Attack on the Press

You know that the Department of Justice tapped scores of phone lines at the Associated Press.

You might have heard that the Attorney General of the United States isn’t sure how often reporters’ records are seized.

You might have learned that the Department of Justice is prosecuting a whistleblower regarding North Korea … as well as the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News who reported on what the whistleblower told him.  As the Washington Post notes:

[Department of Justice investigators] used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

You might have read that the Department of Justice Inspector General published a new report today saying that former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson, concluding:

We believe this misconduct to be particularly egregious because of Burke’s apparent effort to undermine the credibility of Dodson’s significant public disclosures about the failures in Operation Fast and Furious. We further believe that the seriousness of Burke’s actions are aggravated by the fact that they were taken within days after he told Deputy Attorney General Cole that he took responsibility for his office’s earlier unauthorized disclosure of a document to The New York Times, and after Cole put him on notice that such disclosures should not occur. Burke also knew at the time of his disclosure of the Dodson memorandum that he was under investigation by OPR for his conduct in connection with the earlier disclosure to The New York Times. As a high-level Department official, Burke knew his obligations to abide by Department policies and his duty to follow the instructions of the Deputy Attorney General, who was Burke’s immediate supervisor.

But there have been many similar scandals over the last couple of years.  For example:

• The Pentagon recently smeared USA Today reporters  because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

• Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest

• The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers,  bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

After Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge

• An al-Jazeera journalist – in no way connected to any terrorist group – was held at Guantánamo for six years … so the U.S. could find out about the Arabic news network. And see this

• Indeed, reporters who even speak with whistleblowers may be treated as terrorists.  And see this

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this).

Wikileaks’ head Julian Assange could face the death penalty for his heinous crime of leaking whistleblower information which make those in power uncomfortable … i.e. being a reporter.

But – whatever you think of Wikileaks – that was the canary in the coal mine in terms of going after reporters.  Specifically, former attorney general Mukasey said the U.S. should prosecute Assange because it’s “easier” than prosecuting the New York Times.

Subsequently, Congress considered a bill which would make even mainstream reporters liable for publishing leaked information.

Journalist and former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald notes today:

The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty [says that "The alternative to 'conspiring' with leakers to get information: Just writing what the government tells you."]

That, of course, is precisely the point of the unprecedented Obama war on whistleblowers and press freedoms: to ensure that the only information the public can get is information that the Obama administration wants it to have. That’s why Obama’s one-side games with secrecy – we’ll prolifically leak when it glorifies the president and severely punish all other kinds – is designed to construct the classic propaganda model. And it’s good to see journalists finally speaking out in genuine outrage and concern about all of this.

***

Here’s an amazing and revealing fact: after Richard Nixon lost the right to exercise prior restraint over the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers, he was desperate to punish and prosecute the responsible NYT reporter, Neil Sheehan. Thus, recounted the NYT’s lawyer at the time, James Goodale, Nixon concocted a theory:

“Nixon convened a grand jury to indict the New York Times and its reporter, Neil Sheehan, for conspiracy to commit espionage . . . .The government’s ‘conspiracy’ theory centered around how Sheehan got the Pentagon Papers in the first place. While Daniel Ellsberg had his own copy stored in his apartment in Cambridge, the government believed Ellsberg had given part of the papers to anti-war activists. It apparently theorized further that the activists had talked to Sheehan about publication in the Times, all of which it believed amounted to a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act.”

As Goodale notes, this is exactly “the same charge Obama’s Justice Department is investigating Assange under today,” and it’s now exactly the same theory used to formally brand Fox’s James Rosen as a criminal in court.

Indeed, this is not a partisan issue.  Bush was worse than Nixon on unlawful spying and harassment of reporters … but so is Obama.

Whistleblower Witch Hunt

But Obama has gone after whistleblowers more viciously than Bush, Nixon, or any president in history.  Indeed, the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

And the government goes out of its way to smear whistleblowers and harass honest analysts.

