Tagged: WikiLeaks
Ed Snowden Emerges From Hiding To Receive Award, Father Lon Snowden Makes Trip To Russia
Posted by Kristin Tate
October 10, 2013
A new photo of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has surfaced — it is the first photo released of Snowden since he left the Moscow airport.
Snowden emerged from hiding to receive the Sam Adams Associates Integrity in Intelligence Award. In the photo, the whistleblower appeared to be healthy and happy. He smiled as he stood next to Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks journalist who helped him get asylum in Russia.
At this time, the geographical location where Snowden received the award is unclear, but he was most likely in Moscow.
The Sam Adams Associates Integrity and Intelligence Award is given each year by a group of retired CIA officers. It is given to an individual who takes a stand against abuse of information gathering. Many of the award’s past recipients have been whistleblowers — in fact, the award itself is named after Vietnam whistleblower Samuel A. Adams. Wikileak’s Julian Assange received the award in 2010.
Four former US government officials met with Snowden on the day he received the award — they are the first Americans to have met with the whistleblower since he left the Moscow airport. They claim Snowden was in good spirits and did not regret the leaking of classified documents.
Former NSA official Thomas Drake was one of the four Americans who met Snowden. Drake said, “He spoke about going out and about and getting to understand Russia and its culture and the people. For his own safety it’s best that no one else knows where he actually lives. But I believe he is making the best of his circumstances and is living as normally as possible.”
Jesselyn Radack, a former Justice Department official, was also there. Radack said, “He spoke very openly about a whole range of things, a number of which I won’t get into here, but it certainly didn’t involve any kind of manipulation by the Russian government or anyone else for that matter.”
Snowden’s father, Lon Snowden, went to Russia to visit with Edward on the same day that the photo was released.
Lon thanked Russia and Putin for giving his son asylum. He also commented on his son’s current condition and future plans. He said to Russian media, “I’m not sure that my son will be returning to the U.S. again. He’s safe and he’s free, and that’s a good thing… I love my son.”
Lon said it was his understanding that his son had stopped leaking information, a condition of his asylum.
Some US government officials have said they believe Snowden was under the control of the Russian government. The whistleblower’s interactions with the four Americans seems to debunk this.
Related articles
- RT: ‘US unchained itself from constitution’: Whistleblowers on RT after secret Snowden meeting (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
- 4 US whistleblowers meet Snowden in Moscow (sfgate.com)
- 4 US Whistleblowers Meet Snowden in Moscow – ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
Facebook lost 9 million users in US due to privacy concerns
Written by Press Tv
Wed Sep 18, 2013 10:0AM GMT
Facebook users are quitting the US online social networking service in large numbers due to privacy concerns and fear of internet addiction, new research shows.
Reasons for quitting Facebook were mainly privacy concerns (48.3 percent), followed by a general dissatisfaction (13.5 percent), negative aspects of online friends (12.6 percent) and the feeling of getting addicted (6.0 percent).
Earlier this year research showed Facebook had lost 9 million monthly users in the United States and 2 million in Britain. Studies show the majority of users that quit the social website were older males.
Facebook, among other tech giants, have been repeatedly under scrutiny for their lack of user privacy, including turning over thousands of user’s info to the US government.
In August, Facebook revealed that the US government had asked the social network to disclose information on at least 20,000 of its users.
Facebook said it received “both criminal and national security requests” made by local law enforcement officials and national security agencies.
“Given high profile stories such as WikiLeaks and the recent [National Security Agency] NSA surveillance reports, individual citizens are becoming increasingly more wary of cyber-related privacy concerns,” said Brenda Wiederhold, editor of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking which published the findings.
Following the revelations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden about mass spying programs by the NSA, various Internet and communications companies are under pressure to protect the privacy of their users.
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- 11 Million Users Abandon Facebook (vineoflifenews.com)
Spy Files: New WikiLeaks docs expose secretive, unruly surveillance industry
Written by RT News
September 04, 2013 16:44
The growing surveillance industry complex is providing governments with increasingly sophisticated spying software to track and control their citizens, the latest documents obtained by the pro-transparency group, WikiLeaks reveal.
