering a variety of diplomatic traffic including cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence.

Julian Assange said WikiLeaks had been working for the past year to analyse and assess a vast amount of data held at the US national archives before releasing it in a searchable form.

WikiLeaks has called the collection the Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), describing it as the world's largest searchable collection of US confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications.

Assange told Press Association the information showed the vast range and scope of US diplomatic and intelligence activity around the world.

Henry Kissinger was US secretary of state and national security adviser during the period covered by the collection, and many of the reports were written by him or were sent to him. Thousands of the documents are marked NODIS (no distribution) or Eyes Only, as well as cables originally classed as secret or confidential.

Assange said WikiLeaks had undertaken a detailed analysis of the communications, adding that the information eclipsed Cablegate, a set of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks from November 2010 and over the following year. He said WikiLeaks had developed sophisticated technical systems to deal with complex and voluminous data.

Top secret documents were not available, while some others were lost or irreversibly corrupted for periods including December 1975 and March and June 1976, said Assange.

He added that his mother, who lives in Australia, had told him he was being kept at the embassy "with nothing to do but work on WikiLeaks material".

Assange is confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought asylum in June after losing his legal attempts to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted to answer allegations of rape and sexual assault against two women.

Assange denies the claims, and argues that he fears that if he was remanded in Sweden he would be at greater risk of extradition to the US to face potential prosecution for espionage relating to the WikiLeaks cable releases.

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Chagossians suffer blow in fight to go home as court rejects WikiLeak cable

US embassy cables allegedly detailing UK plan to stop return to Indian Ocean islands used by US military is ruled inadmissible

Classified American embassy cables obtained by WikiLeaks cannot be used as evidence in English and Welsh courts because they breach diplomatic privilege, judges have ruled.

The decision by Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Mitting in the high court will have far-reaching consequences and is a severe setback for the use of material obtained from leaks or whistleblowers.

Lawyers representing exiled islanders from the Chagos archipelago had planned to exploit revealing official documents, obtained by WikiLeaks and published in the Guardian, to question a Foreign Office official, Colin Roberts. He was commissioner for the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which covers the Chagos Islands, in 2009 when the cable was written by the US embassy in London.

The US cable quoted Roberts, who is due to become the next governor of the Falkland Islands, telling the Americans that as a result of imposing a marine protected area (MPA) on the territory, there would no longer be "human footprints" or "Man Fridays" on the islands. The US rents a military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia, and the Chagossians have been in a long-running dispute with the Foreign Office about their right to return home.

The case is the first one resulting from the leak of classified US cables in which UK officials had been ordered to appear. WikiLeaks material has been deemed admissible in other cases, notably the UN-backed special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague.

To avoid confirming the WikiLeaks cable's authenticity, Steven Kovats QC, counsel for the Foreign Office, said the government would stick to a policy of "neither confirm nor deny" anything about the documents. The policy is known in Whitehall as NCND.

But the judges warned that Roberts could not avoid answering questions by relying on the NCND policy. Kovats then argued that the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964, which incorporates the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations into domestic law, meant the alleged cable, or copies of it held by newspapers, were inadmissible in evidence.

In their ruling, the judges agreed and said that the 1964 Act prevented them from considering whether the cable contained an accurate record of the May 2009 meeting. Article 24 of the Vienna Convention states: "The archives and documents of the mission shall be inviolable at any time and wherever they may be."

Outside the court, Sam Brown of law firm Clifford Chance, which is representing the Chagossians, said: "We are extremely disappointed that the court has decided not only to reverse the ruling it made on whether the policy of NCND prevented Foreign Office officials being asked questions about the accuracy of US cables, but also to exclude the cables from evidence in their entirety.

"This decision, that has potentially global ramifications, means that the real reason the MPA was created in the Chagos archipelago may never be known. The foreign secretary [William Hague] has opposed the use of WikiLeaks cables in court so as to deprive the Chagossians of the opportunity to cross-examine the BIOT commissioner as to his motives for the MPA, which were recorded by the US officials as being the best way to defeat the resettlement of the islands by their rightful inhabitants, with no human footprints or Man Fridays."

Earlier in the hearing, Roberts denied he had said the MPA was a plan with an "ulterior motive" – namely, to prevent the islanders from returning.

Asked by Nigel Pleming QC, counsel for the islanders, about the alleged "Man Fridays" comment, Roberts, talking generally, said he "absolutely" agreed and would never have used the phrase in such circumstances. He refused to answer questions about the authenticity and accuracy of the cable's contents.

The case has been brought by Louis Olivier Bancoult, chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group, who has seized on the leaked cable to argue in the high court that the decision to impose an MPA by the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, in 2010, should be declared unlawful. The leaked US cable was seen as a key element in their claim.

The inhabitants of the archipelago were removed in the 1960s and 1970s when the UK agreed that the US could build its base on Diego Garcia.

Their removal and the imposition of a marine reserve is also being contested at the permanent court of arbitration in The Hague. Earlier this year Britain was told it would have to justify its decision before a full hearing of the tribunal.

The Mauritian prime minister, Navinchandra Ramgoolam, has said the decision to establish a 1,400,000 sq km (540,000 sq mile) marine reserve was carried out in defiance of assurances given to him at the time by the then prime minister, Gordon Brown.

The Diego Garcia agreement signed by the US and UK in 1966 expires in 2016. Both parties must agree to extend, modify or end it by December 2014. Ramgoolam told the Guardian last year that the objective of Mauritius was to "reassert sovereignty" over the Chagos islands. The case continues.

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Victory for WikiLeaks

Iceland may just have given WikiLeaks & Julian Assange a much needed and overdue boost.

The supreme court of Iceland passed a ruling on April 24, 2013 ordering Valitor – a.k.a Visa Iceland – to resume processing online donations to WikiLeaks within two weeks. And if they don't follow through, the judge will hold them to it by charging Valitor a nice daily fine of $6,830 until it complies.

“This is a victory for WikiLeaks and freedom of information,” Reporters Without Borders declared, “The arbitrary blocking of payments put in place by financial service companies was completely illegal and has now been condemned as such by a country’s highest court.” RWB continues:

. We hope that this ruling will put a stop to the controversial decisions that Visa has been taking until now in connection with WikiLeaks and that Visa will instruct all of its partners and subcontractors around the world to comply. It would be strange, and unacceptable, if only Valitor were obliged to provide a service to WikiLeaks in Iceland while all the other subcontractors, including those in the rest of Europe and the United States, were not.

The gates are finally reopened. It's time to send money and rejuvenate the spirit of transparency that so captivated us all when WikiLeaks first brought all the dirty secret-dealing to light. In two weeks, you'll be able to donate again to WikiLeaks here. And by the end of 2013, let's raise again a unified and unstoppable global rallying cry for full-transparency and freedom of expression . . . this dream must not die!

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Julian Assange reveals GCHQ messages discussing Swedish extradition | Media | guardian.co.uk

WikiLeaks founder uses subject access request to access British agency chatter, which allegedly calls extradition 'a fit-up'

Authorities at GCHQ, the government eavesdropping agency, are facing embarrassing revelations about internal correspondence in which Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is discussed, apparently including speculation that he is being framed by Swedish authorities seeking his extradition on rape allegations.

The records were revealed by Assange himself in a Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme Salvados in which he explained that an official request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by GCHQ.

A message from September 2012, read out by Assange, apparently says: "They are trying to arrest him on suspicion of XYZ … It is definitely a fit-up… Their timings are too convenient right after Cablegate."

The messages appear to contain speculation and chatter between GCHQ employees, but Assange gave little further explanation about exactly who they came from.

The WikiLeaks founder, who has spent the past 11 months in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden, claimed GCHQ had been unaware that it might have anything on him that was not classified.

"It won't hand over any of the classified information," he said. "But, much to its surprise, it has some unclassified information on us."

"We have just received this. It is not public yet," he added.

A second instant message conversation from August last year between two unknown people saw them call Assange a fool for thinking Sweden would drop its attempt to extradite him.

The conversation, as read out by Assange, goes: "He reckons he will stay in the Ecuadorian embassy for six to 12 months when the charges against him will be dropped, but that is not really how it works now is it? He's a fool… Yeah … A highly optimistic fool."

"This is what the spies are discussing amongst themselves," Assange told the Spanish television presenter Jordi Evolé.

The Cheltenham-based agency said: "We can confirm that GCHQ responded formally to the subject who made the request. The disclosed material includes personal comments between some members of staff and do not reflect GCHQ's policies or views in any way.

GCHQ is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. However, it is understood that Assange's request was a subject access request, a mechanism under the Data Protection Act that can be used by individuals to obtain personal information that bodies hold about them.

On its website, the agency says : "As one of the UK's intelligence and security agencies, we gather and analyse digital and electronic signals from many channels, from all corners of the world".

"Converting this information into intelligence material, we play a significant role in informing national security, military operations, police activity and foreign policy."

Julian Assange reveals GCHQ messages discussing Swedish extradition



Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

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WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI | Threat Level | Wired.com

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On an August workday in 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport. The passport photo showed a man with a unruly shock of platinum blonde hair and the name Julian Paul Assange.

Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.

