US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[David Guyatt]

A denial by The Surveillance Group. I am left wondering that of course they didn't do it. Any more than Rupert hacked phones. I would think they outsourced all that messy business much like News Limited seems to have done. Just speculating ....

Press Release

PRESS RELEASE - 04/07/2013
We have this morning heard an accusation the source of which is apparently Ricardo Patino, the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister suggesting that we have bugged the Ecuadorian Embassy. This is completely untrue. The Surveillance Group do not and have never been engaged in any activities of this nature. We have not been contacted by any member of the Ecuadorian Government and our first notification about this incident was via the press this morning. This is a wholly untrue assertion.Timothy Young

CEO

Outsourcing would certainly be the sensible and deniable way to go.

But the question is just how the bug got inside the Ambassadors office? It can't have been easy to access the office and plant the bug in the electrical box without being seen, and this, in turn, suggests to me the possibility that someone inside the embassy was involved?

[Magda Hassan]

Outsourcing would certainly be the sensible and deniable way to go.

But the question is just how the bug got inside the Ambassadors office? It can't have been easy to access the office and plant the bug in the electrical box without being seen, and this, in turn, suggests to me the possibility that someone inside the embassy was involved?

Yes, a possibility of course.

And then there is this guy. Who may be touting for business but might have some thing to say:

4 July 2013Alleged Ecuadorian Embassy Bug Is A Decoy (where are other 3?)
James Atkinson is a professional technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) expert. His recent report on NSA spying contracts:
http://cryptome.org/2013/07/Presidents-S...4-2001.htm

---

Source
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 22:32:42 -0400
From: "James M. Atkinson" <jmatk[at]tscm.com>
Organization: Granite Island Group
To: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com>
Subject: Re: Alleged Bug Found in London Ecuadorian Embassy
This is a photograph of a video.
The outlet is typically what you find in London, but the device itself is a decoy, and is installed like this with the intention that it will be found.
For example this is connected to the back of the faceplate, with the back facing outward. This position the device in such a way that ensures that even the most primitive bug detectors will detect it, and it fact it oudl be almost impossible not to trip over it in any sort of bug sweep.
If this one is present, then this is not the real bug, but merely the decoy.
Where are the other 3 devices that they missed?
George Smiley Lives.
-jma
John Young wrote:
Photo of the alleged bug found in the London Ecuadorian Embassy
where Julian Assange is holed up. Not in his room but the office
of the ambassador:
https://twitter.com/bbhorne/status/352558192359788544
Comments?
--
James M. Atkinson. President and Sr. Engineer
"Leonardo da Vinci of Bug Sweeps and Spy Hunting"
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=15178662
Granite Island Group http://www.tscm.com/
(978) 546-3803 jmatk[at]tscm.com

(978) 381-9111

[David Guyatt]

Very interesting Maggie.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Very interesting Maggie.

And likely very true.

The bug is a patsy.

[Magda Hassan]

July 29, 2013




"We Steal Secrets": A Masterclass in Propaganda

The Assassination of Julian Assange

by JONATHAN COOK
I have just watched We Steal Secrets, Alex Gibney's documentary about Wikileaks and Julian Assange. One useful thing I learnt is the difference between a hatchet job and character assassination. Gibney is too clever for a hatchet job, and his propaganda is all the more effective for it.
The film's contention is that Assange is a natural-born egotist and, however noble his initial project, Wikileaks ended up not only feeding his vanity but also accentuating in him the very qualities secretiveness, manipulativeness, dishonesty and a hunger for power he so despises in the global forces he has taken on.
This could have made for an intriguing, and possibly plausible, thesis had Gibney approached the subject-matter more honestly and fairly. But two major flaws discredit the whole enterprise.
The first is that he grievously misrepresents the facts in the Swedish case against Assange of rape and sexual molestation to the point that his motives in making the film are brought into question.
To shore up his central argument about Assange's moral failings, he needs to make a persuasive case that these defects are not only discernible in Assange's public work but in his private life too.
We thus get an extremely partial account of what occurred in Sweden, mostly through the eyes of A, one of his two accusers. She is interviewed in heavy disguise.
Gibney avoids referring to significant aspects of the case that would have cast doubt in the audience's mind about A and her testimony. He does not, for example, mention that A refused on Assange's behalf offers made by her friends at a dinner party to put up the Wikileaks leader in their home a short time after she says the sexual assault took place.
The film also ignores the prior close relationship between A and the police interviewer and its possible bearing on the fact that the other complainant, S, refused to sign her police statement, suggesting that she did not believe it represented her view of what had happened.
But the most damning evidence against Gibney is his focus on a torn condom submitted by A to the police, unquestioningly accepting its significance as proof of the assault. The film repeatedly shows a black and white image of the damaged prophylactic.
Gibney even allows a theory establishing a central personality flaw in Assange to be built around the condom. According to this view, Assange tore it because, imprisoned in his digital world, he wanted to spawn flesh-and-blood babies to give his life more concrete and permanent meaning.
The problem is that investigators have admitted that no DNA from Assange was found on the condom. In fact, A's DNA was not found on it either. The condom, far from making A a more credible witness, suggests that she may have planted evidence to bolster a case so weak that the original prosecutors dropped it.
There is no way Gibney could not have known these well-publicised concerns about the condom. So the question is why would he choose to mislead the audience?
Without A, the film's case against Assange relates solely to his struggle through Wikileaks to release secrets from the inner sanctums of the US security state. And this is where the film's second major flaw reveals itself.
Gibney is careful to bring up most of the major issues concerning Assange and Wikileaks, making it harder to accuse him of distorting the record. Outside the rape allegations, however, his dishonesty relates not to an avoidance of facts and evidence but to his choice of emphasis.
The job of a good documentarist is to weigh the available material and then present as honest a record of what it reveals as is possible. Anything less is at best polemic, if it sides with those who are silenced and weak, and at worst propaganda, if it sides with those who wield power.
Gibney's film treats Assange as if he and the US corporate-military behemoth were engaged in a simple game of cat and mouse, two players trying to outsmart each other. He offers little sense of the vast forces ranged against Assange and Wikileaks.
The Swedish allegations are viewed only in so far as they question Assange's moral character. No serious effort is made to highlight the enormous resources the US security state has been marshalling to shape public opinion, most notably through the media. The hate campaign against Assange, and the Swedish affair's role in stoking it, are ignored.
None of this is too surprising. Were Gibney to have highlighted Washington's efforts to demonise Assange it might have hinted to us, his audience, Gibney's own place in supporting this matrix of misinformation.
This is a shame because there is probably a good case to make that anyone who takes on the might of the modern surveillance and security empire the US has become must to some degree mirror its moral failings.
How is it possible to remain transparent, open, honest even sane when every electronic device you possess is probably bugged, when your every move is recorded, when your loved ones are under threat, when the best legal minds are plotting your downfall, when your words are distorted and spun by the media to turn you into an official enemy?
Assange is not alone in this plight. Bradley Manning, the source of Wikileaks' most important disclosures, necessarily lied to his superiors in the military and used subterfuge to get hold of the secret documents that revealed to us the horrors being unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan in our names.
Since he was caught, he has faced torture in jail and is currently in the midst of a show trial.
Another of the great whistleblowers of the age, Edward Snowden, was no more honest with his employers, contractors for the US surveillance state, as he accumulated more and more incriminating evidence of the illegal spying operations undertaken by the National Security Agency and others.
Now he is holed up in a Russian airport trying to find an escape from permanent incarceration or death. Should he succeed, as he did earlier in fleeing Hong Kong, it will probably be because of secrecy and deceit.
This documentary could have been a fascinating study of the moral quandaries faced by whistleblowers in the age of the surveillance super-state. Instead Gibney chose the easy course and made a film that sides with the problem rather than the solution.

