Wikileaks Attempts To Bully Wikileaks Documentary With C&D Notices

from the about-face dept

The history of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange is a tortured one, to be sure. Once the darling of the left for exposing important misdeeds by the American government, the site then became a tool for the right in the last Presidential election with the publishing of emails stolen in a hack of the DNC. From there, some have accused Wikileaks of being an arm of Moscow's intelligence efforts, while the America government has made noise about prosecuting the site and Assange under the Espionage Act. Still others support the site for its efforts in exposing the secrets governments wish to keep hidden from the citizens to whom they are beholden.

Through it all, Assange and Wikileaks have remained firm in their mission to expose information and secrets that were previously kept from the public. Except, it seems, when that information has to do with Wikileaks itself. According to the makers of a documentary about Wikileaks entitled Risk, on the topic of Wikileaks, Wikileaks is chiefly interested not in open journalism and unvarnished truth, but rather on its own image. And apparently the site is willing to wield legal threats and lawyers in a way that is almost absurdly hypocritical.

We are the producers of Risk , a documentary film about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. We unequivocally defend WikiLeaks’ journalistic right to publish true and newsworthy information...We were disturbed, however, to learn that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks sent cease and desist letters to our distributors demanding they stop the release of Risk: “We therefore demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all images of the Named Participants and that you desist from this or any other infringement of the rights of the Named Participants in the future.”

From there, the filmmakers go into what lengths they went to work directly with Wikileaks and Assange on the film starting back in 2011. Assange himself provided content to be used in the film and even signed a licensing agreement to use Wikileaks footage for it. Some people involved with Wikileaks requested not to be in the film and the filmmakers complied. People from the site and their lawyers have been shown screenings of the film before every regional release, including as recently as April of this year. There is no claim made thus far that any of the content of the film is false.

So, what is the weighty harm over which Wikileaks is firing off C&Ds? Its image and the image of Assange.

Since 2016, Assange and his lawyers have repeatedly demanded that we remove scenes from the film in which Assange speaks about the two women who made sexual assault allegations against him in 2010 and Sweden’s investigation which has since been discontinued. WikiLeaks’ comments have consistently been about image management, including: demands to remove scenes from the film where Assange discusses sexual assault allegations against him; requests to remove images of alcohol bottles in the embassy because Ecuador is a Catholic country and it looks bad; requests to include mentions of WikiLeaks in the 2016 U.S. presidential debates; and, requests to add more scenes with attorney Amal Clooney because she makes WikiLeaks look good.

The opinion that Assange is an egomaniac has been floating around for some time. With actions like these, there seems to be some evidence of that. But that charge aside, what should be abundantly clear is that the ideals of the site appear to have fallen by the wayside when it comes to a simple documentary that has refused to cinematically stroke Wikileaks to the degree it wishes. That's not a good look for a site that survives on people's belief that it is committed to open and honest information.

In fact, this looks to be the sort of thing that the Wikileaks from years gone by would have dug into and exposed.

Filed Under: cease and desist, documentary, julian assange, risk, truth, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Hypocritical CIA Director Goes On Rant About Wikileaks, Free Speech

from the doesn't-seem-to-care-much-for-either dept

The current administration is back to threatening free speech. On his way to being elected, Trump's passion for bogus defamation suits led him to declare he would "open up" libel laws to make it easier for him to sue people for saying things he didn't like.

This continued after the election. Trump tweeted his opposition to "fake news," calling out pretty much any major network that wasn't Fox News and calling them "enemies of the people." His new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, is similarly threatening the First Amendment. In his remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo went on a rant about Wikileaks -- one no doubt motivated by the site's recent data dumps on CIA computer exploits.

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.

It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.

This is an interesting change of heart for Pompeo. Last year, when he was running for re-election in Kansas, he seemed pleased with Wikileaks and its ability to obtain damning documents.

If you can't read/see the embedded, since-deleted tweet by Pompeo, it reads:

Need further proof the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC leaked by Wikileaks.