A trove of documents, outlining the activities of dozens of companies operating in the ever-expanding electronic snooping industry, were made available by the pro-transparency group on Wednesday.
‘Lawful interception’, mass monitoring, network recording, signals and communication intelligence, and tactical interception devices were among the services and products provided by a litany of Western based firms, as outlined in hundreds of pages of documents covering trade brochures, internal memos, and invoices.
“WikiLeaks’ Spy Files #3 is part of our ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry. This publication doubles the WikiLeaks Spy Files database,” the accompanying press release cites Julian Assange. “The WikiLeaks Spy Files form a valuable resource for journalists and citizens alike, detailing and explaining how secretive state intelligence agencies are merging with the corporate world in their bid to harvest all human electronic communication.”
One 2011 document showed how companies such as UK-based Gamma Group, German-based Desoma and Swiss-based Dreamlab are working in concert to “create Telecommunications Intelligence Systems for different telecommunications networks to fulfill the customers’ needs” regarding “massive data interception and retention.”
In March, Gamma International, which is a subsidiary of Gamma group, made Reporters Without Borders ‘Corporate Enemies of the Internet’ list for 2013, which singled out five “digital mercenaries” who sell their surveillance technology to authoritarian regimes.
The firm’s FinFisher Suite (which includes Trojans to infect PCs, mobile phones, other consumer electronics and servers, as well as technical consulting), is considered to be one of the most sophisticated in the world. During the search of an Egyptian intelligence agency office in 2011, human rights activists found a contract proposal from Gamma International to sell FinFisher to Egypt.
Bill Marczak, a computer science doctoral candidate at the University of California, helped investigate the use of FinFisher spyware against activists and journalists in Bahrain in 2012, as well as in other states.
“We don’t have any sort of contracts, so that we could see financial dealings between companies and these governments. The only indications that we have as to where the spyware has been used are based on the research. In cases that we’ve seen the spyware has been targeted against activists and journalists in a particular country. We’ve been scanning the internet looking for this technology. So we found, as I said, spywares in Bahrain. We saw it being targeted against Bahraini journalists and activists last year. We’ve also found servers for the spyware in a number of other countries, such as Turkmenistan, Qatar, Ethiopia,”Marczak told RT.
RT was the only Russian broadcaster that collaborated with WikiLeaks in this investigation, which also brought into the spotlight other companies including Cobham, Amees, Digital Barriers, ETL group, UTIMACO, Telesoft Technologies and Trovicor.
Trovicor, incidentally, also features among Reporters Without Borders “digital mercenaries.” The firm, whose monitoring centers are capable of intercepting phone calls, text messages, voice over IP calls (like Skype) and Internet traffic, has also been accused by of helping Bahrain imprison and torture activists and journalists.
While a smoking gun in the form of government contracts or invoices was not forthcoming, internal documents discovered by WikiLeaks do confirm that the firm’s dealings with autocratic states.
In a December 2010 correspondence between Nicolas Mayencourt, the CEO of Dreamlab Technologies AG, and Thomas Fischer from Gamma Group’s Germany-based branch Gamma International GmbH, a “quotation concerning the Monitoring system for iproxy (infection proxy)-project” is provided for an unspecified end customer in Oman.
One concern involved keeping the client [Oman] aware of any changes made to the proxy [intermediary] server infected with their software for the sake of culling information from select targets.
“During the integration tests in Oman in September 2010 the end customer figured out that not all of the components of the iproxy infrastructure are under their full control. It is, for example possible that changes of the Oman-network may occur without their knowledge. Thus, it might occur that ISPs [Internet service providers] may modify some of the current configuration. Therefore, the question arose whether it is possible to identify such a modification in the network setup by monitoring the whole iproxy infrastructure.
From this point of view, a request for an efficient and user-friendly monitoring of the iproxy infrastructure including all components of the systems was derived. This requirement is discussed and a proposal for solution is described in this offer.”
The infection process as was conducted on-site in Oman in 2010 can be conducted in two different variants, as described in a separate document, ‘System Manual Project O’, prepared for the Gulf client.
The first is described as a binary infection, whereby binaries (non-text computer files) are infected after being downloaded by the configured target.
