Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-16): Assange Release on Bail Affirmed; Etc.

The ad at right is for real (in Pakistan).

On appeal, the order for release of Assange on bail has been affirmed. It's been confirmed, it was the Brits who appealed, even though there's no allegation against Assange of any violation of British law. Talk about a "show": everyone knows the Swedes and Brits both are acting merely as proxies for the US. More details at The Guardian; and the BBC has a semi-satisfying summary of the legal technicalities.

Meanwhile, Australian federal police have confirmed that neither Assange nor Wikileaks has broken any Australian law, despite Prime Minster Gillard's claim of illegality.

Tweet from John Perry Barlow: "We have reached a point in our history where lies are protected speech and the truth is criminal."

Here's a good audio interview with Assange following his release:



Big news from the cables today, in an area in which I'm particularly interested: in March, 2008 – six months before Lehman's collapse, which triggered the worldwide economic meltdown – the governor of the Bank of England was secretly plotting a bailout of the world's biggest banks using funds from cash-rich nations including the US. "The problem is now not liquidity in the system but rather a question of systemic solvency." Rather a different story than the sales pitch we got from Paulson.

In another highlight, The Guardian reports that "Striking resemblances between BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster and a little-reported giant gas leak in Azerbaijan experienced by the UK firm 18 months beforehand have emerged from leaked US embassy cables."

Anonymous continues its efforts in Wikileaks' behalf with, in particular, Operation Paperstorm:



It remains to be seen whether a population that's managed so long to operate in the shadows and could arguably use help with what little public image its got, can now succeed in generating positive renown for WL's cause.

New slang for pusillanimous: "NYT." Among other reasons, the paper continues its non-publication of cable-related news.

Photo of Assange from Greg Mitchell's blog.

And last but not least . . .

They Rule

They Rule is a site by Josh On that lets you select various companies, institutions, and/or individuals, then makes visual maps of their interconnections via ownership or membership on Boards, and then in some cases lets you search for additional info relating to the results.

Here, for example, is a chart showing that six of the board members of The NYT sat on boards of 13 of the top 500 US companies as of 2004, and that also provides links for you to search for NYT articles on those companies – the concern being that, given that those companies are in a position to exert indirect influence over The NYT, the newspaper's coverage of them might tend to follow the principal of, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" (click on the image for a more legible version, or just go here, click on "Load Map," and see some maps other people have already created).

Then bookmark for future reference.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-15): Manning "Tortured"; Etc.

This story just doesn't let up. Glenn Greenwald has delivered on his promise to report the inhumane conditions in which Bradly Manning is being held by US authorities. Manning's been in solitary for months, among other deprivations. Greenwald says an article in "the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law states: 'Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. . . . When one exacerbates the harms of prolonged isolation with the other deprivations to which Manning is being subjected, long-term psychiatric and even physical impairment is likely. [The article] documents that 'EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement.' Medical tests conducted in 1992 on Yugoslavian prisoners subjected to an average of six months of isolation – roughly the amount to which Manning has now been subjected – 'revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.'" Greenwald discusses how, for decades, the US Supreme Court has recognized that prolonged solitary constitutes "torture." He concludes,

If you became aware of secret information revealing serious wrongdoing, deceit and/or criminality on the part of the U.S. Government, would you – knowing that you could and likely would be imprisoned under these kinds of repressive, torturous conditions for months on end without so much as a trial: just locked away by yourself 23 hours a day without recourse – be willing to expose it? That's the climate of fear and intimidation which these inhumane detention conditions are intended to create.

More worthwhile info at the link above. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Skilling, convicted on multiple felony counts in connection with the collapse of Enron, resides in a low security federal prison that offers pool, ping-pong or even foosball to the inmates (Wikipedia). UPDATE: The NYT is now reporting that, as I predicted, US officials hope to build a case against Assange by eliciting evidence that he actually helped Bradley Manning with the leak, so as to cast him as a conspirator rather than just a passive recipient of the material who then published it.

Greg Mitchell says one reader purporting to be a Verizon employee reports that Verizon and AT&T may be censoring news re- WL. "'It appears there's a blanket URL block for any URL containing the word "wikileaks" no matter what the context. . . . '" UPDATE: Apparently the Verizon block affected only the company's intranet service.

The hearing on the appeal of the ruling granting Assange's release on bail will take place tomorrow at 11:30 AM London time.

POSSIBLY IMPORTANT UPDATE: A source sympathetic to WL says, "Wikileaks.org, the original domain name for the cable leaking website, became active again in the US as of Dec. 11, 10 days after being terminated by their original domain name provider, EveryDNS. However, the domain now points to http://mirror.wikileaks.info/ — a notably different site than the thousands of other Wikileaks mirrors, [which] continue to be updated frequently. Something about this smells strange to me – and I can’t help but personally question whether this reinstatement of service was instigated by [the US] government in an attempt to track and/or misinform. (source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9201189/WikiLeaks.org_domain_back_online)."

David Love has made a case for Assange as this century's Upton Sinclair.

Tonight's cable release includes material on the BP spill – thanks, Guardian!

