Tag: wikileaks

The Espionage Act & the 4th Year of Assange’s Arrest

From its earliest years the United States has found ways to deny the rights of a free press when it was politically expedient to do so.

One of the latest ways was to arrest WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange four years ago today and to indict him — the first time a publisher and journalist has ever been charged under the 1917 Espionage Act for possessing and publishing state secrets.

Though two U.S. administrations came close to punishing journalists for revealing defense information, they both failed, until Assange.

A major hurdle for the government is overcoming the conflict between the Espionage Act and the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from passing any law, including the Act, that abridges press freedom.

Until that legal conflict is resolved in court, resulting in parts of the Espionage Act being found unconstitutional, the language of the Act threatening press freedom remains.

Bolstered by 1950 amendments to the Act, the Donald Trump administration crossed a redline to arrest a journalist. A 1961 amendment made it possible to indict a non-U.S. citizen, acting outside U.S. territory.

The Trump administration’s first indictment of a publisher opened an alarming precedent for the future of journalism.

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Democrats call for Garland to drop charges against Assange

A group of Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday urging him to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over his publishing of classified materials.

Assange faces 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

The Democrats pressing Garland on the issue are led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich. and also include Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Greg Casar (Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).

They wrote that Assange’s charges “pose a grave and unprecedented threat” to journalism practices and the First Amendment.

“Press freedom, civil liberty, and human rights groups have been emphatic that the charges against Mr. Assange pose a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity, and that a conviction would represent a landmark setback for the First Amendment,” they wrote in the letter.

The group pointed to a joint statement issued by major news organizations from around the world, including The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, that called on the United States to drop the charges against Assange.

At the time, the media outlets said Assange’s leaks exposed “corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.” 

“This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,” the outlets said.

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Spanish company provided CIA with information leading to Julian Assange’s arrest

“Be on the lookout tomorrow to see what you can get… and make it work.” Michelle Wallemacq, head of operations of a Spanish company called UC Global, wrote this message on December 20, 2017, to two technicians monitoring security at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was living after being granted asylum. She was alerting them to the arrival of Rommy Vallejo, the head of SENAIN, Ecuador’s secret service, who was scheduled to meet the next day with Assange to receive confidential information that could influence the cyberactivist’s future.

Vallejo had hired the services of this small company from Jerez de la Frontera in southwestern Spain to provide security for Ecuador’s diplomatic corps in London but didn’t know that it was planning to record his meeting with Assange. Vallejo was unaware that UC Global had planted hidden microphones throughout the embassy, even in the women’s bathroom. Nor did he know that UC Global’s owner, David Morales, had been sending information about Assange’s meetings with his lawyers to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) soon after he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Ecuador’s president at the time, Lenin Moreno, had ordered his staff to work with Assange’s Spanish lawyers to develop a plan to get Assange out of the embassy, grant him Ecuadorian nationality and provide a diplomatic passport. The plan was set weeks before Vallejo’s meeting and was known to only six people. When UC Global’s cameras recorded the meeting attended by Assange, his lawyer Stella Morris, Ecuadorian consul Fidel Narváez and Vallejo, it learned that the getaway would happen in four days: December 25. Assange would leave in one of the ambassador’s diplomatic cars and travel through the Eurotunnel to Switzerland or another destination in continental Europe.

“It’s very late… Because it’s so big, I put the file in a shared Dropbox [cloud data storage service] folder. Someone with experience in audio can make it more intelligible… The ecu [Vallejo] is quite audible, but the others [Assange and Morris] are very muffled,” wrote one of the technicians a few hours later to David Morales.

Morales dispatched the data in the early morning hours to his “American friends,” and the impact was immediate. The United States quickly sent an arrest warrant for Assange to the United Kingdom, so the escape plan had to be aborted. Two years later, Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. In June 2022, the British government ordered his extradition to the United States. Since then, Assange has been held in a London jail pending an appeal. The United States has charged him with 18 alleged crimes that could lead to a maximum of 175 years in prison.

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US STILL TRYING TO BURY ‘COLLATERAL MURDER’ VIDEO THAT WIKILEAKS RELEASED

There is no shortage of activists, journalists, academics, and people of conscience who have some story to share about the impact of the “Collateral Murder” video.

The U.S. military footage of an Apache helicopter crew shooting indiscriminately at a dozen Iraqi civilians — including Reuters journalists Namir Noor Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, and two young children — is widely recognized for exposing the true nature of the United States war in Iraq and for making WikiLeaks and Julian Assange household names.