“In order to do this, the software analyzes the data streams on the NDPs [network data processors] at both of the Internet exchanges (IX). As soon as a matching type of binary is downloaded, the infection mechanism is initiated, then it attaches loader and payload (trojan) to the binary.”
The second method is described as update infection, which “works by sending counterfeit server responses to predefined applications (for example iTunes, Winamp, OpenOffice and SimpleLite), when they are searching for updates.”
Data can be captured both through traditional public switch telephone networks (PSTN), mobile providers and internet protocol suites across a range of devices.
The user’s information, including his or her IP address, user name, [cell] phone number, the date time and identity of the person being communicated with, and the method or protocol (mail, WWW, Skype, chat, voice, fax, and SMS) are all up for grabs.
Upon being captured, the data is stored in a ‘Data Warehouse’ and “retrieved on command.”
Quotations for the project, enumerated in Swiss francs (CHF), are broken down in multiple categories:
Monitoring and alarming 83,355.00 Services provided by Dreamlab 34,400.00 Training 5,400.00 Annual solution maintenance 24,000.00 Redundant monitoring implementation 57,955.00 Services provided by Dreamlab for redundancy 5,760.00 Annual solution maintenance for redundant system 12,000.00
Note: 1 CHF = 1.06720 USD
Although such software does have legitimate applications for law enforcement, it can easily be used to stifle civil society, as Marczak argues was the case in Bahrain.
Apart from journalists and activists, he noted that in the Malaysia and Ethiopia, members of the political opposition were apparently being targeted as well. One piece of FinFisher spyware discovered, for example, contained details relating to the upcoming Malaysian elections.
“You couldn’t say exactly who was targeted against, but the use of election-related content suggests politically motivated targeting. We also found a sample of this spyware that appeared to be targeted at activists in Ethiopia. The spyware contained a picture of Ethiopian opposition leaders that was displayed when the user opened it. By opening the picture the user copied the spyware,” he said.
Related articles
- Leaked FinFisher presentation details toolkit’s spying capabilities (net-security.org)
- Turning the Table on the Trackers: Wikileaks Sniffs out Spy Salesmen (corpwatch.org)
- Turkmenistan and Oman Negotiated to Buy Spy Software: Wikileaks (corpwatch.org)
‘Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society’
Published on Wednesday, August 21, 2013 by Common Dreams
The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
Manning invoked that late Howard Zinn, quoting, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.
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- Manning to ask Obama for pardon, will pay ‘high price’ if not granted (rt.com)
- What Bradley Manning Leaked (blogs.wsj.com)
- WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Jailed for 35 Years (worldnewscurator.com)
Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison
Written by RT NEWS
Published time: August 21, 2013 14:18
A US military judge has sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison. Manning faced up to 90 years behind bars, while prosecutors sought to put the whistleblower away for a minimum of six decades.
Manning will be credited with the 1,294 days he spent in pre-trial confinement plus an additional 112 days. He was also dishonorably discharged, saw a reduction in rank and was forced to forfeit all pay and benefits. No additional fine, however, were levied against him.
Col. Denise Lind, who on Tuesday began her deliberations in the court-martial case, said she would announce the first sentence for Manning on Wednesday at 10am local time (14:00 GMT). Wednesday’s sentence will be for the army private’s disclosure of classified information through the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The prosecution had sought a 60-year sentence, arguing the stiff term would deter others from leaking classified information.
“There’s value in deterrence,” prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said in his closing argument on Monday.
Last week the 25-year-old Manning apologized for the “unintended consequences” of his actions, saying he believed he was “going to help people, not hurt people.”
He told the court at Fort Meade, Maryland, that “the last three years have been a learning experience for me.”
WikiLeaks responded to Manning’s mea culpa, saying “the only currency this military court will take is Bradley Manning’s humiliation.” The anti-secrecy group continued that Manning’s “forced” apology was done in the hopes of “shaving a decade or more off his sentence.”
The soldier was convicted last month of 20 charges including espionage, theft and violating computer regulations. Manning was found not guilty, however, of the most serious charge – aiding the enemy – which entailed a potential sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Manning faced up to 90 years in prison for passing on more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.
