Does the U.S. have a case against Julian Assange?

UPDATE November 8, 2018: This mayo615 post from October 2016, discusses the legal complexities of a potential espionage or conspiracy charge against Julian Assange by the United States.  As of now, November 2018, the indictment and extradition of Julian Assange to the United States seems highly likely.  My reading that such a charge was likely and possibly imminent, is now probably becoming fact. Ecuador’s newly elected government is tired of providing Assange with diplomatic protection. Ecuador is likely to happily give up Assange and cause his extradition to the United States by Great Britain. The increased likelihood of moving against Assange was originally heightened by numerous factors: Obama’s announcement on October 7th 2016 that the United States officially holds Russia responsible for the cyber theft of the Democratic National Committee documents released by Wikileaks, and Assange’s own statements of his intent to harm the United States, most recently in a video interview on Real Time With Bill Maher, which are now coming back to haunt him.

 

Reblogged from Agence France Press

Source: Does the US have a case against Julian Assange? | Alternet

Agence France Presse

If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say. On the other hand, over the course of Robert Mueller’s investigation, it has become much clearer that Assange was working directly with Guccifer 2.0 and probably Roger Stone, which alters the equation on his culpability.

Citing fears of prosecution in the United States, Assange remains holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London on Saturday, defying a British police order to turn himself in for extradition to Sweden.

Assange faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden but has refused to set foot there, saying he runs the risk of extradition to the United States, which he insists is intent on charging him with espionage or other serious crimes for releasing troves of once-secret files to the public.

Assange’s lawyers and supporters say his concerns are justified and not driven by paranoia.

They cite tough statements from senior US officials, interrogations of Assange’s colleagues and a grand jury investigation that has reportedly questioned associates of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing hundreds of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

“The grand jury is a serious business,” said Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer advising Assange. referring to the discussions to determine whether a criminal indictment will be issued.

Some with links to Assange have reportedly faced questioning when trying to travel outside the United States and federal authorities at one point demanded Twitter open the accounts of WikiLeaks figures.

“They’re all over this case,” Ratner told AFP.

The US Justice Department will not comment on the grand jury probe and says it has no role in the extradition proceedings in London. But spokesman Dean Boyd said: “There continues to be an investigation into the WikiLeaks matter.”

Some US lawmakers and commentators have called for Assange to be charged with espionage or for conspiracy to obtain secret documents, arguing that he intended to sabotage America’s foreign policy and endangered lives by revealing the identities of informants.

Charging Assange under the Espionage Act — a vaguely worded World War I-era law — would be a difficult challenge, as it requires the government to show the accused intended to harm the US government or aid a foreign power, analysts said.

Without knowing the evidence held by US investigators, it’s difficult to predict how the government will pursue Assange’s case, said Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor.

“It’s a very open question as to whether you could try him for espionage,” said Stimson, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation think-tank who oversaw detainee policies at the Pentagon under ex-president George W. Bush.

A better option for prosecutors may be “to see whether or not they could charge him with something like conspiracy to disclose classified documents,” he said.

A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds a poster reading “I’m Julian” as he demonstrates outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 23, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political asylum. If Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

But such an approach would be breaking new legal ground, experts said.

Unlike Manning, charged with handing over a massive cache of secret State Department cables and military intelligence logs to WikiLeaks, Assange is not a US government employee obliged to withhold classified documents.

The United States has “never really successfully prosecuted a non-government official for taking documents that were classified,” Ratner said.

His defense attorneys portray him as a publisher, who merely came into possession of sensitive information. But US investigators would likely try to paint Assange as a plotter who helped Manning spill secrets, with the aim of tarnishing Washington.

Assange’s supporters can take comfort from a recent case against two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of passing on classified information to Israel, the first time civilians were charged under the Espionage Act.

After a long legal battle, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges in 2009.

The seminal case that proved the limits of government authority over publishing secrets came in 1971 over the Pentagon Papers, when President Richard Nixon tried to stop The New York Times from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War.

The bid failed, with the courts citing the free speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case, said Assange’s website raises questions about the limits of freedom of expression, including the publishing of names of Afghans cooperating with the US government.

Some of Assange’s public comments have seemed to suggest a desire to undermine US foreign policy, comments that could backfire on him in court, Abrams said.

“WikiLeaks has a First Amendment argument, and it is a serious First Amendment argument if it is ever charged,” Abrams said on C-Span television in 2010.

“At the same time, the government has a genuine and serious national security argument to be made with respect to the behavior, often the misbehavior, of WikiLeaks.”

Yesterday’s Internet Outage In Parts of U.S. and Canada You Didn’t Hear About

How a Tiny Error Shut Off the Internet for Parts of the US and Canada

Reposted from Wired

Lily Hay Newman13 hrs ago

© Joe Raedle

A year ago, a DDoS attack caused internet outages around the US by targeting the internet-infrastructure company Dyn, which provides Domain Name System services to look up web servers. Monday saw a nationwide series of outages as well, but with a more pedestrian cause: a misconfiguration at Level 3, an internet backbone company—and enterprise ISP—that underpins other big networks. Network analysts say that the misconfiguration was a routing issue that created a ripple effect, causing problems for companies like Comcast, Spectrum, Verizon, Cox, and RCN across the country.