[Peter Lemkin]

Assange requests investigation into US actions against WikiLeaks

Published time: September 03, 2013 03:24
Edited time: September 03, 2013 08:23














WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange submitted a complaint to the Swedish police, seeking an probe into reports of US' illegal activity in the EU against WikiLeaks, including seizure of his personal property allegedly containing evidence of a US war crime.
In the 48-page affidavit Assange describes evidence of US military intelligence investigations directed at WikiLeaks and himself dating back to 2009 and up to the most recent FBI searches in 2012-2013.

"The subject of this affidavit concerns two events involving Sweden and Germany. These events occur within the context of publicly reported FBI activities against WikiLeaks in the UK, Denmark and Iceland from 2009 to the present, which concern my work," Assange writes in the affidavit.
The WikiLeaks founder touches on two "previously unreported events". The first reveals Assange's "physical surveillance by US military intelligence … in Berlin held on 26-30 December 2009." The results of which were used "to convict Bradley Manning of 'Wanton Publication'".
And the second incident concerns the "illegal seizure" of Assange's suitcase on September 27 2010, while he was on a direct flight within the "Schengen border-free area from Stockholm Arlanda to Berlin Tegel" airports.
The suitcase contained three laptops that had "WikiLeaks material, associated data and privileged communications" on them.
Part of that material included "shocking evidence of a serious war crime; the massacre of more than sixty women and children by US military forces in Garani, Afghanistan."
Evidence of this US military operation had been "corroborated by testimony in the Bradley Manning hearing."
"The suspected seizure or theft occurred at a time of intense attempts by the US to stop WikiLeaks' publications of 2010," the affidavit states.
The WikiLeaks founder received no subsequent information about the whereabouts of his seized items or the reasons for their disappearance.


Ecuadurian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino ® looks on as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (L) waves from the window of the Ecuadorian embassy in central London.(AFP Photo / Andrew Cowi)


Assange's complaint also reveals that he learnt "through an intelligence source" that on 19 August 2010, the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) "requested information about me from an Australian intelligence organization." And Australia "responded to the request with information about me on 21 August 2010."

Assange explains that his affidavit might also help Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, in her appeal after being sentenced to 35 years for leaking classified documents.
"If the US military's surveillance of me in Germany was unlawful, then its use in Bradley Manning's trial may have also been unlawful and that such a use of illegally obtained evidence could have consequences for Bradley Manning's pending appeal to the US Army Court of Criminal Appeal."

US intends to imprison me'

WikiLeaks founder learnt from Manning's court proceedings that "US administration has every intention of imprisoning me and other WikiLeaks associates as co-conspirators."
Assange's lawyers submitted the affidavit with Swedish police to seek an "effective remedy" against illegal activities.
"I am informed by my legal advisors that this formal document may trigger an investigation and that independent judicial bodies may seek explanations of the responsible authorities as a result … I request that Swedish judicial authorities act swiftly to question and arrest if necessary those who are likely to have information about or bear criminal responsibility for the actions taken against WikiLeaks and my person as detailed in this affidavit."
Reportedly, Assange intends to launch similar complaints with the authorities in Germany and Australia.
Since June 2012, Assange has been holed up in a room five meters wide, in London's Ecuadorian Embassy.
This Monday, he marked 1,000 days of confinement, mostly spent under house arrest.
Assange has said he is sure that the minute he sets foot outside the embassy, he would be arrested and handed over to Sweden, where he is wanted on sexual assault charges. He believes he would then be extradited to the US, where he would most likely face trial and a possible death sentence for releasing thousands of classified US diplomatic documents, including about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since November 2010, Assange has been subject to a European-wide arrest warrant in response to a Swedish police request for questioning in relation to a sexual misconduct investigation. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and called the charges politically motivated.
The whistleblower fled to the UK where he was taken into custody after voluntarily attending a police station. After spending 10 days in Wandsworth prison, Assange was freed on bail with a residence requirement at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, England.
In February 2011, a court ruled to extradite the whistleblower to Sweden, with Assange's lawyers appealing against the verdict to various British judicial authorities.
After the British Supreme Court upheld the extradition warrant, the WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
He has previously expressed his willingness to answer questions from Swedish investigators on condition that he receives strong guarantees that he won't be extradited to the United States. No guarantees have ever been given, however.
On July 25, Assange declared he was running in the elections for the Australian Senate and launched the Australian WikiLeaks Party.

[Magda Hassan]

Newly published secret grand jury orders & other docs shed light on US investigation of WikiLeaks now entering 5th yr

