Bradley Manning Willing To Admit To Leaking Info To Wikileaks, Hoping For More Limited Trial

from the ongoing-process dept

As the Bradley Manning court martial trial moves forward, Manning has apparently submitted a plea notice more or less looking to speed up the process by effectively admitting to the fact that he leaked the info to Wikileaks, without pleading "guilty" to any of the charges. The idea appears to be a procedural move to try to take a shortcut to focusing on some lesser charges by admitting some factual things, and leaving some of the most serious charges off the table. This isn't a "plea bargain" in which both sides make an agreement -- but rather an attempt to effectively say "here's what we agree to, without having to go through the effort of proving it, and then let's focus on these lesser charges." The judge does not need to accept this offer, however.

Manning did not plead guilty to the charged offenses in the plea notice. However, significantly, he did indicate with this notice that he is willing to admit to the fact that the act of providing information to WikiLeaks did occur or that the government has evidence that would prove he did commit the act and so he is willing to plea to it.

The notice was a plea to lesser-included offenses—charges with different elements that the judge could agree upon if there is no evidence for the more severe charges. Pleading to lesser-included offenses makes it possible to not plea to committing offenses under the Espionage Act or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Importantly, he can plead guilty without accepting the government’s charge that he “aided the enemy” or “exceeded authorized access” on his computer

Notably, that report, from Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola, points out that even if this goes through, Manning could still end up with life in prison for "aiding the enemy."

Meanwhile, Andy Greenberg notes that merely making this offer does not bind Manning into this admission -- especially if the government doesn't accept the deal (the judge has to accept it first). He can rescind it, and it can't be used against him. It's basically an attempt to speed up the process, along with the recognition that Manning almost certainly is going to be found guilty of something, so the attempt is to narrow down the possible charges to things that aren't quite as severe.

Filed Under: bradley manning, plea, wikileaks

Court Says State Department Can Live In Fantasyland & Pretend Documents Leaked By Wikileaks Are Still Secret

from the head-in-sand-approach dept

We've talked about the problem in which classified documents that are leaked and widely available to the public are still considered classified by the government, even though the concept is ludicrous. It leads to absolutely ridiculous situations, such as government employees not being able to look at documents available on Wikileaks, even as everyone else in the world can easily log in and see them. Or the case (linked above) in which lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees weren't allowed to look at these documents -- which anyone else in the world can see -- which relate to their clients. Even the NY Times called this situation "absurd." And it is. In the business world, people commonly sign "non-disclosure agreements," but they're always considered null and void if that same information becomes public by other means. It's bizarre that the government doesn't recognize the same policy.

However, in a lawsuit we first discussed last year, where the ACLU sued the State Department for failing to declassify (under a FOIA request) documents that were already widely available on Wikileaks, a judge has ruled against the ACLU, and said that the documents remain classified. Once again, this is absurd. It's as if everyone is actively denying reality.

The ACLU relied on the part of the test that questions whether the disclosure of the information "reasonably could be expected to result in damage to national security." Seeing as anyone seeking to "damage" our national security can just surf over to Wikileaks, and has been able to do that for quite some time, you'd think that the ACLU's argument was pretty rock solid. Not according to the court (pdf and embedded below). The court seems to tapdance around the issue. It argues that the Court should "defer" to the judgment of the administration on this question, and that it's possible that the official release of these documents could impact national security. I don't buy it. Any official release is unlikely to have any different impact than the unofficial release. To argue that making those releases official has some sort of new "threat" involved just doesn't pass the laugh test.

What's most distressing about this is that it shows a government that is not dealing in reality, but is dealing in a fantasy land, where it pretends that if it sticks its fingers in its ears, and hands over its eyes, it can pretend that the documents, which are very, very public, are not at all public. I want a government that deals in reality and not fantasy. Unfortunately, with this situation, we have the reverse -- and, bizarrely, the courts are saying that an executive branch that lives in fantasyland is just fine.

Filed Under: classified, documents, public information, state department, wikileaks
Companies: aclu

Wikileaks Truck Owner Arrested For Photographing Police; Told It Was Because He Was 'A Dick'

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

There's a guy in NY, Clark Stoekley, who apparently owns a white panel van that he's painted with the Wikileaks logo to raise awareness of the plight of Bradley Manning (though he has no other connection to Manning or Wikileaks). There's a lot more info on the truck on his website. However, it appears that, unrelated to the truck, Stoekley has another issue to deal with: he was arrested for photographing police at Penn Station in Manhattan. He saw police in the station carrying semi-automatic weapons (an unfortunately common site in Penn Station), and he decided to photograph them with his phone. And from there, a familiar, if unfortunate, and almost certainly illegal incident ensued. As told by Pixiq:

Metropolitan Transit Authority police arrested a man for photographing them at Penn Station in New York City this afternoon – deleting his photo – before releasing him from a jail cell an hour later.

