US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[Peter Lemkin]

Feds defend Twitter dragnet on WikiLeaks supporters

Constitutional claims 'baseless'

By Dan Goodin

Posted in ID, 9th April 2011 06:00 GMT

Federal prosecutors on Friday defended their attempts to access the Twitter records of three WikiLeaks supporters, arguing their claims that the dragnet violates their constitutional rights should be rejected.

In a 19-page filing in federal court, prosecutors said a ruling issued last month should be upheld despite the claims by WikiLeaks supporters Jacob Appelbaum, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, and Rop Gonggrijp that it violates their right to free speech. The filing came in an ongoing criminal investigation into Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blower website.

The March 11 order approved the government's request for IP addresses the supporters used to access Twitter between November 2009 and last December and the email addresses they gave when registering with the micro-blogging website. US Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan said there were no constitutional violations because the information sought didn't involve the content of any of the Twitter subscribers' communications. Federal prosecutors agreed.

"The subscribers' claim that Twitter's non-content records are subject to heightened protections under the First Amendment is baseless," they wrote.

The information demand was made in a confidential filing in December under the US Stored Communications Act. The Twitter users also argued that the secrecy of the motion violated their Fourth Amendment right protecting them from unreasonable searches and seizures. The government later agreed to make public most of the court documents filed in their demand, but withheld revealing one document that Buchanan said would reveal "sensitive nonpublic facts, including the identity of targets and witnesses."

Friday's court filing is here.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

How free speech becomes terrorism: The Tarek Mehanna case and the implications for Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
Submitted by Peter Kemp on Sun, 04/15/2012 - 05:24
Legal Analysis Australia Opinion Human Rights United States Free information


I am indebted to Glenn Greenwald who posted an article here on the Tarek Mehanna case.

Greenwald outlines the case:

Tarek Mehanna, an American Muslim, was convicted this week in a federal court in Boston and then sentenced yesterday to 17 years in prison. He was found guilty of supporting Al Qaeda (by virtue of translating Terrorists' documents into English and expressing "sympathetic views" to the group) as well as conspiring to "murder" U.S. soldiers in Iraq (i.e., to wage war against an invading army perpetrating an aggressive attack on a Muslim nation)

In a link by Greenwald to Julia Spitz of MetroWest Daily News, further details emerge:

He was a 'serious young man' who wanted to 'exemplify Islam,' said the judge, but became consumed by a fervor that led him to support al Qaeda by translating materials from Arabic into English and 'proselytizing' to recruit others to embrace his views.

Embrace his views or incite others to violence? (one might ask). As I wrote here, about incitement on the subject of certain Americans inciting others to kill Julian Assange:

There is no automatic 1st Amendment protection per Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969):
Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action

The Brandenberg 'test' therefore appears no longer to be 'good' US law, unless the prosecutor at trial managed to adduce evidence that Mehanna was directed by Al Queda to do as he did, in which case the bare elements of a conspiracy are made out. There appears to be no evidence that Mehanna did conspire with Al Queda and the information at hand strongly suggests Mehanna engaged only in independent advocacy against the US's propensity to wage wars on Muslim nations and kill innocent civilians in large numbers, without the command structure in any way being held accountable, (excepting for example, as history has recorded, prosecutions of the lowest ranking soldiers for torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.)

I suspect that the jury may have been misdirected in the Mehanna case by the judge on points of law, but even if that is incorrect, it seems apparent that in terrorism cases around the world, juries can be so easily prejudiced against those who hold repugnant views such that it is becoming impossible to conduct fair trials in 'terrorism' cases. (The US is not alone in this respect and this writer and lawyer is an equal opportunity critic of an Australian case where certain things happened during the trial where the jury was/must_have_been influenced by certain events that should have seen the jury discharged and the trial aborted. That case, I believe is/should be wending its way to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.)

At sentence Mehanna, in part read this to sentencing Judge O'Toole:

All those videos and translations and childish bickering over Oh, he translated this paragraph' and Oh, he edited that sentence,' and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to "kill Americans" at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government's own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little "terror plots," but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.