Even high-level government employees are in danger. For example, after the head of the NSA’s spying program – William Binney – disclosed the fact that the U.S. was spying on everyone in the U.S. and storing the data forever, and that the U.S. was quickly becoming a totalitarian state, the Feds tried to scare him into shutting up:

[Numerous] FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime.

Other NSA whistleblowers have also been subjected to armed raids and criminal prosecution.

After high-level CIA officer John Kiriakou blew the whistle on illegal CIA torture, the government prosecuted him for espionage.

Even the head of the CIA was targeted with extra-constitutional spying  and driven out of office.

The Most Gagged Person in the History of the United States

One example of the extreme gagging of whistleblowers is former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

The ACLU described Edmonds as:

The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.

Edmonds has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups.

Edmonds’ allegations have been confirmed by numerous Pentagon, MI6 and FBI officials, including 18-year FBI counter-intelligence expert John Cole.

Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that Edmonds possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”.

Ellsberg also said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:

Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today’s American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"].

As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who “sat on the NSA spying story for over a year” when they “could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome.”

“There will be phone calls going out to the media saying ‘don’t even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,’” he told us.

* * *

“I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel?’” contends Ellsberg. “The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told ‘don’t touch this . . . .‘”

Indeed, the mainstream British newspaper the Sunday Times started publishing a series of articles exposing the scandal which Edmonds had uncovered.   But U.S. State Department pressure killed the series.

What are Edmonds’ allegations … that the media is too cowardly to report … that the most famous whistleblower in history calls “more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”?

Among other things, Edmonds says that the U.S. government worked with Bin Laden and his top lieutenant 3 months after 9/11 … as part of an ongoing operation of launching war under false pretenses.

Now that would be a big story if true, wouldn’t it?

The mainstream media is finally awakening to the fact we are flirting with tyranny … and is finally starting to push back.

The best defense is a strong offense, and it is use it or lose it time for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The press should shake of its sleepiness and start talking to the whistleblowers (like Edmonds)  it’s been ignoring for years … to find out what the government is working so hard to hide.

Full Article Here – http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bigger-story-behind-the-ap-spying-scandal/5335860

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.

Just this week alone, a US federal judge sentenced hactivist Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer to 3 1/2 years in prison for exploiting a flaw in AT&T’s security system that allowed him entrance without any hacking, an act about which Slate’s Justin Peters wrote: “it’s not clear that Auernheimer committed any actual crime”, while Jeff Blagdon at the Verge added: “he cracked no codes, stole no passwords, or in any way ‘broke into’ AT&T’s customer database – something company representatives confirmed during testimony.” But he had a long record of disruptive and sometimes even quite ugly (though legal) online antagonism, so he had to be severely punished with years in prison. Also this week, the DOJ indicted the deputy social media editor at Reuters, Matthew Keys, on three felony counts which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison for allegedly providing some user names and passwords that allowed Anonymous unauthorized access into the computer system of the Los Angeles Times, where they altered a few stories and caused very minimal damage. As Peters wrote about that case, “the charges under the CFAA seem outrageously severe” and, about Keys’ federal prosecutors, observed: “apparently, they didn’t take away any lessons from the Aaron Swartz case.”

But the pending federal prosecution of 31-year-old Barrett Brown poses all new troubling risks. That’s because Brown – who has been imprisoned since September on a 17-count indictment that could result in many years in prison – is a serious journalist who has spent the last several years doggedly investigating the shadowy and highly secretive underworld of private intelligence and defense contractors, who work hand-in-hand with the agencies of the Surveillance and National Security State in all sorts of ways that remain completely unknown to the public. It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism.

A brief understanding of Brown’s intrepid journalism is vital to understanding the travesty of his prosecution. I first heard of Brown when he wrote a great 2010 essay in Vanity Fair defending the journalist Michael Hastings from attacks from fellow journalists over Hastings’ profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone, which ended the general’s career. Brown argued that establishment journalists hate Hastings because he has spent years challenging, rather than serving, political and military officials and the false conventional wisdom they spout.

