On Monday Julian Assange was driven to the Old Bailey to continue his fight against extradition to the United States, where the Trump administration has launched the most dangerous attack on press freedom in at least a generation by indicting him for publishing US government documents. Amid coverage of the proceedings, Assanges critics have inevitably commented on his appearance, rumours of his behaviour while isolated in the Ecuadorian embassy, and other salacious details.

These predictable distractions are emblematic of the sorry state of our political and cultural discourse. If Assange is extradited to face charges for practising journalism and exposing government misconduct, the consequences for press freedom and the publics right to know will be catastrophic. Still, rather than seriously addressing the important principles at stake in Assanges unprecedented indictment and the 175 years in prison he faces, many would rather focus on inconsequential personality profiles.

Assange is not on trial for skateboarding in the Ecuadorian embassy, for tweeting, for calling Hillary Clinton a war hawk, or for having an unkempt beard as he was dragged into detention by British police. Assange faces extradition to the United States because he published incontrovertible proof of war crimes and abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing the most powerful nation on Earth. Assange published hard evidence of the ways in which the first world exploits the third, according to whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the source of that evidence. Assange is on trial for his journalism, for his principles, not his personality.

Youve probably heard the refrain from well-meaning pundits: You dont have to like him, but you should oppose threats to silence him. But that refrain misses the point by reinforcing the manipulative tropes deployed against Assange.

When setting a gravely dangerous precedent, governments dont typically persecute the most beloved individuals in the world. They target those who can be portrayed as subversive, unpatriotic or simply weird. Then they actively distort public debate by emphasizing those traits.

These techniques are not new. After Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to journalists to expose the US governments lies about Vietnam, the Nixon administrations White House Plumbers broke into Ellsbergs psychiatrists office in search of material that could be used to discredit him. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was falsely portrayed as collaborating with the Chinese, then the Russians. Obsession with military intelligence analyst Mannings mental health and gender identity was ubiquitous. By demonizing the messenger, governments seek to poison the message.

Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy - a timeline

The prosecution will be all too happy when coverage of Assanges extradition hearing devolves into irrelevant tangents and smears. It matters little that Assanges beard was the result of his shaving kit having been confiscated, or that reports of Paul Manafort visiting him in the embassy were proven to be fabricated. By the time these petty claims are refuted, the damage will be done. At best, public debate over the real issues will be derailed; at worst, public opinion will be manipulated in favour of the establishment.

By drawing attention away from the principles of the case, the obsession with personality pushes out the significance of WikiLeaks revelations and the extent to which governments have concealed misconduct from their own citizens. It pushes out how Assanges 2010 publications exposed 15,000 previously uncounted civilian casualties in Iraq, casualties that the US Army would have buried. It pushes out the fact that the United States is attempting to accomplish what repressive regimes can only dream of: deciding what journalists around the globe can and cannot write. It pushes out the fact that all whistleblowers and journalism itself, not just Assange, is on trial here.

This piece was written by Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker, co-chairs of AssangeDefense.org

Original post:
Julian Assange is not on trial for his personality but heres how the US government made you focus on it - The Independent

Over the past few years, authorities in many countries have become increasingly bold in their attacks on journalists, especially those who work in alternative media. Julian Assange, who began his extradition hearing at Londons Old Bailey court after a four month delay this past Monday, has become a powerful symbol of the hypocrisy of western states that claim to champion a free press.

A common argument made by centrist and rightwing leaders since Wikileaks embarrassed the American government by releasing documents leaked by Chelsea Manning in 2010 is that someone like Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if sent to the United States, is not a professional journalist and thus not afforded the same protections that apply to those who toil in corporate news rooms. Even more speciously, the current Secretary of State has argued that the countrys 1stAmendment doesnt apply to the publisher because hes Australian.

Worse still, in representative democracies now governed by so-called populists of the right, leaders routinely call stories they dont like fake news and demonize outlets and reporters critical of them at every opportunity. Some, like Brazils Jair Bolsonaro, evenpersonally threatenindividual journalists for asking uncomfortable questions.

At the state and local level here in North America, current attacks by authorities, not only on journalists but on the right to free assembly, have tended to be more physical in nature. While weve seen similar behavior on the part of police in confronting the press at anti-pipeline protests and other actions throughout the continent over the past decade, the context of a widespread Black Lives Matter uprising in the United States this year and the politically motivated hysteria of the far right in reaction to it has led to what appears at some times like targeted, and at others like indiscriminate violence against journalists covering the protests, in some cases leading toserious injuries.

Thanks to the work of theU.S. Press Freedom Tracker, its possible to see a troubling trend line over the course of the current U.S. presidents term. As reported by the group, there were a total of 144 attacks on press freedom in all of 2017while, As of Sept. 1, the Tracker has confirmed 238 press freedom violations including physical assaults, arrests, and equipment searches and seizures more than three quarters of which occurred while journalists were documenting the Black Lives Matter protests.

This impunity on the part of local authorities, encouraged by the countrys president and many of his surrogates, was on display on a national news network on May 29thin Minneapolis. As he was reporting on the protests following the murder of George Floyd, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez, who is African American,was arrested on cameraby the citys police.

Jimenez, aveteran reporterbased in Chicago, previously covered the trials of the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and was nominated for an individual Emmy award when employed by local Baltimore station WBAL, where he worked prior to taking a job as a correspondent for CNN in 2017.

Its hard to argue that Jimenezs arrest didnt to some degree come about as the result of bias.More so after it wasreported by the Guardiana few days laterthat, another of CNNs correspondents, Josh Campbell, who is white, was reporting about a block away from Jimenez. He said police were polite when they approached him to ask him which outlet he was with, and they told him: OK, youre good.

Soon after Jimenezs release, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action suit in Minnesota to put an end to what it claimed was the unconstitutional targeting of journalists during the protests.

As an ACLU attorney said in astatementabout the suit, We are facing a full-scale assault on the First Amendment freedom of the press. We will not let these official abuses go unanswered. This is the first of many lawsuits the ACLU intends to file across the country. Law enforcement officers who target journalists will be held accountable.