Level 3, whose acquisition by CenturyLink closed recently, said in a statement to WIRED that it resolved the issue in about 90 minutes. “Our network experienced a service disruption affecting some customers with IP-based services,” the company said. “The disruption was caused by a configuration error.” Comcast users started reporting internet outages around the time of the Level 3 outages on Monday, but the company said that it was monitoring “an external network issue” and not a problem with its own infrastructure. RCN confirmed that it had some network problems on Monday because of Level 3. The company said it had restored RCN service by rerouting traffic to a different backbone.

 

© Downdetector.com 

The misconfiguration was a “route leak,” according to Roland Dobbins, a principal engineer at the DDoS and network-security firm Arbor Networks, which monitors global internet operations. ISPs use “Autonomous Systems,” also known as ASes, to keep track of what IP addresses are on which networks, and route packets of data between them. They use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to establish and communicate routes. For example, packets can route between networks A and B, but network A can also route packets to network C through network B, and so on. This is how internet service providers interoperate to let you browse the whole internet, not just the IP addresses on their own networks.

In a “route leak,” an AS, or multiple ASes, issue incorrect information about the IP addresses on their network, which causes inefficient routing and failures for both the originating ISP and other ISPs trying to route traffic through. Think of it like a series of street signs that help keep traffic flowing in the right directions. If some of them are mislabeled or point the wrong way, assorted chaos can ensue.

Route leaks can be malicious, sometimes called “route hijacks” or “BGP hijacks,” but Monday’s incident seems to have been caused by a simple mistake that ballooned to have national impact. Large outages caused by accidental route leaks have cropped up before.

“Folks are looking to tweak routing policies, and make mistakes,” Arbor Networks’ Dobbins says. The problem could have come as CenturyLink works to integrate the Level 3 network or could have stemmed from typical traffic engineering and efficiency work.

Internet outages of all sizes caused by route leaks have occurred occasionally, but consistently, for decades. ISPs attempt to minimize them using “route filters” that check the IP routes their peers and customers intend to use to send and receive packets and attempt to catch any problematic plans. But these filters are difficult to maintain on the scale of the modern internet and can have their own mistakes.

Monday’s outages reinforce how precarious connectivity really is, and how certain aspects of the internet’s architecture—offering flexibility and ease-of-use—can introduce instability into what has become a vital service.

Kaspersky Lab Security Software Implicated in Russian NSA Breach

UPDATE, October 11:

Israel hack uncovered Russian spies’ use of Kaspersky in 2015 – The Guardian

An Israeli security agency hacked into Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab in 2015, providing the crucial evidence required to ban the company from providing services to the US government, according to a report.

While the Israeli spies were inside Kaspersky’s systems, they observed Russian spies, in turn, using the company’s tools to spy on American spies, the New York Times reports. That information, handed to the US, led to the decision in September to end the use of the company’s software across the federal government by December.

Read More: Israel hack discovered Russian spies use of Kaspersky Lab in 2015

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Software Includes a Feature That Copies Files And Provides A Backdoor for Russian Hackers – WSJ

Many know the name Kaspersky well. Others may only dimly recognize the brand name. Its anti-virus and Internet security software has been around for years in computer stores and OEM’d with computer systems. More than a year ago, I became concerned about what I was learning about Kaspersky Lab and its headquarters in Moscow, I began asking myself hypothetical rhetorical questions. What if Kaspersky was quietly working with the Russian FSB? What if Kaspersky had installed a sleeping Trojan Horse in millions of copies of its consumer computer security software? I was a user of Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity software myself. I knew that it was rated very highly by the tech journals. I liked its elegance and simplicity compared with other competitor products from U.S. based companies like Symantec and McAfee.  Nevertheless, as the Russian hacking of the 2016 election became an ever-larger issue, I decided to pull the plug on Kaspersky because of my fears, though there was no direct evidence of collusion between Kaspersky and the Kremlin at that time, wiped my system clean, and installed another competitor product.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Kaspersky software is implicated in the most serious breach of NSA security in years, validating my gut instinct decision more than a year ago.  My first hint of the serious nature of the Kaspersky/Kremlin connection came in a murky story related to the earliest public report on the Russian hacking stating with very high confidence that specific FSB officers and Kremlin officials had ordered and orchestrated the hacking. One of those individuals was also a senior engineer at Kaspersky Lab.  U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, (D., N.H.) said in a statement: “This development should serve as a stark warning, not just to the federal government but to states, local governments, and the American public, of the serious dangers of using Kaspersky software.”  She added: “The strong ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are extremely alarming and have been well-documented for some time. It’s astounding and deeply disturbing that the Russian government continues to have this tool at their disposal to harm the United States.”

Read more:

Source: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense – WSJ 

Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

The breach, considered the most serious in years, could enable Russia to evade NSA surveillance and more easily infiltrate U.S. networks

By

Gordon Lubold and

Shane Harris

The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 5, 2017 12:48 p.m. ET

The National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. An NSA contractor took highly sensitive data from the complex and put it on his home computer, from which it was stolen by hackers working for the Russian government, people familiar with the matter said.PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON—Hackers working for the Russian government stole details of how the U.S. penetrates foreign computer networks and defends against cyber attacks after a National Security Agency contractor removed the highly classified material and put it on his home computer, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

The hackers appear to have targeted the contractor after identifying the files through the contractor’s use of a popular antivirus software made by Russia-based Kaspersky Lab, these people said.