The relationship provides a rare window into the U.S. law enforcement investigation into WikiLeaks, the transparency group newly thrust back into international prominence with its assistance to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Thordarson’s double-life illustrates the lengths to which the government was willing to go in its pursuit of Julian Assange, approaching WikiLeaks with the tactics honed during the FBI’s work against organized crime and computer hacking — or, more darkly, the bureau’s Hoover-era infiltration of civil rights groups.

“It’s a sign that the FBI views WikiLeaks as a suspected criminal organization rather than a news organization,” says Stephen Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “WikiLeaks was something new, so I think the FBI had to make a choice at some point as to how to evaluate it: Is this The New York Times, or is this something else? And they clearly decided it was something else.”

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'Microfoon gevonden in ambassade Ecuador'

In de ambassade van Ecuador in Londen, waar WikiLeaks-voorman Julian Assange verblijft, is een afluistermicrofoon gevonden. Dat heeft de minister van Buitenlandse Zaken van Ecuador woensdag bekendgemaakt, aldus Britse media.

Ricardo Pinta zei dat uitleg zal worden gevraagd aan het land dat verantwoordelijk is voor de microfoon maar hij zei er niet bij welk land dat is. De afluistermicrofoon zou zijn aangetroffen in het kantoor van ambassadeur Ana Alban.

Assange vluchtte vorig jaar juni de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in Londen binnen om te ontkomen aan een mogelijke uitlevering aan Zweden. De Zweedse justitie wil hem verhoren in verband met beschuldigingen van seksueel misbruik.

De WikiLeaks-oprichter heeft zich kandidaat gesteld voor de parlementsverkiezingen in Australië, werd gisteren bekend gemaakt. De Australiër, die zich meer dan een jaar schuil houdt in de ambassade, treedt aan voor de politieke vleugel van de door hem opgerichte onthullingssite. De partij wil zich inzetten voor onderwerpen als milieu, vluchtelingenpolitiek en belastingen.
Bron: Volkskrant

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Is Strongbox the New Wikileaks?

The New Yorker's new Strongbox feature claims to be an online safebox for whistleblowers to submit documents safely and anonymously. The system, based on open source DeadDrop software developed by the late Aaron Swartz, has invited comparisons to Wikileaks.

Can Strongbox really deliver on its promises? Can it be as successful and secure as Wikileaks' system was?

"I think Wikileaks is the gold standard for reasons that most other leaking systems hardly understand," said Jacob Appelbaum, a famous hacker who has been working with Julian Assange for years.

Wikileaks' submission system has been offline since late 2010, when the mysterious hacker who developed it — known as "The Architect" — left Wikileaks and took the system with him, as explained in Andy Greenberg's This Machine Kills Secrets.

Strongbox, just like Wikileaks' old submission system, tries to achieve two goals: First, give sources with incendiary information a way to deliver it to journalists without without revealing their identity. Second, strike a balance between security and usability by giving sources and reporters a system they don't need to be computer geniuses to understand.

Security experts are generally impressed by Strongbox's seemingly paranoid approach to security, but are more skeptical about its practicality.

"For me, it's unusable," said Fabio Pietrosanti, an Italian security engineer, who's working on his own Wikileaks-style software called GlobalLeaks.

Pietrosanti was specifically referring to the way journalists must jump through five or six hoops to manage and read documents after files are uploaded to the server. For him, this is "overkill" and a nightmare for journalists without the technical skills or time to take such precautions.

Tim May, one of the leaders of the Cypherpunk movement in the 1990s, agrees with Pietrosanti. May was also the mind behind BlackNet, the very first concept of an anonymous submission system powered by cryptography.

Bron: mashable.com

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TIME Magazine Reporter Michael Grunwald Calls For Murder Of Julian Assange | FDL News Desk

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twitter:

AssangeC twitterde op zondag 18-08-2013 om 03:12:45 @MikeGrunwald I am informed you tweeted to the world, that you cant wait to defend the extra judicial murder of my son Julian #Assange. reageer retweet

Michael Grunwald, TIME magazine’s “senior national security correspondent,” decided to advocate for Julian Assange’s violent murder (in an embassy no less) on twitter saying:

I can’t wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.

A petition has already been created asking TIME to remove Grunwald from national security reporting as clearly he is biased if not unhinged. You can not advocate murdering someone and cover them objectively or really any issue surrounding the individual. And given that Wikileaks is connected to Snowden and the larger issue of government secrecy and civilian privacy in the 21st century - it is unlikely Grunwald can really function in that field. He is going to run into the issue again and again and it seems that transparency advocates give him bloodlust.

However, there may be a larger point here. The attempt by the corporate/mainstream media to defend the Obama Administration’s police state isn’t working. A recent poll showed that 70% of Dems and 77% of Republicans say NSA surveillance intrudes on privacy rights. Establishment media and politicians are losing the argument. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they can no longer effectively propagandize the public.

This loss of power by two different factions within the American kleptocratic elite must be causing immense insecurity and anxiety. They feel the intense desire to reassert dominance over the means of communication in hopes of regaining control of the public’s imagination. Part of this manifests itself in renewed attempts to control the internet, which the corporate media by and large supports. Another aspect is the State Terrorism against supposed threats through the use of drones to kill American citizens. To people like Michael Grunwald – who admits to not believing in the Constitution – Julian Assange is a threat and worthy of death. Assange threatens the 1% and in Grunwald’s world that is the ultimate crime.

Obviously, Grunwald, for all his skill set on national security, is now proving himself to be just another “dry dip stick” in our national media infrastructure.

To wit, I grew up in a “poor” family, served in our military, and spent a considerable amount of my life in the Latin America Region, and thusly, became quickly acquainted with “national security, foreign policy, as well as economics and finance. Hell, I was even offered on two differing occasions, a professorship at distinguished universities, and to which I refused. Being considered a “spy” in several instances, does not make for a longlasting career.

Therefore, when I think of our nation’s “unmet needs” relative to either domestic policy or foreign policy, invariably, none of our decision-makers notify the general public on just encompasses these “unmet needs” relative to the decision-making, other than spending taxpayer dollars. And with this in mind, aside from the assorted propaganda efforts by the Obama administration and the “opposition” readily found in Congress, no mention is made of foreign decision-makers that have inserted themselves into our foreign policy efforts, writ large.

Take, for example, the drone strikes that are ongoing in Yemen. For all this “dirty work” or “heavy lifting” and depending on one’s political affinities, it is obvious that Saudi Arabia has an “unmet need” that the USA is willing to address in the guise of “dirty work” since Al Quaeda is in Yemen, and which is bedeviling the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia.

And needless to say, but I will, Michael Grunwald has no inkling that America is ‘getting its chain’ pulled by the Royal Family, and ultimately, the oil and gas industry ‘needs’ the continuing access to the marketplace for the sale of its black gold, albeit, the role of the Middleman located here in the U.S..

Now, I will step down from my “soap box.”

Jaango

And remember Assange’s big crime was embarrassing the Bullshit Artists. Thou shalt not embarrass your overlord or their minions.
Humanity is in a transition and while much suffering seems to be due us in the near term I am hopeful (and their are signs which should be interpreted as hopeful) that the “new” enlightenment will rid our public offices of these mentally ill people who have no capacity for empathy and should clearly be prohibited from representing a constituency of humans whatever the Government system.

Jaango & BSbafflesbrains = kudos!!!

Let’s see … If this had been tweeted by a member of Occupy,
and the subject of the fantasy was a government official instead of Assange,
how long would it be before an FBI SWAT team was knocking down their door?

Yet another example of liberal media bias.

Color me unsurprised. Geez. “senior national security correspondent” from lapdog poodle Time corporate-fascist propoganda sheet. No kidding.

I am hearing more citizens talk about the “propoganda media.”

It’s really almost “good” when some jerkwad spews forth seriously disgusting crap like this. It reveals the PTB for who they are, and serves to remind the 99% that We, The People, are, after all, 99%.

Shameful and should be fired….Is this kind of advocacy not illegal?

A petition has already been created asking TIME to remove Grunwald from national security reporting as clearly he is biased if not unhinged

A better response: remove TIME from you subscription list. Grunwald is just the tip of TIME’s iceberg.

Exactly. Withholding dollars is the only action you can take that will get noticed by the Corporatocracy.

It is a Tweeter War! Embedded government shill Grunwald, and TIME magazine versus Julian Assange. This cannot end well. Grunwald makes the next move, calling his critics “anti-semitic”. Yes, that always is successful to play the anti-semitic card.

Michael Grunwald ✔ @MikeGrunwald

It was a dumb tweet. I’m sorry. I deserve the backlash. (Maybe not the anti-Semitic stuff but otherwise I asked for it.)
7:36 PM – 17 Aug 2013

And stay on that Soap Box Jaango!

dumb is tweetese for reprehensible, contemptible despicable I guess.

Grunwald’s tweet sounds like something you’d expect from a terrorist didn’t it?

A related comment … If I had ever read Orwell’s “1984″ it would have been 40 years ago. However, I just downloaded and listened to Blackstone Audio’s recording of “1984″ from overdrive.com through my local library’s site and highly recommend it if you haven’t read the book in a while.

Time has been in the red for years. The only place you see it is in the Dentist’s office, about 2 months out of date. Can anyone imagine paying for a copy of Time magazine?

Dumb to admit that’s what he thinks but in no way a misrepresentation of his views.

Does anyone still subscribe to Time? I stopped about 10 years ago.

If I was the Man of the Year I still wouldn’t buy a copy.

