Anonymous and the Rise of Online Vigilantism. Wikileaks Cables Show Massive U.S. Effort to Establish Canadian DMCA. Wikileaks has released dozens of new U.S. cables that demonstrate years of behind the scenes lobbying by U.S. government officials to pressure Canada into implementing a Canadian DMCA. The cables include confirmation that Prime Minister Harper personally promised U.S. President George Bush at the SPP summit in Montebello, Quebec in 2008 that Canada would pass copyright legislation, U.S. government lines on copyright reform that include explicit support for DMCA-style digital lock rules, and the repeated use of the Special 301 process to "embarrass" Canada into action.
In fact, cables even reveal Canadian officials encouraging the U.S. to maintain the pressure and disclosing confidential information. This post highlights some of the key cables. An earlier post discussed confirmation that public pressure delayed the introduction of a copyright bill in 2008 and a parallel post focuses on the linkages between CRIA and the U.S. government lobbying effort. U.S. U.S. on Bill C-60. Guantánamo Files - Lives in an American Limbo. Cablegate Impacts and China Cyberwar: A Wikileaks Movie, Film & Video “Slam Dunk” The United States of Monsanto.
Last night, I was on BlogTalkRadio with former Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell talking about WikiLeaks, secrecy, and democracy. As a way to illustrate how the secrecy of diplomatic cables hides a great deal of undemocratic ideas, I raised the emphasis State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy placed in a hearing on WikiLeaks on State’s role in pitching US business. This formal channel between Washington and our overseas posts provides the Department and other U.S.
Government agencies crucial information about the context in which we collectively advance our national interests on a variety of issues. For example, these communications may contain information about promoting American export opportunities, protecting American citizens overseas, and supporting military operations. I pointed out that WikiLeaks had revealed that our diplomats had proposed a “military-style trade war” to force Europeans to adopt Monsanto’s controversial products. Bradley Manning: U.S. blocks U.N. from unmonitored access to WikiLeaks suspect - BlogPost.
WikiLeaks: extent of US-Israel ties laid bare. Eyes peeled: Israel warned the US about Hamas in 2005, according to a cable The early publication of part of the WikiLeaks US State Department cables regarding Israel reveals a startling degree of openness between senior Israeli officials and their American counterparts. As part of an agreement between WikiLeaks and Israeli newspapers Ha'aretz and Yediot Ahronot, some of the 6,000 cables regarding Israel that the whistleblowing website plans to publish were revealed last weekend.
The cables record detailed accounts of meetings between American politicians and diplomats and the heads of Israel's military security organisations in which the Israelis offered their assessments of developments in the region. Other interesting insights came from former Deputy Director General of the Atomic Energy Agency Ariel Levita, who told the Americans that it would be almost impossible to take out Iran's nuclear programme with a military strike as the various installations were too widely dispersed. An Interview With Glenn Greenwald. Salon writer Glenn Greenwald got rock star treatment at the National Conference for Media Reform, held this past weekend in Boston, where he took part in a standing-room-only panel discussion of WikiLeaks with Emily Bell of Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Greg Mitchell of The Nation, Australian journalist Christopher Warren and Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum.
Cheers of “Hear, hear!” Rippled through the crowd after Greenwald argued that “what WikiLeaks is doing is what journalism is all about.” He’s written extensively about Julian Assange’s network and particularly about accused document-leaker Bradley Manning. He spoke with me after the session about media transformation, WikiLeaks, what drives him to blog and the siren's call of The Drudge Report.
An acquaintance in Madison, Wisconsin, recently tweeted—in the context of the coverage of protests there—that mainstream media doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only corporate media, local media and social media. The WikiLeaks News & Views Blog for Thursday, Day 138. Share As I’ve done for more than nineteen weeks, I will be updating news and views on all things WikiLeaks all day, with new items added at the top.
All times are ET. Contact me at epic1934@aol.com. Read about or order my book The Age of WikiLeaks in print or as an e-book, or brand-new Bradley Manning: Truth and Consequences as e-book here and print here. UPDATED: Go here for Friday edition of this blog. 10:00 Winning designs for WikiLeaks t-shirts revealed! 4:30 Good Wash Post wrapup today on latest controversy surrounding Manning not allowed unmonitored visit by UN prober. 3:45 Wired: The "Twitter 3" hit back at DOJ move. 3:40: One day only: updated print editions of my 2 WikiLeaks and Manning books on sale for paltry.$7.95!
3:20 It's official, Assange memoir delayed indefinitely. 1:10 WikiLeaks lays bare the extent of US-Israeli relations | Jewish Chronicle . 12:20 Helena Kennedy in the New Statesman on "conundrum" posed by sex crime case against Assange. From late Wednesday Rep. ICE Redefines Detainment For Wikileaks Helper: You're Not Being Detained, You Just Can't Leave. Earlier this year, we wrote about computer security expert, Tor developer and Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, who was regularly being detained and intimidated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials each time he (a US citizen) traveled into the country.
If you follow Jacob's Twitter feed, you get detailed descriptions each time he flies back into the country of the hassles he has to go through. Every time he's detained and never once given an explanation for why or what is being searched for. He's often lied to and frequently told that it's a "random" search. He certainly knows enough that he wipes all of his electronic equipment before traveling across the border.
In the latest case, upon returning from a conference in Europe by flying into Houston, Appelbaum again asked his detainers why he was being detained, and was once again not given a straight answer. Cable Viewer. Viewing cable 09CAIRO79, GOE STRUGGLING TO ADDRESS POLICE BRUTALITY Understanding cables Every cable message consists of three parts: The top box shows each cables unique reference number, when and by whom it originally was sent, and what its initial classification was.The middle box contains the header information that is associated with the cable. It includes information about the receiver(s) as well as a general subject.The bottom box presents the body of the cable. The opening can contain a more specific subject, references to other cables (browse by origin to find them) or additional comment.