Clark Stoeckley was issued a summons charging him with “engaging in threatening behavior.”

“I was walking through Penn Station and I came across these MTA cops with semi-automatic weapons,” he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.

“I stopped to take a photo and the cop came up to me and arrested me. I asked, ‘why am I being arrested?’

“’Because you’re a dick,’” the officer responded.

Of course, we've written tons of stories about police arresting the members of public for photographing or filming them while on duty. The MTA and New York may want to pay close attention to what happened up in Boston, where Simon Glik prevailed against the city of Boston and the Boston Police Department for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights under very similar circumstances (though I don't even think they deleted the photos). In the end, the city of Boston had to pay Glik a large sum of money for violating his rights.

At what point will police finally learn that when they're in public, being photographed or video taped is fair game?

Filed Under: bradley manning, new york, penn station, police, wikileaks

Unknown Tech Company Fighting Back Against FBI's National Security Letter Gag Order

from the nice-to-hear dept

Last year Twitter was willing to stand up to the feds when they tried to issue a so-called 2703(d) order to try to reveal info about some Wikileaks collaborators. A (d) order is like a warrant, but with fewer privacy protections, but Twitter fought hard to at least let users know that the government was seeking to get their information, in order to allow them to fight back. Of course, the (d) order process is pretty obscure. Much more commonly used is the so-called national security letters (NSLs) process, which is a favorite of the FBI's. The FBI is also well known for abusing NSLs, and despite various slaps on the wrist, appears to continue to use them regularly. Basically, it lets them write a letter demanding information from an intermediary, along with a complete gag order about it.

The gag orders are especially problematic, and thankfully some judges have questioned those gag orders. But because so much around NSLs is secret, it's tough to know much about what's going on with them. A few years ago, an ISP owner famously fought an NSL he was issued, but it took years before Nicholas Merril, CEO of Calyx Internet Access, could even admit that he had done so.

Wired is now reporting that some other company is now fighting an NSL order from the FBI, but the details are pretty sparse:

Sometime earlier this year, a provider of communication services in the United States "perhaps a phone company, perhaps Twitter" got a letter from the FBI demanding it turn over information on one, or possibly even hundreds, of its customers. The letter instructed the company to never disclose the existence of the demand to anyone "in particular, the target of the investigation..."

[....]

But this time, the company that received the request pushed back. It told the agency that it wanted to tell its customer that he or she was being targeted, which would give the customer a chance to fight the request in court, as a group of Twitter users did last year when the Justice Department sought their records under a different kind of request. The minor defiance in this latest case was enough to land the NSL request in a federal court docket last Friday, where the government filed a request for a court order to force the company to adhere to the gag order.

The Justice Department, of course, is insisting that the gag order must be in put in place or it "may endanger the national security of the United States." Given just how many of these NSLs the government issues, at some point it has to be realized that they're crying wolf tens of thousands of times per year. Somehow it's difficult to believe that actually giving people a right to protect their own privacy rights would endanger national security thousands of times per month...

Filed Under: fbi, national security letters, wikileaks
Companies: twitter

Transparency Double Standard: UK Public Inquiry Requests Info From Wikileaks

from the feeding-the-hand-that-bites dept

Well, this is interesting. Given the general condemnation of Wikileaks by governments, all the ongoing controversy and reputation problems faced by the organization, you wouldn't expect them to be approached with any official requests for leaked information. But it seems just that has happened in the UK, where the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics has requested and received a dossier from Wikileaks on corruption in the British press.

On the surface this is pretty hypocritical, and more than a little ironic: in the past, the UK government asked media outlets to brief them on government secrets they received from Wikileaks before publishing them. Now, a government-run inquiry is asking Wikileaks to hand over information on UK media outlets. Apparently they don't hate leaks as long as they flow in the right direction.

Hopefully this represents another step towards governments recognizing that Wikileaks isn't pure evil, even if there are questionable things about the operation. Though there are risks, bringing sensitive information to light is often in the public's best interest—indeed, that's the whole spirit behind public inquiries. The Leveson Inquiry was convened when the News of the World phone-hacking scandal pointed to a secret culture of corruption in the press, and now Wikileaks is helping to expose it further. If governments attempt to maintain secret cultures of their own, they too will be exposed.