In an excellent profile of Brown in the Guardian on Wednesday, Ryan Gallagher describes that “before he crossed paths with the FBI, Brown was a prolific writer who had contributed to publications including Vanity Fair, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and satirical news site the Onion.” He also “had a short stint in politics as the director of communications for an atheist group called Enlighten the Vote, and he co-authored a well-received book mocking creationism, Flock of Dodos.”

But the work central to his prosecution began in 2009, when Brown created Project PM, “dedicated to investigating private government contractors working in the secretive fields of cybersecurity, intelligence and surveillance.” Brown was then moved by the 2010 disclosures by WikiLeaks and the oppressive treatment of Bradley Manning to devote himself to online activism and transparency projects, including working with the hacktivist collective Anonymous. He has no hacking skills, but used his media savvy to help promote and defend the group, and was often referred to (incorrectly, he insists) as the Anonymous spokesman. He was particularly interested in using what Anonymous leaked for his journalism. As Brown told me several days ago in a telephone interview from the Texan prison where he is being held pending trial, he devoted almost all of his waking hours over the last several years to using these documents to dig into the secret relationships and projects between these intelligence firms and federal agencies.

The real problems for Brown began in 2011. In February, Anonymous hacked into the computer system of the private security firm HB Gary Federal and then posted thousands of emails containing incriminating and nefarious acts. Among them was a joint proposal by that firm – along with the very well-connected firms of Palantir and Berico – to try to persuade Bank of America and its law firm, Hunton & Williams, to hire them to destroy the reputations and careers of WikiLeaks supporters and, separately, critics of the Chamber of Commerce (as this New York Times article on that episode details, I was named as one of the people whose career they would seek to destroy). HB Gary Federal’s CEO Aaron Barr, who advocated the scheme, was fired as a result of the disclosures, but continues to this day to play a significant role in this public-private axis of computer security and intelligence.

Brown became obsessed with journalistically investigating every strand exposed by these HB Gary Federal emails and devoted himself to relentlessly exposing this world. He did the same with the 2012 leak of millions of emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, obtained by Anonymous and published by WikiLeaks. As Gallagher describes about Brown’s fixation on these documents:

“Hackers would sometimes obtain data and then pass it on to him. He would spend days and nights hunkered down in his small uptown Dallas apartment pouring through troves of hacked documents, writing blog posts about US government intelligence contractors and their ‘misplaced power’ while working to garner wider media coverage. . . .

“Brown was frustrated that mainstream media outlets were not covering stories he felt deserved attention. He would complain that reporters would often approach him and ask about the personalities of some of the more prominent hackers . . . but ignore the deeper issues about governments and private contractors contained in documents that had been hacked.”

The issues Brown was investigating are complex and serious, and I won’t detail all of that here. In addition to Gallagher’s article, two superb and detailed accounts of Brown’s journalism in these areas have been published by Christian Stork of WhoWhatWhy and Vice’s Patrick McGuire; read those to see how threatening Brown’s work had become to lots of well-connected people. Suffice to say, Brown, using the documents obtained by Anonymous, was digging around – with increasing efficacy – in places which National Security and Surveillance State agencies devote considerable energy to concealing.

All of this is the crucial background to the charges he currently faces. In March of last year, Brown’s home was raided by the FBI, armed with a search warrant relating to both the HB Gary Federal and the Stratfor leaks. Brown told me they were intent on finding out what he had learned about those firms, particularly HB Gary Federal. Having apparently learned that the FBI agents were coming, Brown went to his mother’s home, so the FBI broke down his door and entered his apartment. They seized various documents but could find nothing linking him to either hack, so he was not arrested.

After that, FBI agents went to his mother’s home. They found Brown there and asked for his laptop, which he denied having. Over the next several months, FBI agents continued to harass not only Brown but also his mother, repeatedly threatening to arrest her and indict her for obstruction of justice for harboring Brown and helping him conceal documents by letting him into her home.

Those months of FBI pursuit, but particularly the threats against his mother, finally caused Brown to explode with rage. Brown has been open in discussing his past battles with substance abuse, and at the time, he had stopped taking various medications which he uses to control his addiction problems. In September, he posted a YouTube video detailing that the FBI and HB Gary Federal had threatened to ruin his life, and was particularly incensed about the threats against his mother. Obviously distraught, he said he intended to do the same to the FBI agent making the threats against his mother, FBI agent Robert Smith. While expressly disavowing any intent to physically harm Smith, Brown issued rambling threats to “destroy” Smith.