The theft, which hasn’t been disclosed, is considered by experts to be one of the most significant security breaches in recent years. It offers a rare glimpse into how the intelligence community thinks Russian intelligence exploits a widely available commercial software product to spy on the U.S.

The incident occurred in 2015 but wasn’t discovered until spring of last year, said the people familiar with the matter.

The stolen material included details about how the NSA penetrates foreign computer networks, the computer code it uses for such spying and how it defends networks inside the U.S., these people said.

Having such information could give the Russian government information on how to protect its own networks, making it more difficult for the NSA to conduct its work. It also could give the Russians methods to infiltrate the networks of the U.S. and other nations, these people said.

The breach is the first known incident in which Kaspersky software is believed to have been exploited by Russian hackers to conduct espionage against the U.S. government. The company, which sells its antivirus products in the U.S., had revenue of more than half a billion dollars in Western Europe and the Americas in 2016, according to International Data Corp. By Kaspersky’s own account it has more than 400 million users world-wide.

The revelation comes as concern over Russian infiltration of American computer networks and social media platforms is growing amid a U.S. special counsel’s investigation into whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign sought or received assistance from the Russian government. Mr. Trump denies any impropriety and has called the matter a “witch hunt.”

Intelligence officials have concluded that a campaign authorized by the highest levels of the Russian government hacked into state election-board systems and the email networks of political organizations to damage the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

A spokesman for the NSA didn’t comment on the security breach. “Whether the information is credible or not, NSA’s policy is never to comment on affiliate or personnel matters,” he said. He noted that the Defense Department, of which the NSA is a part, has a contract for antivirus software with another company, not Kaspersky.

In a statement, Kaspersky Lab said it “has not been provided any information or evidence substantiating this alleged incident, and as a result, we must assume that this is another example of a false accusation.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a statement didn’t address whether the Russian government stole materials from the NSA using Kaspersky software. But he criticized the U.S. government’s decision to ban the software from use by U.S. agencies as “undermining the competitive positions of Russian companies on the world arena.”

The Kaspersky incident is the third publicly known breach at the NSA involving a contractor’s access to a huge trove of highly classified materials. It prompted an official letter of reprimand to the agency’s director, Adm. Michael Rogers, by his superiors, people familiar with the situation said.

National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers. PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Adm. Rogers came into his post in 2014 promising to staunch leaks after the disclosure that NSA contractor Edward Snowden the year before gave classified documents to journalists that revealed surveillance programs run by the U.S. and allied nations.

The Kaspersky-linked incident predates the arrest last year of another NSA contractor, Harold Martin, who allegedly removed massive amounts of classified information from the agency’s headquarters and kept it at his home, but wasn’t thought to have shared the data.

Mr. Martin pleaded not guilty to charges that include stealing classified information. His lawyer has said he took the information home only to get better at his job and never intended to reveal secrets.

The name of the NSA contractor in the Kaspersky-related incident and the company he worked for aren’t publicly known. People familiar with the matter said he is thought to have purposely taken home numerous documents and other materials from NSA headquarters, possibly to continue working beyond his normal office hours.

The man isn’t believed to have wittingly aided a foreign government, but knew that removing classified information without authorization is a violation of NSA policies and potentially a criminal act, said people with knowledge of the breach.

It is unclear whether he has been dismissed from his job or faces charges. The incident remains under federal investigation, said people familiar with the matter.

Kaspersky software once was authorized for use by nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies, including the Army, Navy and Air Force, and the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Treasury.

The headquarters of the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab. PHOTO: SAVOSTYANOV SERGEI/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

NSA employees and contractors never had been authorized to use Kaspersky software at work. While there was no prohibition against these employees or contractors using it at home, they were advised not to before the 2015 incident, said people with knowledge of the guidance the agency gave.

For years, U.S. national security officials have suspected that Kaspersky Lab, founded by a computer scientist who was trained at a KGB-sponsored technical school, is a proxy of the Russian government, which under Russian law can compel the company’s assistance in intercepting communications as they move through Russian computer networks.

Kaspersky said in its statement: “As a private company, Kaspersky Lab does not have inappropriate ties to any government, including Russia, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts.”

Suspicions about the company prompted the Department of Homeland Security last month to take the extraordinary step of banning all U.S. government departments and agencies from using Kaspersky products and services. Officials determined that “malicious cyber actors” could use the company’s antivirus software to gain access to a computer’s files, said people familiar with the matter.

The government’s decision came after months of intensive discussions inside the intelligence community, as well as a study of how the software works and the company’s suspected connections to the Russian government, said people familiar with the events. They said intelligence officials also were concerned that given the prevalence of Kaspersky on the commercial market, countless people could be targeted, including family members of senior government officials, or that Russia could use the software to steal information for competitive economic advantage.

“The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security,” the DHS said Sept. 13 in announcing the government ban.

All antivirus software scans computers looking for malicious code, comparing what is on the machine to a master list housed at the software company. But that scanning also gives makers of the software an inventory of what is on the computer, experts say.

“It’s basically the equivalent of digital dumpster diving,” said Blake Darché, a former NSA employee who worked in the agency’s elite hacking group that targets foreign computer systems.