Filed Under: corruption, hypocrisy, leaks, uk, wikileaks

Using Wikileaks To Figure Out What The Government 'Redacts'

from the compare-and-contrast dept

We've talked in the past about the ridiculousness of the US government pretending that the State Department cables that were leaked via Wikileaks are still confidential. The reasoning, obviously, is that they're afraid that declaring anything that's become public is no longer confidential is that it creates incentives to leak more documents. But the actual situation is simply absurd. Documents that everyone can see easily and publicly... live in this world, a world where anyone in government has to pretend that they're still secret and confidential. There have even been cases where officials have gotten into trouble for using information from a "public" document, because they're supposed to create this fiction that it's not.

Still, there is one way in which this has actually turned out to be enlightening. A few months ago, the ACLU filed some Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the State Department on some issues, getting some of the very same documents that were leaked via Wikileaks. Except... the kind that came with the FOIA had redactions. The Wikileaks documents, for the most part, do not. That created an interesting opportunity for Ben Wizner at the ACLU. He could now compare and contrast the two version of the document, to see just what the government is redacting, and figure out if they're redacting it for legitimate reasons... or just to do things like avoid embarrassment. The ACLU then set up a special page allowing people to compare multiple versions of documents with just a simple mouseover. This came out a few months ago, but I didn't get a chance to write it up until now. It's pretty enlightening to see just what makes the censor's cut, and (not surprisingly) raises significant questions about the government's temptation to simply excise stuff they don't like, rather than information that there are valid reasons to keep hidden.

Filed Under: censorship, freedom of infromation, redacted, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, wikileaks

Court Decision Forcing Twitter To Give Up Info On Wikileaks Associates Challenged In Europe

from the jurisdictional-mess dept

You may recall that the US government has been seeking all sorts of info on some folks who were somehow connected to Wikileaks as a part of its grand jury investigation, using the obscure 2703(d) process, rather than a standard subpoena (the 2703(d) process has fewer privacy protections, of course). Last week, a US district court judge, Judge Liam O'Grady, said that Twitter should hand over the info (it's believed that others have already handed over info as well).

It appears that at least one of those whose info is being sought, Icelandic Member of Parliament (MP) Birgitta Jonsdottir is now trying to challenge this in Europe, where privacy protections are much stronger. This could get interesting for a variety of reasons. While the US does not have such privacy laws, many companies in the US agree to abide by the basics of European privacy laws, in order to be allowed to offer service in Europe. It would be interesting to see what happens if the process in Europe says that Twitter can't give up such info without violating European privacy laws. While I don't think they could stop the handing over of the info (US company, US court...), I wonder if there could be further implications for Twitter, in that it may no longer be able to comply with European privacy rules. That might create quite a mess.

Filed Under: birgitta jonsdottir, eu, jacob appelbaum, privacy, us, wikileaks

Finally Revealed: Feds Sought Info From Google & Sonic.net About Wikileaks Helpers

from the of-course dept

At the beginning of this year, we gave Twitter kudos for not rolling over when the government came calling with a so-called 2703(d) order (like a search warrant, but with much fewer protections for privacy) related to information concerning people associated with Wikileaks. We also wondered who else had received such an order and had not stood up to it. Some of the info is starting to come out, and it appears that both Google and ISP Sonic.net received such requests, at least concerning Jacob Appelbaum. Sonic.net notes that it, too, fought the request, but lost. It then fought to have the request made public, which finally happened, though some details are still under seal:

Sonic said it fought the government's order and lost, and was forced to turn over information. Challenging the order was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do," said Sonic's chief executive, Dane Jasper. The government's request included the e-mail addresses of people Mr. Appelbaum corresponded with the past two years, but not the full e-mails...

It's unclear if Google similarly fought the order. The company says it won't comment on specific cases. It's nice to see that Sonic was willing to fight for its users (which continues to cement the company's reputation as being one of the few user-first ISPs). It still remains likely that the government sent these orders to many others as well. In the case of Twitter there were multiple people being investigated, not just Appelbaum, though it's unlikely most of those others used Sonic.net. So chances are, other ISPs and other service providers received the orders, and whether or not they fought the government may never be known. In the meantime, the government continues its fishing expedition against Wikileaks, but apparently still hasn't found a smoking gun.