God, how I love the smell of angry tweets so early in the morning. Yes, Grunwald was dumb, for admitting that his threatening tweet might be interpreted as a threatening tweet. So he deleted the tweet. And the internet forgot that tweet. Ha ha just kidding.

Michael Grunwald ✔ @MikeGrunwald

Fair point. I’ll delete. @rober1236Jua my main problem with this is it gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in
6:54 PM – 17 Aug 2013

I almost bought a copy. Black cover with honey bee in center. May be a good article – who knows? But I thought (before I read this) Do I really want to spend $4.95 on Time magazine?

There’s plenty of stuff about bees on internet – and that is the point, no?

Yeah, that’s it, I ALWAYS cheer for tweeted death threats and defend them to the death UNLESS the tweeter is Jewish.

Agreed!

Considering Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy, there’s no way those of us in Latin America can interpret this other than a call for using death squads (ok, robo-death squads) against a Latin American nation. You’d think, given the stink over trying to access Bolivian President Morales’ plane that YOU. DO. NOT. JOKE. ABOUT. THESE. THINGS.

For those keeping score at home, my original comment was snark.

I went back and read Grunwald’s piece on “balancing” liberty and security in Time. The quality of his reasoning would be embarrassingly low at a corner bar after the third round of beers.

Calling for the assassination of anyone should be a firing offense at any respectable news organization.

BUT TERRORISTS AND THE CHILDREN!!!

He works for TIME.

You’d think they would at least take away his afternoon Starbucks break.

Hilarious that this hack tweeted about others persecution complex, then hid behind his religion as if he was being persecuted.

Fascism must be called out everywhere it raises its head.

Bron: news.firedoglake.com

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Wikileaks details how NZ spies will work | Stuff.co.nz

Confidential new security industry documents released by Wikileaks reveal details of the kinds of surveillance systems that will be used in New Zealand under the controversial GCSB act.

The documents include operating manuals, promotional material and invoices from companies specialising in internet and telecommunications spying equipment.

This includes equipment for "mass monitoring", "tactical internet monitoring", "deep packet inspection" and "data warehousing". British, German and Swiss companies promised to "fulfil the customer's needs" for "massive data interception and retention".

Special off-the-shelf systems also provide governments with speech identification, facial recognition and number plate recognition technology.

The Government Communications Security Bureau Act passed in Parliament by 61 votes to 59 two weeks ago after months of controversy including mass public protests.

The laws were drafted in the wake of a succession of blunders by the GCSB, New Zealand's foreign intelligence agency, which included illegally spying on German internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.

The new legislation gives it the power to spy on New Zealanders.

The documents outlining just how that spying will be conducted are now publicly accessible on the Wikileaks website. The US government tried to close Wikileaks after its massive leak of US embassy cables and military reports in 2010. However, the whistle-blowing website continues to operate and this is the fourth major leak since then.

The latest leaks reinforce the Edward Snowden revelations about US mass surveillance systems. Wikileaks has been supporting and cooperating with Snowden.

The Sunday Star-Times is one of a small number of global media organisations given advance access to the documents by Wikileaks.

Julian Assange said in a press release that the leak is part of Wikileaks' "ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry". He said the sensitive sales brochures and presentations were being "used to woo state intelligence agencies into buying mass surveillance services and technologies".

The focus of the documents is internet spying technologies, but the documents also detail bulk interception methods for voice, SMS, MMS, email, fax and satellite phone communications, "the ability to analyse web and mobile interceptions in real-time".

One of the specialty services revealed in the documents is called "intrusion solutions". These are computer systems that allow a government to hack into private computers.

For instance, a company called Dreamlab Technologies produces a system called "Finfly iProxy", which is like a computer virus or "trojan" used to enter people's computers when they are downloading information off the internet.

One system, which was designed to cover two internet exchanges in the Gulf state of Oman, was "used to infect binaries [non-text files] downloaded from the internet by the configured target".

The system also had an "update infection mode", entering people's computers when their computers searched for updates to iTunes and other software. Once the computer is hacked, it will automatically send back the users' information to the government agencies.

Finfly was found by human rights activists during a search of an Egyptian intelligence agency after the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak. It was also discovered in Bahrain where it was apparently being used to target political opponents.

The internet monitoring equipment falls into three main types. First, there are "probes" that tap into and and automatically search the major trunk lines of the internet, many of which pass over US and British territory.

Second is what the documents call "LI" operations (Lawful Interception), which are systems like Prism for tapping into private Internet companies. Third is the state-organised computer hacking.

New Zealand's electronic spy agency, GCSB, has legal powers to conduct all three of these types of operations.

Bron: www.stuff.co.nz

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Publeaks

Persbericht 9 september
Vandaag lanceert Stichting Publeaks samen met een groot aantal Nederlandse mediaorganisaties Publeaks (https://www.publeaks.nl), een website waarop iedereen veilig en anoniem documenten kan lekken naar de media. Het initiatief is bedoeld om klokkenluiders te beschermen, misstanden aan de kaak te stellen en onderzoeksjournalistiek te stimuleren en ondersteunen.

Publeaks is een doorgeefluik. Het faciliteert veilig lekken naar de pers: de afzender blijft volledig anoniem en kan zelf kiezen naar welke van de aangesloten media hij of zij documenten, geluid- en beeldfragmenten wil sturen. Ontvangende mediaorganisaties kunnen in een beveiligde omgeving de bestanden inzien en bewerken.

Publeaks maakt gebruik van de software GlobaLeaks die ontwikkeld is door het Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights (http://logioshermes.org). Publeaks heeft zelf geen toegang de gelekte bestanden, kan onmogelijk achterhalen wie de afzender is en publiceert niets. Deelnemende media hebben beloofd dat zij het materiaal voor publicatie checken op waarheidsgehalte, ondersteunende bronnen zoeken en hoor en wederhoor toepassen. Op een afgesloten deel van de website kunnen journalisten vragen achterlaten voor de anonieme tipgever. Het is aan de tipgever om te beslissen of hij of zij hierop in gaat. Journalisten die iets via Publeaks ontvangen zijn op de hoogte welke andere media de documenten eveneens hebben gekregen en kunnen besluiten tot een gezamenlijk onderzoek.

Publeaks is een initiatief van de Stichting Publeaks, een stichting die zich inzet om het controlerend vermogen van de pers te stimuleren, en wordt gefinancierd door deelnemende persorganisaties. Dit zijn: AD, ANP, De Correspondent, De Groene Amsterdammer, de Volkskrant, Het Financieele Dagblad, het Parool, NOS Nieuws, NRC Handelsblad, Nieuwsuur, Nu.nl, Pownews, RTL-Nieuws, Trouw en Vrij Nederland.

De samenwerking tussen vrijwel alle toonaangevende Nederlandse mediaorganisaties maakt dit initiatief uniek in de wereld, op een moment dat veiligheid, privacy en bescherming van klokkenluiders actueler is dan ooit.

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Kijken: een docu over de VS en de media, gemaakt door Wikileaks

De documentaire Mediastan is gemaakt door Wikileaks en toont een offensief van jonge journalisten die namens de klokkenluiderssite in 2011 media in Centraal-Azië bezochten en probeerden aan te sporen om geheime Amerikaanse documenten te publiceren.
Dit is gedaan in de landen Kazakhstan, Kirgizië, Tadzjikistan, Turkmenistan, Oezbekistan en Afghanistan. Het blijkt een moeizaam te bereiken doel.

Alleen dit weekend is de film gratis te bekijken:

Mediastan (2013)

Geïnterviewde lokale journalisten geven zelf aan dat ze volledige vrijheid hebben in hun werk, maar als er documenten door Wikileaks worden aangereikt die de machthebbers in dat land negatief belichten blijkt er weinig bereidheid voor publicatie.

Slechts een journalist, werkend voor Radio Liberty in Kirgizië geeft aan waarom hij niet meewerkt: "Wij worden gefinancierd door USAID" (het Amerikaanse agentschap voor ontwikkelingssamenwerking).

In de documentaire worden geheime bezigheden van de Amerikaanse overheid belicht, maar ook komt de vraag welke taak media precies hebben diverse malen terug. Om deze reden zijn in de film ook interviews met de hoofdredacteurs van The Guardian en The New York Times opgenomen, die ook in 2011 zijn gehouden.

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'Aanklacht tegen Assange van de baan'

Aanklagers in de Verenigde Staten zien waarschijnlijk af van de vervolging van Julian Assange.

De Australiër is verantwoordelijk voor de publicatie via WikiLeaks van een kolossale hoeveelheid vertrouwelijke informatie van de Amerikaanse overheid.

The Washington Post meldde dinsdag dat bronnen bij justitie hebben gezegd dat het te problematisch wordt Assange te vervolgen wegens publicatie van geheimen.

Vervolging zou ertoe leiden dat ook journalisten en nieuwsmedia in de beklaagdenbank terechtkomen, omdat zij de informatie samen met Assange hebben verspreid. Officieel is geen besluit genomen over de vervolging van Assange, maar betrokkenen zeiden tegen de 'Post' dat het er waarschijnlijk nooit van komt.

Diplomatieke post
Als Assange nog iets anders heeft uitgespookt, kan hij misschien worden vervolgd. Maar het lekken van militaire geheimen en diplomatieke post is volgens de bronnen geen optie. Hij heeft ze bovendien niet echt gelekt, maar gepubliceerd.