Kaspersky is “aggressive” in its methods of hunting for malware, Mr. Darché said, “in that they will make copies of files on a computer, anything that they think is interesting.” He said the product’s user license agreement, which few customers probably read, allows this.

“You’re basically surrendering your right to privacy by using Kaspersky software,” said Mr. Darché, who is chief security officer for Area 1, a computer security company.

“We aggressively detect and mitigate malware infections no matter the source and we have been proudly doing it for 20 years,” the company said in its statement. “We make no apologies for being aggressive in the battle against malware and cybercriminals.”

U.S. investigators believe the contractor’s use of the software alerted Russian hackers to the presence of files that may have been taken from the NSA, according to people with knowledge of the investigation. Experts said the software, in searching for malicious code, may have found samples of it in the data the contractor removed from the NSA.

But how the antivirus system made that determination is unclear, such as whether Kaspersky technicians programed the software to look for specific parameters that indicated NSA material. Also unclear is whether Kaspersky employees alerted the Russian government to the finding.

Kaspersky Lab Chief Executive Eugene Kaspersky. The company said it never would help ‘any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts.’ PHOTO: SHARIFULIN VALERY/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

Investigators did determine that, armed with the knowledge that Kaspersky’s software provided of what files were suspected on the contractor’s computer, hackers working for Russia homed in on the machine and obtained a large amount of information, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The breach illustrates the chronic problem the NSA has had with keeping highly classified secrets from spilling out, former intelligence personnel say. They say they were rarely searched while entering or leaving their workplaces to see if they were carrying classified documents or removable storage media, such as a thumb drive.

The incident was considered so serious that it was given a classified code name and set off alarms among top national security officials because it demonstrated how the software could be used for spying. Members of Congress also were informed, said people familiar with the matter.

Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pushed President Barack Obama to remove Adm. Rogers as NSA head, due in part to the number of data breaches on his watch, according to several officials familiar with the matter.

The NSA director had fallen out of White House favor when he traveled to Bedminster, N.J., last November to meet with president-elect Donald Trump about taking a job in his administration, said people familiar with the matter. Adm. Rogers didn’t notify his superiors, an extraordinary step for a senior military officer, U.S. officials said.

Adm. Rogers wasn’t fired for a number of reasons, including a pending restructuring of the NSA that would have been further complicated by his departure, according to people with knowledge of internal deliberations. An NSA spokesman didn’t comment on efforts to remove Adm. Rogers.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, (D., N.H.) said in a statement: “This development should serve as a stark warning, not just to the federal government but to states, local governments and the American public, of the serious dangers of using Kaspersky software.”

She added: “The strong ties between Kaspersky Lab and the Kremlin are extremely alarming and have been well-documented for some time. It’s astounding and deeply disturbing that the Russian government continues to have this tool at their disposal to harm the United States.”

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com and Shane Harris at shane.harris@wsj.com

Does the U.S. have a case against Julian Assange?

UPDATE: This mayo615 post from October 2016, discusses the legal complexities of a potential espionage or conspiracy charge against Julian Assange by the United States.  My reading that such a charge was likely and possibly imminent, is now fact. Ecuador’s newly elected government insistence that it will continue to provide Assange with diplomatic protection is becoming very thin.  It is more likely that time and diplomatic pressure will force Ecuador to give up Assange and cause his extradition to the United States by Great Britain. The increased likelihood of moving against Assange was originally heightened by two factors: Obama’s announcement on October 7th that the United States officially holds Russia responsible for the cyber theft of the Democratic National Committee documents released by Wikileaks, and Assange’s own statements of his intent to harm the United States, most recently in a video interview with Bill Maher, which are now coming back to haunt him.  It now appears that the technicalities of the indictment may be more complex.

Reblogged from Agence France Press

Source: Does the US have a case against Julian Assange? | Alternet

Agence France Presse

If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

Citing fears of prosecution in the United States, Assange remained holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London on Saturday, defying a British police order to turn himself in for extradition to Sweden.

Assange faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden but has refused to set foot there, saying he runs the risk of extradition to the United States, which he insists is intent on charging him with espionage or other serious crimes for releasing troves of once-secret files to the public.

Assange’s lawyers and supporters say his concerns are justified and not driven by paranoia.

They cite tough statements from senior US officials, interrogations of Assange’s colleagues and a grand jury investigation that has reportedly questioned associates of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing hundreds of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

“The grand jury is a serious business,” said Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer advising Assange. referring to the discussions to determine whether a criminal indictment will be issued.

Some with links to Assange have reportedly faced questioning when trying to travel outside the United States and federal authorities at one point demanded Twitter open the accounts of WikiLeaks figures.

“They’re all over this case,” Ratner told AFP.

The US Justice Department will not comment on the grand jury probe and says it has no role in the extradition proceedings in London. But spokesman Dean Boyd said: “There continues to be an investigation into the WikiLeaks matter.”

Some US lawmakers and commentators have called for Assange to be charged with espionage or for conspiracy to obtain secret documents, arguing that he intended to sabotage America’s foreign policy and endangered lives by revealing the identities of informants.

Charging Assange under the Espionage Act — a vaguely worded World War I-era law — would be a difficult challenge, as it requires the government to show the accused intended to harm the US government or aid a foreign power, analysts said.