Rather than being something unique to the United States and its current political scene, examples of this kind of bias in the policing of some journalists as opposed to others is also demonstrated by the ongoing case of Karl Dockstader, a journalist and radio host from Oneida Nation of the Thames in the Canadian province of Ontario, who has beencharged with mischief and violating a court imposed injunctionas a result of his reporting from an indigenous protest camp established on a construction site south of Canadas largest city, Toronto.

While journalists in Canada have fewer protections under the law than those south of the border, exceptions for press covering protests by the countrys indigenous people have been carved out as recently as 2019, when adecisionfrom the Supreme Court of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador found, An injunction can be a very blunt instrument. Unless carefully crafted in its scope and judiciously applied in its enforcement, it risks wrapping within its purview persons who were not part of the mischief to which the original injunctive remedy was directed and also risks unnecessarily trenching upon such other important constitutional and legal values like freedom of association, freedom of the press and, in appropriate cases like the present one, the protection of rights pertaining to indigenous interests.

No charges were brought against any other reporter at what is called the 1492 Land Back Lane protest encampment that Dockstader was covering, leading one to the suspicion that like Jimenez in Minneapolis, his identity plays a role in the case being made by Ontario police against him.

As Dockstader told Canadas national broadcaster,the CBC, I never thought I was going to have to sit my 10- and 12-year-old daughters down in our living room and talk to them about how their dad was arrested. Thats a cycle of violence that I am trying to break as an Indigenous man and I thought that an honorable career like journalism would give me an opportunity to break the cycle of violence, not to bring it into my own house It was just earth-shattering.

Back in the U.S., less troubling in terms of possible motivation on the part of authorities but arguably more worrying in terms of tactics, wasthe arrest and alleged assaultin Seattle on July 1st,of U.K. Independent correspondent Andrew Buncombe as he covered the dismantling of the CHOP (Capital Hill Organized Protest) autonomous zone in the city.

Still, outlets like CNN and the Independent have the resources and reputation to fight back against such overreach on the part of police, but what of those journalists without this kind of institutional backing?

One such reporter isEddy Binford-Ross, a student covering the protests for her high school paper, the Clypion, where she is also editor in chief covering the protests in Portland. Though wearing a helmet and other tags toclearly identify herself as press, Binford-Ross has faced tear gas and other non-lethal projectiles used by police over the course of her work this summer.

As Binford Ross explained to the SPLC (Student Press Law Center) in aninterview, Its very concerning to me that they seem to be targeting the press and, at the very least, disregarding the distinction between who is a member of the press and who is a protester. Sometimes, when I identify myself as a journalist, theyll say okay Ill leave you alone, but normally it doesnt seem to phase them.

In normal times, we often see a gradual chipping away of basic rights like weve seen in the trials of Julian Assange, where a narrative, some of it true, a lot of it based on character assassination and outright lies, has been built over time, denying the publisher the presumption of innocence. In extraordinary circumstances, like after 9/11 or in our current era of crisis, norms are smashed to bits instead of merely being degraded in individual cases over time, with consequences that are often far ranging and permanent.

Although it is in many ways a conservative document, the United States constitution set a new standard for the world in establishing the 4thEstate as a kind of unofficial branch of government tasked with informing the public, this is why oligarchs and politicians have been trying, with some success, to either terrorize or control its practitioners ever since.

FALL FUNDRAISER

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Attack the press - NationofChange

Was hacker Matthew DeHart a whistleblower, a spy or a child pornographer? Or some combination of the above? Watching the provocative new documentary Enemies of the State, your opinion may shift more than once, as director Sonia Kennebeck (National Bird) pursues both the elusive nature of truth and the seductive qualities of conspiracy theories.

Featuring interviews with the key players alongside dramatized recreations the documentary pioneer of this method, Errol Morris, acts an executive producer here Kennebeck takes us deep inside one familys harrowing ordeal and pulls the rug out from our assumptions and prejudices, offering an array of contradicting experts whose judgment and assertions shift in their credibility.

The facts are these: Air National Guard veteran Matt DeHart, who purports to be involved with on-line whistleblowers Anonymous and Wikileaks, has his house ransacked by federal investigators looking for evidence regarding child pornography allegations against Matt. He flees to Mexico shortly thereafter with thumb drives he claims contain volatile classified information regarding an FBI investigation into a CIA operation.

Also Read: 'David Byrne's American Utopia' Film Review: Byrne and Spike Lee Burn Down the House With Style

His parents Paul and Leann both veterans themselves rally to their sons defense, and the next few years involve attempted defections to Russia and Venezuela, an application for asylum in Canada, a car accident on a snowy highway, allegations of government torture and interrogation using the drug Thorazine, and activists and journalists seeking to help out Matt, particularly in the wake of events surrounding Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

In the face of all these conflicting testimonies, then whats the truth? Thats the onion that Kennebeck and her editor Maxine Goedicke (Pope Francis: A Man of His Word) so skillfully unwind over the course of Enemies of the State. People prone to assume the worst about governments and the best about individuals will evaluate the presented evidence in one way, and their opposites in the other, and it isnt until the films final 15 minutes that the audience is presented with the most unassailable facts. (In the timeline of making the film, this final bit of intel came late in the game as well, or so the films intertitles suggest.)

Story continues

Also Read: Toronto International Film Festival Reverses Optional Mask Policy Inside Theaters

Without ever announcing itself as such, the film brilliantly dissects the way that conspiracy theories work and why theyre so irresistible. In an age when so many are willing to dismiss reputable, sourced news and science in favor of shadowy and even anonymous internet experts, Enemies of the State sneakily but indelibly takes us through one individual case and tests our individual ability to filter out white noise and presupposition in favor of whats irrefutable.

For a story about espionage on one hand and accusations of child endangerment on the other, the film focuses on a family that, on paper, seems to be as upright and four-square as possible: Paul DeHart, who entered the ministry after serving in both the Army and the Air Force, describes Leann and himself as the kind of kids who always sat down and followed the rules. Theyre clearly loving parents to Matt, but as the film progresses, we are left to wonder whether or not theyre playing too large a role in the life of their son as he enters his late twenties, and whether or not their distrust of the authorities represents creeping paranoia or a justified response to outrageous government interference.

