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News Release Archive | WikiLeaks | Accuracy.Org

“Three Basic Questions” the Media Should be Asking in Assange Asylum Case

August 16, 2012


ROBERT NAIMAN, naiman at justforeignpolicy.org, www.justforeignpolicy.org
Robert Naiman is policy director of Just Foreign Policy. The group organized and delivered this appeal signed by prominent Americans urging Ecuador to accept Julian Assange’s asylum request in late June.

Naiman said today: “As Americans who appealed to Ecuador to grant Julian Assange’s request for political asylum from the threat of U.S. persecution, we are delighted with the decision by Ecuador to grant Assange asylum. But there are three questions the media should be asking.

“The UK is now saying that it does not respect diplomatic asylum and has threatened to raid Ecuador’s embassy, which would be a grave breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The UK threat to violate international law is particularly extreme when one considers that these three basic questions have never been answered:

1) why Sweden won’t agree to question Assange in the UK;

2) why Sweden won’t promise not to extradite Assange to the United States if he voluntarily goes to Sweden;

3) why the UK won’t promise to oppose an extradition request from the U.S. to Sweden if Assange voluntarily goes to Sweden.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She said today: “The entire U.S. Government’s fixation with secrecy that has led to over-classification of 92 million documents last year, the ‘leak’ frenzy that is driving the espionage prosecutions of so many former CIA, NSA and other government whistleblowers — also driving thousands of unnecessary polygraphs of government employees — is simply a gross over-reaction along with the UK threat today to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy to capture Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and thus deny his asylum.”

Tagged With: Julian Assange, Julian Assange Asylum, JustForeignPolicy, WikiLeaks,

Whistleblowers on Assange, Manning, “Absurd” Secrecy, Leaking and Assassinations

June 27, 2012

The Guardian reports on “A letter signed by leading U.S. figures in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s application for political asylum in Ecuador has been delivered to the country’s London embassy.” Among those who signed the letter were Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover.

The letter, organized by Just Foreign Policy, which is also signed by a number of whistleblowers, including those below, states: “The U.S. Justice Department has compelled other members of Wikileaks to testify before a grand jury in order to determine what charges might be brought against Mr. Assange. The U.S. government has made clear its open hostility to Wikileaks, with high-level officials even referring to Mr. Assange as a ‘high-tech terrorist,’ and seeking access to the Twitter account of Icelandic legislator Birgitta Jónsdóttir due to her past ties to Wikileaks.

“Were he charged, and found guilty under the Espionage Act, Assange could face the death penalty.

“Prior to that, the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of providing U.S. government documents to Wikileaks, provides an illustration of the treatment that Assange might expect while in custody. Manning has been subjected to repeated and prolonged solitary confinement, harassment by guards, and humiliating treatment such as being forced to strip naked and stand at attention outside his cell. These are additional reasons that your government should grant Mr. Assange political asylum.

“We also call on you to grant Mr. Assange political asylum because the ‘crime’ that he has committed is that of practicing journalism. He has revealed important crimes against humanity committed by the U.S. government, most notably in releasing video footage from an Apache helicopter of a 2007 incident in which the U.S. military appears to have deliberately killed civilians, including two Reuters employees.”

THOMAS DRAKE, tadrake at earthlink.net, @Thomas_Drake1
Drake was a senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency. He recently and successfully concluded a legal ordeal with the federal government including an Espionage Act centered indictment over the past several years. He blew the whistle on vast illegal electronic surveillance and data mining inside the U.S. and other government wrongdoing. He has recently been given awards for his role as a whistleblower. His recent tweets include: “Important 2 know facts of Assange seeking asylum & not the spin. He faces grave danger if extradited as prey of power.” And “I consider Assange the most wanted info revolutionary of the Internet Age. Makes him 4most cyber refugee from forces of fascism.”

JESSELYN RADACK, jradack at whistleblower.org, @JesselynRadack
National security and human rights director at the Government Accountability Project, Radack is a former Justice Department adviser and a whistleblower. Her book TRAITOR: The Whistleblower and the ‘American Taliban’ about how she exposed government wrongdoing in the John Walker Lindh case, including how Lindh was interrogated without a lawyer present and the government attempting to suppress that information, was recently released. She also acted as Drake’s lawyer. They both won the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award and the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award this year.

