In response to Glenn Greenwald's coverage of the Wikileaks-Guardian-Tsvangirai controversy and the Guardian's recent retraction, The Atlantic's Max Fisher tweeted an interesting point, which throws into confusion the issue of exactly what time Wikileaks released the 09HARARE1004 cable:
@ggreenwald Not trying to start a fight, but WL time stamp looks to be older than Guardian's? http://bit.ly/ghUUKc http://bit.ly/hHtH2u
and:
@ggreenwald Correct me if I'm wrong, but from these, it looks like WikiLeaks published 21 minutes before the Guardian.
Fisher is pointing out that the timestamp in the header of the 09HARARE1004 cable released on the Wikileaks website reads "2010-12-08 21:09"
The publication date of The Guardian's version of the cable reads "Wednesday 8 December 2010 21.30 GMT."
This would appear to indicate that Wikileaks published the cable on their website 21 minutes before The Guardian did.
This is an important point, and it raises an issue I have been contacted about recently.
Last night in London the Frontline Club presented its first "On the Media" event of 2011, hosted by the club's founder, Vaughan Smith. The topic was WikiLeaks and its relationship with and impact on conventional journalism.
The panel was chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English. Panel members were:
Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian
David Aaronovitch, author and columnist for the Times (London)
Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism
Mark Stephens, media lawyer and attorney for Julian Assange
Video and text summary of the discussion
Reflections from Dominique Jackson of Babel @ Bedlam, who was present at the event.
In support of Wikileaks worldwide.
The Guardian: [Greek] Citizen Protection Minister Upbeat on Reorganization, Cooperation
"The Greek security minister told US diplomats in a private meeting early last year that police in his country knew the identities of almost every member of a new generation of home-grown terrorist groups but lacked the evidence to arrest and imprison them, according to a US diplomatic cable."
6. (C/NF) Chrysochoidis severely criticized the state of EYP, Greece's domestic security and intelligence service. He said bluntly, "EYP is nothing." It does not serve its mission of protecting Greece and in fact is dangerous to national security because of its many shortcomings, not the least of which is a unionized labor force. As a result, Chrysochoidis declared, he intends to "collapse and rebuild it" via a draft law that is in the process of being drawn up.
Last week, The Guardian published an article by James Richardson, a political and communications consultant who has worked in electoral campaigns for the Republican Party in the United States, in which Richardson aggressively criticized Wikileaks for the release of 09HARARE1004, a cable that, he argued, gave Robert Mugabe's faction within the Zimbabwe government a pretext for bringing a high treason trial against Morgan Tsvangirai.
I outlined here on WL Central how The Guardian was in breach of its journalistic duty in the publication of the piece.
National Law Journal: Jason Ching: Journalism WikiLeaks Style
Jason Ching surveys the prospects of a prosecution by the United States Government against Julian Assange, as a response to its recent document releases. The article is detailed, and considers U.S. law in detail, touching also on the case against Bradley Manning. Ching is not altogether favourable to Wikileaks, nor does he conclude that Wikileaks will avoid all legal liability, but his conclusion is that Wikileaks' proximity to the news and publishing industry is such that it will avoid the more drastic of the prosecutory efforts currently underway.
In summary, let's sweep away the tendentious arguments that Assange should not be extradited to the United States or that it is a violation of due process or other constitutional rights to prosecute him. Any fair analysis of the Espionage Act shows that he is chargeable, and yet any fair analysis of the political reality indicates that he is untouchable. The administration is faced with an impossible dilemma — WikiLeaks is joined at the hip with The New York Times et al., and its unofficial policy against charging news organizations protects them all. WikiLeaks, whether acting out of magnanimity or cleverness, cut the major news sources into the deal and in return gained functional immunity from prosecution for espionage.
Wikiileaks, April Glaspie, and Saddam Hussein
Stephen M. Walt provides some much needed analysis on the 90BAGHDAD4237 cable, which casts new light on the long debated meeting between U.S. ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein in July 1990, a week before the outbreak of war between Iraq and Kuwait. Walt addresses arguments made after the release of the cable by Wikileaks to the effect that the cable exonerates Glaspie of the now 20 year old suspicion that she condoned a prospective war with Kuwait. His verdict: that the cable reveals that the U.S. diplomatic stance towards Iraq was insufficiently stern, and is in part responsible for the outbreak of the war.
[T]his incident seems to be a classic illustration of a country applying what IR theorists describe as a "spiral model" remedy to a "deterrence model" situation. (In the "spiral model," states are aggressive solely because they are insecure, and therefore reassuring them is the best way to avoid war. In the deterrence model, states are aggressive because they are simply greedy or ideologically driven, and the only way to avoid war is to pose a credible deterrent threat.) The Glaspie meeting reveals that U.S. leaders were concerned about about Saddam's intentions, and the U.S. government tried to reassure him that we were friendly so that he won't do something precipitous. What was needed, however, was a clear and explicit statement that an attack on Kuwait would be met with an American military response. Glaspie never uttered such a statement, and we all know what happened next.