He also leaked video of ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which shows a US helicopter attack in Baghdad in which at least nine non-combatants were killed, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Manning is entitled to appeal against any verdict handed to him by the court-martial in the Army Court of Criminal Appeal within six months.
Bradley Manning lynched by the US government
Published time: July 31, 2013 01:32
The President of the United States (POTUS) had already said he was guilty. US corporate media had been screaming for three years he was guilty. Now the US government – who criminalized Manning with “evil intent” – has shown there will be hell to pay for anyone who dares to reveal American war crimes, which are, by definition, unpunishable.
As if there was a need of additional evidence of the “bright” future awaiting Edward Snowden – right on top of US Attorney General Eric Holder’s pathetic letter promising Snowden would not be tortured if extradited to the US.
All this as the Angel of History once more threw a bolt of lightning irony; Bradley Manning was pronounced guilty on no less than 19 counts by a Pentagon judge just next door to Spy Central, the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.
You’re in bed with al-Qaeda
Manning is an Oklahoman – just like music legend J.J. Cale, who died a few days ago. It was his decision to have his case heard not by a panel of military jurors – a close match to the Spanish Inquisition – but by a sole presiding military judge, Col. Denise Lind.
This was not exactly a sound move – as Lind was duly offered a carrot to go with the stick, in the form of a promotion to the US Army Court of Appeals after the show trial.
Unsurprisingly, Pentagon prosecutors defined Manning as a “traitor”, a hacker and an anarchist (yes, hackers and anarchists are worse criminals than al-Qaeda jihadists; after all, they are “our” allies in Syria).
The show trial had a Kafkaesque imprint all the way through. The Pentagon hacks at first refused to release court documents. Lind perfected a torture practice of reading for hours from abstruse rulings. Only under threat of a lawsuit from the media in a civilian court, the Pentagon reluctantly started releasing the odd document – obviously redacted to oblivion.
The only accusation that would apply to Manning is unauthorized disclosure of classified material. Everything else is a farce.
Manning’s defense argued he was a legitimate whistleblower; he never expected the leaked information to aid the enemy. Yet Lind denied a request by Manning’s attorneys to throw out the charge. She said he learned as a low-level intelligence analyst that the public release of secret information would risk US national security. The US government was adamant that Manning knew he was helping al-Qaeda when he released more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks.
Lind even altered the charges when the trial was over to suit the US government. US corporate media was too busy to notice it, revelling in the New York mayoral race scandal.
The fact that Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy still leaves him guilty on no less than 19 counts, including “wantonly cause to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the US government” – enough to possibly guarantee him decades of (military) jail time well into the 22nd century.
After sentencing, it will be up to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan – the new commander for the Military District of Washington. He will review the case – and in theory has the power to reduce Manning’s overall sentence. Holding one’s breath is not recommended.
The enemy is you
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, correctly, said on Friday that if Manning was convicted of aiding the enemy that would be “the end of national security journalism in the United States.” Still, the US government and the Pentagon will keep taking no prisoners in their campaign to criminalize investigative journalism from the inside (that’s what Manning and Snowden did) and on the outside (as in WikiLeaks and the work of Glenn Greenwald).
The hellish circular logic of the US government rules that to publish information on the internet means spying. So if the enemy goes on the internet, you are enabling the enemy. Manning being found not guilty of aiding the enemy but mostly guilty of everything else still delivers the message – translated in decades in a military prison.
The verdict also does not change the fact that anything is a “deep” military or national security “secret” if the industrial-military-surveillance complex says so. It totally fits the logic of the Pentagon’s endless war – which in fact is the same ol’ Global War on Terror (GWOT) of 2001-2002, codified in the Pentagon’s 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine (of which the NSA especially covers the cyberspace sphere), all brilliantly renamed by Tom Engelhardt as the Global War on You (GWOY).
It’s Paranoia Paradise; an infinite war with enemies lurking everywhere. The Bush-Obama continuum is the real star of this show; under the new war on terror that is not a war on terror – just as the military coup in Egypt is not a military coup – the Obama administration has already prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other US administrations combined.