So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It's what I've always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it's not extremism. It's what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don't have to agree with my beliefs no. Anyone with commonsense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.

But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed "terrorism" and the people defending themselves against those who come to kill them from across the ocean become "the terrorists" who are "killing Americans."...

The right to self defence (or to argue for self defence?) is necessarily enshrined in domestic law. For an adversarial system example :

(1) A person is not criminally responsible for an offence if the person carries out the conduct constituting the offence in self-defence.
(2) A person carries out conduct in self-defence if and only if the person believes the conduct is necessary:
(a) to defend himself or herself or another person, or
(b) to prevent or terminate the unlawful deprivation of his or her liberty or the liberty of another person, or
© to protect property from unlawful taking, destruction, damage or interference, or
(d) to prevent criminal trespass to any land or premises or to remove a person committing any such criminal trespass,
and the conduct is a reasonable response in the circumstances as he or she perceives them.

While this is domestic law the principles are similar and apply to international armed conflicts. (The only complications that occur is when non state actors become involved, but that does not necessarily deny the right of self defence, however those exercising it are obliged to comply with the laws of armed conflict and safeguard civilian lives.)

What Mehanna did (apparently) was to support the principle of self defence as exercised by Al Queda against the US military, (what is commonly believed by jurists around the world to have been an illegal war). While Al Queda is clearly an odious and murderous group with much innocent blood on its hands, (among others) its killing of invaders from the USA in Iraq was not necessarily contrary to the laws of armed conflict. Mehannah's advocacy of the right to self defence however came against the US's quasi-legal view that anybody who opposes them militarily is a prima facie terrorist, or terrorist supporter.

The Wikileaks Dimension.

The concern I have is that the Mehannah case does not auger well for the future and the probability that Julian Assange will at some stage be extradited to the USA. Readers will recall VP Biden's statement that Assange is a "hi-tech terrorist" for example. The climate in the USA, given the level of the sycophantic media inspired near hysterical outrage against Wikileaks and Julian Assange in particular: is palpable.

Judges in my jurisdiction give great attention to instructing juries that they must only judge a case on the evidence before them, and that to seek outside information is not only highly improper but attracts sanctions; that as members of the jury panel and if prejudiced against the defendant they must declare that prejudice and be excused. In the US climate, given the depth of anti Wikileaks attacks; corporate withholding of financial services crippling Wikileaks to a highly significant degree; smears by former media partners including the New York Times; outright lies that Julian Assange has been charged with sex offences (when he has not): would all make problematic a fair trial of Julian Assange on whatever indictment was presented. To the adage that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, could be added that a US jury will convict a ham sandwich indicted for terrorism or terrorist related offences.

The common thread of such an indictment, (as it was for Mehanna) is of course about free speech or lack thereof. We can readily imagine, or predict what DOJ prosecutors will present in an opening address, "...aiding and abetting the enemies of the USA members of the jury..."..."material support for TERRORISTS TERRORISTS, members of the jury, don't forget that important part of the prosecutions case (subtext: convict this dude and rest easy in your beds)!!!").

Such aiding and abetting simply boiled down, being of course the release of damaging evidence that inadvertently (and irrelevantly) caused groups like Al Queda to either gloat or laugh at the US's expense. So much for the rights of the First Amendment.

Whatever part of the Espionage Act that a US indictment of Julian Assange contains, we can be sure of one thing, Julian Assange, like Bradley Manning, would be in custody for years before the case ever came to trial. And it's probably correct to say that that's the way the US government would want it to be.

A final thought on what people might say or believe were Julian Assange extradited and put on trial in the USA:

1) US domestic law trumps any or all international law.
2) The Australian government on current trends, washing their hands in true Pontius Pilate tradition would be found wanting.