So, Wikileaks is a non-hostile intelligence service when it serves Pompeo's ends, but not so much when it puts CIA hacking tools on public display. This was only part of Pompeo's rant, though. Once he was through being hypocritical, he went after the First Amendment. Here's Glenn Greenwald's take on Pompeo's comments:

Trump’s CIA Director stood up in public and explicitly threatened to target free speech rights and press freedoms, and it was almost impossible to find even a single U.S. mainstream journalist expressing objections or alarm, because the targets Pompeo chose in this instance are ones they dislike – much the way that many are willing to overlook or even sanction free speech repression if the targeted ideas or speakers are sufficiently unpopular.

Decreeing (with no evidence) that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” a belief that has become gospel in establishment Democratic Party circles – Pompeo proclaimed that “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” He also argued that while WikiLeaks “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice,” but: “they may have believed that, but they are wrong.”

He then issued this remarkable threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.” At no point did Pompeo specify what steps the CIA intended to take to ensure that the “space” to publish secrets “ends now.”

Pompeo is now willing to go after publishers of secrets. No doubt he intends to go after whistleblowers and leakers as well, but he has publicly stated a desire to attack the messengers. Making this worse is Pompeo's hypocrisy, which means any targeting of publishers he attempts to engage in will be based on the content of the publications. Stuff he doesn't like will be targeted. Everything else will remain unaffected.

Of course, Pompeo's in the wrong branch of government to be engaging in First Amendment issues. The CIA is a foreign-facing intelligence agency. It should have nearly nothing to do with domestic whistleblower/leaker incidents, unless it happens to be CIA documents that are released. Even then, his agency won't be able to do anything more than an internal investigation. It's not a law enforcement agency, nor is it supposed to be engaged in domestic surveillance.

But Pompeo is the president's pick. He may think he's only speaking for himself and his agency, but his words echo the president's antipathy towards speech he doesn't like. And he has his president's hypocrisy: someone who loves Wikileaks when it's publishing documents that hurt the other team, but not so much when the leaks implicate people, parties, and agencies they hold dear.

Filed Under: free speech, journalism, mike pompeo, reporting, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Just How Wise Is It When Marco Rubio Promises To Swear Off Factual Information From Wikileaks?

from the hmmmm dept

Amidst the reporting and fervor over the email hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, there has been something of a recent discussion that has begun over the ethics of circulating what is in that hacked cache. Some within the media itself have worried about about reporting either too much on the hacked emails, or even at all in some cases, with still others going for a more nuanced position of encouraging the reporting of information in the public interest while leaving all the personal stuff in the emails undisclosed to whatever degree is possible.

It's not difficult to see the wisdom and morality in some of this, particularly when one witnesses the glee the Clinton campaign's political opponents have taken in circulating internal communications within the campaign that have no real public value other than serving as a point-and-laugh target for the most partisan among us. And it seems as though some in the GOP have in mind that there are certainly people on the other side of the aisle that would take the same joy in all of this, if the shoe were on the other hacked foot, as it were. Marco Rubio, for instance, recently released a statement indicating that anything published by WikiLeaks was out of bounds, as far as he was concerned.

"Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow, it could be us," Rubio said in a statement. "I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks," added Rubio, who is up for re-election. "As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge in it."

Frankly, it's refreshing to see a major political partisan actually understand that when you open up every option on the table to attack the political opponent, that can come back and bite you in the ass. But how wise is this particular stance, actually? It appears to rely on two premises: that Russia is behind the email hack and that WikiLeaks is a bad organization for releasing the information it releases. Note that Rubio doesn't say that this particular email hack is out of bounds, but rather that any issue raised as a result of a WikiLeaks release is. That's a hefty barrel of sand in which to put one's head in such a proactive fashion, and it presupposes that WikiLeaks' releases in the past, present, and future have not involved anything of the public interest which politicians and public servants should be talking about and/or addressing.

