Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land.

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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:42 am

RocketMan » Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:19 am wrote:
Grizzly » Thu Apr 11, 2019 9:53 am wrote:So, I don't get it, are you for or against Julian Assange, slad?


I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who think torture and legally sketchy imprisonment are abhorrent IN THEORY, but are silently pleased at the prospect of Assange being frogmarched out of the embassy and into a waiting prisoner transport to the US and some legal black hole. I suppose being an asshole is enough for some people to indict.


I have posted my reply at the other Wikileaks thread.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 32#p672432
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 12, 2019 7:03 pm

KPRC Radio · 10:35 My guest is Barrett Brown. He went to prison for WikiLeaks

https://www.facebook.com/KPRCradio/vide ... 874/?t=297


Roger Stone wants to put Assange on the stand
BEN SCHRECKINGER04/12/2019 02:15 PM EDT
Roger Stone
WikiLeaks has denied having contact with Roger Stone. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
Roger Stone hopes to put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on the stand at his upcoming trial for alleged obstruction and witness intimidation, according to a person familiar with the thinking of Stone’s legal team.

The prospect of obtaining Assange’s testimony has grown somewhat likelier with his Thursday arrest in London, which paves the way for his possible extradition to the United States.

Stone expects Assange, under oath, would reiterate WikiLeaks’ denials that it was in contact with Stone in 2016 as it prepared to release hacked emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, according to the person.

It’s unclear whether Assange would make it to U.S. soil by the time of Stone’s trial in November. But for the longtime Trump confidant, a connoisseur of political theater, putting the iconic, white-haired hacker on the stand would have the added benefit of producing a pure media spectacle.

Stone and his legal team are under a gag order, which bars them from speaking publicly about the case, other than to raise money for Stone’s legal defense fund or say that he has pleaded not guilty. A lawyer for Stone, Grant Smith, declined to comment, as did Marc Raimondi, a national security spokesman for the Justice Department.

Even with Assange’s arrest, several hurdles could prevent his testimony. A hearing on the U.S. extradition request is scheduled for May, but it could be denied, or Assange could appeal an extradition, dragging out the process past the conclusion of Stone’s trial. And if Stone’s team formally seeks Assange’s testimony, a judge could rule it irrelevant or Assange could refuse to cooperate, especially given that he faces unrelated criminal charges of his own and testimony would open him up to cross-examination by prosecutors.

WikiLeaks has denied having contact with Stone. “No communications, no channel,” the group told CNN in 2017. In February 2019, the group tweeted, “WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone” in response to congressional testimony from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that suggested Stone was in touch with the group during the presidential campaign.

Stone called Assange “my hero” during the presidential race. Following leaks of material from Democratic National Committee servers, repeatedly predicted that WikiLeaks would produce more material related to the election, which it did.

In August 2016, he emailed an associate, former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg, “I dined with my new pal Julian Assange last nite” according to The Wall Street Journal. But no evidence has emerged that Stone actually entered the heavily surveilled Ecuadorian embassy, and Stone has said the email was a joke.

Stone, a Donald Trump adviser in formal and informal capacities going back to the 1980s, pleaded not guilty in January to charges that he misled Congress about his efforts to communicate with WikiLeaks and attempted to intimidate Randy Credico, a witness in Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian election meddling who communicated with both WikiLeaks and Stone in 2016.

In April 2018, Stone allegedly threatened Credico’s pet Bianca in a text message, writing that he would “take that dog away from you,” and adding later, “I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].” He also allegedly urged Credico to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli’” a reference to a character in the “Godfather Part II” who lies under oath to Congress about organized crime activities. (Stone has said the messages were intended to be “light-hearted.”)

Stone has not been charged with any involvement in hacking or conspiracy related to the WikiLeaks releases.

Until Thursday, Assange had been living under asylum protection in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, an arrangement that would have made it difficult to obtain his testimony in a U.S. court proceeding. After Assange’s arrest, the U.S. requested his extradition to face unrelated hacking charges stemming from WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of a cache of secret U.S. government documents
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/ ... ge-1272933


Pence: Trump’s Constant Love For WikiLeaks Wasn’t An ‘Endorsement’
David Taintor

Don’t read anything into President Trump’s countless compliments of WikiLeaks during the 2016 election, Vice President Mike Pence told CNN in an interview Friday.

Trump mentioning WikiLeaks dozens of times in the final month of the 2016 election doesn’t mean Trump “endorsed” the group’s activities, according to Pence.

“The President, when he was a candidate, welcomed seeing WikiLeaks and the information they got from Hillary Clinton. Has that changed?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Pence.

“Well I think the President always, as you in the media do, always welcomes information. But that was in no way an endorsement,” Pence said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London Thursday. The U.S. charged Assange with one count of trying to hack a classified U.S. government computer. Prosecutors are seeking to extradite Assange to the U.S.

Watch Pence’s comments:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mike ... ndorsement



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-xeGWcvifw

Here Are The Never-Before-Seen US Government Damage Reports Made In The WikiLeaks Aftermath
One report concluded that “lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk” as a result of the leaks.

Jason Leopold
Posted on April 11, 2019, at 3:07 p.m. ET


The Department of Defense authorized several damage assessment reports after WikiLeaks released its massive cache of classified documents, and BuzzFeed News can reveal some of their contents for the first time.

The heavily redacted reports cover a roughly three-year time span. BuzzFeed News obtained more than 300 pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

One PowerPoint presentation showed the US government closely monitored media reports about WikiLeaks and even studied where WikiLeaks was googled the most in the US: Washington, DC.

Another report concluded that “lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk” as a result of the leaks.

Over a span of years, WikiLeaks released State Department cables, Iraq war logs, top secret files on Guantanamo detainees, and a video depicting the US military killing Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists from an Apache helicopter — all records leaked to the organization by former Army private Chelsea Manning.

On Thursday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange associated with the leaks, accusing him of conspiring with Manning to hack government computers in an attempt to pry loose additional documents.

Manning, a whistleblower who was convicted of Espionage Act violations and served seven years in a military prison, has been incarcerated in a Washington, DC, jail for the past month for refusing to testify about WikiLeaks before a grand jury.

WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which were published by dozens of news outlets around the world, laid bare how US military and intelligence agencies carried out its war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and the treatment of detainees it captured.

According to the documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, the leaks were highly embarrassing to the US government and endangered the lives of foreign sources who provided the US with intelligence related to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Several damage assessment reports say that the records released by WikiLeaks contained details about previously undisclosed civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, which “could be used by the press or our adversaries to negatively impact support for current operations in the region.”

Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Iraq-related military documents and State Department cables, the report assessed “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”

One heavily redacted damage assessment report determined that a different set of documents published the same year, relating to the US war in Afghanistan, would not result in “significant impact” to US operations.

It did, however, have the potential to cause “serious damage” to “intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population,” and US and NATO intelligence collection efforts. The most significant impact of the leaks, the report concluded, would likely be on the lives of “cooperative Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors.”

“The lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk,” the executive summary of a June 2011 task force report said.