[Keith Millea]

Published on Monday, April 16, 2012 by TruthDig.com

First They Come For the Muslims

by Chris Hedges

Tarek Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced Thursday in Worcester, Mass., to 17½ years in prison. It was another of the tawdry show trials held against Muslim activists since 9/11 as a result of the government's criminalization of what people say and believe. These trials, where secrecy rules permit federal lawyers to prosecute people on "evidence" the defendants are not allowed to examine, are the harbinger of a corporate totalitarian state in which any form of dissent can be declared illegal. What the government did to Mehanna, and what it has done to hundreds of other innocent Muslims in this country over the last decade, it will eventually do to the rest of us.


Mehanna, a teacher at Alhuda Academy in Worcester, was convicted after an eight-week jury trial of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq and providing material support to al-Qaida, as well as making false statements to officials investigating terrorism. His real "crime," however, seems to be viewing and translating jihadi videos online, speaking out against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and refusing to become a government informant.

Stephen F. Downs, a lawyer in Albany, N.Y., a founder of Project Salam and the author of "Victims of America's Dirty War," a booklet posted on the website, has defended Muslim activists since 2006. He has methodically documented the mendacious charges used to incarcerate many Muslim activists as terrorists. Because of "terrorism enhancement" provisions, any sentence can be quadrupledeven minor charges can leave prisoners incarcerated for years.

"People who have committed no crime are taken into custody, isolated without adequate recourse to legal advice, railroaded with fake or contrived charges, and disappeared' into prisons designed to isolate them," Downs told me when we met last week at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

Downs calls the process of condemning people before they have committed a crime "pre-emptive prosecution." The concept of pre-emptive prosecution mocks domestic law as egregiously as pre-emptive war mocks the foundations of international law.

Downs' awakening to the corruption of the judicial system came in 2006 when Yassin Aref, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq who was an imam of a mosque in Albany, was entrapped in a government sting operation. Downs, who three years earlier had retired as chief attorney for the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, became part of Aref's legal defense team. He met with Aref two or three times a week in the Rensselaer County jail over a six-month period.

"I was unprepared for the fact that the government would put together a case that was just one lie piled up on top of another lie," Downs said. "And when you pointed it out to them they didn't care. They didn't refute it. They knew that it was a lie. The facts of most of these pre-emptive cases don't support the charges. But the facts are irrelevant. The government has decided to target these people. It wants to take them down for ideological reasons."

"In the past, when the government wanted to do something illegal it simply went ahead and broke the law," he said. "They rounded up the Japanese during World War II and stuck them in concentration camps. They knew they were breaking the law when they decided to go after the activists with COINTELPRO in the 1960s but they rationalized that they were doing it for a higher purpose. This is different. The government is destroying the legal framework of our country. They are twisting it out of recognition to make it appear as though what they're doing is legal. I don't remember that kind of a situation in the past. The opinions of the court are now only lame excuses as to why the courts can't do justice."

"The government lawyers must know these pre-emptive cases are fake," he said. "They must know they're prosecuting people before a crime has been committed based on what they think the defendant might do in the future. They defend what they are doing by saying that they are protecting the nation from people who might want to do it harm. I'm sure they've been co-opted at least to believe that. But I think they also know that they are twisting the legal concepts, they are stretching them beyond what the framework of the law can tolerate. They have convinced themselves that it is OK to convict many innocent people as long as they prevent a few people from committing crimes in the future. They are creating an internal culture within the Justice Department where there is contempt for the law and for the foundational principle that it is better for one guilty person to go free than that one innocent person is convicted. They must know they do not do justice, and that they serve only ideological ends."

Downs pointed out that if the government was actually concerned about the rule of law it would prosecute politicians and other prominent Americans who have publicly spoken out in support of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK or People's Holy Jihadis), an armed group on the State Department terrorism list that carries out terrorist attacks inside Iran. They include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former U.N.
Ambassador John Bolton, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton and Gen. James Jones, who was President Obama's first national security adviser. Some of them voiced their backing in speeches for which they were paid lavishly.