Een aanklacht is dan ook nog steeds niet geformuleerd, meldt de krant. De belangrijkste bron van Assanges infomatie, ex-militair Bradley Manning, heeft wel moeten terechtstaan en werd in augustus veroordeeld.

Assange vreest ondertussen dat er wel een aanklacht en een arrestatiebevel klaarliggen. Hij wordt bovendien gezocht in verband met een aanranding in Zweden en vluchtte in juni 2012 de ambassade van Ecuador in Londen binnen, waar hij sindsdien bivakkeert. Assange is vooral bang dat Zweden hem uitlevert aan de VS.

Grand jury
Een advocaat van Assange in Washington, Barry Pollack, klaagde dat het ministerie van Justitie herhaaldelijk heeft geweigerd te vertellen hoe het onderzoek ervoor staat. Een panel van onderzoekers, een grand jury, moet bepalen of er reden tot strafvervolging is. Het is onduidelijk of dat team al tot een conclusie is gekomen en of justitie daar dan iets mee doet.

Pollack dringt erop aan dat duidelijk te maken, ''want het mag justitie geen jaren kosten om te concluderen dat het geen journalisten mag vervolgen wegens het publiceren van feiten''.

De Amerikaanse minister van Justitie, Eric Holder, heeft recent beklemtoond dat klokkenluider Edward Snowden terecht moet staan en de journalist die diens geheimen publiceerde, Glenn Greenwald, niet.

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Documents Leaked by WikiLeaks Show an Organization Training Opposition Around the World

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The latest leak from WikiLeaks – which the public had access – shows that the founder of this organization will always correspond with analysts of Stratfor, a company that mixes journalism, political analysis and methods of espionage for selling “intelligence analysis” to customers that include corporations like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical – for those who monitored the activities of environmentalists who opposed them – besides the U.S. Navy.

The Canvas (abbreviation for “center for conflict and non-violent strategies”) was founded by two student leaders of Serbia, who participated in the successful revolt that overthrew dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. For two years, students organized creative protests, marches and acts that ended up destabilizing the regime. Then joined the body of knowledge in hand and began to teach the opposition groups from different countries about how to organize to defeat the government. It was so arrived in Venezuela, where they began to train leaders of the opposition in 2005. On his TV show , Hugo Chavez accused the group of coup and be of service to the United States. “It’s called soft coup,” he said.

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Looking through the same PowerPoint presentation, the performance of Canvas impresses. Between 2002 and 2009, held 106 workshops, reaching 1800 participants from 59 countries. Not all Americans are disaffected – Canvas trained activists for example in Spain, Morocco and Azerbaijan – but the list includes many of them: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran

According to the Canvas itself, its performance was important in all so-called “color revolutions” that have spread from former countries of the Soviet Union in the 2000s.

The document points out how “successful cases” knowledge transfer to Kmara movement in Georgia in 2003, the group that launched the Revolution overthrew President and Roses, a little help to the Orange Revolution in 2004, Ukraine; training groups made the Cedar Revolution in 2005 in Lebanon, several projects with NGOs in Zimbabwe and the opposition coalition to Robert Mugabe, training activists in Vietnam, Tibet and Burma, as well as projects in Syria and Iraq with “pro-democracy” . And in Bolivia, “preparation of the 2009 elections in groups of Santa Cruz” – known as the most outspoken group of opponents of Evo Morales.

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Cable Reveals Extend Of Lapdoggery From Swedich Government On Copyrigt Monopoly

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Among the treasure troves of recently released WikiLeaks cables, we find one whose significance has bypassed Swedish media. In short: every law proposal, every ordinance, and every governmental report hostile to the net, youth, and civil liberties here in Sweden in recent years have been commissioned by the US government and industry interests.


I can understand that the significance has been missed, because it takes a whole lot of knowledge in this domain to recognize the topics discussed. When you do, however, you realize that the cable lists orders for the Swedish Government to implement a series of measures that significantly weakens Sweden’s competitive advantage in the IT field against the US. We had concluded this was the case, but had believed things had come from a large number of different sources. That was wrong. It was all coordinated, and the Swedish Government had received a checklist to tick off. The Government is described in the cables as “fully on board”.

Since 2006, the Pirate Party has claimed that traffic data retention (trafikdatalagring), the expansion of police powers (polismetodutredningen), the law proposal that attempted to introduce Three Strikes (Renforsutredningen), the political trial against and persecution of The Pirate Bay, the new rights for the copyright industry to get subscriber data from ISPs (Ipred) — a power that even the Police don’t have — and the general wiretapping law (FRA-lagen) all have been part of a greater whole, a whole controlled by American interests. It has sounded quite a bit like Conspiracies ’R’ Us. Nutjobby. We have said that the American government is pushing for a systematic dismantlement of civil liberties in Europe and elsewhere to not risk the dominance of American industry interests, in particular in the area of copyright and patent monopolies.

But all of a sudden, there it was, in black on white. It takes the description so far that the civil servants in the Justice Department, people I have named and criticized, have been on the American Embassy and received instructions.

This will become sort of a longish article, as I intend to outline all the hard evidence in detail, but for those who want the executive summary, it is this: The Pirate Party was right on every detail. The hunt for ordinary Joes who share music and movies with one another has been behind the largest dismantlement of civil liberties in modern history, and American interests have been behind every part of it.

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Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex

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Today, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which covers 50 countries and 68.2%1 of world trade in services. The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. In a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre by the parties, the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force.

Despite the failures in financial regulation evident during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis and calls for improvement of relevant regulatory structures2, proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets. The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt – into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers. The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.

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Assange files case to dismiss Swedish warrant

On Tuesday 24th of June at 1pm CET, Julian Assange’s lawyers filed a request to Stockholm District Court to dismiss his detention without charge, which has kept him in different forms of deprivation of liberty since 7 December 2010 (3.5 years). The legal actions will lead to the first custody hearing since his arrest.

The Julian Assange case is Sweden’s longest running pre-trial, pre-charge deprivation of liberty (the matter is formally at the ’preliminary investigation’ stage). Julian Assange is in a legal no-man’s-land: he has not been indicted so he cannot formally defend himself.

The Swedish government refuses to guarantee he will not be extradited to the United States. The Swedish prosecutor, unlike in other cases, refuses to question him in London or via video link, instead demanding that Mr. Assange give up his right to political asylum and speak to her in Sweden. The UK has encricled Mr. Assange at a cost to date of over GBP 6.6 million/USD 11 million/SEK 75.000.000 (see: http://govwaste.co.uk).

Assange obtained political asylum in relation to the United States criminal investigation against WikiLeaks in 2012. The United Kingdom and Sweden have both refused to give a guarantee that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the United States for his WikiLeaks activities. Earlier this week, 59 international organizations submitted complaints about the investigation against Julian Assange to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

On 19 June 2014, 56 international free press and human rights organisations signed an open letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder to drop the investiigation against WikiLeaks: https://t.co/cbZcz2dHEE

Read Julian Assange’s sworn statement from September 2013 about his stay in Sweden: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/Affid...

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Julian Assange makes fresh bid to break deadlock in Swedish rape case

Lawyers say change in Swedish law earlier this month means WikiLeaks founder should have access to text message data

Lawyers for Julian Assange have called for controversial telephone evidence to be released as they made a fresh attempt to break the deadlock in the rape case brought four years ago against the WikiLeaks founder.

Filing a challenge to the prosecution in the Swedish courts, lawyers for Assange – who last week marked the second anniversary of his asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London – said a recent revision to Swedish law requires evidence held by the prosecution to be made available to the defence.

Text messages sent by the two women plaintiffs were seen by defence lawyers in 2010, but copies of the messages were not issued to them. Assange has claimed that text messages sent by one of his accusers show that she was ambiguous about his arrest and even opposed to it.

"The messages strongly suggest that there is no basis for the arrest and they are thus vital so that he [Assange] can effectively tackle the arrest warrant," the lawyers say in documents filed with Stockholm district court on Tuesday.

The court said the request would be assessed within a few days by judge Bertil Sundin, who declined to comment.

The Swedish detention order that Assange is challenging requires him to be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over the alleged rape and sexual assault of two women there in August 2010.

Assange claims cooperation with the British and Swedish authorities would expose him to an ongoing criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice into WikiLeaks activity.

Sweden's code of judicial procedure was updated on 1 June to conform with EU law, and now includes a provision that anyone arrested or detained has the right to be made aware of "facts forming the basis for the decision to arrest".

"There is material in the prosecutor's possession that we know is to Julian Assange's advantage," said his lawyer Thomas Olsson, based in Stockholm.

"The new law enables her to release that new material, which has been in the prosecutor's possession from the start … We have seen the text messages but have not been able to use them because we could not demand that the prosecutor hand them over as evidence to the court."

The new law was "a little bit of a revolution" in Swedish legal procedure, Olsson said.

Bengt Ivarsson, president of the Swedish Bar Association, confirmed that since 1 June a suspect has had the right to be made aware of "all the circumstances that have influenced a court's decision", so all the papers for the prosecution must be handed over to the defendant.

"The new law gives us more power," said Per Samuelson, another lawyer for Assange in Stockholm, who said they had also written directly to the prosecutor on Tuesday to request the text messages. "In 2011 we were allowed to read them and memorise them, but we do not have the full messages."