The reports were prepared by an "Information Review Task Force" set up by the Defense Intelligence Agency and was overseen by former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Michael Vickers, and, beginning in 2012, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, one of the Trump administration officials who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

To prepare the damage assessments, more than 20 federal government agencies, including the FBI, NSA, CIA, the Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security, conducted a line-by-line review of more than 740,000 pages of classified documents “known or believed compromised” by WikiLeaks to assess the damage.


DOD
A 2011 PowerPoint presentation reveals the US government had been closely monitoring media reports about WikiLeaks and even studied where WikiLeaks was googled the most in the US — that would be in Washington, DC — and warned lawmakers and officials at the Justice Department that WikiLeaks “was NOT a one-time phenomenon. It represents a 21st Century reality.”

“WikiLeaks’ stated goals of creating a much more open society by revealing government secrets and ‘wrong-doing’ are regarded positively by large sectors of the world’s population, even if members of the public do not condone the group’s methods,” read a bullet point in one slide titled “WikiLeaks Permanently Changes the Disclosure Game.”

A previously unreleased damage assessment conducted by a team from the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization studied how 111,000 IED-related leaked WikiLeaks records “may lead to the compromise of Counter IED tactics, techniques and procedures used by Coalition Forces conducting exploitation of IED events.”

The team found the release of the records revealing the identities of local nationals will result in “an increase in intimidation and/or assassination” and lead insurgents to change their tactics, techniques, and procedures “to account for an improved awareness of [Coalition Forces] capabilities and vulnerabilities.”


DOD
A slide in another Defense Intelligence Agency PowerPoint presentation raises the question “Where are the Russia Cables?”

The slide points out that Assange sold US diplomatic cables to an independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, owned by former president Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, seen as damaging to the Russian government.

But the paper only published two stories “amid much hype about what would be exposed,” and the sale may have actually been an effort to keep the cables “out of the public eye.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ja ... ge-reports


EXCLUSIVE Putin’s Ukrainian Refugee Crisis: the leaks Assange wouldn’t Touch

Stephen Komarnyckyj
5 April 2019


A hacked trove of documents shows Russia’s Interior Ministry struggling to cope with a refugee crisis caused by President Putin’s Ukrainian adventure

A cache of hacked documents, which Wikileaks has refused to publish, show how Putin’s war on Ukraine destabilised Russia in 2014. The documents are internal reports from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The government department responsible for policing.

After Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in February 2014, Ukrainian refugees began flooding into the Russian provinces along the Ukrainian border, particularly Rostov. Heavily armed Russian troops and paramilitaries flowed in the opposite direction.

To cope with this, Russia created two pseudo republics, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), as a front for its invasion of Ukraine, and established pseudo armies for them. The soldiers of these two fake states were hired locals and Russian mercenaries. Many of them were ex-criminals, who were only too happy to let gangsters use the border points they controlled. But the arms Russia dispatched to its proxy forces were often smuggled back into Russia.
Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 8.28.10 PM.jpg


Section of an internal report detailing the arrest of an arms smuggling gang
On 18 October 2014, the police arrested a smuggling gang and seized automatic weapons and a mortar. Members of the DNR and LNR, themselves, were sometimes arrested carrying arms in Rostov. The ministry tried without success to stop the smuggling by stationing police cars near the border crossings controlled by the DNR and LNR, and searching hundreds of cars travelling from Ukraine.

The hospitals in Rostov province were also affected. On 24 October 2014 alone, 16 casualties of the fighting crossed the border from Ukraine. Ukrainian citizens with firearms and shrapnel wounds were also routinely admitted. The reports do not state the circumstances in which they were wounded, but these men would have been local Ukrainian collaborators in the DNR and LNR militias. Many of these men vanished without a trace in the fighting. One police report describes how a “continuously intoxicated” woman reported the disappearance of a Ukrainian citizen, a militia member, whom she was dating.

Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 8.28.31 PM.jpg


Interior ministry report showing that casualties from Russia’s war on Ukraine crossed the border into Russia for treatment
The chaos caused by Russia’s proxy armies, however, was a small problem compared to the Ukrainian refugees flooding into Rostov. In October 2014, one of them was found hanging from a tree [more detail – suicide or murder?], another was arrested for murder. The influx of a large number of displaced people naturally resulted in a rising crime rate.

The authorities in Rostov were simultaneously trying to finance Russia’s Safer Cities programme which aimed to increase public safety by reducing emergency response times. The programme involves a massive increase in camera surveillance in public spaces. In September 2014, VV Konenenko, a police colonel in Rostov, complained that his department hadn’t enough money to deal with the influx of refugees and purchase CCTV for Safer Cities.

The documents show that the ministry’s local departments were commissioning CCTV equipment for public spaces across Russia in this period. The invasion had resulted in an almost 50% increase in protests across Russia in the first quarter of 2014, according to their statistics. The ministry notes that Russians took to the streets both to support and to oppose the seizure of Ukrainian territory, but doesn’t give a numerical breakdown. However, one demonstration in support of the DNR and LNR in Rostov consisted of only five people. The main factor driving the boost in CCTV across Russia, was the threat of anti government protests.

Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 8.28.47 PM.jpg

Report detailing how mercenaries in Russia’s Donbas collaborator units were arrested carrying arms on Russian territory
The refusal by Wikileaks to publish the trove is explained in part by Assange’s championing of an anti-western narrative. The documents show that Russia was patching up wounded soldiers and militia from a war which it had started in Ukraine.

The documents also illustrate the negative consequences for Russia itself: rising crime, public unrest, and lethal weaponry flooding into Rostov province. The material will be invaluable when the history of Putin’s assault on Ukraine is written.

Wikileaks’s decision not to publish the documents raises some awkward questions. Why is an organisation which poses as an advocate of the truth trying to suppress ugly facts about a dictator’s covert war?

Wikileaks failed to respond to requests for comment.
https://bylinetimes.com/2019/04/05/puti ... dnt-touch/


THE LOGISTICS OF THE JULIAN ASSANGE INDICTMENT

April 12, 2019/13 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe, WikiLeaks /by emptywheel
THE EXTRADITION REQUEST AND INDICTMENT HAVE BEEN PENDING WHILE VAULT 7 AND ROGER STONE HAVE PERCOLATED
According to a BuzzFeed report from yesterday’s bail hearing in London, Julian Assange’s extradition warrant was dated December 22, 2017.

That means the extradition request came amid an effort by Ecuador to grant him diplomatic status after which he might be exfiltrated to Ecuador or Russia; the extradition request came the day after the UK denied him diplomatic status.

Ecuador last Dec. 19 approved a “special designation in favor of Mr. Julian Assange so that he can carry out functions at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Russia,” according to the letter written to opposition legislator Paola Vintimilla.

“Special designation” refers to the Ecuadorean president’s right to name political allies to a fixed number of diplomatic posts even if they are not career diplomats.

But Britain’s Foreign Office in a Dec. 21 note said it did not accept Assange as a diplomat and that it did not “consider that Mr. Assange enjoys any type of privileges and immunities under the Vienna Convention,” reads the letter, citing a British diplomatic note.