Time's editors have decided to ignore the will of the people and, instead of Assange, have chosen FB founder, Mark Zuckerberg, as Person of the Year. In the people's votes/ratings, Zuckerberg came in tenth with less than 5% of the number of votes that Assange had.

The NYT et al. seem to be demonstrating the unreliability of traditional media as publishers of truths inconvenient to the the powers that be; their coverage of the cables or related stories has dwindled – in The NYT's case, dramatically.

Here's an article with more details about a new WL rival, OpenLeaks.

I need to go do some other stuff now.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-14)

Assange, who has been in isolation in Oscar Wilde's old cell, has been ordered released on bail. He's had no access to the internet or even newspapers other than The Daily Express. He won't actually be released until the cash for bail has been delivered, which could take several days. Meanwhile, Swedish officials are appealing his release, and the hearing on that may take place within 48 hours (see Mitchell's blog for links re- all of the foregoing) – meaning, among other things, that Assange will go through yet another hearing without having had the opportunity to participate fully in the preparation of his own defense (unless authorities relent and decide to give him fuller access to news and other resources). UPDATE: Apparently to the surprise of everyone other than British officials, it's they, not the Swedes, who are appealing the decision to release Assange on bail. This is odd because, while the Swedes' basis for wanting him held seems slight enough, the Brits have none at all.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald says the leaker of the cables, Bradley Manning, is being subjected to inhumane treatment, even torture. Manning may be the only card US officials have: they probably have no legal basis for prosecuting Assange or Wikileaks unless they can extract a "confession" from him that Assange/Wikileaks conspired with or at least actively encouraged Manning to obtain the leaked cables.

If the US gets possession of Assange, the investigation/prosecution could keep him and Wikileaks occupied for a long, long time (à la Clinton).

But maybe it would be worth it to offer a trade?

Wikileaks.org is back online, "less than 10 days after domain name service provider EveryDNS terminated the whistleblower organization's domain name, citing stability concerns." More at ComputerWorld (which has been the source for a number of good articles on this story).

Naomi Wolf has another great article at HuffPo; a sample: "Anyone who works in supporting women who have been raped knows from this grossly disproportionate response [to the allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange] that Britain and Sweden, surely under pressure from the US, are cynically using the serious issue of rape as a fig leaf to cover the shameful issue of mafioso-like global collusion in silencing dissent. That is not the State embracing feminism. That is the State pimping feminism."

I'd been wondering how energetically Sweden usually pursues alleged sexual miscreants. A quick search today indicates that (notwithstanding the title of a recent NYT article proclaiming, "[i]n Sweden, sex assault gets little tolerance"), although the laws are indeed stricter and women may report sexual misconduct more often, when it comes to prosecution of sex crimes – not so much. On the contrary, in a 2009 article, The Local reported Sweden's National Council of Crime Prevention had found that "less than 13 percent of the 3,535 rape crimes reported in 2007 resulted in a decision to start legal proceedings . . . . [and] Amnesty [International] slam[med] the Swedish judicial system and the prevalence of attrition [i.e., the phenomenon of alleged offenses never reaching court] within it, concluding that, 'in practice, many perpetrators enjoy impunity.'" (Emphasis supplied.) Dave Lindorff says Swedish authorities have submitted only one other request in 2010 for Interpol's assistance in capturing the suspect of a sex crime, and in that case, the suspect was wanted on multiple charges including sex crimes against children (he unfortunately cites no source). [UPDATE: In a new article the following day, Naomi Wolf confirms my impression.]

Slate has a good defense of Anonymous' DDoS attacks here, as a form of civil disobedience.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is concerned about the actions taken by Mastercard, Visa, and others against Wikileaks and says they could be interpreted as an attempt to censor free speech. Iceland may ban the credit card companies.

The Guardian has a profile of Assange. Near the end, it mentions that OpenLeaks' spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, says the new organization "'will act only as the receptacle for leaked documents – the leaker will be able to designate which media organisations can publish the details." According to Forbes, if the designated organization doesn't publish the leaked info, the documents will be sent to other publishers. "Resource constraints, as Assange told [the author, Andy Greenberg] last month, have forced WikiLeaks to choose only its 'highest impact' material for publication. But those constraints have also politicized WikiLeaks and forced it to make subjective decisions about its targets, Domscheit-Berg argues. 'We want to be a neutral conduit,' he says.' That’s what’s most politically sustainable as well.'"

Good description of some of the legalities re- extradition here. In short, it suggests it might be easier for the US to extradite Assange from Sweden, but Sweden may need Britain's consent to send him to the US.

In case you hadn't heard, US officials have instructed employees and contractors not to look at the published cables; and now apparently the Air Force is blocking its personnel's access to the websites of the newspapers publishing the cables. UPDATE: Hey, US Air Force, employees, and contractors: there are over 2,000 WL mirror sites listed here.

Here are some good sources for additional info:

Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation (you may have to click around a bit to get to the current day);
Wikileaks Infopool;
The UK Guardian's daily update on the content of new releases (they've also had the best analysis I've seen from among the traditional media outlets); and
Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog.

For previous posts with my selection of highlights re- this story, click here.