That was more than enough pretext to allow the FBI to do what they long wanted: arrest Brown. The same day he posted the video on YouTube, the FBI arrested him on charges of threatening a federal agent, and then kept him imprisoned with no indictment for weeks on the ground that he posed an immediate threat to Smith. Finally in October, the DOJ unveiled an indictment charging him with three counts of, essentially, harassing a federal officer online.

In December, the DOJ filed a second indictment, which is now the heart of the government’s case against him. It alleged that he “trafficked” in stolen goods, namely the Stratfor documents leaked by Anonymous and published by WikiLeaks. The indictment focuses on one small part of the leak: a list of Straftor clients and their credit card numbers. Critically, the indictment does not allege that Brown participated in the hack or in obtaining any of those documents.

Instead, it simply alleges that he helped “disseminate” the stolen information. He did that, claims the DOJ, when he was in a chat room and posted a link to those documents that were online. As the harsh Anonymous critic Adrian Chen of Gawker wrote:

“Is it a crime for someone simply to share a link to stolen information? That seems to be the message conveyed by today’s indictment of former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown, over a massive hack of the private security firm Stratfor. Brown’s in legal trouble for copying and pasting a link from one chat room to another. This is scary to anyone who ever links to anything . . . .

“This charge does not allege Brown actually had the credit card numbers on his computer or even created the link: He just allegedly copied a link to a publicly-accessible file with the numbers from one chat room and pasted it into another. . . . As a journalist who covers hackers and has ‘transferred and posted’ many links to data stolen by hackers – in order to put them in stories about the hacks – this indictment is frightening because it seems to criminalize linking.”

What makes all of this even worse is that there is zero suggestion that Brown made use of these credit card numbers. To the contrary, when Anonymous advocated that people use the numbers to donate money to charity, Brown vocally condemned that suggestion as a distraction from Anonymous’ mission. He told me in our telephone interview that he did the same privately. As McGuire wrote: “It’s obvious by looking at the most recent posts on Barrett Brown’s blog that while he is highly interested in Stratfor, it wasn’t the credit card information that motivated him.”

Full Article Here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous

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.

“With the NSA building massive domestic spying programs, I can’t blame anyone for wanting to leave: America – land of the surveilled, home of the logged. ”

The coder — who sees his Twitter success as ” hacking public dialog” — left his home, family, and friends because he began to think the government would “fake my involvement in something or try to entrap me, or hit me with a bull— conspiracy charge.”

He likened his situation to Internet hero Aaron Swartz, the RSS co-developer and Reddit cofounder who committed suicide amid an ambitious prosecution after he downloaded millions of academic papers from the nonprofit online database J-STOR.

“I left for some of the same reasons Aaron Swartz ‘left,’” @AnonyOps told Wolf. “But exile was my choice of escape instead. I don’t have suicide in me and I didn’t want to end up in a jail cell.”

Full Article Here – http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/anonymous-hacker-explains-why-fled-002956259.html

Anonymous has a new mission: Operation Wall Street.

The loosely organized hacktivist collective Thursday declared war — or at least inconvenience — on financial services businesses in a call to arms against “the crimes of Goldman Sachs and other firms” for their role in contributing to the mortgage crisis, amongst other alleged misdeeds.

“It should be the duty of any Anonymous, any hacker, in solidarity with Occupy, to release the Dox on the CEOs & any and all Executives of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Wells Fargo, Chase, Meryl Lynch, and any other guilty party,” it wrote, referring to releasing (doxing) stolen data. “Their dox, any and all possible personal information on these people, must be released and made public and spread across the internet as much as possible. The people who have lost their homes and had their lives destroyed deserve to know who it was that did it.”