Three years before WikiLeaks made it possible for the public to watch this video, Dean Yates, Reuters bureau chief in Iraq, learned of its existence. Yates testified about the impact of the video at the Belmarsh Tribunal in Sydney, Australia on March 4, 2023.

Later in the Tribunal, another delegate, Australian lawyer Bernard Collaery, called Yates’ testimony “admissible evidence,” which could serve as witness testimony in defense of Assange. (In fact, a statement from Yates was submitted to a British court during Assange’s extradition trial.)

It has now been nearly 13 years since WikiLeaks published the video, and nearly 16 years since the attack took place. No one responsible for the attack or the invasion of Iraq has faced even a modicum of accountability.

In contrast, Assange is languishing in Belmarsh Prison under torturous conditions. He sits in legal limbo while the United States continues to pursue his extradition under Espionage Act charges, in a case which poses an unprecedented threat to press freedom.

While WikiLeaks’ publication of military documents from Iraq and Afghanistan are at the heart of the case, the “Collateral Murder” video is absent from the 18-count indictment that spans 37 pages.

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FLASHBACK: WikiLeaks Released ‘Vault 7’ Disclosures Showing CIA’s Terrifying Hacking Capabilities Six Years Ago Today

On this day six years ago, the WikiLeaks released its “Vault 7” disclosures showing the hacking capabilities of the CIA.

The disclosures showed that the CIA is capable of hacking smartphones, computer operating systems, automobiles, messenger apps and smart TVs.

The release consisted of 8,761 documents reportedly coming from the CIA’s Center of Cyber Intelligence. It showed how the CIA could hack phones in order to bypass encrypted apps by accessing the information before the user can send the data. They can also tap into the microphone and video recording devices on phones even when they are powered off.

The CIA also developed a hack that puts Samsung Smart TVs in a fake off mode, which deceives an individual into thinking they are not being recorded when they actually are. The CIA can also leave false bread crumbs that will make it look like the hack is done by an adversary, such as Russia or China, if they are caught after the fact.

All of the Vault7 files can be found here.

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CIA software engineer, 33, is convicted over ‘single biggest leak of classified information in Agency’s history’: Gave WikiLeaks top secret intel on how U.S. spies on people abroad using internet-connected TVs and compromised smartphones

A former CIA software engineer accused of the largest leak of classified data in agency history was convicted on all charges.

Joshua Schulte, 33, was convicted Wednesday of leaking classified CIA information to WikiLeaks in 2017. He was found guilty in federal court on eight espionage charges and one obstruction charge over the so-called Vault 7 leak.

Schulte, who chose to defend himself at the New York City retrial, told jurors in his closing arguments that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for the embarrassing public release the trove of secrets.

The leaked materials concerned software tools the Central Intelligence Agency used to surveil people outside the U.S., through such means as compromising smartphones and internet-connected TVs.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Schulte was motivated to leak the materials out of spite because he was unhappy with how management treated him.

Prior to his arrest, Schulte had helped create the hacking tools as a coder at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. 

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Assange Makes Final Appeal Against US Extradition

In a last-ditch effort to avoid extradition to the United States, lawyers for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday appealed to the United Kingdom’s High Court to block the transfer.

Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told Reuters that the Australian publisher’s legal team appealed his extradition, which was formally approved by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel last month.

“We also urge the Australian government to intervene immediately in the case to end this nightmare,” Shipton said.

Supporters of Assange held protests ahead of his 51st birthday on Saturday, including one in an open-top double-decker London tour bus that passed by British government buildings in Westminster on Friday. One of the demonstrators, 79-year-old Gloria Wildman, told Agence France-Presse that Assange has “been in prison for telling the truth.”

“If Julian Assange is not free, neither are we; none of us is free,” she added.

Myriad human rights, journalistic, and other groups have condemned Assange’s impending extradition and the U.S. government’s targeting of a journalist who exposed American war crimes. In a Thursday statement, the Australian Journalists Union said that “the charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom.”

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Merrick Garland: Drop the Charges Against Julian Assange

I turned on the news yesterday and there was Attorney General Merrick Garland somewhere in Ukraine, talking about being part of the effort to prosecute war crimes charges against the Russian invaders. Coincidentally, the night before seeing our chief prosecutor in Ukraine, I had finished reading Nils Melzer’s recently-published book, the Trial of Julian Assange, which is an eloquent and devastating exposé of endemic political corruption deep within the state apparatuses of the US, the UK, Sweden, and other countries.