"Their support of MEK is far worse than any of the pre-emptive prosecution cases," Downs said. "They are literally engaged in material support for terrorism. But of course they're not being prosecuted. ... The whole thing is a game. It's not serious law enforcement. It is political posturing. This will bring the law into contempt. It will bring the mechanisms of prosecution into contempt and eventually it will destroy the legal system."

"Justice is now justice for corporations," he went on. "Anybody who interferes with the corporations, who interferes with their profits, who interferes with their rights, will become labeled terrorists.' They become people we need to get rid of. Judges, politicians and lawyers all feed at the same corporate trough. And that is why their decisions increasingly are corporate decisions."

Downs holds out a faint hope that it may be possible to force the Justice Department to turn over exculpatory evidenceevidence of a defendant's innocence that by law the prosecution must disclose to the defendant but an obligation that the prosecutors frequently ignore. He said he is certain there is exculpatory evidence in government vaults that could free many of those pre-emptively prosecuted. Government prosecutors, however, do not willing sabotage their own cases by turning over evidence that would exonerate those they seek to condemn. Downs knows it is a quixotic fight, but he is working to get the undisclosed exculpatory evidence in pre-emptive prosecution cases released to defense lawyers.

"That's my one hope of getting these guys out of jailI don't see any other way," he said.
The corruption in the judiciary, Downs argues, is so pervasive that it is probably irreversible in the short run. Already dissidents such as peace activists, environmentalists and outspoken intellectuals have been treated as terrorists. Downs expects soon to see labor organizers and those in Occupy encampments treated as terrorists, especially if domestic dissent spreads.

Yet despite his pessimism he has no intention of surrendering.

"I take comfort from organizations like the White Rose in Germany," he said, referring to the anti-Nazi group that defied Hitler and saw most of its members arrested and executed. "They were doomed almost from the beginning. How long could you defy Hitler before you were rounded up and shot? It appeared to be a futile effort. And yet, after the war, when people went back and began to rebuild the German nation, they could look to the White Rose as an example of what German culture was really about. There were Germans who cared about peace, freedom and tolerance. I'm working now as much for the historical record as for those still in jail."

"When I was 6," Mehanna told the court Thursday at his sentencing, "I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigmUncle Tom's Cabin,' The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.' "

"By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world," he went on. "I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendants of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III. I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forcesan insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. As a kid I even went on school field trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs and the struggles of the labor unions, working class and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was 6: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend themregardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home."

"In your eyes, I'm a terrorist, and it's perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit," he told the court at the end of his statement. "But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the U.S. military in foreign countries, yet somehow I'm the one going to prison for conspiring to kill and maim' in those countriesbecause I support the mujahedeen defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a terrorist,' yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the terrorists' are, she sure wouldn't be pointing at me."

© 2012 TruthDig.com

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/16-2

[Peter Lemkin]

"I take comfort from organizations like the White Rose in Germany," he said, referring to the anti-Nazi group that defied Hitler and saw most of its members arrested and executed. "They were doomed almost from the beginning. How long could you defy Hitler before you were rounded up and shot? It appeared to be a futile effort. And yet, after the war, when people went back and began to rebuild the German nation, they could look to the White Rose as an example of what German culture was really about. There were Germans who cared about peace, freedom and tolerance. I'm working now as much for the historical record as for those still in jail."

"When I was 6," Mehanna told the court Thursday at his sentencing, "I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigmUncle Tom's Cabin,' The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.' "

"By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world," he went on. "I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendants of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III. I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forcesan insurgency we now celebrate as the American Revolutionary War. As a kid I even went on school field trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs and the struggles of the labor unions, working class and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was 6: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend themregardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home."

"In your eyes, I'm a terrorist, and it's perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit," he told the court at the end of his statement. "But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the U.S. military in foreign countries, yet somehow I'm the one going to prison for conspiring to kill and maim' in those countriesbecause I support the mujahedeen defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a terrorist,' yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the terrorists' are, she sure wouldn't be pointing at me."

