Too often we hear that protests do not succeed. That resistance does not achieve results. With press freedom on trial, the stakes are too high to subscribe to such pessimism.

Julian Assanges extradition hearings in central London have now come to a close after a full week trial, with the verdict set to be decided in January 2021. During Assanges hearings, the Progressive International hosted the Belmarsh Tribunal in order to put the United States on trial for its imperialist crimes against humanity.

The Belmarsh Tribunal was inspired from the Russell-Sartre Tribunal of 1966, when representatives of 18 countries gathered to hold the United States accountable for their war crimes in Vietnam, in the absence of an international authority that dared to do so. Tariq Ali present at the Belmarsh Tribunal is known for his testimony at the Russell Tribunal addressing US involvement in Vietnam.

At the tribunal, we gathered to defend Julian from 175 years in an American prison. To defend the right to publish government policy made behind closed doors. And the right of whistleblowers to expose corruption. It included voices of politicians, journalists, philosophers, human rights lawyers, and many courageous supporters lining the street outside the courthouse of Old Bailey:

Lets be clear: Julian Assange should have never been charged with a crime, unless its a crime to expose war crimes. Roger Waters, Activist, Pink Floyd co-founder

We must turn the tables on those who seek to persecute Julian and make them defendants who must answer for their crimes. Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder

The trial in Old Bailey is a farce: a parody to give the appearance of justice over the criminalization of a man who removed the veil over war crimes, surveillance, and corruption. Alicia Castro, Argentine diplomat, ambassador to the UK 2012-2016

We found out that, in exchange for financial support, my successor Lenin Moreno agreed to hand over Julian Assange to the United States. Rafael Correa, former President of Ecuador

The insistence by the Western world, mainly the United States and its British satellite, is to impose one narrative and to prevent other news that might challenge the narrative. That is the war against Julian Assange. Tariq Ali, activist, historian, journalist, filmmaker

The media that made so much of Wikileaks disclosures is now absent when it comes time to defend the journalist who was their source. Jeremy Corbyn, former UK Labour party leader

Julian showed us that there is a dark side of the Moon, and that the worst unfreedom is the unfreedom which we experience as freedom. Slavoj iek, philosopher and DiEM25 Advisory Panel member

Ive cited Wikileaks cables in the International Court of Justice, so its striking to me that the person who helped us lead these accountability efforts is in jail. Jennifer Robinson, human rights lawyer

Belmarsh is the prison where Julian is currently held. 11 October marked 18 months in the jail designed to hold terrorists. While Belmarsh has reportedly improved since being deemed Britains Guantanamo, Julian Assanges detention is excessive and clearly meant to further torture the Wikileaks founder.

Make no mistake: Assange is persecuted because Wikileaks publishes material governments do not want you to see. The US government has made no illusion about their case, charging him under the Espionage Act. Espionage Act charges against a publisher would criminalise journalists, the Obama administration decided after mulling over charges against Assange.

We must not forget the ongoing unjust proceedings occurring along with the case itself. Technical issues prevented Assange representatives from being heard and the press was frequently barred from video streaming access. We expand on these and other problems in our trial coverage.

As mentioned, a verdict on Assange extradition is set for January 4, 2021 though this is seen as just the beginning of the legal saga, as appeals are likely to ensue. While prosecution and defense lawyers prepare closing arguments, which will be written and not delivered orally in November, Assange remains in Belmarsh with growing concerns over self-harm, including suicide.

As long as Julian remains in Belmarsh, the Belmarsh Tribunal will resist extradition. If Julian is extradited, we will resist the case seeking to shut him away. If he is found guilty in the US, we will resist imprisonment.

This is not just about Julian Assange, but about the free press and the right for whistleblowers to expose corruption.

We must not, cannot, give up this fight.

Sign the petition against Julian Assanges extradition here.

Photo Source: Screenshot from Collateral Murder by Wikileaks.

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The Belmarsh Tribunal put the US on trial for crimes revealed by Assange - DiEM25

Fidel Narvez was in the court in Londonfor the majority of the hearings and offers this comprehensive summary.

Old Bailey court in London. (Wikimedia Commons)

By Fidel Narvezand translated by Ben NortonThe Grayzone

At the end of the hearings that seek to extradite journalistJulian Assangeto the United States, on Oct. 1, his defense team should have felt triumphant. Because with more than 30 witnesses and testimonies, throughout the whole month of September, they gave a beating to the prosecution representing the U.S.

If the case in London were decided solely on justice, as it should in a state based on law, this battle would have been won by Assange.

However, this trial of the century is, above all, a political trial, and there remains the feeling that the ruling was made beforehand, regardless of the law.

The court kicked off on Sept. 7 with hundreds of protesters outside, in contrast with the restrictions that the court imposed inside in what is the most important case against the freedom of expression in an entire generation.

It only permitted the entry of five people on the list of family members, and five people from the public, who were put in an adjacent room, where they were barely able to follow the video transmission.

The judge, Vanessa Baraitser, who is overseeing the case, without a convincing reason cut the access to the video stream that had previously been authorized to nearly 40 human rights organizations and international observers, including Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and PEN International.

Each day, starting at 5 am, selfless activists stood in line so that observers like Reporters Without Borders, for example, could enter and take one of the five available seats. Thanks to them, and to family members of Assange, I was able to be in court to attend the majority of the hearings.

Julian himself was also woken up, every day, at 5 am and, naked and handcuffed, subjected to humiliating inspections and x-ray scans, before being put into a police car and crossing through London traffic for more than an hour and a half.

At 10 a.m., when court was finally in session, Julian had already endured five hours of insult, before being put in a glass cage for the rest of the day.

To communicate with his lawyers, Julian had to get on his knees to talk to them through a slit in the cage, just a few meters away from the ears of the prosecutions attorneys something that clearly violates due process.