She said today: “Assange meets the criteria for asylum. He has a well-founded fear of persecution, for his political beliefs, that a government would be unable to stop. The Swedish charges are a pretext for getting him to a country that will extradite him to the United States, which has made no secret of its desire to prosecute him under the Espionage Act and seek the death penalty.” Radack has talked about a “war on whistleblowers” becoming a “war on journalism.”

Radack’s recent articles include “Government & MSM’s Deliberate Obfuscation of the Difference Between ‘Leaking’ & Whistleblowing”

Also, see: “Why Ecuador Should Grant Julian Assange Asylum”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net, @ColeenRowley

Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She highlights the importance of the government over-extending its claims of secrecy, saying: “I’m convinced, more than ever, that if that type of anti-secrecy publication [WikiLeaks] had existed and enabled the proper information sharing in early 2001, it could have not only prevented the 9/11 attacks but it could have exposed the fabricating of intelligence and deceptive propaganda which enabled the Bush administration to unjustifiably launch war on Iraq.”

She noted critical developments in secrecy of government this week, including, as AP reports on the Manning case: “A military judge is ordering prosecutors to account for themselves after accusations they withheld evidence from an Army private charged in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history.”

Rowley also notes the secrecy-invoking last minute government response to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about the legal and factual basis for the killings of three U.S. citizens in targeted killing drone strikes last fall. Nathan Freed Wessler, fellow at the ACLU National Security Project, writes today: “The government’s brief amounts to a total secrecy snow job. In every relevant respect, the government’s stonewalling continues. … The government’s brief says that ‘whether or not the United States government conducted the particular operations that led to the deaths of Anwar al-Aulaki and other individuals named in the FOIA requests remains classified.’ But if U.S. responsibility for killing al-Awlaki is classified, someone forgot to tell the Department of Defense. Within hours of al-Awlaki’s death, DOD published a news article stating that ‘[a] U.S. airstrike … killed Yemeni-based terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki early this morning.’ President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have both acknowledged that the U.S. killed al-Awlaki. At this point, refusing to say whether the U.S. was responsible for killing al-Awlaki at all, not even whether the CIA or the military was responsible, is absurd.”

Tagged With: Bradley Manning, Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack, Julian Assange, Thomas Drake, WikiLeaks,

Assange’s Asylum

June 20, 2012

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers (top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War), today signed a petition calling on Ecuador to grant political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ellsberg stated: “Political asylum was made for cases like this. Freedom for Julian in Ecuador would serve the cause of freedom of speech and of the press worldwide. It would be good for us all; and it would be cause to honor, respect and thank Ecuador.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She said today: “An unbelievably cruel irony exists in witnessing powerful western political figures threaten Julian Assange, someone with a unique track record of supporting whistleblowers without any viable outlet for disclosing their superiors’ illegal orders and activities. WikiLeaks’ efforts combating undue secrecy, exposing illegal cover-ups and championing transparency in government has already benefited the world. And I’m convinced, more than ever, that if that type of anti-secrecy publication had existed and enabled the proper information sharing in early 2001, it could have not only prevented the 9/11 attacks but it could have exposed the fabricating of intelligence and deceptive propaganda which enabled the Bush Administration to unjustifiably launch war on Iraq.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern, who was a U.S. army officer and CIA analyst for 30 years, now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He just wrote the piece “Julian Assange’s Artful Dodge,” which states: “Not only is Julian Assange within his rights to seek asylum, he is also in his right mind. Consider this: he was about to be sent to faux-neutral Sweden, which has a recent history of bowing to U.S. demands in dealing with those that Washington says are some kind of threat to U.S. security. Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday provided an example:

“‘In December 2001, Sweden handed over two asylum seekers to the CIA, which then rendered them to be tortured in Egypt. A ruling from the U.N. Human Rights Committee found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for its role in that rendition (the two individuals later received a substantial settlement from the Swedish government).’

“For those of you thinking, Oh, but that was under the Bush administration and that kind of thing is over, think again. In 2010 and 2011, the hysteria surrounding WikiLeaks’ disclosures of U.S. misconduct and crimes around the world brought cries from prominent American political figures seeking Assange’s designation as a terrorist, his prosecution as a spy and even his assassination.

“Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has called for WikiLeaks to be declared a terrorist organization and Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, a position shared by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“‘The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.’