Without knowing the evidence held by US investigators, it’s difficult to predict how the government will pursue Assange’s case, said Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor.

“It’s a very open question as to whether you could try him for espionage,” said Stimson, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation think-tank who oversaw detainee policies at the Pentagon under ex-president George W. Bush.

A better option for prosecutors may be “to see whether or not they could charge him with something like conspiracy to disclose classified documents,” he said.

A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds a poster reading “I’m Julian” as he demonstrates outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 23, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political asylum. If Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

But such an approach would be breaking new legal ground, experts said.

Unlike Manning, charged with handing over a massive cache of secret State Department cables and military intelligence logs to WikiLeaks, Assange is not a US government employee obliged to withhold classified documents.

The United States has “never really successfully prosecuted a non-government official for taking documents that were classified,” Ratner said.

His defense attorneys portray him as a publisher, who merely came into possession of sensitive information. But US investigators would likely try to paint Assange as a plotter who helped Manning spill secrets, with the aim of tarnishing Washington.

Assange’s supporters can take comfort from a recent case against two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of passing on classified information to Israel, the first time civilians were charged under the Espionage Act.

After a long legal battle, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges in 2009.

The seminal case that proved the limits of government authority over publishing secrets came in 1971 over the Pentagon Papers, when President Richard Nixon tried to stop The New York Times from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War.

The bid failed, with the courts citing the free speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case, said Assange’s website raises questions about the limits of freedom of expression, including the publishing of names of Afghans cooperating with the US government.

Some of Assange’s public comments have seemed to suggest a desire to undermine US foreign policy, comments that could backfire on him in court, Abrams said.

“WikiLeaks has a First Amendment argument, and it is a serious First Amendment argument if it is ever charged,” Abrams said on C-Span television in 2010.

“At the same time, the government has a genuine and serious national security argument to be made with respect to the behavior, often the misbehavior, of WikiLeaks.”

How to write to the Electoral College

Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has evolved into a genuine and unprecedented national crisis. Over the years, the Electoral College has deteriorated into a quaint rubber-stamp of each state’s elector outcome. Some states have even passed laws that prohibit electors from changing their votes. However, this is patently un-Constitutional and not the intent of The Founders. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that the intent was for the Electoral College to be a check on exactly the situation we are facing. Meanwhile,  a group of EC electors has demanded that the CIA share with the Electoral College its evidence of Russian interference in the election.

Christoper Suprun, a Texas elector, a Republican, and a 9/11 first responder, declared in an electrifying editorial in the New York Times last week that he will not vote for Donald Trump.  We all need to read Suprun’s impassioned patriotic words.

Read more:

The CIA revelation on October 7th that the Russian hacking was directed by the Kremlin, has been followed by last week’s confirmation from the CIA that the motive was not only destabilization but to aid the election of Donald Trump. Obama has called for his own Presidential report before January 20th. Many members of Congress have already been shown the CIA evidence. Congress is now in bipartisan agreement that it requires a full-scale investigation. Some are already calling for a national “investigative commission” like those for the Kennedy assassination and the 9/11 attacks.  All of this, and the Electoral College issue, requires our fullest attention.

Watch The Video

The Hamilton Electors: www.hamiltonelectors.org

How to write to the Electoral College

Source: directelection.org – How to write to the Electoral College

Read More:

REBLOGGED FROM DIRECTELECTION.ORG

WELCOME TO DIRECTELECTION.ORG!

The purpose of this site is to help you send your own signed postal letters to the members of the Electoral College from states won by Donald Trump to ask them, respectfully, not to vote for Trump.

The electors have already received a ton of e-mail and news attention, but a personal letter means a lot more. A single good old-fashioned, voter-to-voter personal letter is probably worth a thousand e-mails.

How realistic is it that we can politely convince enough electors to abandon Trump (and choose the popular-vote winner Hillary Clinton instead)? Admittedly, the chances are slim, but this is our only shot! Nothing else at this point, other than swaying the electors, can stop Trump from becoming president. Let’s not throw away our shot!

 

HOW IT WORKS

I’ve prepared a ready-to-print, customizable mail-merge in Microsoft Word and a set of ready-to-print Avery Standard 5160 labels for envelopes. Just download, add your name and address (customize more if you want), print, sign, put them in envelopes, address the envelopes, apply stamps, and mail.

So far, I have addresses for about 260 Trump-pledged electors. Total cost of postage if you mail them all: $122. Estimated time to print, sign, stamp them all: just under two hours.

If that’s too much for you, fear not. I’ve also broken it down by state. Just download the states whose electors you care the most about and write to those. (May I suggest Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio?)

Click here to see the content of the letter.

That’s it. Each document has an identical instruction sheet for easy execution. And the best thing is, if you don’t like the letter I wrote, you can change it however you like. This is your letter to the electors.

But remember: The Electoral College will cast its official votes on December 19, so we’ve got to act fast. The electors are elected officials. We voted for them when we voted for president in our various states. It is right that they hear from us.

 

ABOUT ME

I’m Jeff Strabone, registered Democrat from New York. I’m a U.S. citizen and voter who is terrified by the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president. He lost the popular vote and is unfit to be our president. If the electors take their responsibility seriously, I believe they’re obligated to block Trump. That is why I’m asking you to join me in sending polite, respectful letters asking them to do so.