Filed Under: jacob appelbaum, personal info, privacy, searches, wikileaks
Companies: google, sonic.net, wikileaks

Full List Of Sites The US Air Force Blocked To Hide From Wikileaks Info; Includes NY Times & The Guardian

from the sticking-your-head-in-the-sand dept

When the State Department cables leaked via Wikileaks, some government employees and agencies were put in a tough position, in that they couldn't officially view those documents, since they were still classified. As we've noted in the past, this is stupid. In business, any boilerplate non-disclosure agreement says that if some info becomes public due to a third party, the NDA no longer applies. The US government, for reasons that escape me, refuses to do the same thing for classified info that leaks -- even after the press has run stories on it.

We heard all sorts of bizarre stories about government agencies trying to block access to this content which was everywhere, including reports that any Techdirt article that mentioned "Wikileaks" in the title was blocked from Defense Department computers.

Jason Smathers decided to submit a Freedom of Information Act request (via the awesome Muckrock.com platform) to the US Air Force to find out what sites it was blocking. And while the Air Force initially denied the request, on appeal it just changed its mind and handed over the list, which you can see below. Most of the blocked URLs are to various Wikileaks mirror sites, but it also covers the major media properties that Wikileaks initially worked with on releasing these documents, including the NY Times and The Gurdian. I'm at a complete loss as to what the Air Force thinks it accomplishes in blocking the entire NY Times website because some stories mention content that everyone already knows about. How does that possibly make sense?

Filed Under: blocked sites, state department, us air force, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Leaked State Department Cable Confirms What Everyone Already Knew: MPAA Was Behind Bogus Australian ISP Lawsuit

from the pulling-the-strings dept

When it comes to copyright issues, the various State Department leaks via Wikileaks have only served to confirm what pretty much everyone already knew. Earlier we'd covered revelations about US diplomatic involvement in new copyright laws in Spain, and the latest (as a bunch of you sent in) is the rather upfront admission that the MPAA was absolutely behind the decision to sue iiNet in Australia. As you may recall, the lawsuit, which was officially organized by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) along with the Australian arms of various movie studios, complained that Australian ISP iiNet didn't do enough to stop unauthorized file sharing. This was really a trial balloon of a case, because the MPAA knew damn well that blaming ISPs for the actions of their users was a tricky game to play. So, they tried to hit up iiNet from a slight tangent, sending over examples of infringement and then freaking out when iiNet didn't somehow magically stop all infringement.

Of course, the reality was that this was all driven directly from the MPAA in the US and iiNet was carefully chosen as a trial balloon given its size. As Richard Chirgwin notes, iiNet got to enjoy this experience because of its "Goldilocks status. iiNet was just right: Telstra is large, loud, litigious, and possessed of significant lobbying experience; too small a target and the case risked inviting the “bullying” perception that the MPAA was keen to avoid."

Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, this is an MPAA/American studios production. Mike Ellis, the Singapore-based President for Asia Pacific of the Motion Picture Association, briefed Ambassador on the filing on November 26. Ellis confirmed that MPAA was the mover behind AFACT's case (AFACT is essentially MPAA's Australian subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved. MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public. AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn't just Hollywood "bullying some poor little Australian ISP."

Why iiNet? Ellis said they were the right target on several levels. First, they are big enough to be important - iiNet is the third largest ISP in Australia. (Telstra, owners of top Australian ISP BigPond which has about half of the market, are the "big guns", Ellis admitted. It was clear Ellis did not want to begin by tangling with Telstra, Australia's former telecom monopoly and still-dominant player in telephony and internet, and a company with the financial resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and dirty, in court and out.) Ellis also said iiNet users had a particularly high copyright violation rate, and that its management has been consistently unhelpful on copyright infringements.

Amusingly, the cable claims the case is "very strong." Turns out that was wrong. iiNet famously won the case, and AFACT was even told to pay iiNet's legal costs. While an appeal somewhat limited the original (excellent and perceptive) ruling, it still crowned iiNet the winner. Perhaps the US government shouldn't trust the MPAA in setting the odds on its own lawsuits.

Anyway, while most people already knew that the MPAA was the key player here, it's nice to see it laid out in black and white. I'm also curious if the folks who usually rush to the comments to claim that the MPAA/RIAA aren't involved in some of the lawsuits we talk about will have any comment on this, since we've explained that most of these legal actions are coordinated from those two groups.

Filed Under: australia, copyright, state department, wikileaks
Companies: afact, iinet, mpaa