Time Magazine once said WikiLeaks "could become the most important journalistic tool since the Freedom of Information Act." Why? Well, because the value in WikiLeaks is that it knows far fewer boundaries than the general media and is willing to release information that would otherwise not see the light of day. That it tends to do so en masse rather than with careful curation is a potential downside, certainly, but would Rubio and these others really have the public not know about the killing of journalists in Iraq, the Chinese arrests of Tibetan dissidents, the Peru oil scandal, and the rest? WikiLeaks is not explicitly anti-American, after all, and it has released information that is absolutely in the public interest and has caused discussions of political importance within our country that would have otherwise been impossible.

Put another way, it's quite easy for Rubio to take this stance in the wake of an email hack that represents a fairly routine political scandal. What has been uncovered in the Podesta leaks is not unimportant, but it also isn't earth-shattering. What if the hack and WikiLeaks leak had instead uncovered that Hillary Clinton had made a specific agreement with the Chinese government to offer them favors in exchange for illegal campaign contributions? Would Rubio's stance hold true, despite the overwhelming importance of such information to American voters. It's hard to imagine that it would.

So, a nuanced approach to what should be reported on the WikiLeaks release makes all the sense in the world. Let's have that discussion. But putting a blanket over any information generated by WikiLeaks as an organization isn't just dumb, it's cutting out an important source of public good from the masses.

Filed Under: hacked, information, journalism, marco rubio, news, personal, privacy, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

The Ridiculous Redactions The DOJ Required To Try To Hide The Details Of Its Google Gag Order

from the come-on dept

We already wrote a long and detailed post about the DOJ gagging Google for over four years, preventing it from telling Jacob Appelbaum about the government's §2703(d) Order for his Gmail info (a §2703(d) order is like a subpoena, but with less privacy protections -- which is why the government is a fan). The gag was finally allowed to be lifted on April 1st of this year, despite most of the key moments happening in the early months of 2011. However, as part of the agreement to finally unseal this document, the DOJ apparently required parts of it to be redacted. Perhaps that's understandable, but some of the redactions are so ridiculous as to be laughable -- starting mainly with trying to make sure that every judge and every DOJ employee in the documents is hidden away. Throughout the document, you see examples like this: Of course, amusingly, sometimes they redact the phone numbers, and sometimes they don't. So I'm sure that's useful.

And, really, what sort of court system do we have when the judges get to have their names redacted: And, of course, there are plenty of pages like the following: But the truly hilarious redactions come elsewhere. For example, despite being mentioned throughout the document without redactions, the name "Wikileaks" is redacted when mentioned in the headlines of stories and URLs. I mean... really. The redactions of those URLs? What's that about? Does anyone honestly think that people can't find those articles? For what it's worth:

• WikiLeaks demands Google and Facebook unseal US subpoenas
• Twitter, Wikileaks and the Broken Market for Consumer Privacy

Yeah, that really stopped me, DOJ!

And this even extends to the exhibits of publicly available web pages, which the DOJ still needed redacted. This has to be my favorite: Now watch as I blow your mind and link to: DOJ subpoenas Twitter records of several WikiLeaks volunteers and share the following screenshot I just took: Even more amazingly, in the released documents, they redacted things in the article: Now watch as I wave my magic wand... and unredacticus! And then there's the fact that Appelbaum's own name is redacted repeatedly for no damn reason, since everyone has already admitted that it's him. This includes on public tweets, like this one: It's like they're not even trying: And this: And there's an exhibit with the first of those two "tweets" redacted again: Yeah, that's Wikileaks' Twitter account, which is kinda obvious from the background and all. But here you go: The second one -- despite the claim in the document -- does not actually appear to be a tweet at all. However, it was stated by another of the individuals who the DOJ targeted with the Twitter Order, Rop Gonggrijp -- not on his Twitter account, but rather in a blog post about being targeted.