Also Read: How the Pandemic Will Shake Up Toronto Film Festival's (Virtual) Sales Market

Its also a case study in extremes; its plausible, given years of disclosure of governmental dirty tricks, that accusations of child molestation would be used to silence an activist who has become privy to confidential information. By the same token, its just as plausible that someone guilty of child pornography might weave a fiction around himself and his family to explain being the target of a federal investigation. Kennebecks ability to work with both possibilities seems to have translated in access to players on both sides, from the DeHarts to the Tennessee prosecutors working the child pornography case.

Enemies of the State is a chilling watch, both for what it contemplates and for the internal path that each viewer will take while experiencing it. That some will come away from the film unwilling to accept its conclusions merely proves the films point.

Read original story Enemies of the State Film Review: Powerful Documentary Cuts to the Heart of Internet-Era Persecution and Paranoia At TheWrap

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Enemies of the State Film Review: Powerful Documentary Cuts to the Heart of Internet-Era Persecution and Paranoia - Yahoo Entertainment

Updated 8:43am EDT, Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth, AP

Assange told to stop interrupting witnesses at UK hearing

LONDON (AP) A British judge told WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday that his extradition hearing will proceed without him if he continues to speak from the dock and interrupt witnesses.

Vanessa Baraitser briefly adjourned the hearing at Londons Central Criminal Court after Assange interrupted defense witness Clive Stafford Smith, who was giving evidence. Assanges outburst couldnt be heard by journalists following proceedings by video link.

Assange is fighting an attempt by American prosecutors to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial on spying charges. U.S. prosecutors have indicted the 49-year-old Australian on 18 espionage and computer misuse charges over WikiLeaks publication of secret U.S. military documents a decade ago. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

Assanges lawyers say the prosecution is a politically motivated abuse of power that will stifle media freedom and put journalists at risk around the world.

Addressing Assange, the judge said: You will hear things, no doubt many things, you disagree with during these proceedings.

If you interrupt proceedings it is open to me to proceed in your absence, she added.

On Monday, when the hearing opened, Baraitser rejected requests by Assanges lawyers to delay his extradition hearing until next year so they can have more time to respond to U.S. allegations that he conspired with hackers to obtain classified information.

The case has already been delayed for months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Stafford Smith, who founded the nonprofit rights organization Reprieve, told the court Tuesday that WikiLeaks helped expose alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

American authorities allege that Assange conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a new indictment announced in June, the U.S. Justice Department expanded its case, accusing Assange of recruiting hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia, recruiting a teenager to hack into the computer of a former WikiLeaks associate and conspiring with members of hacking groups known as LulzSec and Anonymous. U.S. prosecutors say the evidence underscores Assanges efforts to procure and release classified information.

Assanges lawyers argue that he is a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection and say the leaked documents exposed U.S. military wrongdoing.

The case is due to run until early October. The judge is expected to take weeks or even months to consider her verdict, with the losing side likely to appeal.

View original post here:
Assange told to stop interrupting witnesses at UK hearing - Midland Daily News

Lawyers and legal academics are calling on the UK Government to end extradition proceedings against Australian Wikileaks founder, editor and activist Julian Assange and release him from prison.

Mr Assange is fighting against extradition to the US to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion after he published hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011 when he came to international attention. His leaks provided by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs and Iraqi war logs and many more. As a result, US government launched a criminal investigation into Wikileaks, which he founded.

The letter to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Home Secretary Priti Patel is signed by 169 individuals and legal organisations. Among those calling for the UK government to intervene are Professor Vaios Koutroulis, professor of Public International Law from the University of Brussels, Belgium. Law groups signing the letter are the American Association of Jurists AAJ, consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Center for Constitutional Rights CCR, USA, the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights ELDH and many more.

READ MORE:Assange fails extradition bid

Mr Assange is currently incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh, reportedly in ill health. Lawyers4Assange pinpoint the unlawful nature of the extradition of Mr Assange due to failure to ensure the protection of his fundamental trial rights in the US. The letter states that Mr Assange faces show trial at the infamous Espionage court of the Eastern District of Virginia, before which no national security defendant has ever succeeded. Here, he faces secret proceedings before a jury picked from a population in which most of the individuals eligible for jury selection work for, or are connected to, the CIA, NSA, DOD or DOS.

The lawyers express their collective concerns about the violations of Mr Assanges fundamental human, civil and political rights and the precedent his persecution is setting.

READ MORE:Find out more about WikiLeaks

They call on the British government to act in accordance with national and international law, human rights and the rule of law by bringing an end to the ongoing extradition proceedings and granting Mr Assange his long overdue freedom freedom from torture, arbitrary detention and deprivation of liberty, and political persecution.

Read more:
Lawyers4Assange call for the British government to end extradition proceedings against Julian Assange - Neos Kosmos

Its been seven years since Edward Snowden rocked the world, and in America the ground is shaking once again.

In a promising turn of events, headlines have seen an unprecedented outpouring of support for Snowden from high-ranking American officials. In a press conference Saturday, President Trump stated that he is going to take a look at [Snowdens case] very strongly. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and two sitting members of Congress, Reps. Justin Amash (L-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), have also taken to Twitter to support the whistleblower. Equally encouraging is how swiftly all of this has drawn the ire of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.); in my own experience, when youve angered someone with the surname Cheney, youve probably done something right.

It is an addictive tendency in politics to feel a sense of history about what it is one is fighting for. Everyone wants to believe that their heroes from ages past are smiling down on them while simultaneously rolling in their graves at the sight of whatever the opposition is doing. But the fact of the matter is that the vast network of scandal-ridden government agencies, clandestine secret courts, and diabolically unconstitutional statutes trying to destroy Snowden hails from a particularly dark, shameful chapter of Americas past.

Snowden stands accused of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, championed by then-President Woodrow Wilson. Passed just two months after Americas entrance into World War I, the law sought to silence criticism of the war effort and crush dissent within the ranks of the armed forces. In his State of the Union address just two years earlier, Wilson begged Congress to pass it, declaring, Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once.

Now the law has withstood over a century of criticism and legal challenges from civil liberties advocates, and the misery it has inflicted on countless Americans has proven painfully obvious. In 1918, antiwar activist Charles Schenck was arrested for distributing flyers encouraging men to resist the draft. That same year, socialist Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison, deprived of his citizenship, and disenfranchised for life over nothing more than a speech he made criticizing the war. In January 1919, however, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to freedom of speech by concluding that neithers arrest constituted a violation of the First Amendment.