The unmistakable fact is that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is still actively pursuing the extradition of Julian Assange, in order for him to face charges under the Espionage Act and spend the rest of his life in prison. This is the same Espionage Act that the Nixon administration considered using against Daniel Ellsberg, for leaking what became known as the Pentagon Papers, which were published in the New York Times and elsewhere.

Unlike Ellsberg, Assange did not himself steal, hack, or otherwise make off with secret documents that exposed US war crimes. He only facilitated the leaking of these documents, and the eventual publication of redacted parts of them by Wikileaks, the New York Times, and most of the rest of the world’s media. But unlike with Ellsberg, the government is going ahead with prosecuting someone — a journalist and editor named Julian Assange — under the Espionage Act.

The Espionage Act is one of these laws that is on the books but is not generally considered particularly useful by prosecutors because the law is so blatantly an outrageous, draconian relic of the Red Scare, an example of the most authoritarian responses to the militant labor movement of the post-World War 1 period. Enforcing the Espionage Act makes a complete mockery of all of the most fundamental democratic institutions. It’s obviously in total conflict with the First Amendment and many other elements of the Bill of Rights. The possibility that other journalists who expose war crimes might go to prison for the rest of their lives for violating the Espionage Act is a terrifying prospect. But Garland’s prosecution of a journalist for exposing war crimes under the Espionage Act continues.

While Garland makes plans to help prosecute war crimes committed by Russian soldiers, the war crimes committed by US forces in Bagram, Kama Ado, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Fallujah, Haditha, Baghdad, and on and on and on, go almost entirely unprosecuted and unpunished, and generally unacknowledged, except when the media spotlight is temporarily impossible to ignore, and a few crocodile tears must be shed to maintain appearances. But even while occasional noises are made by officials to half-heartedly acknowledge some of the shortcomings of the US military invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the person most responsible for bringing the knowledge of these shortcomings to the global public is being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

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Fmr CIA Director Summoned by Judge Over Claims US Plotted ‘At Highest Level’ to Execute Julian Assange

Last year, media reported that US officials had allegedly discussed the possibility of assassinating Julian Assange during his stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017. The alleged plot presupposed kidnapping the WikiLeaks founder from the diplomatic mission or capturing him if he tried to escape.

Mike Pompeo, the former US secretary of state, has been summoned by a Spanish court to testify over claims the US had plotted “at the highest level” to assassinate WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange, reported The Telegraph.

Judge Pedraz had sent a request to US authorities to call Pompeo as a witness, a spokesman for Spain’s National Court was cited by The Telegraph as saying, adding that, “There has been no reply as yet.”

Judge Santiago Pedraz, of Spain’s National Court, is leading a probe into whether Spanish security firm UC Global spied on Assange while providing security for the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Australian citizen had sought refuge at the embassy in 2012 in order to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges, which he denies. The whistleblower remained there until April 2019, when Ecuador’s new government revoked his asylum.

Lawyers representing Assange in Spain, including the former judge Baltasar Garzón, have accused Washington of “orchestrating” the espionage effort targeting the whistleblower. The claim that UC Global placed microphones and cameras in the embassy to spy on Assange’s private conversations and meetings.

The legal moves involving Mike Pompeo come as part of a petition filed by Aitor Martínez, one of the lawyers representing Assange in the proceedings against UC Global. In addition to summoning Pompeo, Judge Pedraz is also seeking to question William Evanina, a former US counterintelligence official who is said to have confessed to viewing security camera footage and audio recordings from inside the Ecuadorian Embassy.

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Julian Assange’s Wife Says He’ll Kill Himself After Brits Approve Extradition To America

Stella Moris, the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, suggested that her husband would kill himself if he is extradited to the United States after the British Home secretary approved a judge’s order to fly Assange from the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison in London to Virginia to stand trial.

British Home Secretary Pristi Patel approved the order on Thursday; paving the way for Assange, a native Australian, to stand trial on espionage charges.

“If he’s extradited to the U.S., the conditions he will be under will be oppressive,” Stella Moris told a press conference Friday. “It will drive him to take his own life. That’s not simply a regular discussion about mental health. We are talking about driving a person to take their own life.”

American officials have informed the British government that Assange will not be held in maximum security if he is extradited.

Moris said Assange’s declaration that he would kill himself was made “recently,” adding that she would fight the order with “every available avenue. … I’m going to use every waking hour fighting for Julian until he is free,” The Daily Mail reported.

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