ΩThe lawyers also argue that the "severe limitations on Mr Assange's fundamental freedoms" over the past four years are "unreasonable and disproportionate".

They further attest that the arrest warrant should be rescinded because it cannot be implemented, owing to Assange's asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy. "Under Swedish law, if a detention decision is not useful for its purpose, then it must be rescinded," Samuelson said.

Swedish legal opinion at a senior level has swung against the prosecutor's decision not to travel to London to interview Assange, with Anne Ramberg, head of the Bar Association, calling the current impasse a "circus".

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for one of the women in the case, did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment. Interviewed this year, she said her client would wait as long as it takes to get justice in court, even if Assange stayed in the Ecuadorean embassy until the statute of limitations on the case expired in 2020.

The Swedish prosecutor declined a request to comment.

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Swedish court sets date for Julian Assange rape case hearing

16 July hearing is first legal battle in the case since WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

Prosecutors in Sweden pursuing Julian Assange over rape allegations have rejected a demand by his lawyers to hand over new evidence and withdraw the warrant for his arrest, setting the stage in two weeks' time for the first legal battle in the case since 2012.

In a sharply worded rebuttal, prosecutors stated that Assange does not have the right to see copies of the case files.

Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder requested last week that text messages sent by his accusers be passed to the defence in an attempt to break the deadlock in the rape case brought four years ago against him.

"There is still probable cause to believe that Julian Assange is guilty of the offences that he was arrested for, and the basis for his detention, risk of flight, is undiminished," prosecutors Marianne Ny and Ingred Isgren said in a submission to Stockholm district court.

The court announced on Thursday that the two sides will present their arguments on 16 July in a public hearing – the first formal legal discussion of the case since Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London two years ago.

Dismissing the lawyers' argument that restrictions on Assange's "fundamental freedoms" since the allegations were made in 2010 are unreasonable and disproportionate, the prosecutors said Assange's confinement in the embassy is voluntary and "cannot be equated with detention".

"In our opinion, when assessing proportionality, only the time [detained] for questioning in the English courts should be taken into account," the prosecutors said. Assange was held for just 10 days in December 2010, they point out.

They also reiterated their refusal to travel to London to interview Assange in the embassy, which is seen by some Swedish politicians and senior legal figures as a possible first step to resolving the case.

Legal experts say that new legislation on a suspect's right to see evidence in the case before trial is open to different interpretations and has yet to be tested in court.

"The law states specifically that this provision does not give the suspect the right to have copies of case files," the prosecutors said in their rebuttal.

On Thursday Stockholm district court extended the invitation to Assange to appear at the hearing in two weeks' time.

Writing to him at an "address unknown", the court said valid reasons for not attending were problems with public transport, sudden illness, or unforeseen circumstances. It advised him to arrive in good time and "clear your pockets of metal objects and put them in the plastic bins provided".

Thomas Olsson, a Stockholm-based lawyer for Assange, said: "The statement from the prosecutor gives us strong arguments for our case."

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Swedish officials weigh up option to question Assange ahead of court ruling


Foreign Office happy for Marianne Ny to question Wikileaks founder in Ecuadorian embassy over allegations of rape and sexual molestation made in 2010

Sweden’s chief prosecutor said on Tuesday she was seriously considering an invitation by the British government to question Julian Assange in London, before a court ruling in Sweden on whether to lift the warrant for his arrest.

The Foreign Office said on Tuesday it would welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy and would be happy to facilitate such a move, which is seen by Assange’s lawyers as an important step towards breaking the deadlock surrounding the case.

The appeal court in Sweden is due to rule as soon as next week on a request by Assange’s lawyers that the warrant against him be rescinded, but the timing of the Foreign Office’s remarks appeared to be accidental.

Assange has sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has lived for more than two years to avoid a perceived threat of extradition to the US for publishing military secrets. Since 2010 Swedish prosecutors have been trying to question him about allegations of rape and sexual molestation, although he has not yet been charged.

“These are matters for the [Swedish] prosecutor to decide on, but if she wished to travel here to question Mr Assange in the embassy in London, we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that. Indeed, we would actively welcome it,” foreign minister Hugo Swire said on Tuesday in the House of Commons.

Ny said through a spokeswoman that the remarks were “all news to her”, and she would probably respond to them publicly within the next couple of days.

The argument that the prosecutor should interrogate Assange in London is a central element of his lawyers’ appeal, because, they say, it demonstrates that the prosecutor has not conducted the case with sufficient “urgency or effectiveness”, thereby condemning Assange to indefinite “deprivation of liberty”. However, in documents submitted to the Appeal Court, the prosecutor states she has “continually, over the past two years, tested the conditions and the practical possibility for conducting the interrogations and other necessary investigative measures in Great Britain”. Responding to a question from Anne McIntosh, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton, Swire said Ny was “quite rightly, a fiercely independent lady, and independent of the executive”.

McIntosh said she and other Tory backbenchers saw the failure to question Assange in London as one of the barriers to justice in the case.

She had been moved to ask the question by concern from her constituents over the case of footballer Ched Evans, who is challenging his conviction for rape after serving two years in jail. “I believe if [Assange] is innocent he should submit himself to the law,” she said.

Commenting on the response to her question, McIntosh added: “Presumably the prosecutor would have the time to pop over and speak to [Assange] before the Appeal Court ruling.”

Swedish legal opinion at a senior level has this year swung against the prosecutor’s decision not to travel to London to interview Assange, with Anne Ramberg, head of the Bar Association, calling the current impasse a “circus”.

Ramberg told the Guardian on Tuesday: “Many voices in Sweden take a view along the same lines [as the Foreign Office]. It is time for this longstanding matter to be brought to a fair and proportionate end.”

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said its willingness to help Swedish officials to question Assange was not a change of policy but it was “likely” that the message had not been made clear amid all the other questions about the case. Details of any questioning “should be agreed between the Swedish Prosecutor, Mr Assange and the Ecuadorian Embassy”, she said.

A spokeswoman for Sweden’s new justice minister Morgan Johansson declined to comment until the Appeal Court rules in the case.

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Assange verliest beroep, hof houdt vast aan arrestatiebevel

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Julian Assange is er niet in geslaagd het arrestatiebevel tegen hem te laten intrekken. Het Zweedse gerechtshof zag vandaag niets in de twee argumenten die de WikiLeaks-oprichter hiervoor aandroeg.

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Maar het gerechtshof zegt dat er “geen reden” is het bevel in te trekken louter omdat Assange in die ambassade zit en het bevel dus niet kan worden uitgevoerd. Wel ging het hof in op het “falen van de aanklagers” bij het onderzoeken van alternatieve manieren die het mogelijk zouden moeten de klokkenluider te ondervragen.

De advocaten van Assange lieten weten in beroep te gaan bij het hooggerechtshof in Zweden. Ze zien de woorden van het hof als “een waarschuwing” voor het openbaar ministerie en steunbetuiging voor kamp-Assange, meldt Reuters.

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Amazon’s frightening CIA partnership: Capitalism, corporations and our massive new surveillance state

When Internet retailer and would-be 21st century overlord Amazon.com kicked WikiLeaks off its servers back in 2010, the decision was not precipitated by men in black suits knocking on the door of one of Jeff Bezos’ mansions at 3 a.m., nor were any company executives awoken by calls from gruff strangers suggesting they possessed certain information that certain individuals lying next to them asking “who is that?” would certainly like to know.

Corporations, like those who lead them, are amoral entities, legally bound to maximize quarterly profits. And rich people, oft-observed desiring to become richer, may often be fools, but when it comes to making money even the most foolish executive knows there’s more to be made serving the corporate state than giving a platform to those accused of undermining national security.

The whistle-blowing website is “putting innocent people in jeopardy,” Amazon said in a statement released 24 hours after WikiLeaks first signed up for its Web hosting service. And the company wasn’t about to let someone use their servers for “securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs,” even if much of that data, leaked by Army private Chelsea Manning, showed that its rightful possessors were covering up crimes, including the murder of innocent civilians from Yemen to Iraq.

The statement was over the top — try as it might, not even the government has been able to point to a single life lost due to Manning’s disclosures — but, nonetheless, Amazon’s capitalist apologists on the libertarian right claimed the big corporation had just been victimized by big bad government. David Henderson, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explained that those calling for a boycott of Amazon were out of line, as the real enemy was “megalomaniacal Senator Joe Lieberman,” who had earlier called on Amazon to drop WikiLeaks (and is, admittedly, a rock-solid choice for a villain).

“The simple fact is that we live in a society whose governments are so big, so powerful, so intrusive, and so arbitrary, that we have to be very careful in dealing with them,” Henderson wrote. That Amazon itself cited a purported violation of its terms of service to kick WikiLeaks off its cloud was “a lie,” according to Henderson, meant to further protect Amazon from state retribution. Did it make him happy? No, of course not. “But boycotting one of the government’s many victims? No way.”

But Amazon was no victim. Henderson, like many a libertarian, fundamentally misreads the relationship between corporations and the state, creating a distinction between the two that doesn’t really exist outside of an intro-to-economics textbook. The state draws up the charter that gives corporations life, granting them the same rights as people — more rights, in fact, as a corporate person can do what would land an actual person in prison with impunity or close to it, as when Big Banana was caught paying labor organizer-killing, right-wing death squads in Colombia and got off with a fine.