Both events came in the wake of the revocation of Joshua Schulte’s bail after he got caught using Tor, in violation of his bail conditions. And the events came days before Donald Trump’s longtime political advisor Roger Stone told Randy Credico he was about to orchestrate a blanket pardon for Assange.

In early January, Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and adviser to Donald Trump, sent a text message to an associate stating that he was actively seeking a presidential pardon for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange—and felt optimistic about his chances. “I am working with others to get JA a blanket pardon,” Stone wrote, in a January 6 exchange of text messages obtained by Mother Jones. “It’s very real and very possible. Don’t fuck it up.” Thirty-five minutes later, Stone added, “Something very big about to go down.”


The indictment used to submit an extradition request yesterday was approved by an EDVA grand jury on March 6, 2018, 13 months ago and just a few months after the extradition request.

That means the indictment has been sitting there at EDVA since a few days before Mueller obtained warrants to obtain the contents of five AT&T cell phones, one of which I suspect belongs to Roger Stone (see this post for a timeline of the investigation into Stone). The indictment has been sitting there since a few weeks before Ecuador first limited visitors for Julian Assange last March. It has been sitting there for three months before the government finally indicted Joshua Schulte, in June 2018, for the leak of Vault 7 files they had been pursuing for over a year (see this post for a timeline of the investigation into Schulte). It was sitting there when, in July, Mueller rolled out an indictment referring to WikiLeaks as an unindicted co-conspirator with GRU on the 2016 election hacks, without charging the organization. It was also sitting there last July when David House testified about publicizing Chelsea Manning’s case to the grand jury under a grant of immunity. It was sitting there when Schulte got videotaped attempting to leak classified information from jail, making any prosecution far easier from a classified information standpoint; that happened right around the time Ecuador ratcheted up the restrictions on Assange. It had been sitting there for 10 months by the time Mueller indicted Roger Stone for lying about optimizing the WikiLeaks release of documents stolen by Russia, again while naming but not charging WikiLeaks. It had been sitting there for 11 months when Chelsea Manning first got a subpoena to testify before an EDVA grand jury, and a full year before she went public with her subpoena. It had been sitting there for over a year when Mueller announced he was finishing on March 22; likewise it has been sitting there ever since Bill Barr announced Trump’s team hadn’t coordinated with the Russian government but remained silent about coordination with WikiLeaks.

In short, the indictment has been sitting there for quite some time and the extradition warrant even longer, even as several different more recent investigations appear to be relentlessly moving closer to WikiLeaks. It has been sealed, assuming it’s the same as the complaint the existence of which was accidentally revealed late last year because, “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

There’s a somewhat obvious reason why it got indicted when it did. As WaPo and others have pointed out, the eight year statute of limitations on the CFAA charges in the indictment would have run last year on March 7, 2018.

But that doesn’t explain why DOJ decided to charge Assange in this case, when Assange’s actions with Vault 7 appear far more egregious, or why the indictment is just being unsealed now. And it doesn’t explain why it got released — without any superseding allegations — now, even while WaPo and CNN report more charges against Assange are coming.

Here’s what I suspect DOJ is trying to do with this indictment.

THE DISCUSSION OF CRACKING THE PASSWORD TAKES PLACE AS MANNING RUNS OUT OF FILES TO SHARE
First, consider these details about the indictment. As I noted earlier, the overt act it charges as a conspiracy is an agreement to crack a password.

On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications, as designated according to Executive Order No. 13526 or its predecessor orders.

[snip]

The portion of the password Manning gave to Assange to crack was stored as a “hash value” in a computer file that was accessible only by users with administrative-level privileges. Manning did not have administrative-level privileges, and used special software, namely a Linux operating system, to access the computer file and obtain the portion of the password provided to Assange.

Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers under a username that did not belong to her. Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.


More specifically, the overt act relates to some exchanges revealed in chat logs that have long been public, dating to March 2010 (see this post for a timeline of some related activities from this period, but not this chat; this post describes a chronology of Manning’s alleged leaks). This is a period when Manning had already leaked things to WikiLeaks, including the Collateral Murder video they’re in the process of editing during the conversation and the Iraq and Afghan war logs that were apparently a focus of the David House grand jury testimony.

In the logs, Manning asks whether WikiLeaks wants Gitmo detainee files (a file that, in my opinion, was one of the most valuable leaked by Manning). Assange isn’t actually all that excited because “gitmo is mostly over,” but suggests the files may be useful to defense attorneys (they were! to some of the same defense attorneys defending Assange now!) or if Afghanistan heats up.

Image

Manning says she’s loading one more archive of interesting stuff.

[img]https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-12-at-1.21.20-PM.png
[/img]
This appears to be the Gitmo files.

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Manning explicitly says that’s all she’s got, and then talks about taking some years off to let heat die down, even while gushing about the current rate of change.

Image

Some hours later, amid a discussion about the status of the upload of the Gitmo files that are supposed to be the last file she’s got, Manning then asks Assange if he’s any good at cracking passwords.

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He says he has, “passed it onto our lm guy.”

Two days later Assange asks for more information on the hash, stating (as the indictment notes) that he’s had no luck cracking it so far. Then there’s a six day break in the chat logs, at least as presented.

Image

The next day Assange floats getting Manning a crypto phone but then thinks better of it.

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These chat logs end the next day, March 18, 2010. As the indictment notes, however, it’s not until ten days later, on March 28, 2010, that Manning starts downloading the State cable files.

Following this, between March 28, 2010, and April 9, 2010, Manning used a United States Department of Defense computer to download the U.S. Department of State cables that WikiLeaks later released publicly.


IT’S UNCLEAR WHETHER ASSANGE EVER CRACKED THE PASSWORD — BUT THE CHAT LOG SUGGESTS HE INVOLVED ANOTHER PERSON IN THE CONSPIRACY

Most people have assumed, given what the indictment lays out, that Assange never succeeded in cracking the password. I have no idea whether he did or not, but I’m seeing people base that conclusion on several faulty assumptions. (Update: HackerFantastic notes that Assange couldn’t have broken this password, but goes on to describe how using other code it might be possible; that’s interesting because Manning was alleged to have added additional software onto the network after the initial Linux device, on May 4, 2010.)

First, some people assume that if Assange had succeeded in cracking the password, the indictment would say so. I’m not so sure. The indictment only needs to allege that Assange and Manning entered into a conspiracy — which the indictment deems a password cracking conspiracy — and took an overt act, whether or not the conspiracy itself was successful. The government suggests that Assange’s comment that he’s had “no luck so far” shows that he has taken an overt act, trying to crack it. Nothing else is required for the purposes of the indictment.

Further, several things about the chat log, as received, suggests there may be more going on in the background. There’s the six day gap after that conversation. There’s the contemplation of getting Manning a crypto phone. And then the chat logs as the government has chosen to release them end, though as the government notes, ten days after they end, Manning starts downloading the State cables.

But the record at least suggests that this conspiracy involves at least one more person, the “lm guy.” Maybe Assange was just falsely claiming to have a guy who focused on cracking certain kinds of hashes. Or maybe the government knows who he is.

The reference to him, however, suggests that there’s at least one more person in this conspiracy. The indictment notes there are “other co-conspirators known and unknown to the Grand Jury,” which is the norm for conspiracy indictments. But there are no other details of who else might be included.

