SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and internet censorship laws.

[Peter Lemkin]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A federal appeals court has ruled the government can continue to keep secret its efforts to pursue the private information of Internet users without a warrant as part of its probe into the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The case involved three people connected to WikiLeaks whose Twitter and email records were sought by the government, including computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir .

AMY GOODMAN: The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the account holders, argued that the subpoena violated their privacy rights, and they should know why the government wanted their information. However, late last month, the court rejected a request to unseal all orders relating to the three individuals that may have been sent to companies other than Twitter.

For more, we're joined by Jacob Appelbaum himself. He's a developer and advocate for the Tor Project system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet.

Jacob Appelbaum, welcome to Democracy Now! I'm glad we didn't have to subpoena you to get you here.

JACOB APPELBAUM: Well, I imagine I would have to know about it in order to show up, so...

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about this federal court ruling that came down two Fridays ago.

JACOB APPELBAUM: Essentially, wewe lost, actually, quite some time ago about the data being revealed to the U.S. governmentthat is, metadata. And the government essentially argues that metadata is not the same as content, therefore they can issue an administrative subpoena, a so-called 2703(d) order, and this administrative subpoena has a much lower bar than, let's say, a search warrant. And it can also have a gag. In fact, most of them seem to have a gag. Twitter was able to unseal this so that we could begin to fight it. We lost. And it's quite sad. They received the data. But we appealed again about secrecy of docketing. That is to say that we believe that courts should have to keep accurate records of this type of an order and other orders like it. And we were hoping that we would be able to learn that there were other companies out there and that we would be able to challenge this fishing expedition.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what happened to you. Why did they get your account, all your information in Twitter?

JACOB APPELBAUM: Well, I mean, many people from the government have said, during detainments and other times in which they have confronted me, that I should understand why this is happening. But the reality is that I don't understand why it's happening, in a legal senseat least until now. Now the government argues that I should understand that this is the case, and it's this case because it's as secret as a grand jury proceeding. And there is, in fact, a WikiLeaks grand jury, where they have been pressuring people. In some cases, people have been threatened with, effectively, indefinite detention, if they don't comply, that, you know, they let people know there's really not

AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean to comply?

JACOB APPELBAUM: Well, if they ask them a question, they'll either forcibly immunize them or they willmaybe they'll, you know, threaten them with just detaining them without really explaining what will happen. There's a lot of pressure coming from a lot of different angles. So, what the government is effectively saying with this ruling is that they want to have not just secret laws and secret interpretations, but no accountability. And this is something which I think is pretty scary, and I think we should have public laws, public interpretations and public accountability. And this iswhat we see is more of the same. I mean, we see this with the targeted assassination, the indefinite detention in NDAA. And this is just the Internet version of that, where they've decided they don't even have to get a search warrant, and I have no right to resist it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So what do you thinkwhat are the implications of this ruling for government surveillance, and what the limits are on government surveillance, if any?

JACOB APPELBAUM: Well, I think in the United States the gloves are off. And when I was here with Bill Binney last, I think he pretty much explained that this is the case.

AMY GOODMAN: The former NSA, National Security Agency

JACOB APPELBAUM: Yeah, I mean, the secret interpretation of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act seems to be that anything that the government wants is fair game without a warrant. And that's terrifying. And this seems to be the tip of the iceberg. You know, as we know from that video with the FBI woman that I met, she seemed to indicate that there was a national security letter. So I think these 2703(d) orders, they're important to be considered as the tip of an iceberg of an investigation, so there are probably other types of legal orders. And so, I think it's important to stress: Metadata in aggregate is content.

AMY GOODMAN: If people are having trouble understanding you, metadata in aggregate is content.

JACOB APPELBAUM: It'syeah, absolutely. What that means is that if you look at one event, that I talk to you via email, in theory, that we talked is a piece of metadata. The contentthat is, what I wrote in the emailthat is, in theory, protected, and you need a search warrant for it. But if they know that I talk to you every single morning, that tells a story, maybe even, you know, a really important story. And maybe if they see that I talk to Dan or they see that I talk to other people, that also tells a story that is equal to content when it's viewed in an aggregate. And that's something that's quite terrifying, because the court doesn't seem to recognize that, nor do they recognize the location privacy issues with the Internet. And that is to say, they watch and see every place that I've been. They get this data, and then they have a tracking device, effectively. Now, in my case, I use the Tor network in order to protect my location anonymity needs, but most people don't, and they expect the rule of law to do that for them. So imagine their surprise when it doesn't.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was awarded the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts in absentia this weekend. Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, fighting extradition to Sweden. In a ceremony at the Museum of Modern Art, artist and activist Yoko Ono paid tribute to Assange.

YOKO ONO: This 2013 Courage Award for the Arts is presented to Julian Assange. With your courage, the truth was revealed to usthank youand gave us wisdom and power to heal the world. On behalf of the suffering world, I thank you. Yoko Ono Lennon. Thank you.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Yoko Ono giving an award to Julian Assange in absentia. Jacob Appelbaum, could you comment

AMY GOODMAN: You were there.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: on Assange's case? You were there.

JACOB APPELBAUM: Yeah, I think Julian Assange is ahe's a hero. And, you know, he's a personal friend of mine, and I think that people should support him. And I believe that that award from Yoko Ono is quite an honor, and I'm really happy to see so many people supporting Julian. And I hope that the British government will grant him safe passage to Ecuador, as he is effectively a political prisoner in Her Majesty's surveillance state.