They even want Wikipedia redacted. I wish I were joking. And that one even tries -- but sometimes fails to redact each mention of Wikileaks even in the references and links at the end. I mean, really: All of this should raise plenty of questions. Beyond just the ridiculousness of the original gag order, it now appears that the DOJ is abusing the redaction process for no good reason at all. In some cases, it's clearly to avoid having any of the DOJ team or the judges criticized publicly -- because what kind of democracy or due process is there if we have transparency. In other cases, it just seems... to be for no reason whatsoever except "because we can." That's not how the judicial system is supposed to work. We have public courts for a reason.

Filed Under: doj, gag order, jacob appelbaum, redactions, wikileaks
Companies: google, wikileaks

Wikileaks Reveals NSA Spying On French Presidents

from the is-that-really-a-big-deal? dept

Wikileaks has released some new documents showing that the NSA spied on the communications of a bunch of French Presidents.

The top secret documents derive from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of French Presidents Francois Hollande (2012–present), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012), and Jacques Chirac (1995–2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French Ambassador to the United States. The documents also contain the "selectors" from the target list, detailing the cell phone numbers of numerous officials in the Elysee up to and including the direct cell phone of the President.

Prominent within the top secret cache of documents are intelligence summaries of conversations between French government officials concerning some of the most pressing issues facing France and the international community, including the global financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the leadership and future of the European Union, the relationship between the Hollande administration and the German government of Angela Merkel, French efforts to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations, French involvement in the conflict in Palestine and a dispute between the French and US governments over US spying on France.

To be honest, as with the spying on leadership of other allies like Germany, I really don't think this is that big of a deal in reality. This is what intelligence services are supposed to be doing: spying on foreign governments. The revelations may make for some awkward diplomatic conversations, but you can bet that pretty much everyone knew this was going on already.

But, where this has the potential to get interesting is in the public perception. If the public gets angry about it, it can create international tensions, or lead to various other issues. But, on the whole, compared to spying on private citizens, it's difficult to get too outraged over spying on other governments -- even those deemed "friendly." You can bet the French are doing everything they can to spy back on the US as well.

Filed Under: france, francois hollande, french presidents, jacques chirac, nicolas sarkozy, nsa, privacy, surveillance, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

WikiLeaks Wants To Crowdsource $100K Reward For Leak Of TPP Text, As Doubts Grow About Agreement's Value

from the fanciful-geopolitics dept

The TPP saga is entering a critical phase. After the excitement of the initial rejection of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA -- "fast track") in the Senate, followed by the vote in its favor shortly afterwards, attention is now focused on the House, where the outcome is still in doubt. Meanwhile, Australian politicians have finally been granted access to the negotiating text -- but under humiliating conditions, as The Guardian reports:

They were told they could view the current TPP negotiating text on Tuesday "subject to certain confidentiality requirements" and were shown a document they would be required to sign before any viewing.

Here are some of the "confidentiality requirements" (pdf) the politicians were obliged to sign up to:

I will not divulge any of the text or information obtained in the briefing to any party.

I will not copy, transcribe or remove the negotiating text.

The following condition is interesting:

I therefore agree that these confidentiality requirements shall apply for four years after entry into force of the TPP, or if no agreement enters into force, for four years after the last round of negotiations.

This confirms what Techdirt wrote back in 2011: that aside from the final agreement, all the other negotiating texts will be kept secret for four years after the conclusion of the talks. And yet, bad as the Australian deal is, it's more than the public gets when it comes to accessing the text being negotiated in its name. Fortunately, we have WikiLeaks, which has already published three chapters of TPP, and now hopes to leak the rest:

Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

As we wait for those leaks, the only thing we have to fall back on are the economic models, which try to predict what effects TPP might have, based on various assumptions. The Economist has been reviewing the results:

The most influential, by Peter Petri, Michael Plummer and Fan Zhai, for the East-West Centre, a research institute, forecasts that the deal would raise the GDP of the 12 signatories by $285 billion, or 0.9%, by 2025. It is their numbers that America's government cites when it says TPP will make the country $77 billion richer.