The defense began by requesting deferment of the hearings, in light of the fact that the U.S. had filed a new extradition request at the last minute, with new accusations that not Assange himself was able to look over.

Assange supporters outside the Old Bailey courthouse in London at the start of the extradition trial of Julian Assange. (You Tube, AcTivism Munich still)

In the previous six months, Julian had practically no access to his lawyers. The judge, however, rejected any deferment.

The defense had based its strategy on proving that the legal process was being abused in many interrelated ways. In this extensive summary, allow me to explain 10 reasons that I identified as important factors against the extradition.

For this exercise I have relied, furthermore, on thereportingof American journalistKevin Gosztolaand that of the former British diplomatCraig Murray, next to whom I shared a seat in the court.

1) The accusation is for a political crime, which is not subject to extradition. Publishing classified, and truthful, information is not a crime.

Julian Assange would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act of the United States for a political crime, which is excluded from the extradition agreements between the United Kingdom and U.S.

The U.S. attorney generals office has furthermore said that Assange, as a foreigner, would not be able to exercise the right of the First Amendment. That is to say, punishments apply to foreigners in the U.S., but not legal protections.

The director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm, told the court that the extradition of Assange would be the end of national security journalism because it would criminalize all reporters who receive secret documents.

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He criticized the accusation that having a SecureDrop is a crime, as The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more than 80 other news organization, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, also currently use SecureDrop.

Timm said the Department of Justice has a political orientation, that the prosecution cannot decide who is a journalist and who is not, and that the charges against Assange would radically rewrite the First Amendment.

This was also affirmed in the written testimony by the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Jameel Jaffer, who insisted that the accusation against Assange is meant to discourage journalism that is essential for democracy, and represents a grave threat to the freedom of the press.

The professor of journalism and former investigative reporter Mark Feldstein testified that leaks are a vital element of journalism, that the collection of classified information is a standard operating procedure for journalists, and that WikiLeaks publications are constitutionally protected.

The U.S. lawyer Eric Lewis, a former law professor at Georgetown University, noted that the Obama administration had finally decided not to try Assange because of what is known as The New York Times problem that is to say, there was not a way to prosecute him for publishing classified information without the same principle applying to many other journalists.

Lewis testified that the Trump administration had put pressure on prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia, and cited a New York Times article that referencedMatthew Miller, the former Justice Department spokesman under Obama, who warned the case could establish a precedent that threatens all journalists.

This same concern was expressed before the court by the lawyer Thomas A. Durkin, a former assistant United States attorney and professor of law, who warned that the Trump administration ordering the reopening of the case was clearly a political decision.

Both Durkin and Lewis affirmed that Assange would be condemned for life, given that the sentences for spying in the U.S. are generally life in prison, and the most lenient are from 20 to 30 years.

The lawyer Carey Shenkman, who wrote a book about the history and use of the Espionage Act, testified that the law is extraordinarily broad and one of the most divisive laws of the United States. Never, in the history of the Espionage Act, has there been an accusation against an American editor and neither has there been an extraterritorial accusation against a non-American editor.

The prosecution, for its part, in what was one of the most terrifying admissions heard in the court, recognized that, while the Espionage Act had never been used against a journalist, its extensive scope would allow them to use it in this occasion.

The lawyer Jennifer Robinson, a member of Assanges legal team, submitted to the court a written testimony detailing an offer of a pardon by President Donald Trump, in exchange for Assange identifying the source of the leaks that WikiLeakspublished from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016.

Dana Rohrabacher. (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)

The offer was made through the U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher during a visit to the embassy of Ecuador. The congressman had explained that the information from Assange about the source of the leaks would be interest, value, and assistance for the president, and would resolve the ongoing speculation about Russian involvement.

The offer from the White House demonstrated the politicized nature of the case, given that the charges were made after Assange refused to provide any information.

The award-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn, who has written for The Independent for more than 30 years, submitted written testimony in which he said that Assange is being persecuted because he exposed the way the US, as the worlds sole superpower,really conducted its wars something that the military and political establishments saw as a blow to their credibility and legitimacy.

For his part, the journalistIan Cobain, who worked for The Guardian during the publication of WikiLeaks materials in 2010, said in written testimony that Assange is being persecuted because, There is always the understanding one that is so clear that it needs not be spoken that anyone who has knowledge of state crimes, and who comes forward to corroborate allegations about those crimes, may face prosecution.

The renowned professorNoam Chomskytold the court in written testimony that Assange has performed an enormous service to all the people in the world who treasure the values of freedom and democracy and who therefore demand the right to know what their elected representatives are doing. His actions in turn have led him to be pursued in a cruel and intolerable manner.

Yet, if there remain doubts about the political nature of the case, there was also Judge Baraitser herself, who in the court said her original intention was to have the verdict before the U.S. presidential elections, and who asked the defense and the prosecution what implications a ruling would have had after said elections.

Why is a British judge, who is supposed to impart justice solely based on facts and evidence, waiting for a purely political event in another country to reveal her verdict?

2) There was never a reckless disclosure of names. No one has been hurt due to WikiLeaks publications.

The legendary leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, told that court that he totally disagrees with thegood Ellsberg / bad Assange theory. He said Julian did everything possible to redact and withhold damaging information, working with media outlets in the redaction process.

The Pentagon Papers were top secret, but WikiLeaks documents were not classified as restricted and hence, by definition, there should be nothing that is truly sensitive.

Daniel Ellsberg in 2020. (Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Ellsberg said that Assange withheld 15,000 files from theAfghan War Diaryto protect names, and also requested help from the State Department and Defense Department to redact names, but the U.S. government refused to help, despite the fact that it is standard journalistic practice to consult with officials to minimize damage.

In the court-martial of Chelsea Manning, Ellsberg noted, the Defense Department admitted that it could not identify a single death caused by WikiLeaks publications.