Yes, this particular conspiracy is incredibly narrowly conceived, focused on just that password decryption. But there’s also the “Manner and Means of the Conspiracy” language that has (rightly) alarmed journalists so much, describing the goal of acquiring and sharing classified information that WikiLeaks could disseminate, and describing the operational security (Jabber and deleted chat logs) and inducement to accomplish that goal.

In other words, this indictment seems to be both an incredibly narrow charge, focused on a few Jabber conversations between Assange and Manning, and a much larger conspiracy in which Assange and other unnamed co-conspirators help her acquire and transmit classified documents about the US.

THE LOGISTICS OF THE CONSPIRACY PROSECUTION(S)

Which brings me back to how this indictment might fit in amidst several larger, parallel efforts to prosecute WikiLeaks in the last 16 months.

This indictment may be the formalization of a complaint used as the basis for what seems to be a hastily drawn extradition request in December 2017, at a time when Ecuador and Russia were attempting to spring Assange, possibly in the wake of the government’s move to detain Schulte.

The indictment does not allege the full Cablegate conspiracy. David House testified months ago. And the government currently has Manning in jail in an attempt to coerce her to cooperate. That coercive force, by the way, may be the point of referencing the Espionage Act in the indictment: to add teeth to the renewed legal jeopardy that Manning might face if she doesn’t cooperate.

But what the indictment does — and did do, yesterday — is serve as the basis to get Assange booted from the embassy and moved into British custody, kicking off formal extradition proceedings.

As a number of outlets have suggested, any extradition process may take a while. Although two things could dramatically abbreviate it. First, Sweden could file its own extradition on the single remaining rape charge against Assange, which might get priority over the US request. Ironically, that might be Assange’s best bet to stay out of US custody for the longest possible time. Alternately, Assange could simply not contest extradition to the US, which would leave him charged in this bare bones indictment that even Orin Kerr suggests is a fairly aggressive charging of CFAA.

Barring either of those things happening, however, the US government now has one suspect in any conspiracy it wants to charge in the custody of a friendly country. It has accomplished that with entirely unclassified allegations, which means any other suspects won’t know anything more than they knew on Wednesday. Anything else it wants to charge — or any other moving parts it needs to pursue — it can now do without worrying too much that Assange will be put in the “boot” of a Russian diplomatic vehicle to be exfiltrated to Russia.

It has between now and at least May 2 — when Assange has his next hearing — to add any additional charges against Assange, while still having them charged under the Rule of Specialty before any possible extradition. It has maybe a month left on the Mueller grand jury.

Meanwhile, several things have happened recently.

First, in recent weeks two things have happened in the Schulte case. His lawyers made yet another bid to get the warrants that justified the initial searches excluded from the protective order. Schulte and his lawyers have been complaining about these warrants from the start, and Schulte’s public comments or leaks about them are part of what got him charged with violating his protective order. From description, it sounds like FBI was parallel constructing other information tying him to the Vault 7 leaks, and fucked up royally in doing so, introducing errors in the process (though the Hal Martin case makes me wonder whether the errors aren’t still more egregious). The government objected to this request, arguing that the warrants would disclose how the CIA stored its hacking documents and asserting that the investigation is definitely ongoing.

The Search Warrant Materials discuss, among other things, the way that the U.S. Intelligence Agency maintained a classified computer system that was integral to the Agency’s intelligence-gathering mission. Broadly disseminating that information would permit a host of potentially hostile actors to glean valuable intelligence about the way the U.S. Intelligence Agency maintained its computer systems or its security protocols, which would harm national security.

[snip]

The defendant’s abbreviated argument for de-designating the Search Warrant Materials is speculative, conclusory, and misguided. First, the defendant claims that the “time for investigation is long gone.” (Def. Let. at 1). The defendant is neither in a position to judge nor the arbiter of when it is appropriate for the Government to end its investigation into one of the largest-ever illegal disclosures of classified information. Simply put, while details are not appropriate for discussion in a public letter, the Government confirms that its investigation is not done and can supply the Court with additional information on an ex parte basis if the Court wishes.

Meanwhile, the government suggested severing the most recent charges — in which it has video surveillance showing Schulte leaking classified or protected information — from the underlying child porn and Vault 7 leaks.

As the Court is aware, trial in this matter is currently set for April 8, 2019. (See Minute Entry for August 8, 2018 Conference). To afford the parties sufficient time to prepare the necessary pretrial motions, including suppression motions and motions pursuant to the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”), the parties respectfully request that the Court adjourn the trial until November 4, 2019. The parties are also discussing a potential agreement concerning severance, as well as the order of the potentially severed trials. The parties will update the Court on severance and a pretrial motion schedule at or before the conference scheduled for April 10, 2019.


The defense didn’t weigh in on this plan, which (it would seem) would go a long way to eliminating the government’s parallel construction problem. They were supposed to talk about the severance issue in a hearing Monday, but it sounds like the only thing that got discussed was CIA’s refusal to comply with discovery. My guess is that Schulte will try to get those initial warrants and any fruit of them thrown out, and if that doesn’t work then maybe plead down to prevent a life sentence.

Meanwhile, Ecuador has taken steps to roll up people it claims have ties to Assange.

Tuesday, it fired a staffer in the embassy who had been extremely close to Assange (which may be how he learned about the plans to arrest him last week). Then, yesterday, Ecuador detained Swedish coder Ola Bini, alleging he was involved in some of the hacking they’ve accused Assange of. They also claim to know of two Russian hackers involved.

I have no idea if these developments are just Ecuador trying to cover-up corruption or real ties to WikiLeaks or perhaps something in between. There are no trustworthy actors here.

But — as William Arkin also notes — there’s an effort to test whether WikiLeaks has been at the front end of many of these leaks. Aside from WikiLeaks’ reported source for its Saudi Leaks files from Russia, Arkin focuses less on the reasons there are real questions about WikiLeaks’ relationship with Russia. I think we honestly won’t know which of the untrustworthy sides is being more trustworthy until we see the evidence.

Whichever it is, it seems that DOJ is poised to start building out whatever it can on at least one conspiracy indictment against WikiLeaks. The indictment and its implementation yesterday seems primarily to have served as a way to lock down one part — the most volatile one — of the equation. What comes next may assuage concerns about the thinness of this indictment or it may reveal something far more systematic.

In the meantime, Assange is represented by some great lawyers, both in the UK and here. Which at least increases the chances any larger claims DOJ plans to roll out will be tested aggressively.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/04/12/t ... ndictment/
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 5:22 am

Yeah I get it. Guilt by association is your bag. Pretty weak.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 5:53 am

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2019 ... qtC_k8b_9I

UK media, MPs unveil latest Assange deception

Now we can see how the media is going to collude in a narrative crafted by the political class to legitimise what the Trump administration is doing.

Rather than focus on the gross violation of Assange’s fundamental human rights, the wider assault on press freedoms and the attack on Americans’ First Amendment Rights, UK politicians are “debating” whether the US extradition claim on Assange should take priority over earlier Swedish extradition proceedings for a sexual assault investigation that were publicly dropped back in 2017.