Today has seen increased anticipation of a forthcoming megaleak on an American bank. John Carney, Senior Editor at CNBC, posted on the CNBC "Network Network" blog a report purporting to confirm that the target of the next leak will be, as widely speculated, Bank of America:
Bank of America is the target of the next "megaleak" from WikiLeaks, according to a person who has close contact with top people at WikiLeaks.
and
Our source has confirmed that Bank of America is indeed the target of the next big leak. The source couldn't elaborate on the materials held by Assange.
A cautious reader of the news will regard with a healthy suspicion that an 'unnamed source' has confirmed something to do with WikiLeaks, especially given the uncertainty generated in the past by "WikiLeaks insiders".
Salon.com's Adam Clark Estes carried forward Carney's information, but added some information:
Assange also confirmed this morning outside of the British Magistrates court that the next leak would come soon.
It has to be questioned whether the quote cited as confirmation that the next leak will come soon indeed confirms that:
"We are stepping up our publishing for matters related to Cablegate and other materials," Assange said. "Those will shortly be occurring through our newspaper partners around the world -- big and small newspapers and some human rights organizations."
Speculation was renewed in early January as to the subject of Wikileaks anticipated release, related to a major American bank. WL Central has gathered the history of this story over the last two years to provide context for the speculation. This feature will be updated as more becomes available.
October 2009
In a ComputerWorld article from October 2009, Dan Nystedt reported on an interview with Julian Assange from the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia. The relevant quote is the following:
"At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives," he said. "Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it."
November 2010
In an Andy Greenberg interview with Julian Assange preparing for a cover story by Forbes, some information came out which indicated that a "megaleak" on "a major American bank" would be released "early in the new year." The substance of the leak was elaborated upon, but the bank was not named. A full reading of the interview is highly recommended for an understanding of Wikileaks intentions as regards the leak.
You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?
Ryan Singel, at Wired's Threat Level Blog, presents a laudatory analysis of Twitter's decision to challenge the DoJ's move, during a secret Grand Jury investigation in Virgina, to subpoena the private details of various accounts related to WikiLeaks. WL Central has covered this issue in detail (listed at the bottom of this post. Singel's article presents Twitter's decision in an industrial context, and plays counterpoint to the idea that "good corporate citizenship" should always mean complying with government wishes whenever that seems expedient.
From:WIRED.COM: Twitter's Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard
Of course, it's not the first time tech companies have stood up to requests for user data. Google beat back a government order to turn over search logs in 2006, after AOL and Microsoft quietly acquiesced. We've seen ISPs stand up for their users when movie studios try to force ISPs turn over user information in mass peer-to-peer lawsuits. And just last year, Yahoo successfully resisted the Justice Department's argument that it didn't need a warrant to read a user's e-mails once the user had read them.
But there's not yet a culture of companies standing up for users when governments and companies come knocking with subpoenas looking for user data or to unmask an anonymous commenter who says mean things about a company or the local sheriff.
In the WikiLeaks probe, it's not yet clear whether the feds dropped the same order on other companies.
Regardless, Twitter deserves recognition for its principled upholding of the spirit of the First Amendment. It's a shame that PayPal, Amazon, Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America and the U.S. government all failed - and continue to to fail - at their own versions of that test.
Other Coverage of the Twitter Subpoena on WL Central
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic parliament and former WikiLeaks volunteer, in Toronto to speak at the first Samara/Massey journalism seminar, will be interviewed by Steve Paikin of Television Ontario's The Agenda at 2 p.m. EST today. The interview will be livestreamed and will be archived on the program's website.
From Samara:
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, now a member of Iceland’s Parliament, has led a movement in her country to take the most far-reaching steps towards advancing free speech, freedom of the press and transparency in government of any country in the world. This initiative, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI) aims to bring together transparency laws from multiple jurisdictions to create the strongest media freedom laws in the world, with the goal of improving democracy and Iceland's standing in the international community.
In her talk, Birgitta Jónsdóttir will describe how and why she decided to help transform Iceland into the world’s safe haven for transparency, and what the impact has been to date, including her reflections on WikiLeaks’ ongoing revelations.
Common law conspiracy is an agreement by two or more to do an unlawful act, or to do a lawful act by unlawful means. The actus reus (guilty act) is the agreement itself. The mens rea (guilty mind) is the intention to carry out the unlawful act. Another way of putting it is that there must be a "meeting of the minds" to commit the unlawful act.
It does not matter that the conspiracy was not carried out, liability for common law conspiracy arises simply from the the agreement.
It goes almost without saying, that to avoid First Amendment protection of a hypothetical Espionage case (and I will leave those arguments to US constitutional lawyers), conspiracy appears to have a much greater prospect of success for the DOJ,
Global: Media Blitz to support Wikileaks
Date and time: Tuesday, January 11 · 10:30h - 13:30h
Details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120437981357342
Global: Wikileaks Flash Mob Event
Date and time: Wednesday, January 12 · 15:30h - 17:00h
Details: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112718522134191
Global: Global Protest
Date and time: Saturday 15 January 2011, 18:00h
Details: http://freewikileaks.eu/en/protests/
Global: Anonymous in defense of WikiLeaks and freedom of expression
Date and time: Saturday 15 January 2011
Details: http://www.whyweprotest.net/en/
Event Information: http://forums.whyweprotest.net/forums/planning.283/
Global: Global WikiLeaks Support Rally
Date and time: Saturday 5 February 2011, 15:00h local time
Details: http://www.facebook.com/pages/WikiLeaks-Supporters-United-global-Support...