And these are far from the only people to have been victimized by the very law being used to terrorize Snowden today. A search for just a few of the more well-known cases will yield the stories of journalist Victor L. Berger, activists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, and former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) employee Henry Kyle Frese.

Discussing recent events in an April 2020 interview with journalist and constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald, Snowden warned, Now, the only thing we have left our rights, our ideals, our values as people thats what theyre coming for now, thats what theyre asking us to give up, thats what theyre wanting to change. And remember that, from the perspective of a free society, a virus is a serious problem but the destruction of our rights is fatal thats permanent. With so much confusion and uncertainty about the future of liberty in America, there has hardly been a more fitting moment for our leaders to stand with freedom by denouncing the ever-expanding reach of the surveillance state.

As the curtains of tyranny close tighter, giving Edward Snowden the full pardon he deserves would provide this much-needed glimmer of hope for privacy in America.

Cliff Maloney is the president of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL).

Read this article:
History is on Edward Snowden's side: Now it's time to give him a full pardon | TheHill - The Hill

The politics of the lesser evil has always had a nasty tendency to hold to the great old evil and thus to prepare the way for even greater new evils.

HannahArendt

Day One

+ Quite a symbolic way to kick off the DNC convention: The DNC quietly excised a call to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies from its platform, saying including the language in the first place was an error.

+ This news was swiftly followed by an announcement that the Pipe Fitters Union was endorsing Biden, despite his pledge to stop the completion of the KXL Pipeline. Pretty sure the pipe fitters union knows something about Bidens real intentions that the Sierra Club refuses to believe

+ Last month, a new study found that flaring of natural gas wells, from the fracking operations Biden has vowed not to end, was directly linked to an increase in preterm births in South Texas. Pregnant Latina women were more likely than white women to give birth prematurely.

+ The backlash to Trumps flirtation with pardoning Edward Snowden has been swift and rabid, with Democrats like Susan Rice leading the assault. There are certain people the State will never forgive and will persecute to their last days and beyond: Malcolm, the late Philip Agee, Daniel Ellsberg, Leonard Peltier, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, among them.

+ What would a Democratic Convention be without an altercation involving Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was accused of shoving a high school student volunteer for her Democratic primary challenger Jen Perelman, outside of a polling place in Broward County.

+ It was revealed earlier today that Bernie Sanders personal favorite for Bidens VP was not Liz Warren. Not Barbara Lee. Not Karen Bass. Not ButKamala Harris.

+ Michael Bloomberg dropped $18 million into the DNCs coffers and was rewarded with a speaking slot, an echo of Ronald Reagans quip, Im paying for this microphone!

+ In a bid to win the desperate housewives of suburbia, the opening night of the DNC Zoom Convention is being hosted by the peoples tribune Eva Longoria, who could have held the entire event inside her $15 million Beverly Hills palazzo

+ There are more American flags on display tonight than at Kerrys 2004 Reporting for Duty convention. I hope everyone takes a knee during this playing of the national anthem

+ Its only been 8 minutes and theyve already dropped a needle on Bruce Springsteen.

+ Springsteens 9/11 threnody, The Rising, is being put into service tonight to aid the election of a candidate who exploited 9/11 as an excuse to go to war in Iraq. As cynical as Reagan appropriating Born in the USA on the campaign trail

+ Democrats are presenting a rare message of unity tonightby silencing those in their own party who disagree with the leadership.

+ I hope the kids were sent to their rooms before Andrew Cuomo came on to give them nightmares by bragging about overseeing the deaths of 32,500 New Yorkers

+ Not one of these deeply admirable & courageous health care workers have been allowed to mention Medicare for All in their testimonials about being on the frontlines of the COVID pandemic.

+ Medicare for All and the Green New Deal have been replaced as rallying cries byGive Us Vote by Mail or Death!

+ Most of these speeches have the bland and dreary quality of a state of the union response, without the comedy of Marco Rubios frantic rehydrations

+ Kasich: I know Joe. He wont turn hard left!

+ Hes right about that.

+ Will Bernie dare to venture to left of Doug Jones?

+ Theres nothing quite as jarring as listening to a lecture byKlobocop on racial justice night!

+ If this is the kind of timid middle of the road pablum theyre dishing out on racial justice night, how many countries will they threaten to sanction, drone and overthrow on foreign policy night?

+ If everyone is welcome in the Democratic Party can it really stand for anything?

+ In this merry-go-round of former candidates, they feature Seth Moulton but not Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Castro, or Marianne Williamson? Some are forgiven their apostasies, some arent.

+ Looking at his bookshelves,Id have thought Beto would have had a better vinyl collection

+ One gets the sense that if the Democrats take the senate back 51-49, Biden will offer to give one senator back in the name of unity.

+ Bernies standing in front of a huge stockpile of firewood as he pontificates about climate change

+ Bernie spent 10 awkward minutes avoiding any mentionof the ideas he supposedly made mainstream but couldnt even get into the Democratic platform.

+ Bernie is now a pitchman for Medicare-for-All-Above-60!

+ The intensity ofMichelle Obamas speech backfired to this extent at least: it vividly highlighted all of Bidens weaknesses as an orator.

+ Was Melania taking notes, cutting-and-pasting?

+ Fighting fascism from Barack and Michelles new digs in Marthas Vineyard

Day Two

+ Just in time for Bills big speech tonight at the DNC, the New York Post has released photos of Clinton getting a neck massage from Epstein accuser, Chauntae Davies.

+ Last nights soul reclamation project has been replaced with a plan to upgrade Americas moral compass.

+ Breaking on MSNBC: Colin Powell will be a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention tonight. Will he announce that hes finally found the aluminum nuclear rods and the mobile BW labs?

+ Colin Powell will tell the DNC that the country needs a commander in chief who takes care of the troops like family and Biden knows that: It comes from the experience he shares with millions of military families sending his beloved son off tour and praying to God he would come home safe.

+ 4500 US troops KIA in Iraq, 32,000 US troops WIA in Iraq. (Iraqi dead and wounded cant be mentioned)

+ Robert Drapers book, To Start a War, exposes Powell for the total fraud that he is. He never once directly told Bush he had even the slightest doubts about invading Iraq. How he became a hero of the antiwar Democrats is one of the great political mysteries.