But other researchers predict far more modest gains from TPP:

[The researchers Ciuriak and Xiao] calculate that TPP will raise the GDP of the 12 countries by just $74 billion by 2035, a mere 0.21% higher than baseline forecasts. Others see an even smaller impact. In a paper for the Asian Development Bank Institute, Inkyo Cheong forecasts that America's GDP will be entirely unchanged by TPP.

Given those small, perhaps non-existent, economic benefits, it's perhaps not surprising that US proponents of TPP have shifted their emphasis, claiming that TPP is not so much about economics, as about geopolitical influence -- President Obama's famous "pivot to Asia." A perceptive analysis in the Boston Globe explains why that makes no sense:

The administration's geopolitical case for TPP is fanciful. In the real world, there is no way that new rules for trans-Pacific trade, written without regard to China and without Chinese participation, will somehow pivot the United States into a lasting position of supremacy in China’s backyard.

Four basic facts explain why that is so: First, China is now everybody's biggest trading partner, including America's prospective partners in TPP. Second, the Chinese market represents the major growth opportunity for all these nations.

Third, whatever their concerns about China's increasing military power, Asian leaders have no interest in distancing themselves economically from China -- or from the supply chains that converge there. Fourth, most economists expect China's economic growth will continue to be much faster than that of the United States.

That means that as well as offering the US marginal economic benefits at best, TPP might also damage its chances of engaging meaningfully with China. Sadly, it's probably too much to hope that US politicians will pay much attention to either point once the next round of Congressional haggling over TPA starts again.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: bounty, crowdfunding, leaks, tpp, trade agreements, wikileaks

Wikileaks Releases Transcript Of German Inquiry Into Growing NSA Spy Scandal

from the not-dead-yet dept

Compared to its early days, when releases of material like Collateral Murder dominated public discourse for weeks, Wikileaks is now only a shadow of its former self, eclipsed largely by Snowden's leaks. That's understandable, perhaps: Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for nearly three years, and it has been hard for the organization to raise funds to pay Wikileaks' running costs. However, that reduced visibility and activity doesn't mean it's not still releasing valuable material, particularly in the area of trade agreements. Today, it has published another interesting set of documents, this time from the field of surveillance:

WikiLeaks releases ten months of transcripts from the ongoing German Parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in Germany. Despite many sessions being technically public, in practice public understanding has been compromised as transcripts have been withheld, recording devices banned and reporters intrusively watched by police.

WikiLeaks is releasing 1,380 pages of transcripts from the unclassified sessions, covering 34 witnesses – including 13 concealed witnesses from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The transcripts cover from the start of the inquiry in May 2014 through to February 2015.

WikiLeaks has also written summaries of each session in German and English as the inquiry, due to its subject matter, is of international significance.

This underlines an important aspect of Wikileaks' work: the fact that it seeks to make the documents it releases useful by providing commentary, summaries and indexes. Those valuable additions are often overlooked, but can play a crucial role in helping people understand the raw material provided.

The German parliamentary inquiry has been rumbling on for a year now, but has gained renewed importance with the recent revelations that the German spy service, the BND, has been searching through its databases using "selectors" (keywords) provided by the NSA, with apparently no oversight. Not only were many of the targets for those selectors EU citizens, but they included senior politicians and industry figures, too. Here's Wikileaks' summary:

One of the biggest scandals to emerge from the inquiry so far is the recent "selector" spy target list scandal where a BND official revealed that the agency was expected to spy on thousands of targets at the instruction of the NSA. These targets included members of the French government and European industry. This put into question Germany's suitability in taking a leadership role in the European Union. It also showed that international co-operation on mass surveillance, which has been marketed in public as a counter-terrorism measure, is in practice also used by the United States for the purposes of industrial espionage and geopolitical advantage vis-a-vis members of the European Union. The committee requested the full "selector" list of targets provided to the BND by the NSA. The committee was told that the US would first need to be asked permission for the list to be revealed to the committee (even in confidence). Last Wednesday, 6 May 2015, when the answer was meant to be delivered, stalling tactics were used, leaving the German public, and the Parliamentary inquiry, without any ability to understand what their own secret services are up to.