“Others have gone even further, demanding that Assange be put to death, either by judicial or extrajudicial means. …

“Four weeks before Assange sought asylum, he interviewed Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for Episode 6 of The World Tomorrow (Assange’s program Tuesdays on RT [formerly Russia Today]). Assange asked Correa why he has advocated that WikiLeaks release all its cables. Correa responded:

“‘First, you don’t owe anything, have nothing to fear. We have nothing to hide. Your WikiLeaks have made us stronger’ with the damaging revelations showing the attitude of the U.S. embassy toward the sovereignty of the Ecuadorian government.’

“Correa continued: ‘On the other hand, WikiLeaks wrote a lot about the goals that the national media pursue, about the power groups who seek help and report to foreign embassies. … Let them publish everything they have about the Ecuadorian government. You will see how many things about those who oppose the civil revolution in Ecuador will come to light. Things to do with opportunism, betrayal, and being self serving.’

“Correa made the point that when WikiLeaks cables became available to the national media in Ecuador, they chose not to publish them — partly because the documents aired so much ‘dirty linen’ about the media themselves. He added that when he took office in January 2007, five out of seven privately owned TV channels in Ecuador were run by bankers. The bankers were using the guise of journalism to interfere in politics and to destabilize governments, for fear of losing power.”

See the Assange-Correa interview.

Tagged With: civil liberties, Coleen Rowley, Julian Assange, Ray McGovern, WikiLeaks,

Assange and the “War on Whistleblowers”

May 30, 2012

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She was featured on an IPA news release yesterday titled “Obama’s Priestly Assassinations” about the administration’s “secret kill list.” She said today: “The war on whistleblowers (which Obama has likened to traitors and espionage), is connected to yesterday’s New York Times story about the ‘secret kill list’ since it is secrecy that is being protected and which fuels and empowers the entire illegal, immoral wrongdoing by a ‘l’etat c’est moi’ ['I am the state'] war presidency setting itself up as investigator, judge, jury and executioner. The only thing that will prevent a return to the dark ages is light.”

DAVID MacMICHAEL, dmacmi at centurylink.net
MacMichael is a former CIA analyst. He said today: “There is a strong possibility that if Assange is extradited to Sweden that the U.S. will have him extradited here. It’s widely thought that there is already a U.S. government secret indictment against Assange in the Alexandria, Virginia, federal court. This would be part of a pattern of the Obama administration’s unprecedented attacks on whistleblowers, using the 1917 Espionage Act to pursue them. So are we going to see an extraordinary prosecution of Assange from this? This is a strong possibility, I believe.

“The U.S. government, like any other, seeks to avoid transparency in the conduct of its foreign policy. The Obama administration is no different in this than its predecessors. Yesterday the New York Times published a piece on the way Obama personally approves the so-called ‘kill lists.’ of individuals being targeted in the Middle East and elsewhere. During the Vietnam war, it was widely accepted: ‘If he’s dead, he must be Viet Cong,’ hence the notorious body counts of that conflict — and that’s essentially what the Obama administration is doing: If a foreign male who is of broadly-considered military age is killed as a result of U.S. operations — drone strikes, helicopter strafings, etc., he must have been a ‘militant’ (interesting definition, that) and not a civilian. Because, of course, we (our military and intelligence forces) don’t kill civilians. That would be wrong.”

GLENN GREENWALD, ggreenwald at salon.com, @ggreenwald
Available for limited number of interviews, Greenwald’s latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some. He has written extensively about WikiLeaks and said today: “Remember, Julian Assange is one of the most hated people by Western governments because of the transparency that he brought. … Typically, and unfortunately, judicial branches in the United States and in the United Kingdom do the opposite of what they’re intending to do, which is protecting the institutional power, and help to punish and deprive those who are most scorned. So I would have been shocked had the court ruled in favor of Assange, even though, as the two opposing judges on the high court pointed out, the argument for Sweden and those who argued extradition is directly antithetical to what the statute said. No one thinks that a prosecutor is a judicial authority. He hasn’t been charged with a crime, and therefore, there is no courtroom judge seeking his extradition. … But the law in these cases is not what typically governs. What governs is political consideration and views of the party. …

“[Sweden has] a very oppressive, I would even say borderline barbaric, system of pretrial detention.” Greenwald noted that Assange, since he is not a Swedish citizen, will be “automatically consigned to prison, and not released on bail. … The pre-trial hearings in Sweden are private. … And given how sensitive this case is, the idea that judicial decision in Sweden will be made privately and secretly is very alarming. …The concern is that Sweden will hand him over [to the U.S] without much of a fight and that he will face life imprisonment under espionage statute when he is doing nothing more than what newspapers do everyday.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern, who was a U.S. army officer and CIA analyst for 30 years, now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was also featured on the “Obama’s Priestly Assassinations” news release and has closely followed WikiLeaks.