The co-founder of the organization Iraq Body Count (IBC), John Sloboda, whose work has been recognized by the United Nations and European Union, testified that he worked with WikiLeaks and media outlets to prepare theIraq War Logsbefore their publication. Sloboda recounted that Assange demanded and directed a very strict redaction process to prevent possible harm.

WikiLeaks used a software that was able to edit thousands of documents, identifying each word that was not in the English-language dictionary and automatically removing it, such as Arab names for example. Then, the files were scanned again to remove occupations, such as doctor or driver, in order to better protect identities.

This editing took weeks and was a meticulous process, Sloboda recounted. There was considerable pressure on WikiLeaks because other media outlets wanted to push it to publish more quickly, but the position of Assange and WikiLeaks was to be excessively cautious.

John Goetz, the current director of investigations for German public television NDR, confirmed that when he worked with Assange in 2010, representing Der Spiegel, WikiLeaks had a rigorous redaction process, and that Assange was obsessed with keeping classified documents secure and preventing harmful disclosures.

I remember being very irritated by Assanges constant and endless reminders that we needed to be safe, and that WikiLeaks ended up removing more things than even the Defense Department, Goetz said. Assange frequently discussed how to find confidential names so that we can redact them and take measures to make sure that nobody is at risk.

The journalist Nicky Hager, author of the book Other Peoples Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, testified that one of his jobs was to identify any cable that should not be released for reasons like the personal security of people mentioned, and that WikiLeaks personnel were committed to a careful and responsible process.

He was shocked to see the level of care that they were taking to redact information that could hurt third parties. People were working in silence for hours and hours reviewing documents, he recalled.

The veteran Italian journalistStefania Maurizi, whose persistent reporting showed howBritish prosecutors pressured their Swedish counterpartsto not interrogate Assange in London, said in her writtentestimony:

I myself was given access to 4,189 cables I sat down with Mr, Assange and went through the cables as systematically as possible Everything was done with the utmost responsibility and attention That was the first time I had ever worked in any publishing enterprise involving strict procedures of that kind. Even experienced international colleagues found the procedures burdensome, involving protections considerably beyond those which any of them were accustomed to exercising Not even the work done by close colleagues about the Italian mafia required such extreme precaution and security, it never rose to those levels.

3) WikiLeaks publications are truthful information that is historically relevant.

The British-American lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of the human rights organization Reprieve, testified that WikiLeaks shined a light on torture of detainees in Guantnamo, and revealed that many were not terrorists, but rather had been arrested in Afghanistan in a bounty system. The worst accusations had been staged against prisoners, who were sometimes forced to admit to them under torture.

Stafford Smith explained that it was thanks to WikiLeaks that the use of these torture techniques are known, such as the pulley, or hanging someone by their wrists until their shoulders are dislocated, and cited as an example Binyam Mohamed, a U.K. citizen whose genitals were on a daily basis cut with a shaving razor.

(thierry ehrmann, Flickr)

The lawsuits against the United States drone assassination program in Pakistan would have been impossible without WikiLeaks, Stafford Smith said.

John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count said that the Iraq War Logs constitute the greatest contribution to public knowledge about civilian casualties in Iraq, revealing around 15,000 deaths that had previously been unknown.

Patrick Cockburn, of The Independent, insisted, WikiLeaks did what all journalists should do, which is to make important information available to the public, enabling people to make evidence-based judgments about the world around them and, in particular, about the actions of their governments.

The files published by WikiLeaks convey the reality of war far better than even the most well-informed journalistic accounts, Cockburn added, showing how the dead were automatically identified as terrorists caught in the act, regardless or evidence to the contrary.

The former journalist Dean Yates, who was chief of Reuters Baghdad bureau in 2007 and 2008, said in his written declaration that it was not until 2010, when WikiLeaks published the famous Collateral Murder video, that he knew the truth about the death of his journalist colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.

Yates recounted the attempts by the United States to cover up the truth, and that the military only showed him part of the video. The only person who told the truth was Assange.

Had it not been for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the truth of what happened to Namir and Saeed, the truth of what happened on that street in Baghdad on July 12, 2007, would not have been brought to the world,Yates said. What Assange did was 100 percent an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq in fact was and how the U.S. military behaved and lied.

On this point, Judge Baraitser interrupted Yates testimony, due to repeated pressure by the prosecution. It is ironic that a court would seek to criminalize journalism, while refusing to hear about the crimes exposed by journalism.

That is what happened in the much-anticipated testimony by the German-Lebanese citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was kidnapped and tortured by the CIA and who for technical problems with the online transmission was not able to testify in person.

The judge stopped listening to him, also under pressure by the prosecution. This is what provoked an indignant reaction from Julian Assange, who shouted, I will not censor the testimony of a torture victim before this tribunal I will not accept it!

The prosecution, finally, allowed the summary of the written statement to be read: El-Masri was brought to a CIA black site in Afghanistan, where he was beaten, strip searched, sodomized, force-fed with a tube through his nose, and subject to total sensory deprivation and other cruel forms of inhumane treatment for six months.

Finally, when the torturers realized that they had the wrong man, El-Masri was abandoned with his eyes blindfolded on a remote road in Albania. When he returned to Germany, his house was empty and his wife and kids had gone.

The journalist John Goetz, onGerman public television, demonstrated that El-Masris story was true, and tracked down the CIA agents who were involved. German prosecutors sent out orders for the arrest of the kidnappers, but they were never executed.

WikiLeaks publications proved that the United States put pressure on the German government to block a legal investigation into the crime.

The European Court of Human Rights, using the WikiLeaks cables, agreed with El-Masri, who wrote to the court:

WikiLeaks publications have been essential to accept the truth of the crime and the cover-up without dedicated and brave exposure of the state secrets in question, what happened to me would never have been acknowledged and understood.

4) WikiLeaks was not the first to publish the diplomatic cables without redaction, but only Julian Assange is being persecuted.