Thank you.

Jeff Strabone

Minister of Information

CONTACT

Twitter: @jeffstrabone

E-mail: jeffstrabone@gmail.com

Ecuador cuts Julian Assange’s internet access: Reuters

Final Act of the Assange and Wikileaks Saga appears to be playing out

Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Monday that its founder Julian Assange’s internet was shut down by the government of Ecuador, deflecting blame from the U.S. or British governments which have sparred with Assange for releasing sensitive material.  My earlier predictions that Assange has worn out his welcome at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, appears to be playing out.  Assange and Wikileaks, originally portrayed themselves as an “international, non-profit, journalistic organization” with no political bias, that releases confidential information form anonymous sources for the benefit of the public. This image has been severely tarnished by Assange’s own statements, and numerous allegations of bias favoring Russia going back to 2011, and Assange’s own statements of a bias against the United States for seeking his prosecution.

Source: Ecuador cuts Julian Assange’s internet access: WikiLeaks | Reuters

Ecuador cuts Julian Assange’s internet access: WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks speaks via video link during a press conference on the occasion of the ten year anniversary celebration of WikiLeaks in Berlin, Germany, October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON

Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Monday that its founder Julian Assange’s internet was shut down by the government of Ecuador, deflecting blame from the U.S. or British governments which have sparred with Assange for releasing sensitive material.

“We can confirm Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet access Saturday, 5 pm GMT, shortly after publication of (Hillary) Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speechs (sic),” the statement from WikiLeaks said.

Assange has lived and worked in Ecuador’s London embassy since June 2012, having been granted asylum there after a British court ordered him extradited to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case involving two female WikiLeaks supporters.

WikiLeaks said Assange lost internet connectivity on Sunday night.

“We have activated the appropriate contingency plans,” added the Twitter message on Monday. People close to WikiLeaks say that Assange himself is the principal operator of the website’s Twitter feed.

The Ecuadoran government offered no immediate comment on the question of internet access, but the country’s foreign minister, Guillaume Long, said Assange remained under government protection.

“The circumstances that led to the granting of asylum remain,” Long said in a statement late on Monday.

The government of leftist President Rafael Correa has long backed Assange’s right to free speech, though the Wikileaks saga has caused some strain in relations with the United States, including the expulsion of diplomats in 2011.

Correa, whose term will end next year, has said he is behind

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who he says he knows personally, in the U.S. presidential election.

“For the good of the United States and the world … I would like Hillary to win,” Correa told broadcaster Russia Today last month.

Over the last two weeks, Democratic Party officials and U.S. government agencies have accused the Russian government, including the country’s “senior-most officials,” of pursuing a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

WikiLeaks has been one of the most prominent internet outlets to post and promote hacked Democratic Party materials. While denying any connection with a Russian hacking campaign, Assange has refused to disclose WikiLeaks’ sources for hacked Democratic Party messages.

Sources close to both the Democratic Party and WikiLeaks say they believe WikiLeaks has acquired as many as 40,000-50,000 emails hacked from the personal accounts of John Podesta, the former White House advisor who now chairs Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Despite Assange’s complaint that his internet connection was cut, WikiLeaks posted on Monday afternoon what it said was a fresh batch of Podesta’s emails.

According to a summary of the latest emails posted on Russia Today, a media outlet with close links to the Russian government, highlights include campaign staff discussions about “galvanizing Latino support” and about how to handle media queries about Clinton’s “flip-flopping” on gay marriage.

Does the U.S. have a case against Julian Assange?

The following article from Alternet, discusses the legal complexities of a potential espionage or conspiracy charge against Julian Assange by the United States.  My reading as that such a charge is likely and possibly imminent, which would lead to diplomatic moves by Ecuador to force Assange to leave their embassy in London and extradition to the United States by Great Britain. The increased likelihood of moving against Assange has been heightened in my opinion, by two factors: Obama’s announcement on October 7th that the United States officially holds Russia responsible for the cyber theft of the Democratic National Committee documents released by Wikileaks, and Assange’s own statements of his intent to harm the United States, most recently in a video interview with Bill Maher, which are now coming back to haunt him.

Reblogged from Agence France Press/Alternet

Source: Does the US have a case against Julian Assange? | Alternet

Agence France Presse

If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

Citing fears of prosecution in the United States, Assange remained holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London on Saturday, defying a British police order to turn himself in for extradition to Sweden.

Assange faces sexual assault allegations in Sweden but has refused to set foot there, saying he runs the risk of extradition to the United States, which he insists is intent on charging him with espionage or other serious crimes for releasing troves of once-secret files to the public.

Assange’s lawyers and supporters say his concerns are justified and not driven by paranoia.

They cite tough statements from senior US officials, interrogations of Assange’s colleagues and a grand jury investigation that has reportedly questioned associates of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing hundreds of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

“The grand jury is a serious business,” said Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer advising Assange. referring to the discussions to determine whether a criminal indictment will be issued.

Some with links to Assange have reportedly faced questioning when trying to travel outside the United States and federal authorities at one point demanded Twitter open the accounts of WikiLeaks figures.

“They’re all over this case,” Ratner told AFP.

The US Justice Department will not comment on the grand jury probe and says it has no role in the extradition proceedings in London. But spokesman Dean Boyd said: “There continues to be an investigation into the WikiLeaks matter.”