Assange's 3-Pronged Strategy, Per His Own Writings; Plus, Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-13)

Generally, the law recognizes that when one of two parties to a transaction has information the other would probably consider material in deciding whether to agree to it, and the party possessing the info fails to disclose it, and the other party complains, such failure by the party with the info to disclose it to the other party is deemed a fraud. There's no need to prove that the party that had the info had any actual intent to cheat the other party, because the effect is the same regardless: the party lacking the info has in fact been manipulated into something to which s/he would probably not otherwise have agreed.

The potential to help restore the balance of knowledge and thus the balance of power between us and our governmental and corporate overlords constitutes what I've regarded as the most important effect of Wikileaks' revelations.

Assange states a second benefit in the Swedish documentary I've mentioned previously: that "[e]very release that [Wikileaks does] has a second message: if you engage in immoral, in unjust behavior, it will be found out." I.e., exposure of past bad acts tends to deter future bad acts [at least, that is, if such exposure results in bad consequences to the bad actors; otherwise, it may just increase the "moral hazard"].

Some of the most fascinating writing I've read is Assange's own texts, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance" (2006). In a nutshell, he argues that authoritarian governments are inevitably conspiratorial because their efforts to exploit people and interfere with their liberties tend to inspire resistance; so in order to maintain their authority, such regimes must try to keep the nature of what they're doing secret, restricting certain information to those inside the regime or otherwise in on the exploitation.(If they were maintaining their power legitimately, there'd be no need for secrecy; the more secrets there are, the more likely the regimes that want to keep them have something to hide.) But as the flow of information is throttled down, the regime as a whole – as a "computational system" – becomes less intelligent, in that those within the conspiracy become less able or willing to share all the info and ideas needed in order for the regime to exercise its power as effectively in its own behalf as it otherwise could (i.e., as he notes, "garbage in, garbage out"). Accordingly, provoking the regime to tighten security accomplishes a degradation of its organizational I.Q. that should ultimately hasten the regime's downfall. (Additional analysis here and here.) (UPDATE: I was accordingly interested to see this at Fox News: "Davos expert says hiding less information is best." Also, there's a fascinating new piece at colayer re- what Volatility's called, Wikileaks' "secrecy tax.") Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

This is of course exactly the US State Department's complaint: that governments that aren't telling their own citizens what they're really up to will also stop telling our government – will, in fact, stop conspiring with our government, at least insofar as secret-sharing constitutes conspiracy. [Basically, i.m.h.o., the oligarchs of the planet – those who have accumulated enough wealth and/or weapons and/or p.r. facilities to subdue their local populations – are like kids cheating at Monopoly: I'll help you maintain your power at the expense of your peons if you'll help me maintain mine.]

[Also note, this is also why Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, was such a godsend to the oligarchs – because p.r./propaganda help them manipulate populations through their basic instincts and emotions, rather than through secrecy; i.e., for too many people, the facts actually don't matter any more, because their own fear, anger, or cupidity, have been successfully enlisted against them, to the point that they're immunized against truth; see Adam Curtis's most excellent Century of the Self, here or here. Thus, revelations in recent years of US propaganda illegally directed at its own citizens (see here and here) have had little effect. Assange does not discuss p.r./propaganda (presumably because it doesn't help him to do so), but he might agree that it tends to help oligarchs maintain control without compromising their own systems' computational power.]

Thus, per Assange, generally, the strategy of leaking secrets is effective against authoritarian regimes in three related yet distinct ways: (1) it tends to restore the balance of power between authoritarian governments and those they govern by investing the latter with the power that attends knowledge of the injustices disclosed; (2) it tends to deter unjust actions with the threat that such actions may be revealed; and (3) it tends to provoke authoritarian governments to throttle the flow of information down further, thereby impairing their effectiveness and possibly hastening their own demise.

[And I agree with Assange; and I suspect he'd acknowledge such complicating factors as p.r./propaganda. Indeed, that may be partly why he may have believed it necessary for a infowar to be begun more or less now. Because the oligarchs do not yet control the non-traditional media, but they're making good progress on it (they already control most traditional media). And once they've got control of non-traditional media too, it's not just that they'll be better able to keep their secrets; it's also that there will be no escape from their p.r./propaganda; we'll be immersed, as in Altered States. For Assange, a key consideration may have been when to trigger the infowar: it would be best for it to occur when the internet has grown to reach the greatest possible number of people but before it's been converted into the most powerful instrument of mass mind control ever created.]

[And I gather it may have been disagreement re- the timing/manner of publication of leaked info that gave rise to the split between Assange and those defecting to form OpenLeaks (see the Swedish documentary) – that Assange wanted to publish the info sooner and in a more provocative manner. Indeed, one might wonder whether the "split" is real – whether the WL people may have decided the best strategy would be for the colorful Assange to use WL to draw off the oligarchs' fire and maximize attention to the story, while OpenLeaks continues WL's original, less sensational operations. (Assange's "rape" complainants could even be in on the strategy.) In a fine irony, the WL people would be deploying one of the oligarchs' own favorite tactics against them: when one organization gets in trouble, senior managers just form a new one and carry on business as usual (similarly, Assange has stated that Wikileaks has "us[ed] every trick in the book that multinational companies use to route money through tax havens – instead we route information"; see his speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2010).