Global: Freedom of Information Rally
Date and time: Third Saturdays Every Month
Location: Earth, Everywhere
Details: http://www.whyweprotest.net/en/
Event Information: http://forums.whyweprotest.net/forums/planning.283/
WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE
10 Jan 2011, 10:15 PM EST
“WikiLeaks: treat incitement seriously or expect more Gabrielle Giffords killing sprees.”
Wikileaks today offered sympathy and condolences to the victims of the Tucson shooting together with best wishes for the recovery of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords, a democrat from Arizona's 8th district, was the target of a shooting spree at a Jan 8 political event in which six others were killed.
Tucson Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, leading the investigation into the Giffords shooting, said that "vitriolic rhetoric" intended to "inflame the public on a daily basis ... has [an] impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with." Dupnik also observed that officials and media personalities engaging in violent rhetoric "have to consider that they have some responsibility when incidents like this occur and may occur in the future."
WikiLeaks staff and contributors have also been the target of unprecedented violent rhetoric by US prominent media personalities, including Sarah Palin, who urged the US administration to “Hunt down the WikiLeaks chief like the Taliban”. Prominent US politician Mike Huckabee called for the execution of WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange on his Fox News program last November, and Fox News commentator Bob Beckel, referring to Assange, publicly called for people to "illegally shoot the son of a bitch." US radio personality Rush Limbaugh has called for pressure to "Give [Fox News President Roger] Ailes the order and [then] there is no Assange, I'll guarantee you, and there will be no fingerprints on it.", while the Washington Times columnist Jeffery T. Kuhner titled his column “Assassinate Assange” captioned with a picture Julian Assange overlayed with a gun site, blood spatters, and “WANTED DEAD or ALIVE” with the alive crossed out.
A Croatian group announces its own whistleblowing site, making it time for another updated list.
While looking at this list, please consider the radically varying quality of the sites and the security. The Croatian one is actually found at http://wikileaks.hr/ and calls itself Wikileaks Croatia, without being in any way associated with Wikileaks. ScienceLeaks is asking people to upload material as comments to a blog.
Please don't take the appearance of a site on this list as any kind of a recommendation from WL Central. Buyer beware.
Le Monde: WikiLeaks dévoile aussi comment fut gérée la crise bancaire (WikiLeaks reveals as well how the banking crisis was handled)
A U.S. diplomatic cable in which figure Mervyn King, chairman of the Bank of England, Robert Kimmitt, then U.S. deputy treasury secretary, and Robert Tuttle, U.S. ambassador to Britain, has been released by WikiLeaks. It shows the players agreeing, March 17, 2008, on a diagnosis of the crisis, one that they admit ceased, from summer 2007, to be a liquidity crisis and that became instead a solvency crisis generalized within the banking sector. Although a view widely shared by commentators in the financial press at the time, it will reverse the diagnosis that these players have chosen to present to the public, a position from which they have never departed.
The Wachowski brothers’ 1999-2003 film series, The Matrix gained worldwide popularity and since its release has been very influential. It is not simply a film, but has become a cultural phenomenon. In past ages, it was philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant that engaged youth with deep questions and the search for meaning in their lives. Yet Neo’s conundrum “What is real?” has become the question of our age.
Politiken.DK: [Danish] government involved in double-dealing regarding CIA flights: documents reveal new aspects of the political manoeuvrings around illegal prisoner transports
The government, with former foreign minister Per Stig Møller in the lead, was involved in double-dealing in 2008, when it was forced to investigate whether the CIA had used Danish airspace for secret prisoner transports. While the government had to promise parliament to ask critical questions of the U.S. regarding the flights, both Per Stig Møller and the former prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen let their top officials say the opposite to the American ambassador in London: the government wants silence, not answers, hoping the story will die down.
The following contains no commentary; only quotes from a well reported cable release earlier this week. It will quickly become apparent why no commentary is required.
FRANCE AND THE WTO AG BIOTECH CASE
Summary: Mission Paris recommends that that the USG reinforce
our negotiating position with the EU on agricultural biotechnology by
publishing a retaliation list when the extend "Reasonable Time
Period" expires. In our view, Europe is moving backwards not
forwards on this issue with FRANCE playing a leading role, along with
Austria, Italy and even the Commission.
Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path
has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen
European pro-biotech voices.
Both the GOF and the Commission have suggested that their
respective actions should not alarm us since they are only
cultivation rather than import bans. We see the cultivation ban as a
first step, at least by anti-GMO advocates, who will move next to ban
or further restrict imports. (The environment minister's top aide
told us that people have a right not to buy meat raised on biotech
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