By Alexa O'Brien on February 17, 2014 10:51 AM |

Newly published documents, including sealed court orders from the secret Department of Justice grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, shed light on the manner and scope of the criminal and intelligence probes into Julian Assange and civilians associated with the online publisher of censored material.
Diplomatic Security Services, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Department of State along with "other elements of the U.S. government," began investigating the unauthorized disclosure of a U.S. diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Iceland and its publication by WikiLeaks four years ago tomorrow, according to the testimony of a Department of State official in charge of the investigation during Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's trial.
In August 2013, the 26 year old U.S. Army intelligence analyst was convicted to 35 years in prison for disclosing to WikiLeaks low level battle field reports and U.S. diplomatic cables detailing U.S. Forces complicity in the abuse, torture, and killing of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia.
I am publishing for the first time, two court orders that detail the U.S. Department of Justice's surveillance of a Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks associate, security expert and journalist, who has recently collaborated on articles in Der Spiegel detailing NSA surveillance.
Four days after Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Peterson requested an April 2011 subpoena commanding the testimony of an unidentified Cambridge resident at a secret grand jury, empaneled in Alexandria, Virginia, prosecutors also successfully obtained another court order directing a U.S. based internet service provider, Sonic.net, to turn over the Internet Protocol and email addresses of people who had communicated with Appelbaum. See the secret court order here and below.
Recently released emails also reveal that the secret Sonic order for Appelbaum's information was part of a small portion of sealed grand jury materials, which were turned over to Manning's defense at her trial.
Other recently released emails reveal that the three and a half year old Department of Justice grand jury probe was already empaneled on September 23, 2010, two months before the Attorney General publicly acknowledged an ongoing U.S. criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
The Department of Justice has also characterized the WikiLeaks criminal probe as a national security investigation. Evidence may also indicate that the case has been categorized as terrorism related. If that is so, it raises questions about the methods (beyond traditional criminal law enforcement) that the Obama administration is employing against the online publisher, its employees, associates, and supporters.
Manning, only received portions of the testimony and materials from the secret grand jury investigating WikiLeaks at her trial.
The portions that federal and military prosecutors handed over pertain to three witnesses, were heavily redacted, and totaled just 151 pages.
The material that was turned over to Manning's defense included the Appelbaum Sonic order as well as information from a 2010 secret order issued to Twitter, commanding the social media website to turn over information about individuals associated with WikiLeaks, including Appelbaum.
Recently released emails further confirm that another secret court order from June 2011 (previously reported about here) and an August 2011 search warrant (also reported about here), which sought the IP and email addresses as well as the content of emails from an unidentified Google subscriber, were also part of the WikiLeaks grand jury and were similarly turned over to Manning's defense by federal and military prosecutors.
What is not certain, although likely, is if the January 2011 secret Google Appelbaum order was included among the grand jury materials handed over to Manning's defense. See the secret order here and below.
The Department of Justice criminal investigation of WikiLeaks is broader than the Manning probe. "Private First Class Manning is a piece of the FBI file," said the lead military prosecutor Major Ashden Fein at trial. The FBI file, said Fein, was "42,135 pages or 3,475 documents." Manning represented only 8,741 pages or 636 different documents in that FBI file, said Fein. Most of the file is classified.
Recently released correspondence by military prosecutors detail how the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York were also involved in the criminal investigation of Wikileaks, along with the Eastern District of Virginia and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice.
The August 2011, document coincides with the FBI investigation in the Southern District of New York of members of AntiSec, and the subsequent indictment and conviction of Jeremy Hammond for hacking various websites in the summer of 2011 and the website of Strategic Forecasting, a private security firm located in Austin Texas, in December 2011. WikiLeaks later published the Stratfor emails, which detailed how the private security firm surveilled Bhopal activist in India for Dow Chemical Co.
The August 2011 document also coincides with reports that the FBI and Diplomatic Security Service agents were investigating WikiLeaks in Iceland in the summer of 2011 under the pretext of an alleged cyber-attack on the computer system of the Icelandic government.
The Icelandic Minister of Interior, Ogmundur Jonasson, reportedly discovered the FBI's intention to interrogate an Icelandic citizen as part of the U.S. investigation of WikiLeaks and ordered local police to stop cooperating with U.S. agents.
Other recently released emails also evidence weekly coordination between the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, and military prosecutors even go on to identify themselves as "Team Manning".
According to anonymous law enforcement sources cited in the Washington Post on November 18, 2013, the Department of Justice does not have a sealed indictment against Assange, but the investigation continues.
Since December 2010, the Department of Justice has been looking at the Espionage Act and other statutes, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, to prosecute Assange.
A regular criminal grand jury consists of 16 to 23 citizens. The grand jury only hears cases brought before it by a prosecutor, who decides which evidence to present, which witnesses to call, and which of those witnesses will receive immunity.
The Department of Justice does not have to use the same grand jury to indict Assange or any other civilian that they also used to present their evidence. While regular grand jury terms are for 24 months, investigative material can be rolled into subsequent grand juries.
For most criminal offenses the statute of limitation is five years, but for the Espionage Act, the statute of limitations is ten. The statute of limitations for alleged offenses is also based on the last criminal act, and could potentially wrap in all prior alleged criminal behavior, says Barry Pollack, defense attorney to Julian Assange.
In December 2010, the Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing would be difficult. The Espionage Act was originally intended to prosecute U.S. spies, but has been repeatedly employed by the Obama administration to prosecute whistleblowers for their disclosures of classified information to the press.
An anonymous government official familiar with the U.S. investigation told the New York Times in December 2010 that charging Assange under the Espionage Act could be facilitated if investigators could prove a conspiracy, in other words that Assange aided any of WikiLeaks' sources, by for example directing them to find certain information or providing technological assistance.
At Manning's court martial, military prosecutors unsuccessfully alleged that Manning was an employee of WikiLeaks, who had "harvested" information at the direction of Assange. Military prosecutors however, also alleged, that Assange had provided his source with technical assistance.
While the evidence against Assange was circumstantial and Manning admitted that she acted alone, she was nevertheless convicted of a violation of a lawful general regulation for attempting to change the administrator password on her classified work computer. Military prosecutors had alleged at trial that Manning received knowledge from Assange on how to do that.
By also arguing at trial that Manning had leaked an unclassified video of a May 2009 U.S. bombing in the Farah Province of Afghanistan, which massacred 86 to 140 civilians, including women and children, within days of her arrival in Iraq to on or about January 8, 2010 the day WikiLeaks tweet:

Have encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians http://bit.ly/wlafghan2 we need super computer time http://ljsf.org/
WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 8, 2010