If this is in fact the WL people's strategy, it would seem to be working like clockwork. And it would mean that on this level, too, the strategy is triple-pronged – the third prong being Assange's insurance file. Okke Ornstein notes other evidence of "grand strategic thinking."]

[And as this story unfolds, we'll likely learn something about the extent to which this infowar is really a p.r. war.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

KERA Dallas's excellent Think program aired an interview today with Tim Wu on "The Rise and Fall of Information Empires," including who owns the Internet? Says Wu, "[t]o say it's impossible for the Internet to be controlled is simply wrong." The program is or will be available by podcast soon.

In case you weren't able to see the Swedish documentary on Wikileaks mentioned in yesterday's post, at present, it's also available here.

Greg Mitchell confirms The Guardian and The NYT are cutting back on coverage of Wikileaks news. The NYT in particular seems to have made an editorial decision to simply not publish such stories, despite the fact that they filled half of the paper's front page just a few days ago. Hey NYT, it's a little late to pretend you don't publish leaks!

Here's a great interview with The NYT's Scott Shane on the challenges of sifting through the volumes of leaked material. To date, Wikileaks has shared the entirety of the US Embassy cables with just a handful of the world's major newspapers; but even they don't have the staff to even come close to reading them all. In order to identify the more important cables, they've basically had to rely on search terms and dates. Per the interview,

The rain of criticism that Wikileaks has received from members of the media has been “somewhat hypocritical,” according to Shane, because “[Wikileaks is] doing almost literally exactly what we’re doing at this point.”

* * * * *
With allies like Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, one would imagine that Wikileaks would find more allies in the press. . . . But with even bigger enemies – the United States, French, Australian, Russian and Chinese governments the most active and vocal among them – the ability of Wikileaks to continue running may seriously be in jeopardy.

* * * * *
The New York Times and The Guardian have been redacting cables before posting them to their own sites, and have then shared their suggestions with each other and Wikileaks. Wikileaks has consistently posted the more conservatively redacted version, according to Shane.

[Speculating about the reasons for the "rain of criticism" from the media et al. in the US,] “[t]he government really got out ahead of this,” with their PR attack, said Shane. “They shaped the reception to this leak before people even read the story.”

The prestigious writers' organization, PEN, has issued a statement in support of Wikileaks:

[I]t is important to acknowledge that while the leaking of government documents is a crime under U.S laws, the publication of documents by Wikileaks is not a crime. Wikileaks is doing what the media has historically done, the only difference being that the documents have not been edited. . . . In a world where journalists are regularly physically attacked, imprisoned and killed with impunity, calling for the death of a journalist is irresponsible and deplorable.

PEN International is also concerned by reports that some web sites, fearing repercussions, have stopped carrying Wikileaks, and that individuals, under threat of legal action, have been warned against reading information provided by the organization. PEN International condemns such acts and calls upon corporations and states to avoid breaches of the right to free expression. Governments cannot call for unlimited internet freedom in other parts of the world if they do not respect this freedom themselves.

(Emphasis supplied; more at the link.) Go, PEN! – one of the world's many Cassandra's.

Australian journalists have also declared their support for Wikileaks:

We, as editors and news directors of major media organisations, believe the reaction of the US and Australian governments to date has been deeply troubling. We will strongly resist any attempts to make the publication of these or similar documents illegal. Any such action would impact not only on WikiLeaks, but every media organisation in the world that aims to inform the public about decisions made on their behalf. . . . To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.

More in a piece by Dan Gillmor at Salon. The article goes on to contrast the US media's "collective abdication at a time of unprecedented peril."

Peter Singer has an excellent essay asking, "Is Open Diplomacy Possible?":

[I]t isn’t always the case that openness is better than secrecy. Suppose that US diplomats had discovered that democrats living under a brutal military dictatorship were negotiating with junior officers to stage a coup to restore democracy and the rule of law. I would hope that WikiLeaks would not publish a cable in which diplomats informed their superiors of the plot.

* * * * *
. . . . If governments did not mislead their citizens so often, there would be less need for secrecy, and if leaders knew that they could not rely on keeping the public in the dark about what they are doing, they would have a powerful incentive to behave better.

It is therefore regrettable that the most likely outcome of the recent revelations will be greater restrictions to prevent further leaks. Let’s hope that in the new WikiLeaks age, that goal remains out of reach.

It's official: Assange is the people's choice for Time's "Man of the Year." Time editors will reveal announce whether they agree on Wednesday.

The Guardian has a good article on the Anons today. Unfortunately it starts off with a likely inaccuracy, referring to attacks on Amazon, notwithstanding that both the Anons and Amazon have denied such an attack. For what it's worth, however, the writer's main source is quoted as confirming, "[PayPal] met our demands [to release funds to Wikileaks]. The reason the attack [on PayPal] took place was because they froze Assange's funds. They have unfrozen them due to Operation Payback."

There's also a new Anon video re- Operation Leakspin here; if you haven't caught their other publications re- this operation, this is a good intro.

Here are some good sources for additional info:

Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation (you may have to click around a bit to get to the current day)
Wikileaks Infopool
The UK Guardian
Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog.

For previous posts with my own selection of highlights re- this story, click here.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-12): New Documentary RE- Wikileaks; New iPatriot Act; Etc.