+ What surprise GOP figure will speak tomorrow night? George or Laura? John Boehner or Paul Ryan? A hologram of Reagan?

+ Permission structure (ie, making the Democratic Party safe for neocons) is a grotesque new political catch-phrases. It needs to be sent right to the guillotine

+ I enjoyed hearing Jimmy and Roslyn Carters voices, though I cant quite recall anything specific they said, which is probably intentional. But it did remind me that Joe Biden had already been in the Senate for four years before Carter was elected president

+ Is this last gasp of Bill Clinton? He sounds and looks enfeebled, perhaps weighed down by flashbacks to his flights on Epsteins Air Lolita. If you want a president who defines the job as spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, hes your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if youre trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses.

+ Van Jones: Unlike Trump, Bill Clinton apologizes for his mistakes. Did Clinton apologize to Sistah Souljah? The family of Ricky Ray Rector? The mothers and children he kicked off of welfare? Jocelyn Elders? Lani Guinier?

+ Hey,heres Tom Perez, the Democrats chief vote suppressor (against other Democrats), talking about the evils of voter suppression.

+ When Julian Castro, inexplicably exiled from the festivities, inveighed against the lack of Latinx speakers at the DNC convention, Perez humbly noted that he was speaking for many of them. Did they try calling Alberto Gonzales?

+ Everything Jonathan Chait knows about how working class people express themselves he learned from watching one episode of The Family Guy.

+ Its been said that AOC was given a 60 second slot by the DNC. Thats not quite true. She was picked by Sanders to nominate him. If her restrained remarks were vetted and edited, it was likely done by Sanders, not Biden, to reflect his own tempered and deflated rhetoric.

+ AOC and the four flags

+ Even that bridled performance by AOCwhere she avoided mentioning single-payer, free college, forgiving student debt, slashing the Pentagons budget, ending the Afghan war, abolishing ICE, or defunding the policewill be playing on FoxNews for the next three months

+ AOC herself is dismissing reports of divisiveness inside the party, saying November is about stopping fascism within the United States.Of course, divisiveness is vital now more than ever, especially when the alternative is cooperating with systemic fascism to drive a fascist figurehead from office

+ The roll call speakers are so much better than any of the politicians theyve given speaking gigs to

+ Joe will bring the calamari back

+ So strange to see Barbara Lee speaking, ever so briefly, on Iraq War night

+ Right on cue heres John Kerry, reporting for duty again.

+ Kerry lost with this same argument of competent management of the the Empire to George W. Bush. When will the Democrats give up on the imperial project all together?

+ Colin Powell, who helped cover up the My Lai massacre and lied about WMDs to invade Iraq, sermonizing on values is both appalling and ridiculous.

+ Kerry, Powell, then McCainit could be 2003 all over again.

+ How to raise a McCain up when its in defeatthe night they dropped the Nalpalm down and all the Democrats were singing

Day Three

+ In order to protect the sales of hats made in China, Trump is launching a boycott of tires made in Akron, OhioMAGA!

+ The big story in the New York Times this morning is that Trump may have had a romantic relationship with a former Miss Moscow. Romantic relationship. That doesnt sound like Trump to me

+ The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, where the Moscow honey trap story originated, also fingers former congressman Dana Rohrabacher for having received sensitive documents from Russian officials in 2016. If Rohrabacher, long one of the most clownish and inconsequential members on the Hill, was really Putins favorite congressman, then hes much dumber than we thought he was

+ Navarro is right for once. Now, how does he explain Trumps continuing affection for Mike Pence, Elliot Abrams and Rudy Giuliani?

+ Obama speaks tonight. Will he set an example for the youth of the nation by taking responsibility for any of his lethal escapades? The Afghan surge? Deepwater Horizon? The Honduran Coup? Bailing out banks while forsaking the foreclosed? The destruction of Libya? Drone killings.

+ Aide: Harris wants people to see themselves in her speech. See themselves where? Behind bars?

+ Hillary Clinton is returning to the Democratic National Convention to cement her legacy as a champion of women in politics. Shell speak Wednesday night as Kamala Harris becomes the first Black woman to accept a spot on a major presidential ticket. I thought that HRCs legacy had already been cemented and was only waiting to be deposited in Long Island Sound

+ HRC, dressed like an apparition from a Wilkie Collins novel, began her rant with a lie: Iwish Donald Trump had been a better president. No, she doesnt. Her post-2016 political existence is predicated on Trump being a disaster, regardless of the number of bodies left in his wake. In fact, the higher the death count rises, the more smug she gets.

+ Hillary recounts more imaginary conversations than Trump does: For four years, people have said to me, I didnt realize how dangerous he was. I wish I could go back and do it over. I should have voted.' HRC has never associated with such people, which is a big reason she lost.

+ Sacrifice and service two words not normally associated with the Clintons.

+ Those ravens and gulls swirling around the Bay Bridge and sweeping behind Pelosis head gave the whole presentation a Hitchockian mise-en-scene, which it probably merits.

+ Pelosi: Joes, faith in god Where was it when his crime bill expanded the death penalty and he voted to invade Iraq?

+ And they cant understand why people might want to defect from the Democrats and vote for the Greens, Libertarians or Kanye West

+ For some reason, Anita Hill wasnt included in this segment on Bidens tenacious work on behalf of women victims of sex crimes.But the DNC did bring out Mariska Hargitay to defend his crime bill, an actress whos role model for her character on Law & Order SVU was Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor who led the fallacious prosecution of the Central Park Five.

+ Remember when organized labor used dominate these conventions. Now their chief champion in the Senate, Sherrod Brown, is reduced to a subliminal moment

+ In the background of Elizabeth Warrens live shot at an early childhood center, multi-colored block letters spelled out BLM.

+ Where was this Warren 8 months ago? Plotting the undermining of Sanders, I guess, and blowing up her own campaign in the process.

+ So Obama comes to us from the History of the American Revolution Museum, standing next to an exhibit on the US Constitution featuring a portrait of little Jimmy Madison, who took his slaves with him when he moved to the White House with his wife Dolly. When Madison died, he still owned more than 100 slaves, none of whom were freed after his death.