Yeah, for such articulate, humane, ethical and sane views of America and the World, they would lock anyone up and throw away the key...[size=12].NEXT![/SIZE]

[Magda Hassan]

Why the WikiLeaks Grand Jury is So Dangerous: Members of Congress Now Want to Prosecute New York Times Journalists Too

For more than a year now, EFF has encouraged mainstream press publications like the New York Times to aggressively defend WikiLeaks' First Amendment right to publish classified information in the public interest and denounce the ongoing grand jury investigating WikiLeaks as a threat to press freedom.
Well, we are now seeing why that is so important: at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on July 11th, some members of Congress made it clear they also want New York Timesjournalists charged under the Espionage Act for their recent stories on President Obama's Kill List' and secret US cyberattacks against Iran. During the hearing, House Republicans "pressed legal experts Wednesday on whether it was possible to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information," according to the Los Angeles Times.
In addition, the Washingtonian's Shane Harris reported a month ago that a "senior" Justice Department official "made it clear that reporters who talked to sources about classified information were putting themselves at risk of prosecution."
Leaks big and small have been happening for decadeseven centuriesand the most recent are comparable to several others. No journalist has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act and it has generally been accepted, even by Congress's own research arm, that the publication of government secrets by the press is protected speech under the First Amendment. Yet the government is actively investigating WikiLeaks and now threatening others for just that.
The mainstream media may see little in common with Assange's digital publication methods or his general demeanor, but what he is accused of is virtually indistinguishable from what other reporters and newspapers do every day: poke, prod, and cajole sources within the government to give up classified information that newspapers then publish to inform the public of the government's activities.
It's clear the WikiLeaks and major newspapers can't be distinguished in their critics' own statements. House committee witness Army Col. Ken Allard, echoing the claims by multiple members of Congress* during the WikiLeaks controversy, called the kill list' and cyberattack leaks "unprecedented" in American history. And much like previous comments about Julian Assange, Allard likened New York Times reporter David Sanger to a spy, saying he was "systematically penetrating the Obama White House as effectively as any foreign agent."
Similarly, Senator Dianne Feinstein's recent comments advocating the prosecution of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act in no sense apply to one media organization but not the other.Salon's Glenn Greenwald demonstrated this by replacing phrase "Mr. Assange" with "New York Times" in Sen. Feinstein's statement:

"I believe [The New York Times] has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the United States," the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dianne Feinstein, said in a written statement provided to the Herald. "[It] has caused serious harm to US national security, and [] should be prosecuted accordingly."

In this case, like many others, Congress has invoked the vague, catchall phrase "national security" in an attempt to curtail rights that have existed for decades. As we've previously pointed out, "national security" has been used as an excuse to weaken constitutional protections in laws such as the Patriot Act and CISPA, but it's also been used in attempts to threaten press freedom.
In 2006, shortly after the New York Times first exposed the NSA's illegal warrantless wiretapping program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told ABC News he was contemplating charging Times reporters under the Espionage Act because of the perceived harm to "national security." Of course, the investigation didn't hurt national security, but it did inform the American people of an unconstitutional program that later sparked Congressional hearings, and many ongoing lawsuits (including EFF's). It also won the New York Times the Pulitzer Prize.
The same exaggerated "national security" arguments were made during the Pentagon Papers case and many other instances as well. Yet as New York Times editor-in-chief Jill Abramson remarked in the wake of these new leaks, "No story about details of government secrets has come near to demonstrably hurting the national security in decades and decades."
Congress, for its part, is taking the exact opposite approach it should take. Instead of doubling down on secrecy, it should be working to fix our broken classification system and should be calling for fewer secrets. And instead of clamoring for more prosecutions, it should call for a halt to current prosecutions of whistleblowers under the Obama administrationalready twice the amount than all other administrations combined.
Still, the nation's largest editorial boardsthe New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journalhave been silent on the dangers of the WikiLeaks grand jury. If the mainstream media thought they were protected by the 1st Amendment while WikiLeaks could be prosecuted, they should now be on clear notice that the government makes no such distinction.
If the mainstream media leaves Wikileaks to hang, their own necks are at risk too.






