Category Archives: WikiLeaks
The persecution of Barrett Brown – and how to fight it
Guardian
Mar. 21, 2013
By Glenn Greenwald
Aaron’s Swartz’s suicide in January triggered waves of indignation, and rightly so. He faced multiple felony counts and years in prison for what were, at worst, trivial transgressions of law. But his prosecution revealed the excess of both anti-hacking criminal statutes, particularly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and the fixation of federal prosecutors on severely punishing all forms of activism that challenge the power of the government and related entities to control the flow of information on the internet. Part of what drove the intense reaction to Swartz’s death was how sympathetic of a figure he was, but as noted by Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor in the DOJ’s computer crimes unit and now a law professor at GWU, what was done to Swartz is anything but unusual, and the reaction to his death will be meaningful only if channeled to protest other similar cases of prosecutorial abuse:
“I think it’s important to realize that what happened in the Swartz case happens in lots and lots of federal criminal cases. . . . What’s unusual about the Swartz case is that it involved a highly charismatic defendant with very powerful friends in a position to object to these common practices. That’s not to excuse what happened, but rather to direct the energy that is angry about what happened. If you want to end these tactics, don’t just complain about the Swartz case. Don’t just complain when the defendant happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country – mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring.”
Prosecutorial abuse is a drastically under-discussed problem in general, but it poses unique political dangers when used to punish and deter online activism. But it’s becoming the preeminent weapon used by the US government to destroy such activism.
‘Anonymous’ Hacker Explains Why He Fled The US
Business Insider
Mar. 2, 2012
By Michael Kelley
Anonymous is front and center these days: the amorphous hacktivist group has been publishing internal data of U.S. banks while prominent members are prosecuted on charges of stealing information and sharing links to stolen credit card information.
Yet overarching insights into the decentralized collective are hard to find.
Information activist Asher Wolf provides a unique perspective in an interview with a prominent American Anon, who has more than 290,000 Twitter followers via @AnonyOps and is living in exile by choice.
The hacker left the country out of a fear of being harshly prosecuted by the government for radical advocacy of movements such as WikiLeaks and Occupy .
“I think the idea was planted when I saw others leaving,” @AnonyOps told Wolf. ” Glen Greenwald left … There’s a brain drain of political dissidents – America’s punishment for screwing with civil liberties.
Bradley Manning prosecution to call full witness list despite guilty plea
Guardian
Mar. 1, 2013
By Ed Pilkington
The US government is pressing ahead with a full-blown prosecution of Bradley Manning, the soldier who has admitted to being the source of the massive WikiLeaks disclosures, even though he has pleaded guilty to charges that carry a top sentence of 20 years.
Army prosecutors have indicated that they intend to proceed with a full court martial against the 25-year-old intelligence analyst in which he will face some of the most serious charges available in a leak case such as this. They include the charge under the Espionage Act that he “aided the enemy” – in practice al-Qaida – by leaking information that ended up on the internet, an accusation that carries possible life in military custody with no chance of parole.
It will be the sixth time the Espionage Act has been unleashed against the source of an official leak of classified information under the Obama administration – more than the total number of times it has been deployed under all previous presidents since it was enacted in 1917.
Bradley Manning ensured leaks would not harm US, lawyer insists
Guardian
Jan. 8, 2012
By Ed Pilkington
Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of instigating the largest leak of state secrets in US history, consciously selected the information he passed to WikiLeaks to ensure that it would be of no harm to the US and would not aid any foreign enemy, his lawyer argued on Tuesday.
David Coombs, Manning’s civilian lawyer, revealed at a hearing at Fort Meade military base in Maryland what is likely to be a central pillar of the defence case at the soldier’s court martial. A full trial is scheduled to start on 6 March.
Coombs said that the defence would be calling as a witness Adrian Lamo, the hacker who alerted military authorities to Manning’s WikiLeaks activities, to give evidence about the web chat he had with Manning shortly before the soldier’s arrest in Iraq in March 2010. The content of the web chat, Coombs suggested, would be used by the defence to show that Manning selected information to leak that “could not be used to harm the US or advantage any foreign nation”.
Bradley Manning: how keeping himself sane was taken as proof of madness
Guardian
Nov. 30, 2012
By Ed Pilkington
Shortly before Bradley Manning was arrested in Iraq under suspicion of being the source of the vast transfer of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, he is alleged to have entered into a web chat with the hacker Adrian Lamo using the handle bradass87. “I’m honestly scared,” the anonymous individual wrote. “I have no one I trust, I need a lot of help.”