This is followed by the main contents of the cable: a summary, a collection of specific topics and a comment section. Discussing cables If you find meaningful or important information in a cable, please link directly to its unique reference number. Palestinian Concessions in Leaked Memos May Show Narrower Peace Talk Gap. Classified documents leaked by al- Jazeera signal that Israeli and Palestinian peace positions may have been closer than previously perceived. Al-Jazeera television said it had been given access to thousands of pages of memos and e-mails of private meetings that show Palestinian negotiators were prepared to give up claims to parts of east Jerusalem and swap some Jewish settlements in the West Bank for territory within Israel in 2008 talks. Al-Jazeera didn’t say how it obtained the documents, which covered the period from 1999 to 2010. Nabil Shaath, a Palestinian negotiator, alleged that the papers were leaked by someone who wanted to embarrass his team.
“The idea was to show that, yes, we sold out and got nothing in return,” Shaath said today in an interview with Israel Radio. The most recent peace negotiations broke down in September after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend a 10-month partial construction freeze in West Bank settlements. U.S. ‘End of Israel’ NBC: U.S. can't link Army private to Assange - U.S. news - WikiLeaks in Security. U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.
Assange, an Australian national, is under house arrest at a British mansion near London, facing a Swedish warrant seeking his extradition for questioning on charges of rape. Assange has denied the allegations. WikiLeaks' release of secret diplomatic cables last year caused a diplomatic stir and laid bare some of the most sensitive U.S. dealings with governments around the world. U.S. U.S. Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks | Media | The Observer. The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland. British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London.
Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians". Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information. Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues. Stuxnet Worm Used Against Iran Was Tested in Israel. Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert, solved Stuxnet. The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.
Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own. Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. “To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence.
“The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.” The gruff Mr. Tonight we are all Tunisians | FPJ. Over the last few days we have seen some of the bravest people facing down some of the worst. Armed with nothing more than a revolutionary heart and hopes of a better future they gathered and protested as government forces aimed their weapons and fired live rounds in to the crowds. But the ammunition and the underlying threats of arrest and torture meant absolutely nothing to the masses – for they had simply lost their fear. (Photo: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters) It was the final testament to the brutality of a dictator who has had the support of European leaders and various presidents of the United States. And that the Tunisian President Zine El-Abedine Ben Ali fled from his country like a rat up a drainpipe after 23 brutal years spoke volumes about the character of the man himself. If he had one ounce of the courage his own people displayed, he too would have stayed but most of these tyrants are gutless with the moral fiber of a dung beetle.
I knew it was coming. Unbelievable. Close Read: Tunisia and WikiLeaks. From the Times’s coverage of the President of Tunisia, who seems to have fled the country: Raise your hand if, before the street protests started, you had focussed very much—or at all—on what the WikiLeaks cables had to say about Tunisia. Does any one person know enough about all of the countries mentioned in the cables to say for sure how significant they are? Unless someone does, it is rash to keep talking about how they add texture but “no great revelations.” Anyway: Tunisia. Here’s a sample, from a July 17th, 2009, cable: There are also accounts of shady bank dealings, a stolen yacht, land handed over to Leila, her brother berating an official who actually checked that the amusement park he owned had insurance (what kind of amusement park is that?) It would be useful, while we’re at it, to learn more about the grand jury in Virginia that is apparently pursuing criminal charges against members of WikiLeaks.
Wikileaks Mirror Network | vis4.net. Donation Gateway. SpyTalk - WikiLeaks’s Assange gains influential defenders. Posted at 3:23 PM ET, 12/13/2010 By Jeff Stein The predominant consensus in official Washington that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should eventually stand trial here on espionage charges is not likely to change anytime soon. But three influential voices are now saying publicly what many others say privately: that blame should be focused on leakers, not Assange, who after all was merely the middleman for the handful of newspapers and magazines that were given first crack at classified military and diplomatic documents. On Friday Jack L. Goldsmith, “widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament” when he joined the Bush administration Justice Department in 2003, according to a typical assessment, wrote that he found himself “agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified.”
“I certainly do not support or like his disclosure of secrets that harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests,” Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog. WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers | Media | The Observer. He is one of the newest recruits to Operation Payback. In a London bedroom, the 24-year-old computer hacker is preparing his weaponry for this week's battles in an evolving cyberwar. He is a self-styled defender of free speech, his weapon a laptop and his enemy the US corporations responsible for attacking the website WikiLeaks. He had seen the flyers that began springing up on the web in mid-September.
In chatrooms, on discussion boards and inboxes from Manchester to New York to Sydney the grinning face of a Guy Fawkes mask had appeared with a call to arms. "Greetings, fellow anons," it said beneath the headline Operation Payback. Like most international conflicts, last week's internet war began over a relatively modest squabble, escalating in days into a global fight. Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback's initial target was America's recording industry, chosen for its prosecutions of music file downloaders.
London The cyberwar did not only involve obvious symbols of authority, though. WikiLeaks Attacks Illegal Says Internet Society - PCWorld. DNS Provider Mistakenly Caught in WikiLeaks Saga Now Supports the Group | Threat Level. WikiLeaks grows stronger as supporters fight back. Can Wikileaks Afford To Back The Undiplomatic Julian Assange? [UPDATED] Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook, Back on Twitter Already. Predicting the future of WikiLeaks: Follow the media! How Operation Payback Executes Its Attacks. Anonymous Wikileaks supporters explain web attacks. Anonymous Appears to Threaten Electronic Frontier Foundation with DDOS Attack. WikiLeaks: Stop the crackdown. Meet The New Public Face Of WikiLeaks: Kristinn Hrafnsson - Andy Greenberg - The Firewall.