Meanwhile, even Arctic polar bears know Donald Rumsfeld institutionalized torture in Iraq; the Pentagon killed an untold number of civilians in its self-defined “arc of instability”; the Pentagon never admits collateral damage (not to mention collateral murder); and the absolute majority of the Guantanamo prisoners are absolutely innocent.
Even if the US government and the Pentagon threw Manning into a variant of Edgar Allan Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum, they would never be able to hide their wasteland of war crimes. Assange is confined to an embassy, Snowden to an airport and Manning to a jail cell. But make no mistake; it’s the Masters of the Universe who are afraid, very much afraid. Afraid of anyone with a conscience; afraid of you; afraid of the whole wide world.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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U.S. rights group urges Nobel Peace Prize for WikiLeaks soldier
OSLO |
U.S. rights group RootsAction co-founder Norman Solomon (C) delivers boxes of over 100,000 signatures urging the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to Bradley Manning, a U.S. soldier convicted of leaking classified U.S. government files touching on military policy, to the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo August 12, 2013.
“There’s a cloud hanging over the Nobel Peace Committee,” Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction said on
Monday, as he prepared to hand his 5,000-page petition to the committee
Private First Class Manning was convicted earlier this month of charges that included espionage and theft for releasing more than 700,000 battlefield videos, diplomatic cables and other secret documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. He now faces up to 90 years in prison.
Solomon argued that the disclosures shortened the U.S. military involvement in Iraq and made it more difficult for the country to engage in conflict. A representative of the Nobel committee said the petition would not influence its decision.
“The Nobel Peace Prize is not a popularity contest and a large number of signatures will neither help nor hinder his (Manning’s) candidacy,” Asle Toje, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s Research Director said.
“It will be reviewed on its merit, based on the principles laid out in the will of Alfred Nobel. It’s not unprecedented that we receive a large volume of supporting material for a candidate … but these do not influence the committee.”
Manning, 25, was a low-level intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010 when he was charged with leaking files including videos of a 2007 attack by a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, two of them Reuters news staff.
The Nobel committee, which also came under fire for awarding the Peace Prize to the European Union last year, has repeatedly rejected criticism over its selection of Obama before the first black U.S. president had achieved anything notable in office.
The 2013 Peace Prize will be announced on October 11. A total of 259 people and groups were nominated by the February deadline, including Manning, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Myanmar President Thein Sein.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi, editing by Mark Heinrich)
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WikiLeaks founder: Obama surveillance changes vindicate Edward Snowden
The founder of the WikiLeaks website said on Saturday that President Obama’s announcement of changes to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program this week vindicated Edward Snowden’s release of information about the program.
“But rather than thank Edward Snowden, the president laughably attempted to criticize him while claiming that there was a plan all along, ‘before Edward Snowden,’” Assange continued. “The simple fact is that without Snowden’s disclosures, no one would know about the programs and no reforms could take place.”
Assange compared Snowden to former solider Bradley Manning, who was convicted of releasing classified information about the Iraq War, and Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
“As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently once stated, ‘All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent,’” Assange said. “Luckily for the citizens of the world, Edward Snowden is one of those ‘people of good conscience’ who did not ‘remain silent,’ just as Pfc Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg refused to remain silent.”
Obama said on Friday that he was planning to ask Congress to narrow and improve oversight of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to collect phone records, in response to criticism of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Obama also said he would ask Congress to carve out a role for civil libertarians in courts that give government agencies the warrants to grab data from private citizens and companies.
Assange accused the Department of Justice of “betraying two key principles that President Obama championed when he ran for office — transparency and protection for whistleblowers.
“During his 2008 campaign, the president supported whistleblowers, claiming their ‘acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled,’” Assange said. “Yet his administration has prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers than all other administrations combined.”
Obama said pointedly during a news conference on Friday that he did not think Snowden was a “patriot.”
By Keith Laing – 08/10/13
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316499-wikileaks-founder-obama-surveillance-changes-vindicate-edward-snowden#ixzz2bbfzCu88 Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
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- Obama’s NSA review vindicates Snowden, Assange says (cnn.com)
- JULIAN ASSANGE: Bradley Manning Verdict Is ‘National Security Extremism’ (businessinsider.com)
- Assange: Obama ‘corrupted the presidency’ (usahitman.com)
Global Clarity 