But there should only be one response to the US extradition claim on Assange. That it is entirely illegitimate. No debate. Anything less, any equivocation is to collude in the Trump administration’s narrative.

The Swedish claim, if it is revived, is an entirely separate matter.

That the Guardian and the MPs are connecting the two should come as no surprise.


In another article on Assange on Friday, the Guardian – echoing a common media refrain – reported as fact a demonstrably false claim: “Assange initially took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden.”

There could be no possible reason for its reporters to make this elementary mistake other than that the Guardian is still waging its long-running campaign against Assange, the information revolution he represents and the challenge he poses to the corporate media of which the Guardian is a key part.

Assange and Wikileaks always said that he entered the embassy to claim political asylum so as to avoid extradition on to the US.

For seven years the political and media establishments have been deriding the suggestion that Assange faced any threat from the US, despite the mounting private and public evidence that he did. Assange again has been proved conclusively right by current events, and they decisively wrong.

The Guardian knows that Assange did not need political asylum to avoid a sex case. So reporting this not as a claim by his detractors but as an indisputable fact is simple, Trump-supporting propaganda meant to discredit Assange – propaganda that happily treats any damage to the cause of journalism as collateral damage.


Abbott commented on Friday that Assange’s current arrest was not about “the rape charges, serious as they are, it is about WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public.”

Abbott has faced a storm of criticism for her statement, accused of not giving enough weight to the Swedish case. In fact, her only mistake was to give it more weight than it currently deserves. She spoke of “rape charges”, but there are in fact no such charges. (Additionally, although the case is classed broadly as a rape allegation in Sweden, in the UK it would be classed as sexual assault.)

Rather, Assange was previously wanted for questioning, and has never been charged with anything. If the Swedish extradition request is revived, it will be so that he can be questioned about those allegations. I should also point out, as almost no one else is, that Assange did not “flee” questioning. He offered Swedish prosecutors to question him at the embassy.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby Grizzly » Sat Apr 13, 2019 6:27 am

Thx for your response Slad, guess that clear's that up. Back to the ol, TRUMPRUSSIARUSSIATRUMP, bullshit. Oh, and if that doesn't work sedsexsexsex! As if that's not the oldest trick in the spook book. Pro DNC talking points all the way. Right or wrong, eh, slad? True democrat!
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 7:49 am

Please read: guidelines for posting on the RI board
Postby Jeff » Wed Nov 08, 2006 9:38 am
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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:49 am

No one's denying elemental human values here, or saying you're a disinfo agent. You're just spamming/flooding the board with a ridiculous amount of posts on roughly the same subject, ie. your total horror and revulsion of Trump and it's tiring. And you're spouting general DNC talking points. And you're getting called out on it. No one is saying you WORK for the DNC. That's all. That is not a violation of your human rights or the board rules for that matter.

In addition, I'd say it's denying someone's humanity to snidely crow about someone's confinement to a couple of rooms for seven years in conditions which the UN called arbitrary detention in violation of his human rights.
Last edited by RocketMan on Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:51 am

you forgot the word spook....and making stuff up about me is not helping your cause....maybe you should go back to your faux complaint about photos :roll: did you ever check that thread where all the photos are that you participated in? How did that false made up complaint go for you? It would be helpful if you stopped making stuff up

but here we go again you derailing this thread with your personal opinion of me instead of staying on topic

it is an outrageous disgusting slur ...a personal attack

it's been report to Elvis


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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:10 pm

Daniel Ellsberg On Assange Arrest: The Beginning of the End For Press Freedom

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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:18 pm

since you brought up whistleblowers ...Reality is sitting in jail




John Kiriakou

Verified account

@JohnKiriakou
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.@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

@theintercept showed NSA the original document for comment.
https://twitter.com/JohnKiriakou?lang=en


Moon of Alabama

Do Not Trust The Intercept or How To Burn A Source

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/d ... ource.html


WikiLeaks Declares War on The Intercept
The FBI says a reporter led it to an NSA leaker. Julian Assange says that person, whom he suspects is an Intercept reporter, is a ‘menace’ to sources, journalists, and democracy.
On his personal Twitter account, Assange expressed support for Winner’s actions, saying “she is a young women [sic] accused of courage in trying to help us know.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks ... -intercept


The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/


Ted Rall
Et Tu, Glenn Greenwald?
June 12, 2017
Image
NSA whistleblower Reality Winner leaked a secret NSA memo to the journalism website The Intercept, which promptly betrayed her by showing the document to the NSA. Even worse, they told the Agency where it was mailed from. As a result, Winner is now warming the inside of a prison cell. At bare minimum, The Intercept owes Winner and its readers a big apology for burning their source. But who can possibly trust a news organization that has such close ties to the government spooks it claims to be covering?
http://rall.com/comic/intercept-burned-reality-winner


What’s important for readers to know, to The Intercept’s founding editors, is that their publication’s alleged source was not motivated by their Russia skepticism, or at least not spurred by the transcript of one recorded expression of it. What’s conspicuously lacking is that express solidarity with a woman — source or not — who is accused of, and facing prison time for, releasing a report that revealed no raw intelligence or intelligence-gathering methods but demonstrated, for the skeptics, that at least the U.S. intelligence community’s internal assessments track with its public statements.
But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.

https://medium.com/@charlesdavis/realit ... 70718aaac6


Reality Winner trusted Glenn Greenwald and now she's in federal prison

Greenwald had no problem throwing courageous Reality Winner to the wolves while protecting Assange

She actually sent the info to the intercept to prove to Greenwald that Russian interference...and she got prison time for her trouble

yea Glenn sees a difference in different whistleblowers depending on the info ...it is so obvious why she is in jail

Reality Winner should have known better than to try and contradict Glenn's pro-Russia/trump editorial line and given those docs to NBC.


But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.



The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept. Albury’s legal defense, led by Jane Anne Murray and Joshua Dratel, identified him as a whistleblower, stating that his decision to leak the documents was “driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI.”

Albury’s defense also noted that he has accepted “full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information,” referencing the fact that the document charging Albury was a two-page felony information. As noted by the Star Tribune, such a document usually signals an imminent guilty plea.

Albury had previously worked as a liaison on counter-terrorism matters at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He has been charged with one count of “knowingly and willfully” transmitting documents and information related to national defense to a news organization and one count of refusing to hand over documents in his possession to the government upon request.


While the FBI warrant filed against Albury does not explicitly name The Intercept, MPR revealed that the documents described in the search warrant exactly match a cache of FBI documents used in The Intercept’s article series titled “The FBI’s Secret Rules,” published in January 2017. Albury is alleged to have possessed and shared the documents with a news outlet between February 2016 and January 2017. The documents examine the expansion of, as well as the questionable tactics used by, the FBI since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Intercept’s current editor, Betsy Reed, stated that the publication does not discuss anonymous sources.