Tagged With: civil liberties, Coleen Rowley, David MacMichael, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Ray McGovern, WikiLeaks,

WikiLeaks Exposes Stratfor, “Shadow CIA” — Charges of Using Sex, Targeting Activists, Blackmail, Insider Trading

February 27, 2012


MIKE BONANNO, mike at theyesmen.org
ANDY BICHBAUM, andy at theyesmen.org
The Yes Men news release states today: “WikiLeaks begins to publish today over five million e-mails obtained by Anonymous from ‘global intelligence’ company Stratfor. The emails, which reveal everything from sinister spy tactics to an insider trading scheme … also include several discussions of the Yes Men and Bhopal activists. (Bhopal activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, that led to thousands of deaths, injuries to more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.)

“Many of the Bhopal-related emails, addressed from Stratfor to Dow and Union Carbide public relations directors reveal concern that, in the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the Bhopal issue might be expanded into an effective systemic critique of corporate rule, and speculate at length about why this hasn’t yet happened — providing a fascinating window onto what at least some corporate types fear most from activists.”

At today’s news conference, Assange noted that Stratfor, unlike Murdoch’s News Corp., has refused to discuss the information disclosed.

Carlos Enrique Bayo of El Publico in Spain, one of WikiLeak’s media partners, charged that Stratfor guidelines outlined gathering information using illicit methods, including sexual relations, to in Stratfor CEO George Friedman’s words “take control” of informants (around 36:00). Kristinn Hrafnsson from WikiLeaks (around 1:03:00) charged that Stratfor uses “blatant blackmail.”

See the WikiLeaks news release and access the databases of the emails at “The Global Intelligence Files” and see WikiLeaks Twitter feed for updates: @WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks news release states: “Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to ‘utilise the intelligence’ it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained [this] in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS: ‘What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like.’”

Tagged With: Andy Bichbaum, Mike Bonanno, WikiLeaks,

Prosecuting Manning for WikiLeaks: “Killing the Messenger”

March 3, 2011

Glenn Greenwald writes today: “The U.S. Army yesterday announced that it has filed 22 additional charges against Bradley Manning, the Private accused of being the source for hundreds of thousands of documents (as well as [the video 'Collateral Murder']) published over the last year by WikiLeaks. Most of the charges add little to the ones already filed, but the most serious new charge is for ‘aiding the enemy,’ a capital offense under Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Although military prosecutors stated that they intend to seek life imprisonment rather than the death penalty for this alleged crime, the military tribunal is still empowered to sentence Manning to death if convicted.”

Manning is alleged to have stated last year, prior to the uprisings now embroiling the Mideast: “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public. … Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed.”

COLEEN ROWLEY
Rowley, whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s people of the year in 2002 along with Enron and WorldCom whistleblowers Sherron Watkins and Cynthia Cooper. She said today: “The charging of Bradley Manning with (somehow indirectly but intentionally) ‘aiding the enemy’ is consistent with the Department of Justice’s legal motion filed January 11 of this year in the Jeffrey Sterling case that asserted that leaking is worse than spying for a foreign enemy: ‘The defendant’s unauthorized disclosures, however, may be viewed as more pernicious than the typical espionage case where a spy sells classified information for money.’

“None of the four actual identified real spies of the last three decades (CIA agents Ivan Nicholson and Aldrich Ames and FBI agents Earl Pitts and Robert Hanssen) who sold United States national security information to the Soviet Union and Russia, ultimately faced the death penalty. These actual CIA and FBI agents’ spying for the Soviets did far greater damage to the U.S. than the mere embarrassment allegedly caused by Manning but they did not face the death penalty. The info that Hanssen and Aldrich Ames sold, led to the identification and execution of double agents by the USSR. But in fact Robert Hanssen’s wife even got to keep her portion of his FBI pension.

“If leaking to the public to expose governmental illegality and/or war crimes is considered worse than spying for a foreign country, the question then arises: ‘Who IS the enemy?’ Is it us?”

Rowley recently co-wrote a piece titled “OMB Orders Government Agencies to Monitor Disgruntled Employees — What’s Next?”