https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/wh...e-new-york

[Magda Hassan]

Ecuador denounces the discovery of a bug in the embassy in London

Published: July 2, 2013 | 22:46 GMT Last Updated: July 2, 2013 | 23:20 GMTFP / Hoang Dinh Nam

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, reported that they had found a microphone in the Ecuadorian embassy office in London.

The Chancellor made ​​the report talking about Edward Snowden during a press conference on Tuesday July 2. "We infiltrated everywhere," he said, adding that "request explanations" to the country that put the microphone. The microphone was found in the office of Ambassador Juan Falconi during the visit of Patiño to London, said. Patino said he can not guarantee their origin and promised to give more details on Wednesday. Minister also reported that some government internal communications, such as emails, are being published by various means. As an example put the letter of Edward Snowden to Rafael Correa . The letter was released by the press before the received the President said.


Texto completo en: http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view...ono-hallar[URL="http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/99044-aterrizaje-emergencia-avion-evo-morales"]
http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view...vo-morales[/URL]

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ecuador denounces the discovery of a bug in the embassy in London

Published: July 2, 2013 | 22:46 GMT Last Updated: July 2, 2013 | 23:20 GMTFP / Hoang Dinh Nam

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, reported that they had found a microphone in the Ecuadorian embassy office in London.

The Chancellor made ​​the report talking about Edward Snowden during a press conference on Tuesday July 2. "We infiltrated everywhere," he said, adding that "request explanations" to the country that put the microphone. The microphone was found in the office of Ambassador Juan Falconi during the visit of Patiño to London, said. Patino said he can not guarantee their origin and promised to give more details on Wednesday. Minister also reported that some government internal communications, such as emails, are being published by various means. As an example put the letter of Edward Snowden to Rafael Correa . The letter was released by the press before the received the President said.


Texto completo en: http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view...ono-hallar[URL="http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/99044-aterrizaje-emergencia-avion-evo-morales"]
http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view...vo-morales[/URL]

(Spluttering) But but but..... Volkland Security..... network hygiene..... Ban this terrorist from talking about our listening devices.....


:unclesam: :unclesam: :unclesam:

[Magda Hassan]

Perhaps The Surveillance Group might know some thing about this listening device.
http://www.thesurveillancegroup.com/

"The device was found inside an electrical power box hidden behind a library, in the ambassador's office"

Microphone found at the Embassy of Ecuador in London British origin would

Patino said the device belongs to the company Survillance Group Limited, a British company specializing in surveillance and espionage. Photo: ALVARO PEREZ - THE TELEGRAPH



Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, filed Wednesday afternoon, espionage device was found in the office of the Embassy of Ecuador in London on June 14.The minister of affairs, presented the microphone to the press and said that this was found hiding in an electrical box mounted on the wall. This device work with GSM networks, ie carrying a SIM card, which receptaba the call receiver and listen to conversations inside the office.Patino said the device belongs to the company Survillance Group Limited, a British company specializing in surveillance and espionage. He also announced that the Ecuadorian government also requested the assistance of the British government to investigate the details of the device.With regard to the situation of Air Force Evo Morales, the official described what happened very serious and said that so far five presidents, those of Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Surinam and Ecuador, have confirmed their attendance tomorrow at the meeting of Heads of State of UNASUR in Cochabamba.The Chancellor also said he received an official statement from the United Kingdom where the Ecuadorian government requested not to receive Edward Snowden and if it comes, it delivered.Patiño ended the press conference by stating that it will promote greater control over security in the country, taking the microphone found this fact as National Security unasunto.Sse security measures are being taken to improve the confidentiality of communications capability, "he said.

[Magda Hassan]

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