Corporations are more properly understood not as victims of the state, but its for-profit accomplices. Indeed, Amazon was eager to help the U.S. government’s campaign against a website that — thanks almost entirely to Chelsea Manning — had exposed many embarrassing acts of U.S. criminality across the globe: the condoning of torture by U.S. allies in Iraq; the sexual abuse of young boys by U.S. contractors in Afghanistan; the cover-up of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, including one that killed 41 civilians, 21 of them children. The decision to boot WikiLeaks was, in fact, one that was made internally, no pressure from the deep state required.

“I consulted people I knew fairly high up in the State Department off the record, and they said that they did not have to put pressure … on Amazon for that to happen,” said Robert McChesney, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois, in an appearance on “Democracy Now!.” “It was not a difficult sell.”

And it paid off. A little more than a year later, Amazon was awarded a generous $600 million contract from the CIA to build a cloud computing service that will reportedly “provide all 17 [U.S.] intelligence agencies unprecedented access to an untold number of computers for various on-demand computing, analytic, storage, collaboration and other services.” As The Atlantic noted, and as former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed, these same agencies collect “billions and perhaps trillions of pieces of metadata, phone and Internet records, and other various bits of information on an annual basis.”

That is to say: On Amazon’s servers will be information on millions of people that the intelligence community has no right to possess — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper initially denied the intelligence community was collecting such data for a reason — which is used to facilitate corporate espionage and drone strikes that don’t just jeopardize innocent lives, but have demonstrably ended hundreds of them.

Instead of helping expose U.S. war crimes, then, Amazon’s cloud service could be used to facilitate them, for which it will be paid handsomely — which was, in all likelihood, the whole point of the company proving itself a good corporate citizen by disassociating itself from an organization that sought to expose its future clients in the intelligence community.

“We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA,” Amazon said in a 2013 statement after winning that long-sought contract (following a protracted battle for it with a similarly eager tech giant, IBM).

If it were more honest, Amazon might have said “We look forward to a successful relationship with the [coup d’état-promoting, drone-striking, blood-stained] CIA.”

And if it were more honest, Amazon could have said the same thing in 2010.

So long as there are giant piles of money to be made by systematically violating the privacy of the public (the CIA and NSA together enjoy a budget of over $25 billion), corporations will gladly lie in the same bed as those who created them, which is, yes, gross. Protecting consumer privacy is at best an advertising slogan, not a motivating principle for entities whose sole responsibility to shareholders is to maximize quarterly profits. This isn’t an admission of defeat — and when companies fear state-sanctioned invasions of privacy will cost them customers in the private sector or contracts with foreign states, they do sometimes roll back their participation — but a call to recognize the true villain: If we desire more than just an iPhone with encryption, we must acknowledge the issue is not just a few individual megalomaniacs we call senators, but a system called capitalism that systemically encourages this behavior.

In the 1970s, following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the Church Committee exposed rampant spying on dissidents that was illegal even according to the loose legal standards of the time. Speeches were made, reforms were demanded and new laws were passed. The abuses, it was claimed, were relegated to history. What happened next? Look around: The total surveillance we enjoy today, enabled by high-tech military contractors including AT&T and Google and Verizon and every other nominally private tech company that capitalism encourages to value profits over privacy — a public-private partnership that grants those in power a means of spying on the powerless beyond the wildest dreams of any 20th century totalitarian. Sure, ostensibly communist states can of course be quite awful too, but the difference is that, in capitalist nations, the citizens actually place the eavesdropping devices in their own homes.

Now, whether the reforms of the 1970s were inadequate or were just plain ignored by those who were to be reformed is sort of beside the point; the status quo is what it is and, at least if one values privacy and the ability to organize and engage in political discussion and search the Internet without fear a spy agency or one of its contractors is monitoring it all in real-time, it sure isn’t good. So when groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and progressive magazines such as The Nation call for “another Church Committee,” the question we ought to ask them is: “Fucking really?”

Abolishing capitalism is indeed a utopian goal, but when corporations routinely go above and beyond their legal duties to serve the state — granting police and intelligence agencies access to their customers’ data without so much as a judge’s rubberstamp on a warrant — expecting meaningful change from a few hearings or legislative reforms will only leave the reformers disappointed to find their efforts have just led to dystopia. So long as there’s money to be made serving the corporate state, that is what corporations will do; there’s no need to resort to conspiracy for it’s right there in their corporate. And that’s not to be defeatist, but to suggest we ought to try a different approach: we ought to be organizing to put a stop to public-private partnerships altogether.

Right-wing libertarians and other defenders of capitalism are absolutely right when they say that the profit motive is a mighty motive indeed — and that’s precisely why we should seek to remove it; to take away even just the prospect of a federal contract. If the demands of privacy advocates are limited by myopic concerns of what’s politically possible here and now, all they will have to show for their advocacy will be a false sense of achievement. The problem isn’t, as some imagine it, a state spying without appropriate limits, but the fact that capitalism erases the distinction between public and private, making it so non-state actors gleefully act as the state’s eyes and ears. This isn’t about just Google or the government, but both: the capitalist state. And until we start recognizing that and saying as much, the result of our efforts will be more of the same.

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In de gaten houden Assange kost de Britten al 13 miljoen

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Sinds Assange in de ambassade zit, staan continu agenten bij het pand in de wijk Knightsbridge. 'We zijn aan het kijken welke opties we hebben', zegt politiecommissaris Bernard Hogan-Howe vandaag tegen de radiozender LBC. 'Het put onze middelen uit. We bekijken ook hoe we dit anders kunnen doen in de toekomst.'

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Julian Assange to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London

Lawyers for Wikileaks founder welcome prosecutor’s decision to interview Assange at Ecuadorian embassy in bid to break deadlock

Lawyers for Julian Assange have claimed victory after a Swedish prosecutor bowed to pressure from the courts and agreed to break the deadlock in his case by interviewing the WikiLeaks founder in London.

Marianne Ny, who heads the investigation into accusations of rape, coercion and sexual molestation against Assange, made a formal request to interrogate him in the Ecuadorian embassy – the first sign of movement in a case that has been frozen since August 2012.

The prosecutor will also ask the UK government and Ecuador for permission to carry out the interviews at the embassy in London, where Assange has been staying for more than two-and-a-half years to avoid extradition to Sweden, from where he fears being handed over to the US to face espionage charges.

Ny said she had changed her mind because the statute of limitations on several of the crimes of which Assange is suspected runs out in August 2015.

“My attitude has been that the forms for a hearing with him at the embassy in London are such that the quality of the interrogation would be inadequate and that he needs to be present in Sweden at a trial. That assessment remains,” Ny said in a statement.

“Now time is running out and I therefore believe that I have to accept a loss of quality in the investigation and take the risk that the hearing will not take the investigation forward, because no other option is available as long as Assange does not make himself available in Sweden,” she said.

Per Samuelson, a Stockholm lawyer for Assange, said: “It is a victory for us. We have been asking for this to happen for over four years. That is the route to acquittal.”

There were “minor details” to be discussed between Assange and the prosecutor over how the interrogations will be conducted, Samuelson said, “but there are no major questions as I see it”. Assange welcomed the development but was irritated it had taken so long, Samuelson said. They are due meet in London on Saturday.

The British Foreign Office said in November it would welcome a request by the Swedish prosecutor to question Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy. Ecuador’s government has also repeatedly stated that it approves of such a step. Assange has been wanted in Sweden since the accusations were made against him in August 2010.

His lawyers, who are currently appealing against his arrest warrant in Sweden’s highest court, have complained bitterly about the prosecutor’s refusal to travel to London to speak to him – an essential step under Swedish jurisprudence to establish whether Assange can be formally charged.

The prosecutor’s refusal, they say, has condemned Assange to “severe limitations” on his freedom that are “disproportionate” to the accusations against him.

Ny has objected that interrogating Assange abroad would be complicated and largely pointless because – should sufficient grounds emerge – he would still have to travel to Sweden for trial. However, she is obliged to drop the case against him unless she believes there are reasonable grounds for suspicion of his guilt.

The prosecutor’s apparent U-turn on Friday came just days after a supreme court judge in Stockholm wrote to the prosecutor general, directing him to give his opinion concerning Assange’s appeal, “especially regarding the investigatory procedure and the principle of proportionality”.

Further pressure on the prosecutor came in November when the appeal court, while rejecting Assange’s arguments, nonetheless directed sharp criticism at Ny for failing in her “obligation” to move the case forward.

Swedish legal opinion at a senior level has swung against the prosecutor’s position. Anne Ramberg, head of Sweden’s Bar Association, said on Friday she welcomed the decision to go to London, but added: “It should have been taken long before.”

Karin Rosander, Ny’s spokeswoman, said the decision to go to London was entirely her own. She said: “Swedish prosecutors are independent in their decision-making and nobody, not even the prosecutor-general, can order a prosecutor what steps to take.”

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, a lawyer for one of the women in the case, said she had changed her mind on questioning Assange in London, and her client had also requested the move. “If Swedish investigators and prosecutors are present when Assange is interviewed, then it will be a good interrogation of high quality,” she said.

Last year, Fritz dismissed as “empty and ill-informed speculation” calls by Swedish politicians and top legal figures to do go to London.