Some US lawmakers and commentators have called for Assange to be charged with espionage or for conspiracy to obtain secret documents, arguing that he intended to sabotage America’s foreign policy and endangered lives by revealing the identities of informants.

Charging Assange under the Espionage Act — a vaguely worded World War I-era law — would be a difficult challenge, as it requires the government to show the accused intended to harm the US government or aid a foreign power, analysts said.

Without knowing the evidence held by US investigators, it’s difficult to predict how the government will pursue Assange’s case, said Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor.

“It’s a very open question as to whether you could try him for espionage,” said Stimson, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation think-tank who oversaw detainee policies at the Pentagon under ex-president George W. Bush.

A better option for prosecutors may be “to see whether or not they could charge him with something like conspiracy to disclose classified documents,” he said.

A protester wearing a Guy Fawkes mask holds a poster reading “I’m Julian” as he demonstrates outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 23, where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking political asylum. If Assange ever ends up in a US courtroom, prosecutors could face an uphill struggle trying to convict him, given America’s legal safeguards for publishers, analysts say.

But such an approach would be breaking new legal ground, experts said.

Unlike Manning, charged with handing over a massive cache of secret State Department cables and military intelligence logs to WikiLeaks, Assange is not a US government employee obliged to withhold classified documents.

The United States has “never really successfully prosecuted a non-government official for taking documents that were classified,” Ratner said.

His defense attorneys portray him as a publisher, who merely came into possession of sensitive information. But US investigators would likely try to paint Assange as a plotter who helped Manning spill secrets, with the aim of tarnishing Washington.

Assange’s supporters can take comfort from a recent case against two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of passing on classified information to Israel, the first time civilians were charged under the Espionage Act.

After a long legal battle, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges in 2009.

The seminal case that proved the limits of government authority over publishing secrets came in 1971 over the Pentagon Papers, when President Richard Nixon tried to stop The New York Times from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War.

The bid failed, with the courts citing the free speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case, said Assange’s website raises questions about the limits of freedom of expression, including the publishing of names of Afghans cooperating with the US government.

Some of Assange’s public comments have seemed to suggest a desire to undermine US foreign policy, comments that could backfire on him in court, Abrams said.

“WikiLeaks has a First Amendment argument, and it is a serious First Amendment argument, if it is ever charged,” Abrams said on C-Span television in 2010.

“At the same time, the government has a genuine and serious national security argument to be made with respect to the behavior, often the misbehavior, of WikiLeaks.”

What Happens Now That Julian Assange is Implicated in Russian Espionage?

Assange In Possession of Documents Obtained By Russian Intelligence.

Assange Could Lose Ecuadorian Diplomatic Protection and Risk Arrest by United States

The next Bradley Manning?

Lost today in the extraordinary news frenzy surrounding the release of a video tape of Donald Trump making unprecedented lewd and obscene comments about women, was Barak Obama’s announcement that the United States officially and publicly accuses Russia of espionage in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, and stealing documents, now in the possession of Wikileaks.  Some may recall Julian Assange’s video interview with Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher about a month ago on this topic.  It seems clear from the Bill Maher interview that Assange is on a jihad against the DNC because Clinton wanted to prosecute him. He has no altruistic motives — it is personal. We have a foreigner trying to influence U.S elections using documents stolen by Russia.

Last week, Assange said that Wikileaks will release more DNC documents by the end of October.  But as I pondered Obama’s announcement today, it dawned on me that the United States surely now considers the documents in Assange’s and Wikileaks possession to have been obtained as result of Russian espionage against the United States.  This puts Assange in much more serious jeopardy than an alleged rape in Sweden.  Its seems highly probable to me that the United States will now criminally pursue Assange for being an accomplice to espionage against the United States.  Should this happen, the Ecuadorian government would abandon Assange, not wishing to damage relations with the U.S.,  and Assange would be quickly arrested by the British government and extradited to the United States.

Assange must have figured all this out, and is tonight trying to deal with the consequences of now being in a position similar to that of Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, now serving a long sentence in a federal penitentiary.

U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections

Reblogged from THE NEW YORK TIMES

By DAVID E. SANGER and CHARLIE SAVAGE   OCT. 7, 2016

President Obama in the Rose Garden on Wednesday. CreditAl Drago/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing emails from theDemocratic National Committee and from a range of prominent individuals and institutions, immediately raising the issue of whether President Obama would seek sanctions or other retaliation for the cyberattacks.

In a joint statement from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” The emails were posted on the WikiLeaks site and newer ones under the namesDCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said. It did not name President Vladimir V. Putin, but that appeared to be the intention.

For weeks, aides to Mr. Obama have been debating a variety of possible responses to the Russia action, including targeted economic sanctions and authorizing covert action against the computer servers in Russia and elsewhere that have been traced as the origin of the attacks.

The statement said that the recent “scanning and probing” of election systems “in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company,” but did not say the Russian government was responsible for those probes.

The president’s aides have also been debating whether to publicly attribute the attacks to Russia. Mr. Obama had decided against taking that stance in other cases where cyber techniques were used to steal tens of thousands of emails from the unclassified system of the State Department, the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As recently as Wednesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, refused to accuse the Russians of the cyberattack, even while talking at length about how to secure the American election system from foreign data manipulation and information warfare.