Three of the 18 charges against Assange accuse him specifically of publishing U.S. diplomatic cables without redactions. But the defense and its witnesses showed that WikiLeaks was not the first media outlet to publish these files, and those who did it were not prosecuted. WikiLeaks was careful to encrypt the archive, but actions out of Assanges control led to its publication.

The German computer science professor Christian Grothoff testified about an investigation into the chronology of the events of 2011. Grothoff reviewed the timeline: In the summer of 2010, WikiLeaks shared the cables with The Guardianjournalist David Leigh, through a file on a temporary website protected with a very strong encryption password. Assange only wrote part of the password on paper. WikiLeaks and its media partners began to publish the edited cables in November 2010.

WikiLeaks suffered constant attacks on its servers and mirror copies of its archive were created around the world to protect the information. Those copies were not accessible without a secure code. In February 2011, The Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding published a book in which the title of a chapter was the complete password for the unredacted cables. When the book published the key, WikiLeaks no longer had the ability to delete the mirror archives or change the encryption.

On Aug. 25, 2011, the German newspaper Der Freitag published an article in which it explained that the password revealed by Leigh and Harding could be used, and in a few days the complete archive, without redaction or editing, appeared on Cryptome.org, a page created in the United States. The websites MRKVA and Pirate Bay also published copies of the archive. On Sept. 1, the U.S. government accessed the unredacted cache for the first time, through Pirate Bay.

Professor Grothoff testified that he had not been able to find a single example of the code published online before The Guardian journalists published it in their book.

Assange and his WikiLeaks colleague Sarah Harrison called the U.S. State Department to warn that the unredacted cables were online, but their warnings were ignored. The journalist Stefania Maurizi recounted in her testimony that she was meeting with WikiLeaks the same day that she found out that the cables had been published, out of Assanges control.

I remember that when I arrived there were fierce discussions as to what to do.Julian was clearly acutely troubledby the situation with which Wikileaks was faced, she recalled. For more than a year, he had been taking all of the possible measures to prevent this. Assange was himself making urgent attempts to inform the (US) State Department the information was circulating out of Wikileaks control.

WikiLeaks had to release the cables on Sept. 2, 2010, and published an editorial note indicating that AGuardian journalist has negligently disclosedtop secret WikiLeaks decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables.

Thejournalist Glenn Greenwald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Edward Snowden revelations, wrote that day:

Once WikiLeaks realized what had happened, they notified the State Department, but faced a quandary: virtually every governments intelligence agencies would have had access to these documents as a result of these events, but the rest of the world including journalists, whistleblowers and activists identified in the documents did not. At that point, WikiLeaks decided quite reasonably that the best and safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the worlds intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources.

The journalist Jakob Augstein, editor of Der Freitag, confirmed in his written testimony that, in August 2010, his media outlet published an article titled Leak at WikiLeaks, about the about the release of the password by The Guardianjournalists. Assange called him and requested that he not publish anything that could reveal where the archive could be found, worried about the security of the informants of the U.S. government.

Finally,John Young, the representative of Cryptome.org, confirmed in his written testimony that his U.S.-based website first published the unredacted diplomatic cables, before WikiLeaks republished it:

I published on Cryptome.org unredacted diplomatic cables on September 1, 2011 and that publication remains available at the present no US law enforcement authority has notified me that this publication of the cables is illegal, consists or contributes to a crime in any way, nor have they asked for them to be removed.

5) Assange never helped Chelsea Manning access national security information.

Chelsea Manning in 2017. (Vimeo)

One of the charges against Julian Assange is that he supposedly conspired with the soldier Chelsea Manning to obtain greater access to government databases y hid his identity to do it.

The argument is that Manning spoke in an encrypted chat with the user Nathaniel Frank (who the United States alleges, but has not proved, was Assange) and requested help from him to open an encrypted part of a password. The defense argues that Manning asked for help to protect her identity, something that journalists are obligated to do with their sources.

The defense brought before the court the best possible expert on the material: Patrick Eller, a forensic digital expert who worked for two decades for the U.S. Army and now is a professor of forensic evidence and the president of Metadata Forensics, which investigates civil and criminal cases. Eller reviewed the transcriptions from the court-martial of Manning in 2013 and came to the following conclusions:

In his testimony, Eller also established that neither he nor the U.S. government can prove that Nathaniel Frank was truly Julian Assange, or any other person.

6) Assange would not have a fair trial in the U.S. Spy Court.

US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at Alexandria. (Court website)

Julian Assange would be tried in the Spy Court of the United States, where national security cases go, and which in 2010 opened a secret investigation against WikiLeaks and Assange, for which he requested political asylum from Ecuador.

Continued here:
Julian Assange's 'Trial of the Century': 10 Reasons Why it Threatens Freedom of Speech - Consortium News

One day in June 2019, Jitarth Jadeja went outside to smoke a cigarette. For two years he'd been in the virtual cult of QAnon. But now he'd watched a YouTube video that picked apart the last element of the theory he believed in. Standing there smoking, he would say later, he felt "shattered." He had gone down the QAnon rabbit hole; now, having emerged from it, he had no idea what to do next.

QAnon is a virtual cult that began in late 2017.

The most basic QAnon belief casts President Trump as the hero in a fight against the "deep state" and a sinister cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities who abuse children. And it features an anonymous government insider called "Q" who purportedly shares secret information about that fight via cryptic online posts.

Travis View is a conspiracy theory researcher who co-hosts the podcast "QAnon Anonymous."

The theory's believers "always fantasize that they are saving children and they're bringing criminals to justice," View says. "But QAnon only hurts people. It has helped nobody."

There aren't solid estimates for the number of QAnon followers worldwide, but it's clear their ranks are growing. A CNN investigation reviewed QAnon-related Facebook pages and groups based only outside the US and found a total of at least 12.8 million interactions between the beginning of the year and the last week of September.