The "selector" scandal has now reached the highest political echelons in Germany, with Angela Merkel's earlier outrage over NSA spying -- not least against herself -- looking hypocritical at best, or dangerously naive at worst. Wikileaks' latest release therefore comes at just the right moment for those seeking to understand what has been going on in Germany. It's also a timely reminder that Wikileaks is still able to perform an important service in this respect, despite its straitened circumstances.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: germany, interviews, leaks, nsa, surveillance, transparency, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Shameful: Feds Spied On Wikileaks' Journalists' Emails

from the freedom-of-the-press? dept

The DOJ's war on investigative journalism keeps on going. In 2013, it came out that the DOJ was able to get massive phone records of AP journalists in trying to find the source of a leak. Soon after that, it obtained Fox News reporter James Rosen's emails by lying to a court and saying he was a co-conspirator with a State Department official who leaked him some information. And, now the latest example, is that it's come out that the feds demanded and received emails and other information from three Wikileaks staffers who had Google Gmail accounts. And, because this is what the government does, with the orders for that information, Google was slapped with a gag order that prevented the company from informing those staffers.

It's no secret that the DOJ has been desperate for years to come up with some way -- any way -- to try to charge Julian Assange with crimes under the Espionage Act. However, to date, this has failed. Attempts to pressure Chelsea Manning into lying about deeper involvement from Wikileaks failed, and that should have been the end of any investigation. But years later, the "investigation" continues for no clear reason. If the DOJ has been unable to find any evidence of criminal violations so many years later, it should end the investigation.

Instead, it's spying on journalists' emails, using a combination of the outdated ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) and the Espionage Act to demand a very broad set of information from Google concerning those three staffers. Of course, the DOJ and Wikileaks haters will counter that Wikileaks isn't a journalistic operation, but that is hard to square with reality. You would have a very difficult time coming up with a legitimate distinction for how what Wikileaks does is any different than what the NY Times or Washington Post investigative reporters do on a regular basis. Getting leaked documents is part of investigative reporting. Cultivating sources is part of investigative reporting (and that likely happens a lot more often with traditional reporters than operations like Wikileaks).

Trevor Timm has an article highlighting how these warrants to seize Wikileaks' staffers' emails is an outright attack on journalism, even as many traditional journalism operations refuse to speak out against the treatment of Wikileaks:

Unfortunately the news world has never rallied around WikiLeaks’ First Amendment rights they way they should – sometimes even refusing to acknowledge they are a journalism organization, perhaps because they dare to do things a little differently than the mainstream media, or because WikiLeaks tweets provocative political opinions, or because they think its founder, Julian Assange, is an unsympathetic figure.

Those are all disgraceful excuses to ignore the government’s overreach: the rights of news organizations everywhere are under just as much threat whether the government reads the private emails of staffers at WikiLeaks, Fox News or the Associated Press. In the eyes of the law, the organizations are virtually indistinguishable, as legal scholars from across the political spectrum have documented for years.

Isn't it about time "we don't like those people" stopped being an acceptable excuse for spying on people? Wasn't our Constitution supposed to prevent that kind of abuse?

Filed Under: doj, grand jury, investigation, julian assange, seizure, warrant, wikileaks
Companies: google, wikileaks

Four Years Is Long Enough: The DOJ Should End Its Grand Jury Investigation Into Wikileaks

from the file-charges-or-drop-it dept

For many years, it's been widely known, if not officially confirmed, that the DOJ had a grand jury investigation going on against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. As far back as early 2011, it was already quite clear that they didn't have enough evidence to actually make a case against him. They were so desperate that they tortured Chelsea Manning and offered her a plea deal if she would lie, and claim, falsely, that Assange "conspired" with her. Last fall, we noted that some in the DOJ were finally admitting that they had no case, but as of the end of April, the investigation was still happening.