Generally, my fave institutional sources at present are Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation (you may have to click around a bit to get to the current day), The UK Guardian, and Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog. Below are some highlights from those and other sources (for highlights from previous days, click here).

NEWS:

An excellent Swedish documentary re- Wikileaks can be seen here. Highly recommended. [UPDATE: This documentary is still available at the link and is still worth seeing, but it has been revised to present Assange in a less favorable light. I believe the original, rough cut can still be found online; search for original rough cut SVT documentary Assange, or the like.]

In Iceland [today or yesterday? No date on the dam' story; I hate that], "[r]epresentatives from Mastercard and Visa were called before a parliamentary committee to explain the credit companies’ refusal to process donations to the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. . . .'People wanted to know on what legal grounds the ban was taken, but no one could answer it . . . .' '[Wikileaks] is simply a human rights organization with freedom of speech at its core, and there are lots of people who have Visa cards and want to spend their money supporting exactly this issue. It is understandably irritating when some credit card company somewhere decides what you are allowed to spend your money on.'" (Need I explain how important that is, given that the SCOTUS thinks money = speech?) More here.

Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, says, "We have heard from the Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria . . . just over the river from Washington, D.C. . . and that if [Assange] comes to Sweden, they will defer their interest in him to the Americans. Now that shows some level of collusion and embarrassment, so it does seem to me what we have here is nothing more than holding charges . . . so ultimately [US authorities] can get their mitts on him." The court hearing on Assange's bail and extradition is scheduled for Tues., 12/14. More here.

RT America [edited to add: and HuffPo] reports the Wikileaks affair is already being used by some in the US to push for the passage of an "iPatriot Act for the Internet" (discussed on this blog in 2008, here – Lawrence Lessig: "I had dinner once with Richard Clark [the guy who was trying to get the Bush admin to pay attention to Al Quaeda before 9-11] . . . and I said, 'is there an equivalent to the Patriot Act – an iPatriot Act – just sitting waiting . . . for them to have an excuse for radically changing the way the Internet works?' And he said, 'Of course there is.'") We should expect that, as part of the campaign for iPatriot and whatever else they've got on the shelf, Wikileaks will be demonized and its actions misrepresented (and that the organization will be conflated with the Anons, who will suffer the same treatment).

You can download a mask of Assange's face for use in protests against the actions against him and/or Wikileaks here.

Some of the Anon Twitter accounts I was watching yesterday have been closed, but Anon's hydra-headed; there seem to be twice as many today. Give up, Twitter.

Here are some answers from one Anon in response to questions from another reporter:

1. Why this particular form of attack (DDoS)?
DDoS attacks are high-profile and require little technical knowledge to execute successfully. Once there is a sufficient number of clients in the "hive," it's relatively easy to overwhelm a vulnerable webserver. In this case, Anonymous did not target critical credit card processing infrastructure, instead opting to disrupt mainly corporate "brochure" websites. No lasting damage is done to the target servers, so the DDoS makes for an effective political demonstration.

2. Does Anyonymous identify with Assange in any way or support Wikileaks' actions?
Anonymous overwhelmingly supports the actions of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. They believe that freedom of information is a fundamental right, and perceive the actions of the corporations and government as direct attacks on that freedom. There seems to be a common fear among members of Anonymous that the freedoms we enjoy online are slowly eroding. These fears were compounded when the various corporations chose to suspend their respective accounts with WikiLeaks.

3. (Related) your thoughts on more openness in government, and government itself?
While I understand that the protection of top-secret information is a matter of national security, I believe the government could stand to become more transparent in most areas of daily activity. The people of the United States have a right to know what is happening in their name.

4. Is this an attack on institutions that are identifiable as authoritarian and monetary? I.e., were they attacked for being that way?
The various institutions were targeted because they chose independently to terminate their relationships with WikiLeaks. Their willingness to comply with US pressures ultimately creates a system of privatized censorship in which the government doesn't need to lift a finger. Anonymous has begun attacking these institutions in what is essentially an invocation of the "golden rule": what goes around comes around.

5. What do you want ideally for the results of this action to be?
I don't personally support the DDoS attacks, although they have certainly served their purpose (mainstream media coverage). I think Anonymous has the potential to become a truly significant movement for freedom if they continue to focus their efforts on peaceful protests and creative information campaigns. Ideally, Anonymous would cease the DDoS attacks and cultivate a more publicly accessible voice.

Rival site OpenLeaks is scheduled to launch tomorrow.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS:

Another great essay in The UK Guardian here; as w.r.t. others I've referred you to, too many great observations to pick out just a few, but here's a taste:

In 1771, that great lover of liberty, John Wilkes, and a number of printers challenged the law that prohibited the reporting of Parliamentary debates and speeches, kept secret because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would disrupt the life of the country if made public. Using the arcane laws of the City of London, Alderman Wilkes arranged for the interception of the Parliamentary messengers sent to arrest the printers who had published debates, and in doing so successfully blocked Parliament. By 1774, a contemporary was able to write: "The debates in both houses have been constantly printed in the London papers." From that moment, the freedom of the press was born.