prosecutors were attempting to build a case for a criminal conspiracy against Manning and Assange.
The time line of the Garani video offense dovetails with the start date (November 1, 2009) of all known secret orders including those for Sonic, Google, Dynadot, and Twitter-- to turn over information about civilians under investigation, including Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange.
At Manning's pretrial a U.S. Army agent testified that Adrian Lamo had informed them in July 2010 that he was aware of someone on the Internet, who was allegedly attempting to decrypt the Garani video for WikiLeaks. The FBI, said the agent, was directing the investigation into Jason Katz, an employee at Brookhaven National Laboratory between February 2009 and March 2010. Katz was later fired for engaging in inappropriate computer activity.
An internal investigation into Katz by Brookhaven National Laboratory predated the U.S. investigation of WikiLeaks, but forensic evidence was later acquired by FBI investigators and used by military prosecutors at Manning's trial.
Manning was eventually acquitted of espionage for the Garani airstrike video, but the military prosecution's theory against Katz, Assange, and what one agent referred to the "founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks" survives the Manning court-martial.
In December 2010, the Attorney General stated, "It would be a misimpression if the only statute you think we are looking at is the Espionage Act. That is certainly something that might play a role, but there are other statutes, other tools that we have our disposal."
One of those statutes includes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA was cited in a May 2011 letter, which accompanied the subpoena ordering one of the founders of the Private Manning Support Network to testify at the secret grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning was also convicted under the CFAA for disclosing 116 U.S. diplomatic cables to the WikiLeaks organization, because she used freely acquired software that automated downloading of the material.
The Obama administration's attempt in a recent strategy document to re-frame WikiLeaks by associating the media organization with cyber-crime and intellectual property theft for the publication of "computer files provided by corporate insiders indicating allegedly illegal or unethical behavior at a Swiss bank, a Netherlands-based commodities company, and an international pharmaceutical trade association" is an attempt to bypass a constitutional challenge to prosecuting Assange for publication.
Typically, the Department of Justice simply indicts, keeps the indictment sealed, issues a warrant, and then sits and waits. It is a violation of federal law for an official to disclose the instance of a sealed indictment before an accused is in the custody of law enforcement.
Once an indictment is unsealed or an investigation is concluded, all the secret orders and search warrants related to the case are simultaneously unsealed. All the secret orders and search warrants related to the WikiLeaks investigation that are publicly known, including those published here, remain under seal.
In the Assange case, however, there are public relations concerns, says Stanley Cohen, U.S. defense attorney on numerous high profile terrorism and cyber-crime cases. "The Department of Justice could also list a target as an un-indicted co-conspirator and still get the benefit of him or her fitting within the history and evidence chain presented to the grand jury," says Cohen. An unindicted co-conspirator can later be charged whether on his or her own, or by a superseding indictment along with those previously charged, Cohen added.
In the end, however, Assange (or any other civilian) could be extradited by criminal complaint or by indictment.
Neil MacBride, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was in charge of the WikiLeaks grand jury, hired Andrew Peterson (who later requested the Appelbaum secret Sonic Order) to join the Terrorism and National Security Unit, nine days after Manning was arrested in Iraq. The Terrorism and National Security Unit became the National Security and International Crime Unit soon after.
While a grand jury is under the purview of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks is under the supervision of the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division at the Department of Justice or a higher authority, which includes the Attorney General.
In February 2011 James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, who is in charge of the 16 agencies and departments that make up the U.S. Intelligence Community, remarked to the Senate Intelligence Committee at a hearing on current and projected national security threats that WikiLeaks disclosures had been damaging to U.S. national security.
Then in March 2011, Clapper declared to the Senate Armed Services Committee that WikiLeaks disclosures were a current and projected counterintelligence threat to the national security of the United States -- on par with corporate espionage, drug trafficking, and climate change.
Evidence may indicate that the National Security Division has characterized the WikiLeaks investigation as 'Category 2' terrorism case. Category 2 terrorism cases allege "an identified link to international terrorism" including "any link or reference to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)," according to the U.S. Attorney's Manual.
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, U.S. law enforcement has morphed from its traditional role obtaining evidence to use in a court of law to an agency that employs extra-judicial methods geared towards the prevention of future crimes.
In a law journal article, entitled Addressing Tomorrow's Terrorists, authored by the WikiLeaks grand jury prosecutor, Peterson writes that the Department of Justice declared that it's responsibility was "not simply to prosecute terrorists for crimes, but to '[p]revent, disrupt, and defeat terrorist operations before they occur.'"
Although later acquitted of aiding the enemy, Manning was charged at trial with giving intelligence to the enemy via the WikiLeaks website.
Military prosecutors also identified the enemy as al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Both entities are designated as terrorist organization on the FTO list maintained by the U.S. Department of State. Aiding the enemy is also one of two articles under the Uniform Code of Military Justice that apply to "any person" and not just military personnel.
Manning was also convicted of making U.S. intelligence accessible to Al Qaeda and AQAP on the Internet. The charge and conviction to 'wanton publication' was unprecedented, because the offence is not actually tied to any existing punitive article under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or U.S. federal criminal statute.
The CFAA also falls under the statutes that can be used in Category 2 terrorism cases. The National Security Division and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment on the nature of the ongoing investigation.
"It is possible that the WikiLeaks investigation has been characterized as a Category 2 terrorism case," says Pollack, "However, as a practical matter, I think there is no question that the WikiLeaks investigation is being treated as a case the National Security Division must approve and supervise."
Even if the investigation of WikiLeaks were not characterized as a Category 2 terrorism related case and the Department of Justice was simply constructing a case alleging criminal violations of the Espionage Act and the CFAA, says Pollack, the criminal probe would still unambiguously fall under the purview of the National Security Division.
Closing the four-year-old WikiLeaks investigation, therefore, requires the authorization of the National Security Division or a higher authority, such as the Attorney General.
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Categories:

• 18 USC 2703d,
  
• WikiLeaks Grand Jury,
  
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[Peter Lemkin]

Julian Assange on Being Placed on NSA "Manhunting" List & Secret Targeting of WikiLeaks Supporters




Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. According to a new article by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks website by collecting their IP addresses in real time, as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda. We speak to Assange live from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has sought political asylum since 2012. Also joining us is his lawyer Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article co-written by Glenn Greenwald published this morning by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a, quote, "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda.
AMY GOODMAN: Another document reveals the NSA considered designating WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor." According to The Intercept, "Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillancewithout the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches." In addition, the leaked documents reveal the United States urged its foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group's publication of the Afghanistan War Logs.
Joining us now from London is Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange, talking to us by the phone from the Ecuadorean embassy where he has political asylum since August 2012. Here in New York, we're joined by Michael Ratner, the attorney for Julian Assange, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
When you read this, Julian welcome back to Democracy Now! what were your thoughts on being put on this "manhunting"their words"manhunting" list together with al-Qaeda?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Good morning, Amy.
Well, my first thought was, well, finally, we have some proof that we can present to the public for what we have long suspected for a variety of reasons. And it is strange to see your name in that context with people who are suspected of serious criminal acts of terrorism. Clearly, that is a massive overstep.
We've heard a lot in the propaganda pushed on this issue by Clapper and others in the U.S. national security complex that, of course, this pervasive surveillance is justified by the need to stop U.S.stop terrorist attacks being conducted on the United States and its allies. But we've seen example after example come out over the last few months showing the National Security Agency and its partners, GCHQ, engaged in economic espionage.
And here we have an example where the type of espionage being engaged in is spying on a publisherWikiLeaks, the publishing organization, and a publisherme, personally. And the other material that came out in relation to GCHQ was from 2012, and that shows that GCHQ was spying on our service and our readers, so not just the publisher as an organization, not just the publisher as a person, but also the readers of a publisher. And that's clearly, I believe, not something that the United States population agrees with, let alone other people.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by anything that came out in these latest documents?
JULIAN ASSANGE: I was surprised about how someone is added to the foreign malicious actor list. So, the National Security Agency went through a process to try andat quite a high level, at the office of the legal director, to designate us as a foreignforeign malicious actor, which means that our U.S. personnel can be spied on, or our U.S. supporters or associates. The, quote, "human network" that supports WikiLeaks in the United States can be targeted without going through any of the checks that the National Security Agency might normally engage in.
And if you read the detail of that writing, you can see that it's quite a lackadaisical, cavalier approach to going into that very serious step of deciding to spy on a publisher and all its U.S. personnel. And we must assume that news agencies like Reuters or the Deutsche Presse Agency that have foreign correspondents in the United States, who are American citizens or American citizens working overseas, could be similarly affected.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, the Intercept article quotes from the document you're referencing. It was from July 2011 and showed how two NSA officers considered designating WikiLeaks a, quote, "malicious foreign actor." I want to read from the exchange between the NSA agency's general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center. Quote, "Can we treat a foreign server who stores, or potentially disseminates leaked or stolen US data on it's [sic] server as a 'malicious foreign actor' for the purpose of targeting with no defeats? Examples: WikiLeaks, thepiratebay.org, etc." The response was, quote, "Let us get back to you." Julian Assange, your response, and what the documents reveal about the process that the NSA or GCHQ go through to designate someone a malicious foreign actor?
JULIAN ASSANGE: What they mean here by "no defeats," it's sort of no protections for any form of interception of content of U.S. citizens communicating with that organization or through that foreign server. And the particular document that this came out in was actually not a document that was formally looking at this issue in relation to us; rather, it was a extraction from that consideration that happened sometime in the past and then was put into one of their, if you like, sort of frequently asked questions internally in the National Security Agency. So we're quite lucky to have found this reference.
We were used as an example of how could you in fact target these servers, even when they were used by people in the United States. And the answer is, yes, that can be done. And we don't know what the answer was in our particular case, but given that the general example is yes, then we must assume that it was. And I think, really, now General Alexander needs to come clean and say, in fact, was that permitted in the case of WikiLeaks, and did the National Security Agency proceed in spying on our U.S. personnel or our lawyers, for example, like Michael Ratner, who's based in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian, we have Michael here, but I did want to askyou've been in the embassy, haven't had natural daylight, sunlight, for 608 days. How are you? And does the information that has come out of this change in any way what your thoughts are about your future?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just find it helpful thatin preparing the asylum application, of course, we looked into many details like this that were quite technical, a big puzzle of many pieces, which some organization, like a foreign office or the Ecuadorean Department of Foreign Affairs, has the time to assess, but of course it's harder for the public to understand, that documents like this show very readily sort of the scale of the U.S. response to our publications and why it's, unfortunately, necessary for me to apply and receive asylum and for some of our other personnel, like Sarah Harrison, who's a British citizen, to be in legally advised exile in Germany.
AMY GOODMAN: And will the information about whether there is a sealed indictment, which this seems to indicate there isn'tdo you have any further information about that, an indictment against you in the United States?
AMY GOODMAN: The district attorney of Virginia gave the last information on that issue and formally stated publicly that the investigation continues.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Julian Assange, we want to thank you for being with us, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Will this change anything you do inside the embassy, when you see howfurther information about your being monitored and people even going to the websitewhat is itGCHQ, the equivalent of the NSA in Britain, collecting the IP addresses in real time of people who even access the WikiLeaks site?
JULIAN ASSANGE: The WikiLeaks security model has always been predicated under the basis that we are dealing with very powerful organizations that do not obey the rule of law, whether those are powerful criminal organizations, whether those are corrupt governments in Africa, or whether they're spy agencies allied with the West or Russia or China. And so, it doesn'twe've always been prepared to defend against that sort of scrutiny. The U.K. government has publicly admitted that they've spent six million pounds in the last year surveilling the embassy through police forces alone. We see from these documents that we must assume that GCHQ is also monitoring the situation. That's part ofI suppose, part of the sad state of the rule of law in the West, where these organizations behave that way. I think the days are clearly numbered that they can get away with it without being exposed. But I'll leave you to Michael Ratner now.
AMY GOODMAN: Thanks so much, Julian. Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. When we come back, we are joined by Michael Ratner, legal adviser to Julian Assange. We'll also be joined from London, not in exile in the Ecuadorean embassy, but in a studio in London, by Jesselyn Radack, the legal adviser to Edward Snowden who was stopped at Heathrow Airport on Sunday, asked, "Who is Edward Snowden? Where is Bradley Manning?" and other such questions. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article written by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher published this morning by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden details a "manhunting timeline" that shows how the U.S. tried to pressure other nations to prosecute Julian Assange. One read, quote, "The United States on 10 August urged other nations with forces in Afghanistan, including Australia, United Kingdom, and Germany, to consider filing criminal charges against Julian Assange."
Joining us now is Michael Ratner. He is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is the legal adviser to Julian Assange.
So, talk about this last point, Michael, first what you're most surprised by in this piece that just came out at The Intercept, and particularly the U.S. pushing other countries to prosecute Julian.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, what I was really shocked by was the extent the U.S. and U.K. have gone through to try and get and destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and their network of supporters. I mean, it's astounding. And it's been going on for years. And it also, as Julian pointed out, tells us why he is in the Ecuadorean embassy and why Ecuador has given him asylum. He has every reason to heavily fear what would happen to him in this country, in the United States, if he were to be ever taken here. So I think, for me, that's a very, very critical point, justifies every reason why Ecuador gave him asylum.
And the document you're addressing, Amy, what they call the manhunt timeline, which is extraordinary because it groups him among, you know, a whole bunch of people who the U.S. considers terrorists, it also, interestingly, groups themgroups them among Palestinians, which is pretty interesting in itself. But to have Julian on that list as a manhunt timeline, and it says prosecute him wherever you can get him, is pretty extraordinary. It doesn't say you necessarily need a good reason to prosecute him; it just says, basically, prosecute him. And what it's reminiscent, to me, is of the program that took place in this country in the '60s and the '70s, COINTELPRO, counterintelligence procedures, when the FBI said, "We have to basically destroy the black civil rights movement, the New Left and others, and prosecute them, get them however you can, get rid of them." And so, the manhunt timeline, even its name is chilling. But that's what it is. It's an effort to try and get WikiLeaks and their personnel, wherever they are in the world.
And, of course, we've seen some of that. You've had people on this show. When people cross borders who are associates with WikiLeaks, they get stopped. They get surveilled all the time. We've seenwe've seen efforts to taketo basically destroy WikiLeaks by stealing their laptops on a trip that went from Sweden to Germany. We've seen efforts across the board, in country after country. Germany, they surveil conferences when WikiLeaks people speak there, everywhere. So, actually, this program is not just an abstraction. This program has been implemented. And the manhunt timeline, I think, is incredibly significant, considering that the manhunt is an effort to locate, find and destroyin some cases, killkill people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael Ratner, what do you think the appropriate response should be to something like that? Is there any legal action that Assange's legal team can take in response to this?
MICHAEL RATNER: Julian Assange, in his statement to the article, said that he felt that the U.S. ought to appoint a special prosecutor, not just to investigate what's happening to WikiLeaks and a publisher and journalist, but across the board what's happening to publishers and journalists in this entire country right now and around the world, where the U.S. is trying to basically say publishing is a crime. And that's what they're saying. That's what the Obama administration is saying. And Julian is strongly suggesting, and I support, the idea of a special prosecutor to look into this.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is that aspect of it unprecedented, though? I mean, you drew comparisons between COINTELPRO and manhunt timeline, but the fact that publishing, people who work in journalism, are being monitored in this way by intelligence agencies here, has that occurred before?
MICHAEL RATNER: On this level, I don't think it's occurred, on this extreme level. You had the manhunt program. You also had what they callwhat do they call it? The ANTICRISIS GIRL program. And that's the dragnetI don't know how it got that name.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain, ANTICRISIS GIRL program.
MICHAEL RATNER: What doeswhat is that about? I mean, I don't know. Except what it is, is whenever I search for WikiLeaks on my computer, or when I go visit the WikiLeaks site, in real time, the GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, can take in my IP address, take in what I'm searching for in real time. Now, they gave anthey did a number of slides showing how they could do this. We don't know how extensively they've implemented that program, but that means that every one of us who have ever gone to a WikiLeaks site to look for a document could technically be surveilled and our IP address taken in.
AMY GOODMAN: And also the hacktivist group Anonymous and Pirate Bay. Explain.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, Anonymous, they actually did designate as what they call a malicious foreign actor. And a malicious foreign actor, which is what they were deciding whether to designate WikiLeaks as or notand we don't know what the final decision was, whether WikiLeaks was designated as a malicious foreign actor, but Anonymous apparently was. And what it means is any restrictions on government surveillance of anythingmy conversations, my emailare completely lifted, whether you're an American or whatever. Any of my communications to anywhere in the world to that website, to Anonymous, going on chat rooms with Anonymous, going on tweets with Anonymous, those can be taken in and surveilled. It's an incredibly broad power. We don't know, as I said, if it was used against WikiLeaks. It was certainly discussed, and they asked to use it against WikiLeaks. We will know, I hope, soon, if and when a lawsuit is ever filed around these issues.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do the documents reveal about what the U.S. officials said they were doing and what in fact they were doing? Because not only was their surveillance of U.S. citizens problematic, but also of foreign citizens.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, I'm sorry, I'm not following the question exactly, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, in other words, Michael Ratner, the U.S. officials have claimed that they only surveil foreignforeign citizens who are, in some sense, either potentially guilty of or likely to be involved in terrorist activities. But if you're monitoring every visitor to a website, whether it's WikiLeaks or Pirate Bay orI mean, that's obviously not the case.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, this is just obfuscation and lies by our officials, which has been consistent. Obviously, if there's a WikiLeaks website overseas, what they're really saying is everybody who visits that website, American or otherwise, we can surveil. So it's completeit's complete B.S. This is just untrue. We are all being surveilled.