The new statement from Anonymous struck a populist note, referencing widespread bankruptcies triggered by the mortgage crisis, bank employees’ bonuses and the poor treatment of Internet activist Aaron Swartz. But it was also personal, calling out Bank of America for its “pathetic assault on Anonymous’ methods,” referring to what it first alleged Monday was a campaign funded by Bank of America to spy on Anonymous and Occupy members.

The so-called Anonymous Intelligence Agency Par:AnoIA bolstered those claims Wednesday by publishing what it described as “a total of 14GB data, code and software that is related to Bank of America, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, TEKSystems and ClearForest.”

“Looking at the data it becomes clear that Bank of America, TEKSystems and others … gathered information on Anonymous and other activists’ movement on various social media platforms and public Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels,” according to a statement posted on the Par:AnoIA site. It said the data dump included “a full version of ClearForest’s text analyzing software OneCalais,” emails between Bank of America and a subcontractor it hired to monitor Anonymous, as well as source code for what appeared to be Bank of America software.

The dumped data and files were reportedly retrieved from an unsecured server located in Tel Aviv, Israel, which also included a full version of OneCalais. “The source of this release has confirmed that the data was not acquired by a hack but because it was stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs,” according to Par:AnoIA.

In its statement, Par:AnoIA also noted that 4.8 GB of that data included “detailed career and salary information of hundred of thousands of executives and employees from various corporations all around the world.” It said the file was tagged with “reuterscompanycontent” — which seems to indicate that it came from Thomson Reuters — although stored in a file named “Bloomberg.” “What it was doing on the Israeli server is up to anyone’s guess,” said Par:AnoIA.

After the 14 GB of data was released, word quickly spread via Twitter that the published software included code designed to infect targeted PCs. “WARNING: The #Anonymous #BOA files include #TROJAN scripts and programs that ‘call home’ to #ClearForest and #OneCalais,” according to a tweet from the OneCalais Twitter account, which broadcast its first tweet on Wednesday.

Full Article Here – http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/anonymous-launches-operation-wall-street/240149804

An Occupy Wall Street activist was acquitted of assaulting a police officer and other charges on Thursday after jurors were presented with video evidence that directly contradicted the NYPD’s story.

Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges this week in regards to a case that stems from a December 17, 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Lower Manhattan. For over a year, prosecutors working on behalf of the New York Police Department have insisted that Premo, a known artist and activist, tackled an NYPD officer during a protest and in doing so inflicted enough damage to break a bone.

During court proceedings this week, Premo’s attorney presented a video that showed officers charging into the defendant unprovoked. The Village Voice reports that jurors deliberated for several hours on Thursday and then elected to find Premo not guilty on all counts, which included a felony charge of assaulting an officer of the law.

Since his arrest, supporters of Premo have insisted on his innocence. “They’re trying to make something out of nothing and they’re trying to charge him with something that didn’t actually occur,” colleague Rachel Falcone told Free Speech Radio News this week.

After being arrested, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office presented Premo with a deal that would have let him off the hook by pleading guilty to lesser charges. Maintaining his innocence, however, he was determined to fight the case in court.

Premo was “facing serious charges and potential substantial jail sentence, even though he never should have been arrested at all,” his supporters claimed in a post published on The Laundromat Project website.

Nick Pinto of the Village Voice says he was nearby during the December 2011 rally and recalls watching Premo’s arrest from a distance. In his report from court this week, Pinto explains how the details provided by the NYPD in this trial have been fabricated to such a degree that the allegations presented by the cops turned out to be literally the opposite of what occurred.

Full Article Here – http://rt.com/usa/nypd-occupy-michael-premo-703/

In a bid to address widespread public outrage over greed in the financial sector, European officials have agreed to legislation capping bankers’ bonuses at a maximum of a year’s salary. Great Britain fought to prevent the measure, but failed to rally enough support.

Starting in 2014, banks in the European Union must limit bonus payments for their employees. After some 10 months of tough negotiations, top European officials agreed late on Wednesday in Brussels to cap bonuses at a maximum of one year’s base salary.

“For the first time in the history of EU financial market regulation, we will cap bankers’ bonuses,” said the European Parliament’s head negotiator, Austria’s Othmar Karas, in a statement. “The essence is that from 2014, European banks will have to set aside more money to be more stable and concentrate on their core business, namely financing the real economy, that of small and medium-sized enterprises and jobs.”