* * * * *

Over the past few weeks, there have been similarly dire predictions from sanctimonious men and women of affairs about the likely impacts of publication, and of course Julian Assange finds himself banged up in Wandsworth nick, having neither been formally charged with, nor found guilty of, the sex crimes he is alleged to have committed in Sweden. Making no comment about his guilt or innocence, or the possibility of his entrapment, I limit myself to saying that we have been here before with John Wilkes; and the reason for this is that authorities the world over and through history react the same way when there is a challenge to a monopoly of information.

It is all about power and who has access to information. Nothing more. When those who want society to operate on the basis of the parent-child relationship because it is obviously easier to manage, shut the door and say "not in front of the children," they are usually looking after their interests, not ours.

(Emphasis supplied.) Knowledge is power, and a balance of power requires a balance of information.

A Summary of the Case for Wikileaks; Plus, Who Let the Logs Out?! and Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-11)

[Scroll down to THOUGHTS for the case for Wiklieaks.]

Fwiw, in general, my fave institutional sources at present are Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation, The UK Guardian, and Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog. Below are some highlights (for highlights from previous days, click here).



NEWS:

At right, demonstrators in Brisbane, Australia. Protests are ongoing worldwide and more are planned (see the Guardian). Here's a FB page that may have some info re- planned protests.

The BBC has a good written summary about Anonymous here (but re- the video, I'm not sure all Anons would agree with all the one speaking says).

While Anons' DDoS attacks continue, they've decided to shift their efforts to publicizing content from the leaks themselves, since that's what the powers that be fear most; see, e.g., Operation Leakspin.

Question: What exactly are the Anons' demands? TorrentFreak refers to an Operation Payback page stating them, but apparently that site's been taken down.

A recent Anon tweet: "Join us. First for the good news! You get 72 virgins! Now for the bad news . . . ain't no girls here."

One small business reports that Paypal has locked its account because it donated to Wikileaks. Moneybookers is not an alternative because, even though it's based in Europe, it too has cut off payments to Wikileaks and has been taken down by Anon's DDoS attacks.

Not exactly new, but urgent in the light of current developments, is this story (as reported by the BBC) about the President's "killswitch" power – the power to kill the internet in the event of a national "emergency." UPDATE: "The Senate Committee on Homeland Security . . . has approved a cybersecurity bill . . . that would give the president far-reaching authority over the Internet in the case of emergency."

THOUGHTS: The Case for Wikileaks

We are living in times of extraordinary incursions against the rightful liberties and powers of ordinary citizens. The U.S. Congress has acquiesced in, among other things:

Routine secret service and police violations of First Amendment rights, including preemptive round-ups and detentions of protesters in connection with political conventions and other events (see various posts here and sources cited therein, esp. here and here);

Wholesale NSA/AT&T violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including warrantless wire-tapping and mining of e-mails of U.S. citizens (see various posts here and sources cited therein);

Gross TSA and other governmental or quasi-governmental violations of Fourth Amendment and privacy rights, including unreasonable and invasive searches without the least pretext of probable cause (see posts here {may include some repeats from previous link} and sources cited therein);

The institution of policies of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of U.S. citizens and others without trial (see, e.g., here, here, and here);

The invasion of Iraq based on lies; etc.

These violations are are massive, and they're becoming the new norm. And apart from a few bit-part scapegoats, no one has been held to account for them; indeed, for the most part, they have not even been investigated. Talk about the terrorists winning. 

And similar violations are taking place in other so-called democracies.

There have been periods in the past when the traditional media did a better job of fulfilling their proper function as the "watchdog of democracy." But it's been some time since they fulfilled that role (see, e.g., "leaked reports back up what Iraq vets have been telling journalists for years, only to be ignored").

I do not fault individual journalists, most of whom are over-extended and underpaid. But, leaving the internet aside for the moment, the vast majority of traditional media worldwide are directly or indirectly controlled by a handful of large corporations (see Wikipedia and the sources cited there). Resources for real reporting have been hollowed out, and most "liberal" journalists were driven out years ago. As a result, wittingly or not, much if not most of the traditional media functions mainly to "catapult the propaganda," controlling the national agenda by echoing talking points originated by conservatively-funded think tanks and disseminated by Faux News et al.

As for the internet, big business is already well on their way to controlling most of that, too; among other things, witness the latest pending FCC regulations and this article about proposed legislation to give the U.S. President the legal power to "kill" the Internet; see also Lawrence Lessig re- the "iPatriot Act."

With respect to the U.S. Embassy cables, Wikileaks is working with the major newspapers of the world to carefully vet and redact everything it publishes, and it has published nothing that has not been published by one or more of those newspapers.

Wikileaks was founded in 2006; since then, not a single person is known to have been physically harmed as a result of any Wikileaks disclosure, ever (I'm pretty sure if the U.S. government could name one, it would have been leaked by now.) {UPDATE: Per Assange in an interview with Frost Over the World, the Pentagon has confirmed that it knows of no one that has been physically harmed because of any Wikileaks publication}).

In contrast, as of this writing, the number of Coalition soldiers who have died because of the lies used to justify invading Iraq, conservatively counted, are nearing 5,000, Iraqi deaths are nearing 1.5 million, and the U.S. has spent over $1 trillion {see info in the left sidebar of this blog}.