[David Guyatt]

Julian Assange on Being Placed on NSA "Manhunting" List & Secret Targeting of WikiLeaks Supporters




Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. According to a new article by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks website by collecting their IP addresses in real time, as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda. We speak to Assange live from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has sought political asylum since 2012. Also joining us is his lawyer Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article co-written by Glenn Greenwald published this morning by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site. One document from 2010 shows that the National Security Agency added WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to a, quote, "manhunting" target list, together with suspected members of al-Qaeda.
AMY GOODMAN: Another document reveals the NSA considered designating WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor." According to The Intercept, "Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillancewithout the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches." In addition, the leaked documents reveal the United States urged its foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group's publication of the Afghanistan War Logs.
Joining us now from London is Wikileaks founder and editor Julian Assange, talking to us by the phone from the Ecuadorean embassy where he has political asylum since August 2012. Here in New York, we're joined by Michael Ratner, the attorney for Julian Assange, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
When you read this, Julian welcome back to Democracy Now! what were your thoughts on being put on this "manhunting"their words"manhunting" list together with al-Qaeda?
JULIAN ASSANGE: Good morning, Amy.
Well, my first thought was, well, finally, we have some proof that we can present to the public for what we have long suspected for a variety of reasons. And it is strange to see your name in that context with people who are suspected of serious criminal acts of terrorism. Clearly, that is a massive overstep.
We've heard a lot in the propaganda pushed on this issue by Clapper and others in the U.S. national security complex that, of course, this pervasive surveillance is justified by the need to stop U.S.stop terrorist attacks being conducted on the United States and its allies. But we've seen example after example come out over the last few months showing the National Security Agency and its partners, GCHQ, engaged in economic espionage.
And here we have an example where the type of espionage being engaged in is spying on a publisherWikiLeaks, the publishing organization, and a publisherme, personally. And the other material that came out in relation to GCHQ was from 2012, and that shows that GCHQ was spying on our service and our readers, so not just the publisher as an organization, not just the publisher as a person, but also the readers of a publisher. And that's clearly, I believe, not something that the United States population agrees with, let alone other people.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by anything that came out in these latest documents?
JULIAN ASSANGE: I was surprised about how someone is added to the foreign malicious actor list. So, the National Security Agency went through a process to try andat quite a high level, at the office of the legal director, to designate us as a foreignforeign malicious actor, which means that our U.S. personnel can be spied on, or our U.S. supporters or associates. The, quote, "human network" that supports WikiLeaks in the United States can be targeted without going through any of the checks that the National Security Agency might normally engage in.
And if you read the detail of that writing, you can see that it's quite a lackadaisical, cavalier approach to going into that very serious step of deciding to spy on a publisher and all its U.S. personnel. And we must assume that news agencies like Reuters or the Deutsche Presse Agency that have foreign correspondents in the United States, who are American citizens or American citizens working overseas, could be similarly affected.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Julian Assange, the Intercept article quotes from the document you're referencing. It was from July 2011 and showed how two NSA officers considered designating WikiLeaks a, quote, "malicious foreign actor." I want to read from the exchange between the NSA agency's general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center. Quote, "Can we treat a foreign server who stores, or potentially disseminates leaked or stolen US data on it's [sic] server as a 'malicious foreign actor' for the purpose of targeting with no defeats? Examples: WikiLeaks, thepiratebay.org, etc." The response was, quote, "Let us get back to you." Julian Assange, your response, and what the documents reveal about the process that the NSA or GCHQ go through to designate someone a malicious foreign actor?
JULIAN ASSANGE: What they mean here by "no defeats," it's sort of no protections for any form of interception of content of U.S. citizens communicating with that organization or through that foreign server. And the particular document that this came out in was actually not a document that was formally looking at this issue in relation to us; rather, it was a extraction from that consideration that happened sometime in the past and then was put into one of their, if you like, sort of frequently asked questions internally in the National Security Agency. So we're quite lucky to have found this reference.
We were used as an example of how could you in fact target these servers, even when they were used by people in the United States. And the answer is, yes, that can be done. And we don't know what the answer was in our particular case, but given that the general example is yes, then we must assume that it was. And I think, really, now General Alexander needs to come clean and say, in fact, was that permitted in the case of WikiLeaks, and did the National Security Agency proceed in spying on our U.S. personnel or our lawyers, for example, like Michael Ratner, who's based in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian, we have Michael here, but I did want to askyou've been in the embassy, haven't had natural daylight, sunlight, for 608 days. How are you? And does the information that has come out of this change in any way what your thoughts are about your future?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I just find it helpful thatin preparing the asylum application, of course, we looked into many details like this that were quite technical, a big puzzle of many pieces, which some organization, like a foreign office or the Ecuadorean Department of Foreign Affairs, has the time to assess, but of course it's harder for the public to understand, that documents like this show very readily sort of the scale of the U.S. response to our publications and why it's, unfortunately, necessary for me to apply and receive asylum and for some of our other personnel, like Sarah Harrison, who's a British citizen, to be in legally advised exile in Germany.
AMY GOODMAN: And will the information about whether there is a sealed indictment, which this seems to indicate there isn'tdo you have any further information about that, an indictment against you in the United States?
AMY GOODMAN: The district attorney of Virginia gave the last information on that issue and formally stated publicly that the investigation continues.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Julian Assange, we want to thank you for being with us, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. Will this change anything you do inside the embassy, when you see howfurther information about your being monitored and people even going to the websitewhat is itGCHQ, the equivalent of the NSA in Britain, collecting the IP addresses in real time of people who even access the WikiLeaks site?
JULIAN ASSANGE: The WikiLeaks security model has always been predicated under the basis that we are dealing with very powerful organizations that do not obey the rule of law, whether those are powerful criminal organizations, whether those are corrupt governments in Africa, or whether they're spy agencies allied with the West or Russia or China. And so, it doesn'twe've always been prepared to defend against that sort of scrutiny. The U.K. government has publicly admitted that they've spent six million pounds in the last year surveilling the embassy through police forces alone. We see from these documents that we must assume that GCHQ is also monitoring the situation. That's part ofI suppose, part of the sad state of the rule of law in the West, where these organizations behave that way. I think the days are clearly numbered that they can get away with it without being exposed. But I'll leave you to Michael Ratner now.