The bonus cap was part of a package of financial laws hammered out between EU officials, the European Commission and representatives of the 27 member states in negotiations led by Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan. The goal is to prevent bankers from taking excessive risks, which can shake the financial industry.

“This overhaul of EU banking rules will make sure that banks in the future have enough capital, both in terms of quality and quantity, to withstand shocks,” Noonan said. “This will ensure that taxpayers across Europe are protected into the future.”

Fierce Resistance from London

European Parliament and member states must still formally approve the compromise, which would allow banks to grant bonuses of twice employees’ fixed salary only if the majority of their shareholders approved. The legislation is part of the far-reaching “Basel III” financial reform package aimed at increasing capital requirements to shore up the banking industry.

Wednesday’s agreement to implement what will be the world’s strictest pay cap was hard-won after months of resistance from member states. Chief among them was Great Britain, which boasts Europe’s largest financial sector. London argued that the bonus cap would hobble industry growth, but failed to attract backing from other countries to prevent the measure.

Full Article Here – http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/european-officials-cap-banker-bonuses-at-maximum-of-one-year-of-salary-a-886083.html

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.

The soldier has already pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges he is facing, leaving him liable to up to 20 years in military prison followed by a dishonourable discharge. In an exceptionally rare move for a defendant in a serious criminal trial, Manning gave his confession to the court in Fort Meade, Maryland, on Thursday in what is known as a “naked plea” – that is, it was proffered voluntarily and not as part of any plea bargain with the prosecution.

Manning’s supporters are now protesting that the soldier has done enough, and that a decision on the part of the prosecution to continue to a full trial would be a blatantly political act. Jeff Patterson, of the Bradley Manning support network, said that “from day one the prosecution had the option to prosecute Bradley easily for the charge’s he’s admitted to now. If they push on with the Espionage Act it’s because they want to send a political message that what Bradley did will not be tolerated.”

The team of three military prosecutors presenting the government’s case, led by Major Ashden Fein, have thrown the book at Manning. This week they revealed that they intended to call no fewer than 141 witnesses for a possible 12-week trial – a display of prosecutorial muscle that has astonished experts in military law. Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale law school, said: “I find it shocking that any trial counsel would think that a judge would permit 141 witnesses. This is not an anti-trust case, there are not that many moving parts in this case.”

Among the 141 witnesses, the government intends to call four people who would testify anonymously. They include “John Doe”, presumed to be a US Navy Seal who was part of the team that raided the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden.

“Doe” would be called by the prosecution, Fein argued in court this week, to show that Bin Laden personally asked his assistants to access the WikiLeaks disclosures online and present him with their findings. “Doe” is alleged to have grabbed three digital discs in the Abbottabad house on which was stored four-files’ worth of WikiLeaks material originating from Manning.

In court on Friday, there was heated legal argument over access to “Doe”. According to a court report from Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake, Manning’s lead lawyer, David Coombs, requested permission to interview “Doe” confidentially under pre-trial discovery.

He argued that access was essential for defence to prepare a proper cross-examination strategy over the most serious single charge that the soldier faces. But the prosecution objected, saying that to grant such access could reveal the identity of the unnamed “operator” involved in the killing of the al-Qaida leader.

Full Article Here – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-prosecution-guilty-plea

OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) – Police must face excessive-force claims related to an Occupy protest they dispersed at the University of California, Berkeley, a federal judge ruled.

The protesters claimed to have been engaged in a peaceful protest of tuition hikes and the privatization of public education when officers battered them and used excessive force.

After police raided their Sproul Hall encampment on Nov. 9, 2011, hundreds of protestors allegedly returned later that evening and erected more tents.

They said Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Harry LeGrande warned them to remove their tents before the police arrived 10 p.m., at which time they would allegedly give a 10-minute warning and remove the tents by force. Officers actually arrived in riot gear at 9:30 and raided the encampment, according to the complaint.