Some have argued that Wikileaks' publication of State secrets is as bad as our governments' and big businesses' invasions of the privacy of U.S. citizens; but this is a false equivalency. I don't have the power to act on behalf of or make decisions affecting the welfare of millions of other people; and if I did, again, I should not also have the power to unilaterally decide what they get to know about it.

Some argue that Wikileaks' work is not REAL journalism and so should not be afforded the same First Amendment protection as other news media.

Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the traditional media in the U.S. utterly FAILED to report the fact that the aluminum tubes claimed by the Bush admin to have been purchased for use in a nuclear weapons program were in fact ill-adapted for such use and were more likely purchased for other reasons (I heard that fact mentioned only late at night, on the BBC). Indeed, rather than verifying the Bush admin's claim, The NYT chose to publish Judith Miller's completely uncritical – if not complicit – story, "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" – a story substantially based on the deliberate leaking of classified information by Scooter Libby, chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney. If what Wikileaks' work isn't journalism, I wish The NYT and other corporate media did more "non-journalism."

The corporate media are also the "journalists" who failed to analyze Bush admin. claims far enough to realize that a half-dozen specious reasons to invade Iraq did not add up to one good one – something obvious to the millions who demonstrated against the invasion in "the biggest global peace protests before a war actually started."

There simply is no principled basis for distinguishing Wikileaks' publications from those of The NYT and other newspapers.

Some argue the information published by Wikileaks isn't important enough to justify the breach of secrecy. So, who gets to decide what's important, and on what basis? The U.S. agents who warned of the possibility of 9/11 but were ignored have speculated that that tragedy might have been prevented if someone had leaked to Wikileaks.

How about the needless gunning down by U.S. military forces of a Reuters cameraman and Iraqi innocents shown here? Or, from the U.S. Embassy cables, what about the revelations that the British government secretly promised to protect U.S. interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, or that, in response to U.S. pressure, the German government assured the U.S. that it would not follow through on its investigation of the CIA's abduction of a German citizen mistakenly identified as a terrorist, or that the U.S. dismissed British objections about secret U.S. spy flights taking place from the UK, amid British officials' concerns that the UK would be deemed an accomplice to rendition and torture, or that the U.S. sought assurances from the Ugandan government that it would consult the U.S. before using American intelligence to commit war crimes, or that as of 2009, Shell Oil had infiltrated all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, or that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer paid investigators to unearth corruption links to Nigeria's attorney general in an attempt to stop his legal action against a controversial drug trial involving children, or that Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups, or that the Obama administration and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, are determined to reject talks with the Taliban, or that government corruption in Afghanistan is rampant (viz. an incident last year when then vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped in Dubai while carrying $52m in cash), or that the U.S. seeks to manipulate nations opposed to its approach to global warming, or that the U.S. and China worked together to prevent European nations from reaching an agreement at last year's climate summit, etc.? And I look forward eagerly to the expected publications re- the Guantanamo detainees and a major US bank.

The U.S. and other governments have struggled for months to find some legal violation to charge Wikileaks with, without success. To date, the only U.S. law seriously proposed as a possible basis for charges is the Espionage Act, which was used to try to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers – and in that case, the charges were dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Wikileaks' case, the argument for a violation of the Espionage Act is even weaker, since (1) Wikileaks has neither stolen nor leaked any information but merely published information others leaked to it, and (2) Wikileaks is not a U.S. citizen or resident.

The lack of any basis for legal action against Wikileaks has not stopped governments and big businesses from using all their might to try to crush it. They've tried to strangle Wikileaks' presence on the internet through their own DDoS attacks (yes, someone did it to Wikileaks before “Anonymous” did it to any of them) and by pressuring Wikileaks' website hosts and domain name registrars to drop Wikileaks; they're trying to strangle the organization financially (MC, Visa, Bank of America and other banks have stopped processing donations to Wikileaks, although you can still donate to the KKK); and much of the traditional media, particularly in the U.S., are working to bury revelations that Wikileaks has published or to make it and/or Assange look bad enough to make you forget about the governmental and corporate crimes that Wikileaks' publications are revealing. This could happen to you, even if you'd broken no laws, just like it happened to Wikileaks, if the powers that be didn't like what you were saying.

Some conservative leaders in the U.S. have even called for the assassination of Wikileaks' staff. One has to wonder what might have happened to Assange by now if he hadn't had his insurance file.

What governments and big businesses fear most is not terrorism, but us – and what we might do if we learn the truth.

Knowledge is power, and a balance of power requires a balance of knowledge. The way things are now, corporations and governments know everything about us and we know almost nothing important about them.

I believe that too much information is better than too little. I have more faith in our ability as a species to collectively sort through the info and interpret it helpfully, than I have in the likelihood that any smaller group of individuals entrusted with the power to pick and choose what we should know, without meaningful oversight, will refrain from abusing that power.

In truth, we must ALL be journalists, which means we must ALL have access to the facts.

If Wikileaks can be crushed by the powers that be, we can ALL be crushed. There's only one thing that can stop them: us.

If just ten percent of the people travelling by air over Thanksgiving had refused to submit to the unreasonable searches by TSA, it would have been the end of those searches. If enough of us stand up for Wikileaks, it will be the end – at least for a time – of our governments' and big businesses' efforts to crush those who insist on the right to know what the powerful are doing to us or in our name.