AMY GOODMAN: Thanks so much, Julian. Julian Assange, founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. When we come back, we are joined by Michael Ratner, legal adviser to Julian Assange. We'll also be joined from London, not in exile in the Ecuadorean embassy, but in a studio in London, by Jesselyn Radack, the legal adviser to Edward Snowden who was stopped at Heathrow Airport on Sunday, asked, "Who is Edward Snowden? Where is Bradley Manning?" and other such questions. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Top-secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed new details about how the United States and Britain targeted the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks after it published leaked documents about the Afghan War. According to a new article written by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher published this morning by The Intercept, Britain's top spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, secretly monitored visitors to a WikiLeaks site by collecting their IP addresses in real time as well as the search terms used to reach the site.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden details a "manhunting timeline" that shows how the U.S. tried to pressure other nations to prosecute Julian Assange. One read, quote, "The United States on 10 August urged other nations with forces in Afghanistan, including Australia, United Kingdom, and Germany, to consider filing criminal charges against Julian Assange."
Joining us now is Michael Ratner. He is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is the legal adviser to Julian Assange.
So, talk about this last point, Michael, first what you're most surprised by in this piece that just came out at The Intercept, and particularly the U.S. pushing other countries to prosecute Julian.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, what I was really shocked by was the extent the U.S. and U.K. have gone through to try and get and destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and their network of supporters. I mean, it's astounding. And it's been going on for years. And it also, as Julian pointed out, tells us why he is in the Ecuadorean embassy and why Ecuador has given him asylum. He has every reason to heavily fear what would happen to him in this country, in the United States, if he were to be ever taken here. So I think, for me, that's a very, very critical point, justifies every reason why Ecuador gave him asylum.
And the document you're addressing, Amy, what they call the manhunt timeline, which is extraordinary because it groups him among, you know, a whole bunch of people who the U.S. considers terrorists, it also, interestingly, groups themgroups them among Palestinians, which is pretty interesting in itself. But to have Julian on that list as a manhunt timeline, and it says prosecute him wherever you can get him, is pretty extraordinary. It doesn't say you necessarily need a good reason to prosecute him; it just says, basically, prosecute him. And what it's reminiscent, to me, is of the program that took place in this country in the '60s and the '70s, COINTELPRO, counterintelligence procedures, when the FBI said, "We have to basically destroy the black civil rights movement, the New Left and others, and prosecute them, get them however you can, get rid of them." And so, the manhunt timeline, even its name is chilling. But that's what it is. It's an effort to try and get WikiLeaks and their personnel, wherever they are in the world.
And, of course, we've seen some of that. You've had people on this show. When people cross borders who are associates with WikiLeaks, they get stopped. They get surveilled all the time. We've seenwe've seen efforts to taketo basically destroy WikiLeaks by stealing their laptops on a trip that went from Sweden to Germany. We've seen efforts across the board, in country after country. Germany, they surveil conferences when WikiLeaks people speak there, everywhere. So, actually, this program is not just an abstraction. This program has been implemented. And the manhunt timeline, I think, is incredibly significant, considering that the manhunt is an effort to locate, find and destroyin some cases, killkill people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael Ratner, what do you think the appropriate response should be to something like that? Is there any legal action that Assange's legal team can take in response to this?
MICHAEL RATNER: Julian Assange, in his statement to the article, said that he felt that the U.S. ought to appoint a special prosecutor, not just to investigate what's happening to WikiLeaks and a publisher and journalist, but across the board what's happening to publishers and journalists in this entire country right now and around the world, where the U.S. is trying to basically say publishing is a crime. And that's what they're saying. That's what the Obama administration is saying. And Julian is strongly suggesting, and I support, the idea of a special prosecutor to look into this.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is that aspect of it unprecedented, though? I mean, you drew comparisons between COINTELPRO and manhunt timeline, but the fact that publishing, people who work in journalism, are being monitored in this way by intelligence agencies here, has that occurred before?
MICHAEL RATNER: On this level, I don't think it's occurred, on this extreme level. You had the manhunt program. You also had what they callwhat do they call it? The ANTICRISIS GIRL program. And that's the dragnetI don't know how it got that name.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain, ANTICRISIS GIRL program.
MICHAEL RATNER: What doeswhat is that about? I mean, I don't know. Except what it is, is whenever I search for WikiLeaks on my computer, or when I go visit the WikiLeaks site, in real time, the GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, can take in my IP address, take in what I'm searching for in real time. Now, they gave anthey did a number of slides showing how they could do this. We don't know how extensively they've implemented that program, but that means that every one of us who have ever gone to a WikiLeaks site to look for a document could technically be surveilled and our IP address taken in.
AMY GOODMAN: And also the hacktivist group Anonymous and Pirate Bay. Explain.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, Anonymous, they actually did designate as what they call a malicious foreign actor. And a malicious foreign actor, which is what they were deciding whether to designate WikiLeaks as or notand we don't know what the final decision was, whether WikiLeaks was designated as a malicious foreign actor, but Anonymous apparently was. And what it means is any restrictions on government surveillance of anythingmy conversations, my emailare completely lifted, whether you're an American or whatever. Any of my communications to anywhere in the world to that website, to Anonymous, going on chat rooms with Anonymous, going on tweets with Anonymous, those can be taken in and surveilled. It's an incredibly broad power. We don't know, as I said, if it was used against WikiLeaks. It was certainly discussed, and they asked to use it against WikiLeaks. We will know, I hope, soon, if and when a lawsuit is ever filed around these issues.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do the documents reveal about what the U.S. officials said they were doing and what in fact they were doing? Because not only was their surveillance of U.S. citizens problematic, but also of foreign citizens.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, I'm sorry, I'm not following the question exactly, Nermeen.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, in other words, Michael Ratner, the U.S. officials have claimed that they only surveil foreignforeign citizens who are, in some sense, either potentially guilty of or likely to be involved in terrorist activities. But if you're monitoring every visitor to a website, whether it's WikiLeaks or Pirate Bay orI mean, that's obviously not the case.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, this is just obfuscation and lies by our officials, which has been consistent. Obviously, if there's a WikiLeaks website overseas, what they're really saying is everybody who visits that website, American or otherwise, we can surveil. So it's completeit's complete B.S. This is just untrue. We are all being surveilled.