Lisa Kaplan and Cindy Otis lead Alethea Group, a company that tracks disinformation to protect its clients' brands. They followed false claims that Wayfair was complicit in a child exploitation plot as they spread from havens for QAnon to the mainstream in the summer of 2020.

"There's not sort of one sort of set doctrine or belief system," Otis said. "But a lot of it goes down to what goes viral and what doesn't."

Like many previous conspiracy theories, QAnon has become as much about community as actual theory. The result is a convoluted and ever-changing web of beliefs which branch off from the central worldview. In this case, that includes things like members of the supposed cabal also worshipping Satan, and JFK Jr. having faked his 1999 death in a plane crash to escape the deep state plotters. QAnon has also started assimilating unrelated conspiracy theories, including false ideas about the supposedly dangerous nature of 5G infrastructure and the false, dangerous notion that the Covid-19 pandemic is a ploy to monitor private citizens.

Since there's no leadership or structure to QAnon, its supporters incorporate existing conspiracy theories and develop new ones. QAnon "really does take on a life of its own, which can, in fact make it a more significant threat," Kaplan said.

Jadeja, the former QAnon believer, is Australian. But he said he's he's always been interested in American politics. He spent time studying in the US, living in Queens, New York. His nationality is a testament to the fact that QAnon has spread well beyond the United States.

"If you'd look in Australian politics, it's boring by comparison," Jadeja said. "American politics, it's like it's like a car crash you can't look away from."

During the 2016 US presidential election, Jadeja said, he was drawn to then-candidate Bernie Sanders. He liked what Sanders had to say about inequality and his "anti-establishment sentiment."

But then Trump won. "That kind of really kicked it all off for me," Jadeja said.

It felt to him like the world was shocked by Trump's win. How had seemingly no one seen it coming? And most importantly, who had? "I kind of switched off from all mainstream media," Jadeja said.

That's when he began listening to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and reading Infowars, which exposed him to QAnon theories for the first time. By December 2017, he identified as a Q follower.

Around this period, Jadeja said, he was in the midst of a 15 year struggle to finish his degree. He'd pulled away from friends and become socially isolated. "I just felt completely overwhelmed... I was probably in a deep depression I think when I found Q," he says.

Once Jadeja found QAnon he was quickly sucked in. He would spend time on websites that aggregated posts supposedly from Q, which often first appear on darker corners of the internet like 8kun. Then he'd move on to read the interpretations of those posts from other believers. These interpretations are popular among the QAnon community because posts from "Q" are often so vague that they can be read in any number of ways. The tactic tends to lure in supporters the way fraudulent psychics can - because there's little solid information given, almost anything can be taken as confirmation of a pronouncement by "Q."

"There'd be a lot of Youtube and Reddit mini-celebrities within the community that would be like the anointed decrypter for that point in time," Jadeja noted.

QAnon was all he wanted to talk about. That made life offline increasingly difficult for him, and he pulled away from friends.

"No one believes you. No one wants to talk to you about it. ... You get all angsty and crabby and whatnot. [S]uch shouting, irrational, you sound like the homeless guy on the street yelling about Judgment Day," Jadeja said.

One of the few people in his regular life who he was able to talk with about his newfound interest with was his father. "We used to talk about it a lot. We used to only talk about it with each other. We show each other things like, did you see that? Did you see that?" Jadeja said.

"I think superficially it did seem like [QAnon] gave me comfort," Jadeja said. "I didn't realize the nefarious kind of impact it was having on me because it was very insidious how it slowly disconnected me from reality."

Experts say that people often seek out conspiracy theories in times of crisis.

"I think we tend to underestimate the extent to which these sorts of narratives are appealing," Alethea Group's Otis said, "especially when we're in a time of great stress and emotions are high."

Otis noted that the 2016 US presidential election was one of those times for many people. Now the coronavirus pandemic means uncertainty and anxiety are once again at a high point.

"It's a very compelling narrative to say all of this is orchestrated," Otis said. "There's a cabal coming after you. They're trying to make your life miserable. You want an answer for why bad things are happening? Here they are."

View, the conspiracy theory researcher, said QAnon preys on vulnerable people who in some cases might be suffering from mental health issues.

"I think it's a mistake to say that QAnon is a conspiracy theory, because this kind of makes it sound like Area 51 or Big Foot," he said. "It's a community of people that radicalizes them into a world view, that just essentially detaches them from reality."

For Jadeja, the impulses he developed while he believed in QAnon are a source of shame. "I would have been so happy to see Hillary Clinton dragged in front of a military tribunal, even though she's a civilian," he said.

"That still bothers me to this day, how willing and happy and joyfully I would have reacted to something that I would normally want no part in... This is how you get good people to do bad things."

In a May 2019 bulletin, the FBI warned that conspiracy theories like QAnon could "very likely" motivate criminal and sometimes violent activity in the US especially because of the reach and volume of conspiratorial content available online.

QAnon theories often start out on fringe internet forums like 8kun and 4chan, according to Alethea Group's Kaplan. But once a claim gains popularity there it can quickly catapult onto mainstream social media networks. "It becomes especially dangerous once these conspiracies go on to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, because it increases the breadth of the reach that these false conspiracies have," she said.

Reddit banned a popular QAnon subreddit in 2018. In July 2020, Twitter said it had removed more than 7,000 QAnon-associated accounts. Last week, Facebook announced it would ban any pages, groups or Instagram accounts representing QAnon. And on Wednesday, YouTube joined the other platforms, saying it would prohibit conspiracy theory content that threatens or harasses an individual or group. It stopped short of banning QAnon and other dangerous theories completely.

But the task of identifying and policing these kinds of accounts is massive. Facebook, for one, has previously made promises to ban certain groups or types of content in the past but enforcement has sometimes been slow or inconsistent.