Questioning the prosecutor’s reluctance to travel to London, several Swedish legal figures have pointed to the occasion in 2012 when the entire Stockholm district court moved to Kigali for several weeks to interview witnesses to the Rwandan genocide, with more witnesses heard in Stockholm by video link from Kigali.

The proposed interviews in London will be conducted by the deputy prosecutor in the case, Ingrid Isgren, and a police investigator. The statute of limitations on the rape accusations against Assange expires in August 2020.

Sweden’s supreme court is due to rule on the case later this month or next.

The prosecutor’s change of heart was “demonstrably cynical” in waiting until shortly before the statute of limitations expired to keep Assange “trapped in the UK”, said journalist John Pilger for the Julian Assange Legal Defense Fund.

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Jacob Appelbaum's legal disclosure from Google about Wikileaks Grand Jury investigation

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This Google legal disclosure is 306 pages long. Holy cow.
^{Fri, Jun 19 2015 00:56:33}

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Ten pages into this legal document and I'm convinced that I'm never going to return to my home country. What the actual fuck.
^{Fri, Jun 19 2015 01:04:49}

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Google says government forced it to hand over Jacob Appelbaum's data for WikiLeaks grand jury - Boing Boing

“Google released another legal disclosure notice related to the United States government’s ongoing grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks,” Kevin Gosztola writes at Firedoglake.

Google recently told Jacob Appelbaum, who has worked with WikiLeaks, that Google was ordered by the U.S. government to provide data from his account to federal investigators.

From Firedoglake:

. Google’s full legal disclosure to Appelbaum consisted of 306 pages of documents. He did not post the disclosure in its entirety but shared screen shots of parts of the disclosure through his Twitter account.

. On April 1, the government apparently determined there was some information that could be disclosed to Appelbaum.

. The government seems to confirm in legal documents that it does not consider WikiLeaks to be a journalistic enterprise. It also writes, “The government does not concede that the [redacted] subscriber is a journalist,” referring to Appelbaum.

. Nevertheless, the government broaches the issue and insists “newsmen” may be subject to grand jury investigations of this intrusive nature.

“Google Reveals It Was Forced to Hand Over Journalist’s Data for WikiLeaks Grand Jury Investigation” [Firedoglake]

Applebaum's tweets on Google's disclosure follow:

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Saoediërs waarschuwen voor ‘nepdocumenten’ na Wikileaks



Een rekening van een paar miljoen dollar voor een limo van een lid van de Saoedische koninklijke familie in Genève, manipulatie van media wereldwijd en zoveel mogelijk Iran dwarsbomen. Dat zijn tot nu toe enkele van de verhalen die zijn voortgekomen uit de ruim 61.000 Saoedische documenten die klokkenluidersite Wikileaks gisteren heeft gepubliceerd. Nu waarschuwt de regering in Saoedi-Arabië haar burgers tegen verspreiding van ‘documenten die mogelijk vervalst zijn’, meldt persbureau Reuters.

De waarschuwing lijkt een reactie op ‘The Saudi Cables’, in het kader waarvan Wikileaks zegt de vertrouwelijke diplomatieke boodschappen van het Saoedische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken te publiceren. De authenticiteit van de documenten is niet in die woorden door de autoriteiten ontkend. Het is onduidelijk of op verspreiding van nepdocumenten een straf staat of komt te staan.

Wie op de zoekterm ‘Netherlands’ zoekt, krijgt achttien resultaten. Een brief van de Nederlandse ambassade in Riad bijvoorbeeld, en een formulier van de luchtvaartautoriteit waarop een militair transportvliegtuig, onderdeel van ISAF, vermeld staat met kennelijk ‘gevaarlijke goederen’ aan boord.

Hoe Wikileaks aan de gevoelige informatie komt, maakte de organisatie niet bekend. Maar in een persbericht werd verwezen naar een Saoedische verklaring in mei, waarin stond dat er een schending was geweest van de computernetwerken van de overheid. De cyberaanval werd ‘opgeëist’ door een groep die zichzelf Yemeni Cyber Army noemt.

Saoedi-Arabië, de grootste olie-exporteur en een absolute monarchie met amper persvrijheid, staat bekend om de harde aanpak van activisten en critici. Zo werd de Saoedische mensenrechtenadvocaat Walid Abu al-Khair (35) veroordeeld tot vijftien jaar cel wegens ‘opruiing’. autoriteiten. Blogger Raif Badawi kreeg duizend zweepslagen opgelegd alsmede tien jaar celstraf en een boete van 220.000 euro wegens belediging van de Islam.

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Assange: Wikileaks heeft meer documenten over NSA-spionage



Klokkenluidersite Wikileaks heeft documenten in bezit die van groter politiek belang zijn dan de onthullingen, gisteren, over spionage van Franse presidenten door de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA. De economische en politieke belangen van Frankrijk alsook zijn soevereiniteit staan op het spel, zo waarschuwde Wikileaks-oprichter Julian Assange vanavond in een interview met de Franse tv-zender TF1.

Assange roept de Franse regering op nu in te grijpen. De “tijd is gekomen” voor Frankrijk om een parlementaire enquête in te stellen om de spionagepraktijken te onderzoeken en de schuldigen te vervolgen, zei hij. Uit de documenten zou onder meer blijken dat er sprake is geweest van economische spionage.

Volgens de documenten die via Mediapart en Libération werden gepubliceerd, werden Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) en François Hollande (2012-heden) gedurende zes jaar bespioneerd. Dit gebeurde tussen 2006 en mei 2012. Voor zover bekend stopte het afluisteren na de eerste maand dat Hollande als president was ingezworen. Welke informatie de NSA precies heeft verkregen is onduidelijk, maar het betrof in ieder geval geen staatsgeheimen.

Assange, die sinds 2012 schuilt in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in Londen om uitlevering aan Zweden te vermijden, gaf zijn interview met TF1 vanuit de ambassade. Afgelopen vrijdag publiceerde Wikileaks al een reeks van tienduizenden vertrouwelijke Saoedische documenten. Daaruit bleek onder meer dat Nederland tevergeefs op het hoogste niveau heeft geprobeerd de immuniteit te laten opheffen van een Saoedische ex-ambassadeur die werd verdacht van mensenhandel.
Bron: NRC

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Sweden and Ecuador edge closer to end of Julian Assange standoff | Media | The Guardian

Swedish government agrees to direct talks with Ecuador which may lead to WikiLeaks founder being interviewed in London

Sweden has offered to negotiate an agreement with Ecuador to enable Swedish prosecutors to interview Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, potentially ending the standoff between the two countries but almost certainly too late to prevent some allegations against the WikiLeaks founder from expiring.

Sweden’s government had agreed to open direct talks with Ecuador to explore the possibility of “a general agreement” on legal assistance in criminal matters, the Swedish justice ministry said.

“The coming discussions will show if this is a way forward,” said Cecilia Riddselius, the senior justice ministry official responsible for the case.

The move marks an apparent concession by Sweden after sharp official exchanges between the two countries in which each accused the other of blocking progress. On Friday, Riddselius said demands by Ecuador were “in complete violation of our principles of justice”.

Related: Julian Assange: Ecuador and Sweden in tense standoff over interview

Meanwhile, the British government has grown increasingly irked by the stalemate, which has cost the Metropolitan police more than £10m in policing the embassy in Kensington.

“We are frustrated that the interview has not yet taken place,” the Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire said. “This remains a deeply unsatisfactory and costly situation.”

Sweden’s justice ministry said it welcomed Ecuador’s acceptance of its offer of negotiations, but the Guardian understands the ministry rejected a proposal by Quito to meet this week because officials were on holiday, and because it would take more than a few days to prepare the negotiations.

Assange is wanted for questioning over allegations of sex crimes in Stockholm in August 2010, but has resisted extradition to Sweden citing fears that he could be transferred to the US to face espionage charges. He has repeatedly requested that he be questioned in London. He has not been charged with any offence.

Sweden’s prosecutor has faced pressure to interview Assange in London to make progress in the case, which has been deadlocked since Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012. In March she dropped her objections, citing the impending expiry of the statute of limitations on most of the allegations as a reason for renewed urgency.

In April, Assange consented to the prosecutor’s conditions for an interview. But as this month’s deadline under the statute of limitations drew closer, progress towards a London interview was slow. Sweden formally requested permission from Ecuador to enter the embassy only two months later, and an agreed date of 17 June to begin the questioning had to be cancelled at the last minute amid mutual accusations of blame for the delay.

The statute of limitations on allegations of unlawful coercion and one count of sexual molestation, made against Assange by two Swedish women, expires on Thursday, and on one count of sexual molestation next Tuesday.

Sweden made the offer last Thursday to negotiate with Ecuador, and Ecuador accepted it on Monday, Riddselius said. “I do not know when the discussions will begin. Undertaking a general agreement takes time and is normally a longer procedure.”

Ecuador had insisted on negotiating a specific agreement with Sweden over the conditions for questioning Assange in the embassy, which would be contrary to the Swedish constitution, Riddselius said last week.

She said Quito had also demanded that Sweden confer upon Assange the same status of political refugee bestowed on him by Ecuador, which had created a fresh obstacle to agreement. This appeared to prompt a statement by the Ecuadorian embassy on Monday: “At no point has the Republic of Ecuador asked the Kingdom of Sweden to grant Mr Assange asylum”.