+ Did Obama preserve and defend or ignore, erode and assault the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, & seventh amendments?

+ Obama didnt call the press the enemy of the people, but treated many reporters as the enemy of his administration and jailed them.

+ Obama ignored Bidens one sound piece of advice, which was not to pursue a troop surge in Afghanistan

+ Obama gave a real American carnage speech. Too bad he didnt give it to himself 10 years ago.

+ He may go AWOL for weeks, even months, at a time, but Michael Moore always comes home to roost

+ The metaphor of America as family, which the Democrats and Harris, in particular, have been pushing all week as a symbol of unity will fall flat for most people who recall the fraught dynamics of last years Thanksgiving Day meal.

+ Being born in Oakland is one of the best things Harris has going for her

+ Is Willie Brown part of Harris extended family?

+ How is this rhetorical notion of national unity and togetherness relentlessly pushed by Biden and Harris functionally different than Trumps claims after Charlottesville that theres good people on both sides? Will the Democrats ever draw a line they wont cross? Where is it?

+ God knows, Id never have the nerve to speak before 320 million people, even on Zoom, but Harris is not an inspiring orator. Like most prosecutors, she has a mechanical and rigid, almost relentless, speaking style, that sounds even harsher after listening to Obama for 20 minutes.

+ Tonight, only Warren even hinted at a structural enemy beyond the current depraved administration, the corporations, banks & financial predators that have been looting the nation before Trump came on the scene & will be there after hes gone, perhaps even more deeply entrenched.

+ Theres still one night to go, and it may all blow up spectacularly, but theres been much less Russiagating and China-bashing from the Democrats than Id anticipated and feared. One would like to think its been purged from their system. Then again

+ Melina Abdullah: Were not in the streets to get out the vote. Were in the streets to upend this system of oppression.

Day Four

+ I awoke on Thursday morning to the news that Steve Bannon had been arrested while on board a 150-foot yacht by US Postal Service inspectors for his role in a fraudulent scheme to build a private border wall, in which some of his co-conspirators had embezzled money to buy a 40-foot boat that would later make an appearance in a Boaters for Trump flotilla.

+ Trump on Bannons arrest: I havent had anything to do with him in years.

Trump on FoxNews in July: He says greatest president ever. I said, Lets keep Steve out there, hes doing a good job. But theyre all involved.

+ Geoffrey Bennett, NBCNews: Respectfully, sir, its not just Steve Bannon, its Roger Stone, its Michael Flynn, its Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen. Whats it say about your judgment

Trump: Well, I have no idea.

+ Trey Gowdy throws Steve Bannon under the bus on FoxNews, reverses, plows over him again: Hes the same guy who claimed credit for the presidents victory..the only person on the planet, literally..that can elect a Democrat, because he backed Roy Moore.

See the original post:
Roaming Charges: Conventional Weapons at the DNC - CounterPunch

Third, they encrypt as many files on the network as possible, using a scrambling algorithm for which they alone have the key. The crooks typically copy the malware program across the network first, so that when they kick off the encryption process, it runs in parallel on all your devices, thus bringing maximum disruption in minimum time.How these stages evolved

As you probably know, the first two stages above are fairly recent developments in ransomware criminality.

When ransomware crooks started out back in 2013 when the infamous CryptoLocker gang were the kings of the ransomware scene it was all about stage 3: scrambling files and then using the decryption key as a blackmail tool: Send us $300 or your files are gone forever.

The crooks generally didnt target networks back then; instead, they went after millions of victims in parallel, with each infected computer ransomed independently.

The criminals targeted everyone from home users who probably didnt have backups of any sort and might be willing to spend $300 to get their wedding photos or the videos of their children back to big companies where 100 users might fall for the latest ransomware spam campaign and the business would need to spend 100 $300 to get the unique decryption key for each now-useless computer.

Stage 1 arrived on the ransomware scene when criminals realised that by going after entire networks one-at-a-time, they could cut their losses early in the case of a network that they didnt have much success with, and focus on networks where they could cause disruption that was both sudden and total.

Instead of pursuing thousands of individual computer users for hundreds of dollars each, the crooks could blackmail a single company at a time for tens of thousands of dollars a time.

Indeed, the early adopters of the all-at-once ransomware approach often took the cynical approach of offering two prices: a per-PC decryption fee, and an all you can eat buffet price for a master key that would unscramble as many computers as you wanted almost as if the crooks were doing you a favour.

The crooks behind the SamSam malware four Iranians have been identified and formally charged by the US, but are unlikely ever to stand trial even offered a staged payment service whereby you could pay half the ransom to receive half of the decryption keys (chosen randomly by the criminals).

If you were lucky, you might just end up with enough computers running again to save your business for just 50% of the usual price

but if not, you could pay the rest of the ransom, presumably now with considerable confidence that the crooks would deliver the decryption tools as promised.

You could even take a chance on paying the per-PC fee for your most critical computers typically $8000 a time to tide you over, and top up later, once you were confident in the criminals, to the master-key price, which was typically set by the SamSam crooks just below $50,000.

Whether they chose $50,000 at a guess, or because they found it represented a common accounting department limit in the US below which it was much easier for the IT manager to get the payment approved, we never found out.

As you can imagine, the exposure of the alleged perpetrators by US law enforcement pretty much drove the SamSam crooks out of business, albeit not before they had extorted millions of dollars from victims around the world, but ultimately didnt make much of a dent in ransomware attacks in general.

Sadly, the SamSam gangs fee of $50,000 a network turns out to be small by current standards.

A recent ransomware attack that took US GPS and fitness tracker giant Garmin offline for several days was apparently resolved when the company coughed up a multi-million dollar payment, supposedly negotiated downwards from $10,000,000.

That incident attracted controversy because the ransomware involved was alleged to have been the work of a Russian cybercrime outfit known as Evil Corp, and transactions with that group are prohibited by US sanctions imposed in December 2019.

And US travel company CWT is said to have coughed up $4,500,000 recently again, down from an opening demand of an alleged $10 million for unscrambling what the crooks claimed were 30,000 ransomed computers.