"This isn't something that there's one solution that will, you know, remove this group from from their platform for all eternity," Otis said. "It's going to be an ongoing and dynamic problem."

View believes these actions may be too late. "This is a group who are very highly motivated, and they believe that they are fighting essentially an information war."

After two years in the world of QAnon, Jadeja said, cracks began to form in his conviction. He believed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had been instrumental in "exposing" Hillary Clinton and had helped win Trump the election. If Trump was trying to bring down the cabal, Jadeja wondered, how could he let Assange face extradition to the US for charges related to publishing secret military and diplomatic documents? On top of that, Jadeja said, he was noticing more logical inconsistencies in QAnon's theories.

But there was one particular piece of "proof" he was still holding on to.

It went like this: A QAnon follower had supposedly asked Q to tell President Trump to use the phrase "tip top" in a speech. Then Trump did.

To Jadeja, that had been proof that Q existed and had the ear of the president.

But then, as his doubts mounted, he decided to research it further and came across a YouTube video that showed other times Trump had previously said the phrase or something similar. Suddenly "tip top" was no longer irrefutable proof, it was probably just coincidence.

For others, that might have easily been glossed over, a blip easily dismissed in their belief. But for Jadeja, who was nearing a break with QAnon, it was a turning point.

"It was the worst feeling I had in my life," Jadeja said.

That's when he went outside for a smoke.

r/Qult_Headquarters is a forum on Reddit "dedicated to documenting, critiquing, and debunking the chan poster known as 'Q' and his devotees." Its 30,000 members pick apart QAnon theories and point out inconsistencies.

It's where Jadeja turned when he stopped believing. He wrote a 659-word post that began with the words "Q fooled me."

He thought the group would ridicule him for believing in the conspiracy theory. "I expected to be torn apart," he said.

Instead, the opposite happened. According to Jadeja, he got over a hundred responses to his post and nearly all of them were supportive. "These guys put me back together again."

He now thinks one of the toughest challenges in trying to deradicalize a QAnon believer is that they view the opposition as "pure evil."

"This is a big problem, not just because people are being taken in and their families are like being ripped apart," he said. "This is an existential battle between good and evil that these people think they're fighting." He says he used to think the same thing.

Another Reddit community called QAnonCasualties functions as a support group for friends and family members of QAnon believers. It has more than 28,000 members. There are hundreds of stories of loved ones "lost" to QAnon. Friendships ruined. Relationships ended. Families suffering.

Looking back, Jadeja said, he doesn't think there isn't a single relationship in his life that wasn't affected by his time believing in QAnon. "It's destroyed some of them to this day. It's strained a lot of them to this day."

But there's one thing in particular that he regrets the most: sharing QAnon with his father. CNN reached out to Jadeja's father multiple times for a comment but he did not respond.

Jadeja thinks it's possible more QAnon believers can follow his path out.

"It has to start with empathy and understanding," Jadeja said. That's what the QultHeadquarters community on Reddit gave him.

In View's opinion, confronting QAnon believers with facts isn't the best way to deradicalize them.

He said the best way to help believers is to remind them of their life before Q. Believers need to be encouraged to ask themselves "if this new life that they built for themselves is actually productive, if it's actually building towards something good or if it's just a waste of time and it's filling some kind of emotional void."

Potentially being known as "the QAnon guy" among his friends is the last thing Jadeja wants. But he fears the community will continue to grow. That's why, he said, he decided to share his story in the hope that other believers might see that there is life after QAnon and reevaluate their choice to support it.

Ultimately, he said, he's glad he went down the QAnon rabbit hole. It taught him a lot about hubris, he believes. And, he said, "It allowed me to really confront, like, the own darkness that's in my own heart."

Additional reporting by Sofia Barrett

More:
He went down the QAnon rabbit hole for two years. Here's how he got out - KCTV Kansas City

Where do we stand today compared to the 2016 election lead up?

Social media platforms were vulnerable in 2016 because they didnt realize what was happening. Now theyre closing down inauthentic accountspeople pretending to be someone theyre notand theyve been doing it extensively. Many now are performing a fact-checking operation by blocking or annotating posts containing false health information, so theres a corrective function in place. YouTube is now identifying government-funded sources of information, so viewers will be able to identify the source behind a message.

Beyond that, the platforms have put rules in place that make it very difficult for foreign nationals to buy advertising; you now have to have a business ID and address thats an actual location in the U.S. That doesnt mean a foreign operation couldnt still plant someone here and satisfy those rules, but its much more difficult. The platforms have stepped up in important ways and made it less likely that a comparable Russian operation to the one in 2016 would have the same effect in 2020.

What about media outlets? Has their approach changed?

Reporters are now participating in seminars examining their treatment of illegally gotten content in 2016. Newsrooms have discussed it. The question is, if a hack-and-release happens in the pressure of an ongoing campaign and a lot of content is released, will that pressure overwhelm newsrooms? Will those same mistakes be made or will their awareness of what happened in 2016 prompt them to resist the impulse to act too quickly?

So far, we havent heard about hacked content in this election. If it comes up, how can journalists disseminate it responsibly?

Its appropriate to use this kind of content under certain circumstances. For one, if its illegally gotten, the public needs to know that, and if it came through an intermediary, the public needs to know that persons agenda. Every time that content gets discussed, the source and any biases should be noted. Julian Assange was on record saying he wanted Hillary Clinton defeated, yet the press made scant mention of that through October and November 2016.

During the last election, under the pressure of a very large amount of content being dumped on a weekly basis, journalists also lost track of newsworthiness, and in two key instances took information out of context in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. They should be using traditional newsroom judgement about any hacked content and make sure its kept in context.

Finally, they should characterize content as they report on it, using phrases like Russian-stolen, for example. Instead of leaked, they should say hacked. Keep the sourcing linguistically tied to the reporting all the way through and make sure any intermediary remains tied to the content, too. We know that audiences judge messages, in part, by assessing whether they trust the source.