That's me fucked then. ::

We're all surveilled anyway, whether we go to Wikileaks, Pirate Bay, or even The Wall Street Journal.

[Magda Hassan]

US government still hunting WikiLeaks as Obama targets whistleblowers

The Department of Justice and the FBI are pursuing a multi-subject long-term' investigation of the open-information website, court documents reveal




[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/05/us-government-still-hunting-wikileaks-obama-targets-whistleblowers#img-1"]

[/URL] The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange responded to the revelation by saying: My God, I know I am an Australian, but that doesn't mean that WikiLeaks deserves a kangaroo court.' Photograph: John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Ed Pilkington in New York
[URL="http://twitter.com/@edpilkington"]
@edpilkington
[/URL]
Friday 6 March 2015 04.57 AEDT Last modified on Friday 6 March 2015 06.17 AEDT






The US government is conducting an active, long-term criminal investigation into WikiLeaks, a federal judge has confirmed in court documents.
Five years after Julian Assange and his team began publishing the massive dump of US state secrets leaked by an army intelligence analyst, two wings of the Department of Justice and the FBI remain engaged in a criminal investigation of the open-information website that is of a "long-term duration", "multi-subject" in nature and that "remains in the investigative state".

Google waited six months to tell WikiLeaks it passed employee data to FBI

The disclosure was made in the course of a ruling from the US district court for the District of Columbia, the jurisdiction of which covers federal agencies, and underlines the Obama administration's dogged pursuit of WikiLeaks and its unprecedentedly aggressive legal campaign against official whistleblowers.
Judge Barbara Rothstein records that she had considered evidence from both the Justice Department's criminal and national security divisions, as well as from the FBI and that the government included seven declarations, three of them delivered to her in secret. At the end of her deliberations, the judge reached the conclusion that "this court is persuaded that there is an ongoing criminal investigation".
Rothstein added that federal agencies had told the court that their inquiry into WikiLeaks was "separate and distinct" from the prosecution of the army soldier who leaked the vast database of secrets, Chelsea Manning. She was convicted under the Espionage Act and sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in military custody.
WikiLeaks's lawyer, Michael Ratner, said the disclosure was significant because, coming from such a high court, it left no doubt about the US government's intentions.
"We are talking about a serious, multi-subject long-term investigation of WikiLeaks and its people," Ratner said. "This confirms in spades that the US authorities are coming after WikiLeaks and want to close it down."
The court ruling arrived in response to a freedom of information request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic). About a year after the Manning leaks, Epic requested from the DoJ and FBI all records regarding any individuals who had been targeted for surveillance "for support for or interest in WikiLeaks".
In her ruling, the judge ordered the national security division of the DoJ to redouble its search of its files for documents that might fit the freedom of information request. But she sided with the federal agencies in granting them an exemption to the rules, so that they did not have to hand over any material to Epic on grounds that doing so might interfere with their law enforcement activities.
The FBI and criminal division argued before the court that the release of their files "would allow targets of the investigation to evade law enforcement". Rothstein agreed that "the government's declarations, especially when viewed in light of the appropriate deference to the executive on issues of national security, may satisfy this burden."
Assange, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief who is currently living in the embassy of Ecuador in London after being granted asylum there, poured scorn on the judge's reference to "appropriate deference to the executive".
"My God, I know I am an Australian, but that doesn't mean that WikiLeaks deserves a kangaroo court," Assange told the Guardian.
Some aspects of the FBI's investigation into WikiLeaks have already become public. In January 2011 it was revealed that the US government had ordered Twitter to hand over private messages from a then WikiLeaks volunteer, the Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir.
Earlier this year, it emerged that a similar demand for information had been imposed on Google relating to three WikiLeaks staffers, including the British citizen Sarah Harrison.
The Obama administration has launched eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act more than under all previous US presidencies combined. John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, was released from federal prison last month after almost two years behind bars for disclosing the identity of another covert operative; in January, Jeffrey Sterling was convicted under the act of leaking information to a New York Times journalist relating to a secret CIA operation in Iran.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/ma...tleblowers