That cry for assistance was a gross under-estimation of the trouble that was about to befall Manning, judging from his testimony on Thursday. In his first publicly spoken words since his arrest in May 2010, delivered at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland, the soldier painted a picture of a Kafkaesque world into which he was sucked and in which he would languish for almost one excruciating year.
Over more than six hours of intense questioning by his defence lawyer, David Coombs, Manning, 24, set out for the court what he described as the darkness and absurdity of his first year in captivity. The more he protested the harsh conditions under which he was being held, the more that was taken as evidence that he was a suicide risk, leading to yet more tightening of the restrictions imposed upon him.
Bradley Manning lawyer argues soldier’s confinement was too harsh
NBC News
Nov. 28, 2012
By John Bailey
FORT MEADE, Md. — During a pre-trial hearing Tuesday, the defense for Army Private First Class Bradley Manning — accused of leaking thousands of classified documents to the website Wikileaks – began making the case that Manning’s charges should be dismissed, saying the Army private’s confinement conditions constitute illegal punishment.
Pfc. Manning’s defense team alleges he was improperly classified as a high security risk and as a risk to himself while confined at Quantico, which resulted in Manning being kept on 23-hour lockdown in a small cell. At one point, his clothes were taken from him at night.
David Coombs, Manning’s lead attorney, spent more than six hours questioning retired Marine Corps Col. Daniel Choike (pronounced CHOY-kee), who was commander of the Quantico brig at the time. Coombs asked Choike about a number of emails sent among the brig staff indicating that some at the facility believed that Manning did not require such harsh confinement.
Bradley Manning offers partial guilty plea in WikiLeaks case
Guardian
Nov. 8, 2012
By Ed Pilkington
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who is facing life in prison for allegedly having leaked hundreds of thousands of state secrets to WikiLeaks, has indicated publicly for the first time that he accepts responsibility for handing some information to the whistleblower website.
Manning’s defence lawyer, David Coombs, told a pre-trial hearing ahead of his court martial that the soldier wanted to offer a guilty plea for some offences contained within the US government’s case against him. This is the first time the intelligence analyst has given any public indication that he accepts that he played a part in the breach of confidential US material.
The statement is technically known as “pleading by exceptions and substitutions”. By taking this legal route, Manning is not pleading guilty to any of the 22 charges brought against him, and nor is he making a plea bargain. He is asking the court to rule on whether his plea accepting limited responsibility is admissible in the case. Coombs set out the details in a statement that was posted on his website after the hearing.
Julian Assange says victorious Obama ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’
AFP
Nov. 7, 2012
LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday described re-elected President Barack Obama was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and said he expected the US government to keep attacking the anti-secrecy website.
Speaking to AFP by telephone from Ecuador’s London embassy, where he sought asylum in June in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex crime allegations, Assange said Obama’s victory was no cause for celebration.
“Obama seems to be a nice man, and that is precisely the problem,” the 41-year-old Australian told AFP, after the president defeated Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday night to sweep back into the White House. “It’s better to have a sheep in wolf’s clothing than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Assange complained of the “persecution” of WikiLeaks by Obama’s government. He added: “All of the activities against WikiLeaks by the United States have occurred under an Obama administration.
Anonymous vows revenge after WikiLeaks launches ‘filthy’ paywall
Raw Story
Oct. 12, 2012
By Stephen C. Webster
Nameless hackers with the online protest movement “Anonymous” have turned on longtime ally WikiLeaks for deploying a paywall on its website that blocks access to the site’s trove of formerly secret files unless users donate or tell their friends about WikiLeaks via social media.
Calling the tactic “filthy and rotten,” a post to the “AnonPaste” website Thursday night said that WikiLeaks has gone too far for the hacker community to abide, so they’re taking matters into their own hands and plotting revenge.
“To this day, not ONE single WikiLeaks staff are charged or incarcerated,” the Anonymous post explains. “However, Anonymous has 14 indicted (facing 15 years) for online protests defending WikiLeaks – and one (Jeremy Hammond) in prison and facing 20 years for allegedly supplying the Stratfor GI Files. Not to mention the heroic Bradley Manning who now rots in Ft. Leavenworth Prison facing life.”
US calls Assange ‘enemy of state’
The Sydney Morning Herald
Sept. 27, 2012
THE US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States – the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.
Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with “communicating with the enemy”, a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.
The documents, some originally classified “Secret/NoForn” — not releasable to non-US nationals — record a probe by the air force’s Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.