In the past few months, reports have emerged of China, Russia, and Iran trying to influence the U.S. election, some to oust President Trump, others to help him. How is our election infrastructure protected?

The Russians penetrated this infrastructure in 2016. As far as the intelligence community can tell, votes were not changed, but we actually dont know with certainty because the states didnt have the mechanisms in place to tell. Its still an open question whether we have put in place the needed protections for our electoral infrastructure this time.

Here, there is an irony, too. The big debate has been about the integrity of mail-in ballots, but you cant engage in cyberwar as readily with mail-in ballots. My ballot is more secure when I drop it in the mail than when I walked three blocks to my voting place and pushed a button in a system registering digitally in 2016 because with that there was an opportunity for malware to simply reverse votes. I actually view mail-in balloting as a Russia-thwarting move.

How does Trumps relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin factor in?

The United States hacked back against the Russians in 2018 to prevent cyber influence over that election. We dont know whether President Trump approved that or whether relevant agencies simply did that under authorizations they already had. But the president confirmed that it happened. The question is, to what extent are our capacities to deal with Russian interventions shaped by President Trumps view of Vladimir Putinwhich is, shall we say, less wary than his predecessors.

What the presidents rhetoric calls into question is how the level of preparation against Russia as an adversary will compare to that against China or Iran should they try to intervene. One would hope that were being equally protective against all foreign nations that might intervene and that we are being as protective as we can against all of them. Whatever electoral outcome a foreign state anticipates, interference in our election is inappropriate.

Does the average citizen understand the intricacies of whats happening?

In all likelihood, no, because its complex and the citizenry is focused on so many other factors, particularly around COVID-19. There isnt much that ordinary people can do in any event. They can make sure theyre informed by using sites such as FactCheck.org and SciCheck, which are aggressively trying to counteract misperceptions. They can also get their ballots in as early as possible and get verification that it has been received. They can then go back to the rest of their lives having cast an informed vote. Everything else? Its in the hands of election officials and the U.S.s cyber professionals.

Follow this link:
Mail-in ballots, foreign interference, and the 2020 election | Penn Today - Penn Today

Defence ministers have ordered a new inquiry into how war crimes are investigated, after their new combat zone immunity bill was ripped apart by the human rights committee.

Since the second reading of the Overseas Operations Bill on 23 September, the legislation has been attacked by members of the human rights committee. With the proposals proving deeply unpopular and controversial, panicked Tories have launched a judge-led inquiry into how war crimes are investigated.

In a press release on 13 October, defence secretary Ben Wallace said:

Nobody wants to see service personnel subjected to drawn-out investigations, only for the allegations to prove to be false or unfounded.

At the same time, credible allegations against those who fall short of our high standards must be investigated quickly and efficiently.

This review, which will run in tandem with our Overseas Operations Bill and build on the recommendations of the Service Justice System Review, will help future-proof investigations and provide greater certainty to both victims and service personnel.

The new move begs a question:

If the bill is as solid as the government says, why launch an inquiry into a key aspect which they claim their new proposal deals with?

Organisations like the Quakers, Royal British Legion, and Liberty, as well as former military officers, have fiercely condemned the proposed new laws.

The Ministry of Defence has framed the bill, including in its new announcement, as a defence of UK troops against so-called vexatious prosecutions and reinvestigations.

Critics, including the vice-chair of the Law Society, have warned that the bill would strip personnel and veterans of their right to sue the MOD. It would also strip overseas victims of UK military abuse of their right to justice, and badly damage international law.

The war crimes immunity bill is part of a broader pattern of authoritarian moves alongside:

It seems the Tories are on the run over their war crimes bill. But this new wave of authoritarian moves, which endangers the lives and freedoms of people in the UK and beyond, must continue to be resisted.

Featured image via Elite Forces UK

See the original post:
Under-fire Tories launch new inquiry after war crimes immunity bill is ripped to shreds - The Canary

In July 2017, two journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, wrote of a stash of incriminating documents, running into hundreds of pages. They were secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC. These documents gave an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australias elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.

In exposing these depravities of invasion, adventurism, and war, the devotees of secrecy got busy. Bureaucrats chatted; investigations commenced. On June 5, 2019, officers of the Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of the ABC. It was a busy time for the police; Annika Smethurst of News Corp was also the subject of a warrant, having written about discussions about a proposed enlargement of surveillance powers already possessed by the Australian Signals Directorate. Both warrants had been executed pursuant to alleged breaches of official secrecy under the old version of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth). Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor of The Australian, was alarmed enough to write of a less than brave new world. Welcome to modern Australia a nation where police raid journalists in order to track down and punish the exposure of leaks inside the federal government.

Both warrants were subsequently challenged. The returns for journalism were mixed. In the case of the ABC, they were abominable. In February, the Federal Court Justice Wendy Abraham dismissed the effort by the broadcaster to impeach the warrant. She found the warrant validly drafted and sufficiency clear. Justice Abraham also affirmed that the implied constitutional right to communicate on political subjects was not a personal, enforceable one, merely a restraint on state power. [T]he notion of speech as an affirmative value has no role to play.

This formulation of Australian law, miraculously extracted from the worn teeth of the Australian constitution, is designed to render any such rights inoffensive and benign, lest the citizenry get uppity with such ideas as free speech. This state of affairs ought to encourage a move towards a bill or charter of rights, but Australias politicians will have none of it. Constitutionally enshrined rights would only inhibit the powers of parliament and frustrate the ever abstract sovereign will.

Smethurst had better luck in invalidating the search warrant on April 15. But the judges of the High Court found against the police the way a teacher might against an essay from a student prone to poor grammar. The warrant in question failed to identify any offence under section 79(3) [of the Crimes Act] and significantly misstated the nature of an offence arising under it. In short, go back to class and mind your punctuation before searching the homes and workplaces of journalists. The ill-gotten gains of the police material taken from the Smethursts home could still be kept, guaranteeing her a run of sleepless nights.