Read more by Whitney Webb

The Media’s Curious Coverage of the “Second Snowden”
Displacing WikiLeaks and Intercepting Whistleblowers: SecureDrop’s Security Problem
Palantir: The PayPal-offshoot Becomes a Weapon in the War Against Whistleblowers and WikiLeaks
FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
Former FBI special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley — who retired after 24 years after having opposed the invasion of Iraq and exposed the agency’s mishandling of information — told MintPress that she was “kind of surprised that FBI informant guidelines,” such as those allegedly leaked by Albury, “are now considered secret as, if I remember right, most of the informant guidelines were not classified when I worked there [up to and including 2004]. But after 9-11, things began to rapidly change, so I am guessing they have overly/improperly classified them [these types of documents].”

Rowley, who like Albury worked in Minneapolis during her time at the FBI, continued that “the informant program was replete with problems because there was no oversight” during her years at the FBI and that “Albury was probably trying to bring systemic problems [in the FBI] to the public. That makes him a true whistleblower.”

The Intercept fails to protect its source

Other information contained in the complaint against Albury has led some to suggest that The Intercept was responsible for outing or “burning” Albury as a confidential source. According to the FBI, The Intercept made two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in March 2016. Both of those requests contained specific information identifying the names of the documents that were not publicly available.

Previously sealed FBI search warrants show that these FOIA requests led the FBI to link references contained in the requests to Albury’s activity on FBI information systems. This led the FBI to conclude that “the classified and/or controlled nature of the documents indicates the News Outlet obtained these documents from someone with direct access to them” and that The Intercept had the documents prior to making the FOIA requests and then “used its knowledge of such documents to create the FOIA requests.”

Jesus, what a bad look. A second member of the US intelligence community, this time a Minneapolis FBI agent, has been charged with leaking to the Intercept. This appears to the the opsec failure: https://t.co/nMX1K2qUHn pic.twitter.com/eW3xTpsSf8

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) March 28, 2018

Ah the Intercept: Get a source, try to launder the source's leaked documents through FOIA requests, fail, publish anyway, get source arrested.#NeverChangehttps://t.co/Vb0tjD1M7T

— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) March 28, 2018

An FBI review conducted at a later date found that Albury had taken 11 screenshots of one of the documents specifically named in the FOIA requests by The Intercept and was one of only 16 individuals to access the document between August 2011 and March 29, 2016 – when the FOIA request was filed. The warrant also added that “to date, a review of FBI records has revealed no indication that any individual other than ALBURY both accessed this document and conducted cut and paste action.”

The FBI has asserted that Albury was found to have accessed more than two-thirds of the leaked documents published by The Intercept and had been caught taking photos of other secret documents months later in the summer of 2017.

Interestingly, The Intercept report referencing Albury’s arrest does not make any mention of the FOIA requests mentioned in the FBI’s case against Albury. A statement regarding Albury’s arrest from First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, mentions neither the FOIA requests nor the involvement of The Intercept.

Second whistleblower burned in less than a year

Albury is not the first source to have been burned by poor journalistic practices and source protection methods at The Intercept. Just nine months ago, Reality Leigh Winner, a now 26-year-old federal contractor, was arrested for allegedly leaking a classified NSA document to The Intercept that was related to an investigation of an alleged Russian military intelligence hacking operation targeting the U.S. Ever since her initial arrest, Winner has been held in pre-trial detention and has been denied bail. She faces up to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act and her trial is set to begin in October of this year.

While The Intercept has long maintained that it was unaware that Winner was the source of the document, FBI documents have shown that negligence helped lead federal investigators straight to Winner.The Intercept’s scanned images of the intelligence report that Winner leaked contained tracking dots – a type of watermark – that, according to Rob Graham of the Errata Security blog, showed “exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed.” These dots make it easy to identify a printer’s serial number as well as the date and time a document was printed. As Graham noted, “Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document.”

https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/871931112221794306

In addition, and perhaps most concerning of all, the FBI warrant also notes that the reporter in question – who is unnamed in the document – contacted a government contractor with whom he had a prior relationship and revealed where the documents had been postmarked from – Winner’s home of Augusta, Georgia – along with Winner’s work location. He also sent unedited images of the documents that contained the tracking dot security markings that allowed the document to be traced to Winner.

Despite that, The Intercept has never named the reporter who was responsible and has taken minimal responsibility as an organization for her arrest. However, Pierre Omidyar – the billionaire backer of The Intercept, who has a noted disdain for transparency organizations like WikiLeaks – has directed First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, to support Winner’s legal defense via its Press Freedom Defense Fund. It remains to be seen if Omidyar and First Look Media will offer to support Albury’s defense.

While the identity of the reporter mentioned in the FBI warrant remains unknown, the published report that used the document leaked by Winner has four authors – two of whom, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, were once involved in a case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Cole still writes regularly for The Intercept while Esposito’s last story for the publication was the report containing the Winner document. When Winner’s arrest was announced, Kiriakou specifically singled out Cole as having not only misled him, but also played a likely role in incriminating him. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

Kiriakou, in an email to MintPress stated:

I am appalled that yet another whistleblower in touch with The Intercept has been outed and arrested. The Intercept has a track record on whistleblowers that it should be ashamed of. Reality Winner was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. Terry Albury apparently was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. I was arrested and charged with espionage after being in touch with Matthew Cole, now an Intercept reporter. If The Intercept cannot or will not protect the identity of its sources, it should not be in the business of journalism. Indeed, perhaps The Intercept should walk away from national security reporting before its lack of journalistic professionalism ruins any more lives.”

Rowley, for her part, took a different view of the situation. She stated that “whistleblowing is so difficult these days for a lot of different reasons. … Both the whistleblower and the reporter are really up against some huge challenges. It’s probably not possible [anymore] to guarantee secrecy. If any reporter is promising that kind of thing, they are probably not being honest because the government has really doubled down on the ‘insider threat.’”

However, Rowley also expressed skepticism about recent hires at The Intercept and also asserted:

[The Intercept] should be a lot more forthright about this [Albury arrest] because this issue [whistleblowers, leaks] is their bread and butter. … That’s The Intercept’s brand and if they now are falling down on that job they should be as forthright as they could be about this mess and not just blaming [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions and Trump – the crackdown on whistleblowers has been going on for a long time.”

She also expressed concern about the SecureDrop platform that The Intercept promotes.

Pierre Omidyar and the Snowden documents

The news that another whistleblower in contact with The Intercept has been arrested is concerning, as it suggests that source protection at the outlet is not given the importance it deserves, especially when those sources are risking their freedom to get vital information out to the public. However, other actions taken by The Intercept in its short history have also raised concern and have been the subject of extensive reporting at MintPress News as well as other publications, such as Pando.

Much of the scrutiny, aside from the arrest of Winner and now Albury, has been aimed at The Intercept’s billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar, who is very well-connected to various agencies of the U.S. government and powerful politicians, including past presidents; has funded U.S.-backed regime-change efforts abroad; and still funds USAID, particularly its overseas program aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad. Omidyar also has a history of attacking the transparency organization WikiLeaks and has publicly stated that, in the case of those who leak documents to news outlets, those outlets “should help catch the thief.”