A very long list of human rights and press freedom groups have now sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to end the criminal investigation and admit that nothing criminal was done by Assange or Wikileaks in relation to publishing classified information leaked to it by Manning (and, potentially, others).

In a recent meeting with media representatives, you promised that “as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Yet, the continued criminal investigation and other persecution of WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange puts them at serious risk. Well-respected legal scholars across the political spectrum have stated that a prosecution of WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange for publishing classified material or interacting with sources could criminalize the newsgathering process and put all editors and journalists at risk of prosecution.

There is growing international recognition that new media organisations are creating new channels for political debate and play a crucial role in maintaining transparency and democratic forms of government. The US Government made freedom of expression on the Internet one of the priorities of its foreign policy; this commitment must not be limited to the international arena. Thus, we are concerned that actions against Wikileaks undermine the commitment of the US Government to freedom of speech

It's doubtful that this will do any good, but it's important to keep highlighting issues like this, and how the administration has failed, badly, to live up to its promises. Unfortunately, rather than actually doing the right thing, all too often, the administration seems to decide to double down on its strategy.

Filed Under: bradley manning, chelsea manning, doj, eric holder, free press, free speech, grand jury, human rights, journalism, julian assange, wikileaks

German Town Shoots Down Father's Plan To Name His Son 'Wikileaks'

from the leaked-birth-certificate-confirms! dept

One of the great unwritten rules of parenthood is that the right to name your offspring should be treated as a privilege. The temptation is to give the child a "unique" name that sets him or her as far apart for his/her eventual peers as humanly possible, thus living up to the common parental delusion that each child is its own special flower, unlike the millions born before it or after it.

Unfortunately, a "unique" name is often just an unwieldy name, if not simply embarrassing. And the unlucky child has to bear that clumsy moniker until he or she hits the legal paperwork-filing age and changes it to something that won't trigger an inadvertent laugh from college staff and potential employers. The intervening years will pass excruciatingly slowly as the child awkwardly orbits his peers like a gatecrasher at a menage a trois, trying desperately to find somewhere to fit in. This is generally made worse by the "unique" parents, who somehow view intense shunning as more "evidence" of their child's one-in-a-million qualities.

This unwritten rule holds true even if (or especially if) the abusive-by-proxy moniker holds some deep and special meaning to the parent attempting to sabotage their child's future before the ink on the birth certificate is dry.

Hajar Hamalaw wanted to name his son, who was born on March 14th, after the online whistleblowing platform as it “changed the world”, the Passauer Neue Presse reported.

But the 28-year-old failed to get the name past authorities in Passau, Bavaria.

Hamalaw's heart is in the right place, at least in terms of having a decent reason to name his new child "Wikileaks." But first he had to convince local officials, which went just about as well as could be expected from any place where newborns' names get run past local officials.

But Wikileaks did not make it onto the birth certificate. "The registrar said that this was not a first name. He thought it was a series or TV show," said Hamalaw.

Beyond the out-of-touch registrar, there's another rule on the books that keeps Passau parents from saddling their offspring with ridiculous names.

A spokesperson for the town of Passau said the decision by the registry office was based on legal rulings which state a child’s name should not be granted if it could endanger their welfare.

I don't agree that any government entity should keep you from naming your child whatever you want, but if you're going to have a stupid rule like this, at least have one that looks out for the child's best interests. When "Dako" (the "Plan B" name, apparently) hits legal age, he'll have the option to change his name to "Wikileaks" or "Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova" if he'd like and no one, not even a person who thinks "Wikileaks" went downhill after its third season, will be able to stop him. But until then, he's got several years of pre- and post-pubescent awkwardness to live through that will have nothing at all to do with his father's love for leaked documents.

Filed Under: germany, names, wikileaks