This blog supports Wikileaks. If you agree that free speech is essential to democracy, I hope that you too will stand up against those who seek to stifle it.

You can sign a petition to stop the crackdown on Wikileaks here.

At right, a bit of off-the-cuff Anon art.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-10): A Call to Arms, er, Computers; and We Must ALL Be "Journalists"

First, let me refer you to Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation, the excellent UK Guardian, and Foreign Policy's Wikileaked blog. Here are a few highlights (based as always on my own idiosyncratic interests).



Funny/Scary:

"Wikileaks" Google searches exceed those for Justin Bieber.

HUGE volume of "Wikileaks" searches originating from U.S. intelligence agencies.

At least I'm not alone.

NEWS:

The images at right show the bunker in which the servers now hosting Wikileaks are located (thanks, Julie!), operated by the Swedish company, Bahnhof. Seriously.

You can sign a petition calling for an end to the crackdown on Wikileaks here.

TechCrunch reports DDoS attacks have hobbled Facebook, and as of 1:45pm CST, it does seem slow. Mastercard's site was down again this a.m.; "The attack was due to begin at 2pm and within five minutes MasterCard's site was down." "Most of those participating in the attacks are using the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) DDoS tool . . . . The open-source tool . . . is being downloaded at the rate of about 1,000 copies per hour, said Tal Be'ery, the Web research team lead at Imperva's Application Defense Center." As of this a.m., I believe I read there'd been over 44,000 copies downloaded. UPDATE: Twitter is closing Anon accounts as fast as it can find them – which isn't fast enough. "#anonymous does not care why twitter is suspending accounts. we simply respawn. back to business."

Interesting article at Financial Times: "This year has seen military and security experts often warn about the prospects of 'cyberwarfare.' Few expected the most prominent assaults against large companies to come from a scattered group of anarchists and idealists with no identifiable leader, membership or nationality. . . . [One Anon said,] 'If [authorities] are willing to gun down WikiLeaks in broad daylight, they will come down on you as well.'" That reminds me, time to download a copy of this blog . . . .

A DNS provider that suffered backlash last week after it was wrongly identified as supplying and then dropping service to WikiLeaks has decided to support the secret-spilling site, offering DNS service to two domains distributing WikiLeaks content; more here.

Greg Mitchell has a great idea: "WikiLeaks should send its 249,000 unpublished cables to Bernie Sanders for him to read during his epic filibuster [of Obama's tax cut deal]; he could vet them as he goes along. Bernie now trending #1 and #2 at Twitter." He also says "[f]amed French newspaper Libération [is] now hosting a Wikileaks mirror site" (vive la France!)

Wikileaks now has a competitor: OpenLeaks.

Search the entirety of the cables for particular words or phrases here.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS:

Re- the Second Amendment . . . this whole affair shows that computers are the "arms" of our time, and the hazards of surrending them in favor of Cloud-based facilities owned or controlled by others. Maybe the Second Amendment should be expanded to include computers.

(New train of thought:) We're seeing the beginning of a push to sell the claim that Wikileaks' actions are not protected by the First Amendment because what it does is not "real" journalism. I'm pretty sure this is B.S. and hope to hear more from the EFF and ACLU on this point.

And I'm not really so interested in the U.S. media's opinion as to why Wikileaks' work is not "journalism."

These are the media who utterly FAILED to report the fact that the aluminum tubes claimed by the Bush admin to have been purchased for use in a nuclear weapons program were in fact ill-adapted for such use and were more likely purchased for other reasons (a report I heard only on the BBC). On the contrary, instead of verifying the Bush admin's claim, The NYT chose to publish Judith Miller's completely uncritical – if not complicit – story, "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" – a story substantially based on the deliberate leaking of classified information by Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

So, it's journalism to publish without question leaked material produced by persons known to have spoken in furtherance of their own political agenda, but it's not journalism to publish leaked material produced by persons who to all appearances had no agenda other than to tell the truth?

The corporate media are also the same "journalists" who failed to analyze Bush admin claims far enough to realize that a half-dozen specious reasons to invade Iraq did not add up to one good one – something obvious to the millions who demonstrated against the invasion in "the biggest global peace protests before a war actually started." (See also, e.g., Phil Donohue pushed off the air for opposing Iraq invasion.)

Publishing facts is at least as important as the corporate media's much-vaunted "analysis."

In truth, we must ALL be journalists, which means we must ALL have access to the facts.

I'm also hearing the argument that the Wikileaks' disclosures don't deserve protection because the lies they reveal aren't as big as those revealed by the Pentagon Papers. To this I say, (1) who gets to decide? and (2) only a tiny fraction of the material held by Wikileaks has yet been published.

Terrific new essay by Naomi Wolf at HuffPo: "Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Aggression Against the People of the United States" – i.e., the law was created as a way to do that; and as a result, e.g., "poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp . . . for the 'crime' of saying that he did not hate Germans."

Good essay by Ian Welsh here: "The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies. The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to . . . ."

The latest from Anonymous:



They say access to the internet is a fundamental human right. I'm inclined to agree.