Concern and speculation related to Omidyar’s role at The Intercept has proliferated due to its glacial publishing of the Snowden documents. Indeed, The Intercept was founded with the mission to “aggressively report” on the leaked NSA documents Edward Snowden provided to Intercept co-founders Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. However, in the years since The Intercept’s founding, more than 90 percent of those documents leaked by Snowden have yet to be made publicly available, leading some to accuse the publication of having “privatized” leaks originally intended for public scrutiny.

Snowden, however, has not publicly spoken about the slow pace of the releases and, in the past, has said he delegated all decision-making regarding the release of the documents to the journalists to whom he gave his cache. Snowden’s lack of concern could also potentially be due to the fact that he is now the President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar since 2014. The majority of the FPF’s directors, aside from Snowden, either work for First Look Media – the Omidyar-owned parent company of The Intercept – or for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – which has received significant funding from the Omidyar network since 2004.

Another area of contention related to the release – or lack thereof – of the Snowden documents has been the timing with which some documents have been released. In two recent cases, The Intercept published Snowden documents that would have had a major impact had they been released earlier. In one instance, The Intercept published a document last year on the Syrian conflict that revealed that some Syrian “rebel” opposition groups were taking marching orders from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As MintPress reported at the time, The Intercept published this document only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.”

A more recent example of this occurred little over a week ago. On March 20, The Intercept published Snowden documents that revealed how the NSA worked to illegally “track down” Bitcoin users, naming tracking the movements of Bitcoin as a “#1 priority.” However, the information in this document was released only after Bitcoin had become a mainstream phenomenon. It also was released after it could have helped defend Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame.

As The Intercept itself noted:

Part of his [Ulbricht’s] unsuccessful defense was the insistence that the FBI’s story of how it found him did not add up, and that the government may have discovered and penetrated the Silk Road’s servers with the help of the NSA — possibly illegally. The prosecution dismissed this theory in no uncertain terms.”

Thus, if this document had been released before or during Ulbricht’s trial, it could have impacted the outcome. In 2016, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole and his legal team is seeking to appeal that decision. Interestingly, one of Ulbricht’s lawyers, Joshua Dratel, is currently representing Terry Albury.

“Welcoming” whistleblowers should not mean outing them

Despite its sizable financial resources and the number of employees who are dedicated to source protection, The Intercept’s practices have led to the arrest of a source — not once but twice — in less than a year. In the cases of Winner and now Albury, it has not taken full responsibility for its role in outing either of these unfortunate whistleblowers, but still seeks to present itself as a trustworthy organization that “welcomes whistleblowers.” Along with past calls to scrutinize the publication — as well as its billionaire backer — Albury’s arrest should serve as a fresh reminder that The Intercept has largely become part of the establishment journalism that it purports to stand against, and is hardly the haven for whistleblowers that it has presented itself to be.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/



The Intercept
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.

STATEMENT ON THE SENTENCING OF WHISTLEBLOWER REALITY WINNER FOR DISCLOSING NSA REPORT ON RUSSIAN ELECTION HACKING
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.
REALITY WINNER WAS sentenced today to 63 months in prison for disclosing a top-secret NSA document describing a hacking campaign directed by the Russian military against U.S. voting systems.

On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published a story about the document. We did not know the identity of the source who had sent it to us. Shortly after we posted our story, we learned that Winner had been arrested two days earlier. After an internal review, we acknowledged shortcomings in our handling of the document.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/23/rea ... n-hacking/




Reality Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, June 3rd, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one US voting software company just days before the US presidential election in 2016


It was provided to the Intercept, which made several mistakes related to source protection that led authorities to identify Winner as the person who gave the report to the media outlet.
https://shadowproof.com/2018/08/23/nsa- ... isclosure/



Evidence That The Intercept Betrayed Winner
The Intercept Sent A Copy Of The Document To An NSA Contractor Who Tattled
One of the Intercept's reporters shared a photograph of the document with another contractor in an attempt to verify its authenticity. Crucially, that reporter told the contractor that the document had been sent from Augusta, Georgia — where Winner lives.

[O]n May 24, a reporter from the Intercept reached out to an unnamed government contractor, trying to determine the validity of the leak. During the exchange, the Intercept revealed that the leak had been mailed with a postmark of Augusta, Georgia, where Winner lives. (Checking with other sources about the validity of a leak is not necessarily bad opsec; revealing specific information about the leak almost certainly is — though it's also probably more common than journalists would like to admit.)
[New York Magazine]

According to the FBI's search warrant affidavit, the contractor eventually told his or her superiors about the conversation with the reporter.

The Contractor informed the Reporter that he thought that the documents were fake. Nonetheless, the Contractor contacted the U.S. Government Agency on or about June 1, 2017, to inform the U.S. Government Agency of his interaction with the Reporter. Also on June 1, 2017, the Reporter texted the Contractor and said that a U.S Government Agency official had verified that the document was real.
Lawfare's Susan Hennessey points out on Twitter that the Intercept's contractor source was legally obligated to report any leak to his or her superiors, which means that the Intercept was taking a big risk by sharing the leak with him or her.


The Intercept Also Gave A Copy Of The Document Directly To The NSA
As part of the verification process, and to give the government a chance to recommend redactions of sensitive info, the Intercept shared some version of the document with the NSA.

The Intercept also passed along a copy of the document to the government as part of its reporting process — and that apparently contained some clues as well. "The U.S. Government Agency examined the document shared by the News Outlet and determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space," says one of the court documents.
[Washington Post]
http://digg.com/2017/did-intercept-burn-reality-winner



Mother of NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner: My Daughter Was “Nailed to the Door”
Amy Goodman Published August 24, 2018
NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison — the longest sentence ever imposed in federal court for leaking government information to the media. Twenty-six-year-old Reality Winner is the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act since President Trump took office. Her sentencing Thursday came after she pleaded guilty in June to transmitting a top-secret document to a news organization. She had faced up to 10 years in prison. We speak with her mother, Billie Winner-Davis.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison — the longest sentence ever imposed in federal court for leaking government information to the media. The 26-year-old Reality Winner is the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act since President Trump took office. Her sentencing Thursday came after she pleaded guilty in June to transmitting a top-secret document to a news organization. She had faced up to 10 years in prison.

This is Bobby Christine, US attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, speaking after Winner’s sentencing.

BOBBY CHRISTINE: The sentence rendered today is the longest received by a defendant for an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information to the media. It appropriately satisfies the need for both punishment and deterrence, in light of the nature and seriousness of the offense. … Winner’s purposeful violation put our nation’s security at risk. … She claimed to hate America. When asked, “You don’t really hate America, right?” she responded, “I mean, yeah, I do. It’s literally the worst thing to happen on the planet.” She was the quintessential example of an insider threat.

AMY GOODMAN: Reality Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, June 3rd, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one US voting software company just days before the US presidential election in 2016. The exposé was based on a classified NSA report from May 5th, 2017, that shows the agency is convinced the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier this morning, President Trump tweeted about the case, saying, quote, “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.” He was referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he has been attacking over the last 24 hours.