If true, $10,000,000 for 30,000 devices comes out at $333 each, a fascinating full-circle back to the $300 price point of the 2013 CryptoLocker ransomware, which was itself an intriguing echo of the first ever ransomware attack, way back in 1989, where the criminal behind the malware demanded $378. (With no prepaid credit cards, online gift cards or cryptocurrencies to use as a vehicle for pseudoanonymous payments, this early attempt at ransomware, known as the AIDS Information Trojan, was a financial failure. Indeed, it wasnt until the early 2010s that cyberextortion based on locking up computers or files worked out at all for the cyberunderworld.)

But the biggest tactical change in ransomware is stage 2 above.

By perpetrating data breaches up front, before unleashing the file scrambling component in Brown-Formans case, the breach allegedly includes 1 terabyte; in CWTs attack, the criminals claimed that 2 terabytes were thieved up front the crooks now have a double-barrelled weapon of criminal demand.

Youre no longer being extorted to pay for the crooks to do something, namely to send you a set of decryption keys, but also being blackmailed into bribing the crooks not to do something, namely not to go public with your data.

Early ransomware had more in common with kidnapping, though with jobs at stake rather than the victims life: the theory was that if you paid up and the crooks released a working decryption tool, you not only got your data back but also quite clearly ended the power that the criminals had over you.

For the crooks to ransom your data again (sadly, this happens), theyd need to break into your network again and essentially start from scratch, assuming that you worked out how they got in before and closed the holes they used last time.

But todays ransomware is turning into old-school, out-and-out blackmail: the crooks promise to delete the data they already stole, and thereby to prevent your ransomware incident turning into a publicly visible data breach, but you have no way of knowing whether they will keep their promise.

Even worse, you have no way of knowing whether the crooks can keep their promise, even if they intend to.

For all you know, the data they took illegally could already have been stolen from them remember that many of the cybercrime busts written about on Naked Security, including ransomware arrests, happened because of cybersecurity blunders made by the perpetrators that allowed their evil secrets to be probed, uncovered and ultimately proved in a court of law.

Or the criminals themselves may have been victims of insider crime, where one of their own decided to go rogue after all, weve also written about crooks getting busted not through operational blunders but through a falling-out among thieves, where one of the gang has ratted out the others or otherwise co-operated with the authorities to save themselves

Technically, or at least from a regulatory point of view, all ransomware attacks are data breaches, even if all they do is scramble your files in place.

After all, if an outsider is able to modify files they werent supposed to access at all, that clearly amounts both to unauthorised access (a crime in most jurisdictions) and to unauthorised modification (a yet more serious crime) and even though this makes you a victim of crime, it also means youve failed in at least some way at protecting information you were supposed to protect.

And ransomware crooks who steal your data before scrambling it are really in the pound seats when it comes to blackmail.

Even if you prevent the final stage of the attack and the file scrambling failed, or if you have reliable and comprehensive offline backups that allow you to repair and reimage all your computers without relying on the crooks for decryption keys, the crooks are going to squeeze you anyway, by threatening to make a bad thing (a provable data breach) much worse: a data breach that can actively be used against you, by other crooks, by unscrupulous competitors, by activists, by regulators, by anyone who is determined to make you look bad for any reason they choose.

The good news, in the case of the Brown-Forman attack, is that current reports suggest two important things:

All we can say to that is, Well done, and thanks for standing firm.

Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, a law firm that represents numerous high-profile celebrities, recently faced a demand similar to Brown Formans, where the ransomware criminals menaced company founder Allen Grubman in broken English with threats to auction off celebrity data in the cyberunderworld:

We have so many value files, and the lucky ones who buy these data will be satisfied for a very long time. Show business is not concerts and love of fans only also it is big money and social manipulation, mud lurking behind the scenes and sexual scandals, drugs and treachery. [] Mr. Grubman, you have a chance to stop that, and you know what to do.

The company famously likened the blackmailers to terrorists and refused to pay up. (The threatened auctions havent yet happened though no one knows whether thats because the crooks felt they couldnt trust their own or because the data stolen simply wasnt up to what the crooks claimed.)

To reward companies that are willing to say, We wont pay, and who help to break the feedback that keeps the ransomware cycle turning, we suggest that you repay them by making sure that if their data does get dumped by crooks

that you simply do not look.

No matter how useful it might seem; no matter what items that you feel are now both in the public domain and in the public interest; no matter how much you might argue that companies like Brown-Forman were themselves remiss in the first place for not protecting data that they ought to have, dont look.

We urge you, Just say no.

Brown-Formans breach is now a matter of public record and we assume it will be carefully investigated by law enforcement and the relevant regulators, so lets leave them to it.

As Sophos Cybersecurity Educator Sally Adam put it:

There is no end justifies the means discussion to be had here because this is nothing like the cases of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, where no matter what you think of their ultimate actions an insider identified something they perceived to be wrong. This is purely about extortion.

Clearly, prevention is way better than cure.

Its important to have protection in place to stop stage 3 above (after all, not all ransomware attacks do follow this three-step process, and one-off scrambling attacks are still an ever present risk.)

Weve got plenty of advice on how to do just that, including our popular report:

But the earlier you block or spot the crooks, the better for everyone, including yourself.

So we recommend you review the following handy resources too, to keep ransomware crooks out right from the very start:

Go here to see the original:
US liquor giant hit by ransomware what the rest of us can do to help - Naked Security

In what it calls an effort to make itself "a morereliable source for election-related news and information,"YouTube hasannounced that it will be removing "content thatcontains hacked information, the disclosure of which mayinterfere with democratic processes, such as elections andcensuses."

"For example, videos that contain hackedinformation about a political candidate shared with theintent to interfere in an election," adds the Google-ownedvideo sharingplatform.

IMPORTANT

YOUTUBEjust quietly announced they'll REMOVE "videos that containhacked information about a political candidate with theintent to interfere in an election" https://t.co/vum1y5c9ER

Rememberhow Wikileaks changed the game in 2016? Yeah, that's notallowed anymore. pic.twitter.com/dzt7WsOHKe

Memelord (@dailydigger19) August13, 2020

This by itself is analarming assault on human communication and press freedom.If there is authentic information out there about either ofthe candidates who are up for the most powerful electedposition on the planet, the world is entitled to know aboutit, regardless of how that information was acquired.Monopolistic tech oligarchs have no business barring us fromlearning about and discussing thatinformation.