The administration’s announcement came only hours after Secretary of State John Kerry called for the Russian and Syrian governments to face a formal war-crimes investigation for attacking civilians in Aleppo and other parts of Syria. Taken together, the two moves mark a sharp escalation in Washington’s many confrontations with Moscow this year.

With little more than a month to go before the presidential election, Mr. Obama was under pressure to act now on the hacking, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations. The timing of Friday’s announcement was decided in part because a declaration closer to Election Day would appear to be political in nature, the official said.

The subject came up in the first presidential debate, with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee and a former Secretary of State, blaming Russia for the attacks. Her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, said there was no evidence that Russia was responsible, suggesting that the Chinese could be behind it, or it “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

The question now is how Mr. Obama might respond without setting off an escalating cyberconflict. One possibility is that the announcement itself — an effort to “name and shame” — will deter further action.

The identification of Russia was hardly a surprise: In late July, American intelligence officials told The New York Times that they had “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee.

The hack led to the resignation of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, as chairwoman of the committee, after the leaks suggested the committee had favored Mrs. Clinton in the nominating fight over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Anonymous, Chinese Hackers, RickRolling and ISIS

Anonymous Announces Plan to Attack ISIS Following Paris Killings

 

Anonymous, the murky global and leaderless hacking group has struck out on a campaign to disrupt ISIS’ sophisticated use of the Internet and social media. It claims to have disabled over 11,000 identified ISIS Twitter accounts with looped Rick Astley videos. For those of you not familiar with Rick Astley, he was a 1980’s British pop star of limited talent, whose videos are sometimes painful to watch.  For unknown reasons, Astley’s videos have been used in a variety of online pranks and hacking incidents since about 2007. So Anonymous did the convenient thing and used old Astley videos, a tactic now known as “RickRolling”, to disrupt and confound ISIS Twitter and other social media accounts.  I like it.  Striking back in this way is probably causing smiles in the French Intelligence Service, U.S. Defense Department, NSA, and GCHQ in the UK.

That said, there has also been sharp criticism of Anonymous in the press this week, notably CBC News in Canada, which quoted a leading cyber hacking author, Gabriella Coleman, the author of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, that the rush to embrace the group could be premature. She argues that Anonymous has made grievous errors in the past, and causing more harm than good.  A likely reason for this problem is that Anonymous creed is that it is leaderless, as its logo graphically depicts a headless figure.  That said, I disagree. This is exactly the kind of action that has the potential to take down ISIS. Anonymous has even posted a guide advising others on how they too can hack ISIS.  This is “crowdhacking,” or perhaps a new people-driven version of a bot driven “distributed denial of service attack” (DDS) attack.  I believe the civilized World is still figuring out how to exist and survive in the cyber world, which is continuing to evolve, and even sadly to balkanize. I like this Anonymous approach.

Two Chinese citizens were killed in the Mali Radisson Hotel attack, and another at the Bataclan in Paris. This has led the Chinese government to join the unanimous UN Security Council resolution denouncing the attacks and promising global collaboration and increased efforts to stop ISIS. China is well-known now for the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 in Shanghai, and its sophisticated cyber hacking capabilities and exploits, as well as those of murky independent Chinese hackers. But The PRC has so far refused to say exactly what it plans to do about the killings of Chinese citizens.  It seems to me that the UN Security Council members should now strongly urge the Chinese to join in the cyber battle against ISIS.

Anonymous torments ISIS with ‘Rickrolls’

SF GATE: Mike Moffitt

Updated 7:29 am, Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Anonymous is wielding a new weapon of mass disruption in its ongoing social media war with the Islamic State — Rick Astley videos.

The “hacktivist” group has been flooding all pro-Isis hashtags with countless videos of the red-headed bass-baritone, according to a recent tweet from the #OpParis account.

Anyone familiar with 1980s music videos knows how unsettling watching Astley sing and dance can be. In fact, as Dazed notes, tricking people to watch his “Never Gonna Give You Up” has been a staple of viruses, protests and other online pranks since 2007.

It’s called “Rickrolling.”

Whenever some Islamic State account attempts to spread a message or try to get a topic trending, the subject with be barraged with Rick videos from the late ’80s.

ISIS, which relies heavily on social media, is not taking Anonymous’ tactic lightly. It already released instructions aimed at thwarting the hackers after Anonymous posted information on 11,000 jihadist Twitter accounts, prompting them to shut down.

 

Splinternet: The Web is fracturing into regional internets

Over the last few months there has been a flood of reports from a host of journalists as well as me, predicting the imminent fragmentation of the Internet we have all known” an unrestricted global network.  Some, including Eric Schmidt of Google, and others have argued that it is a recent phenomenon precipitated largely by the NSA Prsim and Thinthread snooping of all Internet traffic, and perhaps also including Chinese military snooping.  On the other side of this debate, Bill Gates, Vin Cerf, and Mark Andreeson have all pooh poohed the end of the Internet as we know it, arguing that it is “too big to fail.” Where have we heard that before? The reality is that the fragmentation of the Internet has been evolving for years as numerous governments attempt to prevent the Internet from undermining their power and authority, long before the NSA, GCHQ and the Chinese military began messing with the Net.  The old Internet we knew is dead, and we had better get accustomed to dealing with the NEW Internet