Around 8pmest every night
Sorry for the late post. I had to pay for more internet protection b/c my computer was getting attacked. My fault really since I had the least amount of protection and I use a pc b/c it was free and not a Mac.
Two updates by Greg Mitchell :
5:55 More from @EvgenyMorozov who has been on this all day: "Wow! julianassangemustdie.com is registered to melissaclouthier.com. Clouthier is a blogger for RightWingNews and StopTheACLU." Proof here. She hasn't added anything to her site since October but tweets @Melissatweets.
7:35 This is rich: Woman who apparently registered JulianAssangeMustDie as a domain name does joint podcasts with... Andrew Malcolm, the former Laura Bush aide and longtime L.A. Times blogger. "Malcolm & Melissa."
Informationthread 32 has a whole bunch of info on Twittergate.
Glenn Greenwald : Government-created climate of fear
One of the more eye-opening events for me of 2010 occurred in March, when I first wrote about WikiLeaks and the war the Pentagon was waging on it (as evidenced by its classified 2008 report branding the website an enemy and planning how to destroy it). At the time, few had heard of the group -- it was before it had released the video of the Apache helicopter attack -- but I nonetheless believed it could perform vitally important functions and thus encouraged readers to donate to it and otherwise support it. In response, there were numerous people -- via email, comments, and other means -- who expressed a serious fear of doing so: they were worried that donating money to a group so disliked by the government would cause them to be placed on various lists or, worse, incur criminal liability for materially supporting a Terrorist organization.
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But more significant than the legal soundness of this fear was what the fear itself signified. Most of those expressing these concerns were perfectly rational, smart, well-informed American citizens. And yet they were petrified that merely donating money to a non-violent political and journalistic group whose goals they supported would subject them to invasive government scrutiny or, worse, turn them into criminals. A government can guarantee all the political liberties in the world on paper (free speech, free assembly, freedom of association), but if it succeeds in frightening the citizenry out of exercising those rights, they become meaningless.
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Consider how this expresses itself with regard to WikiLekas. Jacob Appelbaum was first identified as a WikiLeaks volunteer in the middle of 2010. Almost immediately thereafter, he was subjected to serious harassment and intimidation when, while re-entering the U.S. from a foreign trip, he was detained and interrogated for hours by Homeland Security agents, and had his laptop and cellphones seized -- all without a warrant. He was told he'd be subjected to the same treatment every time he tried to re-enter the country (and his belongings, months later, have still not been returned). And he was one of the individuals singled out in the DOJ's court-issued subpoena to Twitter.
Since that airport incident, Appelbaum has been extremely (and understandably) cautious about speaking out publicly on anything having to do with WikiLeaks. In other words, he passionately believes in the cause of transparency promoted by WikiLeaks, but is afraid to exercise his free speech rights to advocate for that cause. Two weeks ago, he left the U.S. for the first time since that incident and has talked about the trepidation he feels when returning.
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This is the same reason for keeping Bradley Manning in such inhumane, brutal conditions despite there being no security justification for it: they want to intimidate any future whistleblowers who discover secret American criminality and corruption from exposing it (you'll end up erased like Bradley Manning). And that's also what motivates the other extra-legal actions taken by the Obama administration aimed at WikiLeaks -- from publicly labeling Assange a Terrorist to bullying private companies to cut off ties to chest-beating vows to prosecute them: they know there's nothing illegal about reporting on classified American actions, so they want to thuggishly intimidate anyone from exercising those rights through this climate of repression.
computer security expert Chris Soghoian documented how little the DOJ can hope to learn from the court-ordered Subpoena issued to Twitter :
- Amateur Hour. The 2703(d) order misspelled the names of one of the targets, Rop Gonggrijp. It also requested credit card and bank account numbers of several Twitter users, even though Twitter is a free service and so doesn't have such information (presumably someone at DOJ knows a little about Twitter, since the agency has 350,000 followers of its official Twitter account).
The Department of Justice prosecutor named in the order, Tracy Doherty-McCormick, was prosecuting online child exploitation cases just five months before the Twitter order was issued. Given that the wikileaks investigation is the most high-profile national security investigation of the decade, and that the court order seeks records associated with an Icelandic member of parliament, you would think that DOJ would assign this case to someone more senior.
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- Three of the individuals named in the order, Jacob Appelbaum, Rop Gonggrijp, and Julian Assange are computer security experts - Appelbaum has worked with the Tor project, and has co-authored some pretty awesome encryption research, Assange co-authored a deniable encrypted filesystem, and Rop has worked for several years to create mobile phone encryption software. All three likely use strong encryption to store and transmit sensitive communications and use Tor to mask their IP addresses. As such, I'm not really sure what DOJ hopes to gain by asking Twitter for this data -- as it is doubtful that these individuals have entrusted Twitter with anything private.
- Why the "d" order? For a case this high profile, it is quite shocking that the government is using a "d" order to try and gather information. At least for Assange and Manning, surely there is sufficient evidence already to demonstrate probable cause, and get a rule 41 warrant, which could be used to get full communications content and prospective location information? What is even more surprising though, is that criminal statutes are being used, and not foreign intelligence laws. To be perfectly frank, I would have bet money that DOJ had already obtained a FISA order to monitor Assange and any of his associates. I really don't know what to make of this.
- Twitter. The bigger story here, IMHO, far more interesting than the government request for wikileaks related info, is the fact that Twitter has gone out of its way to fight for its users' privacy.
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- Did the government seek the contents of private messages? As I wrote above, it's not clear if the government sought the content of private messages. Had they sought such information, I would have expected them to be clearer in describing that information. However, based on Twitter's actions in getting the court to unseal the 2703(d) order, had the government sought communications content, I would fully expect to see the company to fight that order, on 4th amendment grounds.
My guess is that the government opted to not ask for such information, purely as a strategic matter, as it probably feared that Twitter would lawyer up, refuse to disclose any communications content, and seek to have that part of 18 USC 2703 ruled unconstitutional.
Great LATimes editorial about the treatment of Bradley Manning
Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst suspected of providing documents to WikiLeaks, can't reasonably complain that the military has him in custody. But the conditions under which he is being held at the Marine detention center at Quantico, Va., are so harsh as to suggest he is being punished for conduct of which he hasn't been convicted.
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Some see Manning as a whistle-blower who deserves leniency for exposing official duplicity; others believe that, like anyone who engages in civil disobedience, Manning, if guilty, should accept punishment for his actions. But regardless of one's view of his alleged conduct, the conditions under which he is being held are indefensible.