The protestors allegedly linked arms to face the police, who again used their batons, “but this time with even more brutality, pushing and jabbing people and using overhand strokes on protestors’ heads,” according to the complaint.

“The officers grabbed and indiscriminately pulled some of the protestors out of the lines and placed them under arrest,” the added. Even after removing the tents, some officers allegedly continued to beat the protestors, who were reinforced with hundreds more concerned students, according to the complaint. At least 2,000 people allegedly amassed before the officers “ceased their attack on the protestors.”

A group of 29 then sued school police, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office and the Oakland Police Department for excessive force, false arrest, retaliatory prosecution and abuse of process. They said university officials had set in motion or ignored the police action that caused their injuries.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers last week found the allegations sufficient against some officers who were directly involved in alleged beating of protestors, but she dismissed claims against supervisors and others not directly involved.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department failed to show that the claims against its officers were “unwarranted deductions of fact or unreasonable inferences,” according to the ruling.

She cited multiple specific allegations from the lawsuit, including a claim that Officer Obichere, “who appeared to weigh over 250 pounds, focused on [Plaintiff Christopher] Anderson and hit him with tremendous force about five times with increasing intensity. In addition to jabs,  this officer used overhand swings and struck Mr. Anderson’s legs as well.”

Alleging that a police officer used excessive force is a legal conclusion, but “alleging that a police officer used overhand swings to strike the plaintiff is not,” Rogers wrote.

The protestors pleaded “factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant[s are] liable for the misconduct alleged,” she added.

Rogers upheld excessive-force allegations against Officers Chavez, Garcia, King and Obichere. Neither the complaint nor the ruling provides the first names of these individual police officers.

University of California Police Department Officer Samantha Lachler is similarly not entitled to immunity for claims that she purposely hit protestor Hayden Harrison in the groin with the edge of her baton.

“Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, police officers, who were attempting to enforce a no-camping ordinance at 3:30 pm, made a dispersal announcement that protestors could not hear, and then the police officers began hitting protestors that were trapped in a crowd,” the ruling states. “The facts and circumstances confronting the officers, when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, do not support an inference that Mr. Harrison posed a threat to the safety of officers or others, was disobeying police orders or camping. Rather, the well-plead facts support an inference that Officer Lachler hit a passive individual in the groin because, by linking arms with other protestors, he may have inhibited her progress.”

Full Article Here – http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/01/55345.htm

JERUSALEM – A photo posted online by an Israeli soldier showing a child in the crosshairs of a rifle scope has created a firestorm on the internet, drawing widespread criticism.

The photo was reportedly posted on Jan. 25 by Mor Ostrovski, 20, a member of an Israeli sniper unit. It shows crosshairs zeroed in on the back of the head of what appears to be a Palestinian boy in a village. The photo has since been taken down and Ostrovski’s account has been deactivated.

“There are no other images to suggest that the photographer actually fired at the person in the image in this case,” wrote Palestinian activist Ali Abuminah who runs the site Electronic Intifada and drew much of the attention to the photo. “The image is simply tasteless and dehumanizing. It embodies the idea that Palestinian children are targets.”

Before the account was taken down, Abuminah posted other photos from Ostrovski’s account that showed him in his olive green uniform holding a variety of weapons, including a sniper rifle.

Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told ABC News that Ostrovski told his commander on Saturday that he had not taken the photo himself but that he’d taken it off the internet. No disciplinary action will be taken.

“The picture in question does not coincide with IDF’s values or code of ethics,” the spokesman added in an e-mailed statement.

The uproar over the photo follows another posted by an Israeli infantryman on Facebook around a week ago. In it, he mocked the four Palestinian prisoners he was guarding by posing bound and blindfolded next to them. He was sentenced to 14 days detention after the brigade’s commanders discovered the photo and ordered it taken down.

“Before the investigation began, it was discovered that the soldier was already judged by his commanders,” Buchman said in a statement. “Since the documented offense isn’t criminal and since the legal procedure conducted by the soldier’s commanding officer was found appropriate, a disciplinary action was decided to be sufficient.”

Full Article Here – http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-sniper-posts-photo-child-crosshairs-163924256–abc-news-topstories.html