AMY GOODMAN: A lawsuit challenging a controversial statute that gives the government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens is back in federal court this week. On Wednesday, a group of academics, journalists, and activists will present oral arguments in court against a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In a landmark ruling last September, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. The judge rejected the Obama administration's argument that the NDAA merely reaffirmed an existing law recognizing the military's right to perform certain routine duties. However, President Obama quickly appealed Judge Forrest's ruling and sought an emergency stay on the injunction.

Well, for more, we're joined now by Daniel Ellsberg, one of the plantiffs in the NDAA lawsuit who will be attending Wednesday's hearings. He's perhaps the country's most famous whistleblower, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg, welcome to Democracy Now!

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Thank you.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you talk about this case?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yes. Well, as an American citizen, I'm really almost whipsawed by emotions this morning. On the one hand, I'm here to attend the court hearing at the circuit court on Wednesday at the Federal Court Building, where I expect to see the Obama administration color itself with shame in arguing that an American citizen can be detained indefinitely in military custody without charges, indefinitely, violating really the core principles of law that go back to the Magna Carta. On the other hand, I was up late last night reading the 112-page document of Katherine B. Forrest, and I have to say, at the end of that

AMY GOODMAN: The judge.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: The judgment, again, granting an injunction, saying that these provisions of the law that will be argued and defended byshamefully, by the Obama administration and by three U.S. senators, who will be claiming that the detention is constitutional and legalher argument was that it was facially unconstitutional. And when I read her detailed argument, 112, taking each point of the prosecution over a period now of nearly a yeartheir evidence, their lack of evidence, their argumenttaking each argument that this was constitutional and smashing it on this, I felt pride as an American. I thought, this is the American citizen that I fought for as a marine. This is a constitutional order, a rule of law, a judge, appointed by Obama, who's willing to say that her boss was mistaken in claiming that this rule is compatible with our rule of law.

It really says to me, at last, I think, that President Obama, who was a constitutional teacher, like Professor John Yoo, Y-O-O, of Berkeley, who authored most of these torture memos in the first placeI think that, like Yoo, Obama has to be seen as either a rotten constitutional lawyer or a man who, like Yoo, believes that the Constitution simply does not bound an American prisoner in any way in an indefinite law of torture. And either way, I believe we have here impeachable offenses by all of the people arguing this case, including the three senatorsMcCain, otherswho will be arguing today on this. We should be looking at Brennan and the other people connected with the torture program not in terms of confirmation hearings, but in terms of impeachment hearings and convictions.

AMY GOODMAN: The case is called Hedges v. Obama. A number of people are involvedChris Hedges, the writer, who says ifyou know, he's one of thepart of a team at The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize

DANIEL ELLSBERG: He's pressed this case, to his great credit. I have great admiration for Hedges.

AMY GOODMAN: says that if he is talking to someone who the United States deems terrorist, he could end up in jail himself, as a journalist. Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, you yourself, Dan Ellsberg, the premier whistleblower of this country.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: For talking to Jake Appelbaum, right here, who has been identified at one point, an earlier point, as a spokesperson from WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning right now is on trial in military court with the absurd and unconstitutional charge of aiding the enemy without any element of intent, merely that his information would get to ObamaI'm sorry, to Osama bin Laden or to al-Qaeda eventually, thus making it, in effect, a terrorist organization. But giving it to WikiLeaks is very like saying that WikiLeaks is the enemy he's aiding and affecting.

Now, simply by associating with Jake, whom I'm proud to do and I'm learning from, or supporting WikiLeaks or Manning as I do, it's very clear that my speech, my First Amendment activities in support of their activities, can be interpreted by the vague, broad terms of this unconstitutional 1021(b)(2) section of the National Defense Authorization Act as, quote, "substantial support to an organization associated with terrorism." These vague terms make it possiblereally there's no one at this table who could be exempt from some informed official, who we've now learned has the power to defendto condemn us to death. And, of course, if you can do that, I'm sure they can feel quite easy about simply putting us in military custody like Bradley Manning, even though we're not in the military.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, this law is unprecedented in U.S. history. Can you talk about what

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, as a law, it's unprecedented, but as a practicewhat we've seen for the last 10 years is a systematic assault on the Constitution of the United States in every aspectin the aspects of the illegal surveillance, the warrantless surveillance, which was conducted against me 40 years ago by President Nixon and then led to his impeachment proceedings, but is now regarded as legal. That's the way the law has changed. Efforts to assault me or kill me on the steps of the Capitol on May 3rd, 1972, a presidential hit squad of the kind that the president now takes pride in proclaiming that he runs all over the world.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain, for people who don't know your story, how was it 40 years ago that you're saying you could have been

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, 40 years ago, I was on trial for the same offense, essentially, as Bradley Manning, though he was in the military. As a former civilian official, I released 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating lies, crimes, treaty violations by the American government that had lied us into a wrongful and hopeless war and were killing Americans and others at a great rate as it went on. For that, I was facing 115 years in prison, just as Bradley Manning is now facing life charges, essentially the same. In my case, the crimethe then-crimes against me of illegal surveillance, warrantless surveillance, the use of the CIA against me, now legal under the PATRIOT Act, and a hit squad against me, now allegedly legal by the president, all those things figured in impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: And it led to his resignation. They should lead, right nowwe've seen this assault. The time has comeand Katherine Forrest has shown the way, I thinkto defend the Constitution and try to restore it to the rights of Americans.