For more, we’re joined by three guests who were in the courtroom Thursday during Reality Winner’s sentencing. Joining us via Democracy Now! video stream is Billie Winner-Davis, mother of Reality Leigh Winner. She’s joining us from Augusta, where Reality Winner was sentenced. In Atlanta, Georgia, Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He has been covering Reality’s case and has covered several whistleblower trials, including that of Chelsea Manning. He was in the courtroom on Wednesday. And in Washington, DC, James Risen is with us, The Intercept’s senior national security correspondent, a best-selling author and a former New York Times reporter, also serves as director of First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Reality’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis. You were in the courtroom with your daughter. Can you explain your — can you share your reaction to her plea deal and sentencing?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Well, I think yesterday my initial reaction to the whole proceeding and the judge’s sentencing was, I was relieved that the judge did approve of the plea agreement that the parties had reached for the 63 months in prison with a 3-year supervised release. Today I’m a little bit bitter. I’m a little angry. No, I should say I’m a lot bitter today. Just processing it, knowing that she is going to be serving the longest prison sentence for this, hearing Mr. Christine’s comments about her, hearing, you know, again, that she has to be the deterrent for anyone else in America who would think of warning us, of blowing the whistle on something important like this, it’s just — it’s really hard. It’s hard, as her mother, to have to experience this and to know that she’s going to be the one who is going to set the example. She is that first leaker under Trump’s administration. She’s the first one that they intended to nail to the door as a message to others.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you share Reality’s statement yesterday before the judge?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Reality had a pretty lengthy statement that she had worked on. She basically — she let the judge know a little bit about who she was. She did share with the court that she was grateful for the professionalism that everyone had shown to her, the respectful environment. She let the court know, you know, a little bit about who she was, why she went in to serve her country. She basically went through her childhood, her relationship with her father, how 9/11 had affected her as a child, how she followed her stepbrother’s footsteps to go into the Air Force to be a linguist. She wanted to serve her country. She really had the desire to protect and defend and serve her country. I think she was trying to, you know, let the court know that although in some statements with texting with her sister she did indicate that she hates America, that that’s not really who she was. And so, she was really letting the court know a little bit about herself.

She also apologized to the court. She apologized to the government for the breach of trust. She apologized to the court and the government for the expense that she has cost them. She apologized to her family. She indicated that she knew that what she had done was wrong. She indicated that she was willing to accept responsibility and willing to move forward and accept the consequences of her actions.

AMY GOODMAN: How long has she been in jail, Billie?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: She’s been in jail for about 15 months.

AMY GOODMAN: Will that be part — will time served be part of that five — more than five years in jail?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Yes, it’s my understanding that that time served will count toward her sentence, day for day.

AMY GOODMAN: When she came into the courtroom, you heard her shackles?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Yes. That was — that was really difficult. That’s the first time that we’ve heard that, I think, because typically she’s been in the courtroom downstairs, and there’s carpeting. You know, you kind of hear her shuffle. But yesterday it was very quiet when they brought her in. And when she went up to the podium, you could actually hear her leg shackles hit the floor and make that clanking sound. It’s really striking that every time that Reality has appeared in court, she has to wear the orange inmate jumpsuit. She is shackled. She is very much presented as a criminal in that court. They dehumanize her, and they portray her as a criminal.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, your daughter Reality will be incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. Why a medical center?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: That is only the recommendation at this time. That’s the recommendation that her defense team is making for her, the recommendation that a psychiatrist is making for her. And the judge actually approved of that recommendation yesterday. Whether or not she’s placed there, we won’t know. That will be up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide. But we do feel like that facility will meet her needs. My daughter does suffer from severe depression. She does suffer from bulimia. This entire situation with her being incarcerated, her inability to really control her environment, has been very difficult on her. And we’re hoping that she is placed there, so that they can meet her needs and she can get the treatment that she needs.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you speak to her? Were you able to communicate with her yesterday?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Afterward, she called me when she was back at the jail. The defense team did ask the marshals if we could be allowed, you know, a brief visit with her yesterday at the courthouse. And again, we were denied. They make this request whenever they can. And again, the marshals will not permit us to be in the same room with her.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re speaking to Billie Winner-Davis. She is the mother of Reality Winner, who has just been sentenced to more than five years for releasing intelligence, leaking a top-secret document to The Intercept. When we come back, in addition to Billie Winner-Davis, we’ll be joined by Jim Risen. He is now at The Intercept. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He himself has been prosecuted, under the Obama administration. And we’ll talk about that, as well. And Kevin Gosztola, longtime reporter, in the courtroom yesterday, he’ll be speaking to us from Atlanta. Stay with us.
https://truthout.org/video/mother-of-ns ... -the-door/
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:20 pm

This has got what to do with Assange now? Your spamming has reached truly pathological and disgusting levels.

I'm not running to the mods even though I think everyone would benefit from you getting banned. I guess I still keep holding on to the fantasy that you would see how your actions are damaging to this forum. And you would stop this absurd game. That's all I want, really. I have no personal animus towards you whatsoever. I don't know you. Just your actions.
Last edited by RocketMan on Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:21 pm

what has your derailing comment have to do with Assange

I have no personal animus towards you whatsoever


oh yes you do or else you wouldn't constantly making up crap about me and your comment is so self serving

so be my guest do what you do ..keep derailing my threads with your personal opinion of me

the only one breaking the rules here is you

damaging to this forum


you damage this forum every time you make stuff up about me and derail my threads
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:27 pm

seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 7:21 pm wrote:what has your derailing comment have to do with Assange

I have no personal animus towards you whatsoever


oh yes you do or else you wouldn't constantly making up crap about me and your comment is so self serving

so be my guest do what you do ..keep derailing my threads with your personal opinion of me


When I start a thread, I don't claim ownership of it and start calling it "my thread".

Neither do I consider this "my forum", where I do as I please.

Anyway, :backtotopic: I realize this is pointless with you. You accept no responsibility for your own behaviour.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby RocketMan » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:29 pm

John Pilger: Julian Assange Exposed US' 'KILL THEM ALL' Mentality!

-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 13, 2019 12:30 pm


RocketMan
I think everyone would benefit from you getting banned.



thanks for wanting me banned....shows exactly what you are up to and why you are up to it....at least you have finally admitted to it

I am not playing games here... but thanks again for the personal attack

when you start taking responsibility for making up false reasons for your dislike for me posting here...I'll think about it

photos...remember the false made up reason of posting photos attack?

you just make stuff up as you go along....it would be helpful if you could stop doing that

RocketMan
When I start a thread, I don't claim ownership of it and start calling it "my thread".


well you have only started 6 threads in the past year so not much to complain about...no one came into your threads to derail them and get all personal with you...so you have nothing to complain about

RocketMan
Anyway, :backtotopic: I realize this is pointless with you. You accept no responsibility for your own behaviour.


and it is pointless with you to accept responsibility for constantly derailing my threads with your personal critique of me ..you can not take responsibility for your own disruptive behavior


RocketMan
Anyway, :backtotopic: I realize this is pointless with you. You accept no responsibility for your own behaviour.


yes you did what you came here for ...now we shall move on or are you going to continue to intertwine your personal critique of me with your on topic posts?

are we done now....got it out of your system for another week?


you are able to post anything you want in this thread as long as it is not an attempt to relay why you want me banned
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Sat Apr 13, 2019 1:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
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