The AFP subsequently confirmed that a brief of evidence had been submitted to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDDP), the result of the July 11, 2017 referral received from the Chief of the Defence Force and then acting-secretary of defence. It recommended that charges be made, though only against Oakes.

With Oakes facing a gloomy prospect of being charged, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released its report on the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. The report, with its 16 recommendations, was predictably weak and timorous. At times, it reads like a cosy overview of how government institutions in the country truly appreciate the role of a free press. There are merry references to Australias vibrant democracy. It notes such fairly meaningless improvements as the Attorney Generals direction of September 19, 2019 that his consent would be required were the CDPP to initiate prosecutions against journalists.

The power to issue warrants against journalists was barely challenged. At most was a qualifying recommendation that the role of the Public Interest Advocate be expanded. This creature was already an oddity, given the secretive nature of the office. We know little about the credentials of those who occupy the office, nor its actual workings. The committee suggests a more active role for the advocate in dealing with warrant applications against journalists and media investigations concerning breaches of government secrecy. The PIA must represent the interests of the principles of public interest journalism, and be authorised to request information to clarify elements of the warrant application provided by ASIO or an enforcement agency to enable the case to be built in their submission. The monstrous chink in this already perforated armour is that that the PIA is wholly dependent on the evidence and claims of the government agency. The balancing act ceases to be credible.

With this less than comforting backdrop, it was confirmed on October 15 that the CDDP would not be taking the matter up against Oakes. According to a statement from the AFP, In determining whether the matter should be prosecuted, the CDPP considered a range of public interest factors, including the role of public interest journalism in Australias democracy. Having applied its own version of a public interest test (all government agencies seem to be doing so these days), the prosecutor found no reason to pursue the case despite believing that there was a reasonable chance of securing a conviction on three criminal charges.

As with such prosecutions, the public interest is a weapon twisted not in the name of the publics interest, whose ignorance must be assured, but in the name of the states interest, ever reliant upon secrecy. To that end, The CDPP determined the public interest does not require a prosecution in the particular circumstances of the case.

The conclusion of the case against Oakes can only be troubling. The CDPP preferred waving the wand of deterrence just in case other journalists might wish to engage in the same practice. After all, there was a reasonable chance of securing a successful conviction. Clark, while welcoming the decision, claimed that the matter should never have gone this far.

As with the dangerous US Department of Justice indictment against WikiLeaks publisher and Australian national Julian Assange, the very fact of its existence is, in itself, threatening. It is a roaring threat, a promise that publishing national security information that reveals the dark side of state power will be pursued, and, importantly, can be pursued.

See original here:
Dropped Prosecutions: The Afghan Files, Public Interest Journalism and Dan Oakes - International Policy Digest

Twitter claimed it was reversing course late Thursday and would no longer forbid users from tweeting links to websites containing hacked material so long as the hackers themselves werent the ones doing the sharing. We will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them, said Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde.

The decision a response to the conservative uproar over the blocking of an unverified, self-contradictory, and error-filled smear piece about a presidential candidate weeks before an election would have brought Twitters policies more in line with how U.S. law treats journalists who republish stolen material; which is to say, it generally (but not always) protects their right to do so, provided they arent involved in the actual stealing.

Unfortunately, it turns out Twitters decision to abolish the rule is being unequally applied, which is also sort of fitting. The rule itself was never fairly administered. The best obvious example of Twitter selectively enforcing the rule is WikiLeaks, which exists solely to publish stolen secrets; many, if not most, pilfered electronically.

If a reporter had emailed a Twitter spokesperson last week asking if the platforms bans accounts that disseminate hacked emails, the spokesperson would have said yes, we do, and offered a link to the companys rules. But if the same reporter then asked, Well, what about all those stolen Democratic emails from 2016? the spokesperson would have quietly backed away from their keyboard and maybe gone outside for a smoke.

This is exactly how Twitter responded to me in June when it decided to prevent users from sharing links to the website ddosecrets.com. The website, run by a handful of journalists and transparency activists operating under the name DDoSecrets, is still banned by Twitter, even though CEO Jack Dorsey has claimed doing so is wrong. (Go ahead and try to tweet it yourself.) Twitter also banned the @DDoSecrets account, and it remains banned today.

Twitter took aggressive action against DDoSecrets for publishing one of the largest repositories of leaked U.S. law enforcement files some 270-gigabytes worth of documents from more than 200 police departments dating as far back as 1996. A decent portion, comprising things like outdated training manuals and old FBI bulletins, are completely benign, if not objectively boring.

Crime is down, after all, and 90 per cent of being a cop is learning how to cope with sitting on your arse all day.

After the announcement by Twitter on Thursday, I reached out to ask why the @DDoSecrets account was still suspended and why users are still banned from posting links to its website. Twitter did not respond. Not even to tell me it was working on it.

I also asked why Twitter had banned users from tweeting links to another of DDoSecrets websites, AssangeLeaks.org, which doesnt actually contain any stolen or hacked material. According to Lorax Horne, the sites editor, Twitter banned the URL when the page displayed nothing but a countdown clock. Today it only offers links to 10-year-old chat logs potentially evidence the U.S. government is using in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges extradition case.

No, they were not hacked, Horne said of the chat logs. To no avail, DDoSecrets has filed multiple appeals seeking clarification on how Twitters rules are enforced.

They blocked our whole fucking website and every subsequent website we published, said Horne. Reddit also blocks our URL, now. But Twitter blocked us first, so get a special trophy.

Twitters silence is presumably the result of having already gotten what it wanted: A slew of headlines this morning declaring something that is just patently untrue.

This story will be updated if we hear back from Twitter.

Excerpt from:
No, Twitter Did Not Stop Blocking URLs and Hacked Content - Gizmodo Australia