Riddselius said on Tuesday that Sweden had not altered its understanding of Ecuador’s requests.

Ecuador had noted a “positive change on the Swedish side” during the last few weeks, according to a senior official at the country’s foreign ministry. Quito had therefore been surprised and disappointed by the rebuff it received from Sweden last week, according to people familiar with the situation.

“After the initial official correspondence from Sweden seemed to discard any possibility of maintaining an official dialogue on the matter, Sweden’s current inclination towards negotiating an agreement is perceived with optimism from our side, along with the hope that we can find a well overdue resolution to the Assange case,” the foreign ministry official said.

“It’s unfortunate that those authorities haven’t responded favorably to our requests to meet during the nearly three years of Julian Assange’s asylum”.

An outstanding allegation against Assange of “rape, less serious crime” remains current under Swedish law until August 2020.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Wikileaks Offering $50,000 Bounty for Kunduz Bombing Footage

Transparency activist group Wikileaks is offering a $50,000 reward for any footage of the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders facility in Kunduz or cockpit audio from the plane.

“The AC-130 records its attacks with high resolution gun cameras,” says the post on Wikileaks, the website founded by Julian Assange that publishes news leaks and classified information. “According to military procedure, this footage should have been retained along with the cockpit audio. A post-massacre inquiry report referred to as an ‘AR 15-6’ should have also been commissioned. We are raising a U.S. $50,000 bounty to obtain the footage, the cockpit audio, the inquiry report and other relevant materials.”

Read More: Obama Apologizes for Air Strike That Hit Doctors Without Borders Hospital

On Oct. 3, a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was bombed, killing 22 staff and patients. U.S. officials have admitted the bombing was a mistake and apologized; leader from Doctors Without Borders have called for a United Nations investigation into the attack.

Read Next: Doctors Without Borders Releases Post-Bombing Footage and Calls for Investigation


Bron: time.com

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Wikileaks release of TPP deal text confirms 'freedom of expression' fears

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Wikileaks has released what it claims is the full intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the controversial agreement between 12 countries that was signed off on Monday.

TPP was negotiated in secret and details have yet to be published. But critics including Democrat presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, unions and privacy activists have lined up to attack what they have seen of it. Wikileaks’ latest disclosures are unlikely to reassure them.

One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread.

A drafter’s note says that every participating country’s individual laws about whistleblowing would still apply.

“The text of the TPP’s intellectual property chapter confirms advocates warnings that this deal poses a grave threat to global freedom of expression and basic access to things like medicine and information,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of internet activist group Fight for the Future. “But the sad part is that no one should be surprised by this. It should have been obvious to anyone observing the process, where appointed government bureaucrats and monopolistic companies were given more access to the text than elected officials and journalists, that this would be the result.”

Among the provisions in the chapter (which may or may not be the most recent version) are rules that say that each country in the agreement has the authority to compel anyone accused of violating intellectual property law to provide “relevant information [...] that the infringer or alleged infringer possesses or controls” as provided for in that country’s own laws.

The rules also state that every country has the authority to immediately give the name and address of anyone importing detained goods to whoever owns the intellectual property.

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Britse politie stopt bewaking Assange bij ambassade

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De Britse politie patrouileert niet meer rond de klok bij de ambassade van Ecuador om Julian Assange direct op te kunnen pakken als hij een voet buiten de deur zet. De politie verklaarde maandag dat de kosten 'niet meer proportioneel' zijn. Ze zullen wel hun best blijven doen om de oprichter van WikiLeaks te arresteren, laat de politie in een verklaring weten.

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Five years confined: New Foia documents shed light on the Julian Assange case

The role of the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers in advising the Swedish prosecutors, their comments on the extradition case as not being handled as just another extradition request, the questioning in the embassy that never took place. Files obtained by l'Espresso under the Freedom of Information Act provide a five-year account of the Swedish case against the WikiLeaks founder
19 ottobre 2015
The Scotland Yard agents encircling the embassy and guarding Julian Assange night and day have been removed. But the police siege which is estimated to have cost 12 million pounds over the last three years is far from over, as the Metropolitan police admits in its press release: Scotland Yard «will make every effort to arrest him», deploying «a number of overt and covert tactics».


He has been confined in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge since June 19th, 2012. Next December 7th will mark five years since the founder of WikiLeaks lost his freedom, ending up first under house arrest and then confined in the embassy in a roughly 20 square-meter room. «Despite the efforts of many people», wrote Scotland Yard last week, «there is no imminent prospect of a diplomatic or legal resolution to this issue». A clear admission that the judiciary case against Julian Assange has become a legal and diplomatic quagmire.


L'Espresso has filed two comprehensive Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests in Sweden and Britain to access the Assange file and reconstruct the case. We have requested documents from the Swedish Prosecution Authority in Stockholm – which has been conducting a criminal investigation for the last five years on Assange, still in its preliminary phase - and from the "Crown Prosecution Service" in London, the principal prosecuting authority for England and Wales, which has provided support to the Swedish Prosecution Authority on the Assange case. While the British have rejected all of our Foia requests, the Swedish released 226 pages of documents to l'Espresso.

Whether these pages represent a major portion of the Assange file or only a small set of documents is hard to say. To our request on the exact number of pages held by the Swedish Prosecution Authority, the Swedish replied that it was impossible to say, as many documents only exist as individual electronic documents, requiring too many resources to count all the pages. Instead the Crown Prosecution Service replied that the task was not possible for the opposite reason: the information is voluminous and mostly held in paper format, hence ascertaining the exact number of pages would be too time-consuming and expensive.

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The files obtained under Foia reveal that from the very beginning, the "Crown Prosecution Service" in London advised the Swedish prosecutors against the investigative strategy that could have led to a quick closure of the preliminary investigation: questioning Assange in London – as he has requested on many occasions - rather than extraditing him to Stockholm, as the Swedish prosecutors have always tried to do.

Bron: m.espresso.repubblica.it

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WikiLeaks releases documents from CIA director's personal email account | Media | The Guardian

Publication follows the hacking of John Brennan’s email account on Monday, allegedly by high school students who call themselves Crackas With Attitude

WikiLeaks has released documents it said had been collected from CIA director John Brennan’s personal AOL account, the first in what the group said would be a series of publications.

The personal email account of the US’s top spy was compromised by hackers who claimed to be high school students. Those hackers had threatened on Twitter to release the same documents.

The embarrassing leaks include a questionnaire for the official’s security clearance marked: “Review copy – Do not retain.”

Other documents included an early version of the Limitations on Interrogations Techniques Act of 2008, a bill defining the limits of interrogation methods. Also released was a letter from Missouri Republican senator Christopher Bond, then a member of the Senate select committee on intelligence.

All the documents in the WikiLeaks cache are from 2008 and before. Brennan assumed office in 2013.

The hack is an embarrassment not just for Brennan and for the CIA, but also for AOL and parent company Verizon. The sensitivity of the material in the account notwithstanding, the hackers have said that they were able to obtain a Verizon employee ID number and, with that, the last four digits of Brennan’s credit card on file, which was all that was needed to reset the email password for the US’s top intelligence official.

The leak arrived one day before former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was scheduled to testify about her own personal email accounts before a congressional panel established to investigate the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, but has grown increasingly focused on the vulnerability of government information on her communications.

The people behind the breach, who call themselves CWA (Crackas With Attitude), said they had breached Brennan’s account and followed up with screenshots containing social security numbers, cellphone numbers and email addresses. The cell numbers and email addresses appeared to be genuine.

Authorities told CNN that Brennan’s account did not contain any classified information.

Multiple Twitter accounts associated with CWA have been deleted or suspended. Another account, used by a member calling him or herself PHPhax, is still live, but has not been active for 13 hours after a near-constant stream of information, teasers about the kind of data in the account and jokes about how the account’s user would soon be “v&” (“vanned”) – taken away in a van. His last tweet was: “What are those flashing lights.”

One hacker, who first spoke to the New York Post, claimed to be “American high school student who is not Muslim and was motivated by opposition to US foreign policy and support for Palestine”. The Twitter timeline for PHPhax includes many references to the UK. It’s not clear which members of CWA are using any of the accounts at a given time.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

twitter:

BellaMagnani twitterde op vrijdag 01-01-2016 om 19:20:44 FOI email shows #Assange prosecutor trying to mislead press over negotiations with #Ecuador https://t.co/Lcpu5X3dHm https://t.co/6P7VOcZKCm reageer retweet

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Op vrijdag 1 januari 2016 23:46 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Moet de topic titel inmiddels niet tonen dat Wikileaks een front is van de Russische geheime dienst en een propaganda kanaal van het Putin regime? (FSB/SVR)?

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Op zaterdag 2 januari 2016 12:19 schreef Nintex het volgende:

[..]


[..]


[..]


[..]

http://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/

[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

Wikileaks gebruikt 90% bronnen van RT/Sputnik, komen altijd met pro-Russische verhaaltjes aan zetten. Hebben nog nooit iets schadelijks over Rusland gepubliceerd. Assange wilde FSB beveiliging, vertelde Snowden dat hij alleen in Rusland veilig was. Rusland verliest een jet boven Turkije en plots begint Wikileaks anti-Turkse propaganda te verspreiden.

En frontman Assange heeft een talkshow op Russia Today. Ze zijn niet meer zo subtiel de laatste tijd.