Immensely powerful people should not bepermitted to have secrets from the public anyway. The amountof power one has should be directly inverse to the amount ofsecrecy they are permitted to have. If you're anywhere nearthe presidency of the United States of America, the secrecyyou are entitled to should be zero.

If a hacker isable to get a hold of accurate information about DonaldTrump or Joe Biden, that information is ours. We're entitledto it. Anyone who tries to obstruct our access to thatinformation is stealing from us. It's absolutely ridiculousthat we have a society where people are permitted to bothrule over us and keep secrets from us as it is without government-alignedtech plutocrats silencing our attempts to learn what thosesecrets might be.

Moreover, no YouTube moderator willbe in any position to definitively say whether mostinformation that comes out is hacked. They'd only be able todo what the mass media did with the 2016 WikiLeaks drops andcite unproven assertions by opaque intelligence agencies whohave a proven track record of lying, assertions which turnedout to be far more dubious than most Americans realize.Documents or video could be leaked about a candidate and USintelligence agencies could just declare it a "hack" andhave any YouTube videos about it immediatelycensored.

As Alan MacLeod explainsfor MintPress News:

"[T]hegreat majority of leaked information the lifeblood ofinvestigative journalism is anonymous. Often, like inthe cases of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning or RealityWinner, whistleblowers face serious consequences if theirnames become attached to documents exposing government orcorporate malfeasance. But without a name to go with adocument, the difference between leaked data and hacked datais impossible to define. Thus, powerful people andorganizations could claim data was hacked, rather thanleaked, and simply block all discussion of the matter on theplatform."

'Discussionof Wikileaks or any Hacked Information Banned UnderNew YouTube Rules' | @AlanRMacLeodfor @MintPressNewshttps://t.co/IXt8oFImPy

Courage Foundation (@couragefound) August14, 2020

So this in and of itselfis an outrage. But the way things are playing out it couldwind up being a lot worse if damning information about acandidate surfaces prior to the November election.

Wealready know from experience that social media giants tendto follow in each other's footsteps whenever there's asignificant step in the direction of censorship, like theircoordinated cross-platform removals of alternativemedia outlets, accountsfrom US-targeted nations, and peoplewho have been labeled "conspiracytheorists".

So there's already reason to beconcerned that YouTube's new attack on press freedoms willspread to social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.Add in the fact that these platforms are openly coordinatingwith each other and with the US government to silence speechdeemed "online meddling" and "election interference" and itlooks a lot more likely.

The New York Times published an article onWednesday titled "Google, Facebook and Others Form TechCoalition to Secure U.S. Election", laterchanged to "Google, Facebook and Others Broaden Group toSecure U.S. Election".

"Facebook, Google and othermajor tech companies said on Wednesday that they had addednew partners and met with government agencies in theirefforts to secure the November election," NYT reports. "Thegroup, which is seeking to prevent the kind of onlinemeddling and foreign interference that sullied the 2016presidential election, previously consisted of some of thelarge social media firms, including Twitter and Microsoft inaddition to Facebook and Google. Among the new participantsis the WikimediaFoundation."

Monopolistic techcompanies which collaborate in unison with governmentagencies to prevent unauthorized narratives from circulatingon the internet are conducting state censorship. Own it.pic.twitter.com/mhtuENkeyx

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) August13, 2020

So if informationemerges about a candidate in an "October surprise" in a waythat can be credibly spun as a "hack" like the 2016WikiLeaks drops were, it's entirely likely that we will seesome interference in people's ability to communicate aboutit on not just one but multiple social media platforms. Howmuch communication interference we'd be subjected to isunknown at this time, but it certainly looks like there aremeasures in place to at least implement some under certaincircumstances.

Imagine if documents or video footagewere posted online somewhere and we'd get blocked fromsharing its URLs on Facebook or suspended for postingscreenshots of it on Twitter. The way iron-fisted censorshippractices are already unfolding, it's a possibility thatlooks not at all remote.

Anyway, something to be onalertfor.

Scoop Media

Rogue journalist

Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids. She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness. She is the author of the illustrated poetry book "Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers."

Originally posted here:
How We Could Wind Up Banned From Discussing An October Surprise On Social Media This Election - Scoop.co.nz

In front of representatives of the press, Donald Trump has announced the prospect of examining a pardon for whistleblower Edward Snowden but he does not seem to know much about the case.

Washington The consequences of his whistleblowing in 2013 continue to have an effect today: At that time, Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee, handed over documents to journalists about the escalating surveillance practices of the US secret service NSA. Snowden, des Treason accused im exile in Moscow. On his Escape he was stranded there and applied for asylum.

The reputation of the USA has suffered internationally: Only a few weeks ago the European Court of Justice conceded an agreement to transfer data from Europeans to the USA because the information there was not sufficiently protected for the second time. Well, of all things Donald Trump Get moving into the matter.

The topic Edward Snowden was in an interview recently Trumps with the newspaper New York Times came up. Trump had stated that many people believed that Edward Snowden had not been treated fairly.

Because Snowden is still polarizing: While some people continue to accuse him of betraying secrets, others see his actions as a service to society. He has even received several international awards for it. Trump himself admits, however, that he was not particularly concerned with the case but he may now want to change that.

Some people think he should be treated differently, others think he did very bad things, Trump said in typical fashion at the press conference. He had been approached by journalists about his position on Snowden. His first reaction was that he wasnt particularly familiar with the matter, but he promised, I willIll see that.

Edward Snowden was open on Friday Twitter responded to Trumps first interview by taking a poll one Youtube channel who posted a probably not particularly independent, but clear answer to the question about the pardon delivered: 92 percent of the participants would support one.

At the end of his tenure in 2017, Trumps predecessor already had Barack Obama the Whistleblower Chelsea Manning pardoned although he was rather strict with whistleblowers during the tenure. The Democrat showed no mercy for Snowden. The CDU reacted extremely to an asylum request by Snowden in Germany.

Meanwhile, the current US President is mourning a family member: Donald Trumps younger brother has died. (kat) * Merkur.de is part of the Ippen-Digital network.)

Read the original:
A bang in the Snowden case: Trump is considering a step that Obama shied away from and makes an admission - Pledge Times