Note to producers: The song “You are the Domestic Enemy,” which features a voice mix with Noam Chomsky, may be appropriate as a lead in.

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is featured in a recent Panorama segment on German TV. See in English

He said today: “After the U.S. Army abuses at Abu Ghraib became public in April 2004, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba led the first (and only honest) investigation. In May 2004 he completed a report that was extremely critical of the Army; it was leaked to the press. For Taguba, this was not career enhancing. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: manning, WikiLeaks,

Is Manning, Alleged WikiLeaks Source, Being Held Illegally?

January 25, 2011

NBC is reporting: “U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private [Bradley Manning] suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks….

“The officials told NBC News that a U.S. Marine commander did violate procedure when he placed Manning on ‘suicide watch’ last week.”

DAVID MacMICHAEL
MacMichael, who commanded the facility where Manning is being held, last week wrote a letter to General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps. The letter reads in part: “I wonder, in the first place, why an Army enlisted man is being held in a Marine Corps installation. Second, I question the length of confinement prior to conduct of court-martial. The sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing to the accused in all criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial, extends to those being prosecuted in the military justice system. Third, I seriously doubt that the conditions of his confinement — solitary confinement, sleep interruption, denial of all but minimal physical exercise, etc. — are necessary, customary, or in accordance with law, U.S. or international.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: manning, WikiLeaks,

“Unconstitutional” Espionage Act May Target WikiLeaks

January 5, 2011

ConstitutionROBERT MEEROPOL, via Amber Black
In response to reports that the House will be reading aloud the Constitution on Thursday, attorney Meeropol — founder and executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children — said today: “I hope that if that happens, Congress will take special note of Article III, Section 3, that defines treason, since rumors have been swirling that the United States is preparing to indict WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for conspiring to violate the Espionage Act of 1917 — a law that I believe violates the Constitution.

“The modern version of the Espionage Act states among other things that: ‘Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States’ causes the disclosure or publication of this material, could be subject to massive criminal penalties (18 U.S. Code, Chapter 37, Section 793.)

“I view the Espionage Act of 1917 as a lifelong nemesis. My parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were charged, tried and ultimately executed after being indicted for Conspiracy to Commit Espionage under that Act. And their case was just the highest profile use of the Act which has a notorious history. It originally served to squelch opposition to World War I. It criminalized criticism of the war effort, and sent hundreds of dissenters to jail just for voicing their opinions. It transformed dissent into treason. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: civil liberties, constitution, WikiLeaks,

WikiLeaks Documents Expose Boeing Dealings

January 3, 2011

Prophets of War

Secret U.S. diplomatic cables are continuing to be released via WikiLeaks; only about 2,000 of the reported 250,000 documents have been released thus far.

The New York Times reports on its front page this morning: “The king of Saudi Arabia wanted the United States to outfit his personal jet with the same high-tech devices as Air Force One. The president of Turkey wanted the Obama administration to let a Turkish astronaut sit in on a NASA space flight. … Each of these government leaders had one thing in common: they were trying to decide whether to buy billions of dollars’ worth of commercial jets from Boeing or its European competitor, Airbus. …

“To a greater degree than previously known, diplomats are a big part of the sales force, according to hundreds of cables released by WikiLeaks, which describe politicking and cajoling at the highest levels.”

WILLIAM HARTUNG
Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and author of the new book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. [Read more...]

Tagged With: boeing, cablegate, military, Military-Industrial Complex, WikiLeaks,

Attacks on WikiLeaks Violating the Law?

December 13, 2010

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON
Simpson is a professor who teaches about media, propaganda and media law at the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. He said today: “The ongoing information war campaign against WikiLeaks conducted by U.S. security agencies, politicians and crackpots is illegal under U.S. law as well as under international treaties. In addition to the usual propaganda attacks, the companies that provide commercial website services to WikiLeaks websites have been the focus of hundreds of thousands of denial of service attacks and other forms of online sabotage during the past two weeks. In the case of the DNS.org service, these attacks threatened to shut down WikiLeaks and some 500,000 other websites. DNS.org and others succumbed to the pressure. But so far, the FBI and similar U.S. agencies have ignored these clear violations of the U.S.’s own cyber security laws, which usually classify cyber attacks on this scale as terrorism.
[Read more...]

Tagged With: civil liberties, internet, WikiLeaks,