The U.S. is trying to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial for espionage, but even though sedition is no longer on the books, thats what the U.S. is really charging him with, says Joe Lauria.

By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News

The United States has had two sedition laws in its history. Both were repealed within three years. Britain repealed its 17th Century sedition law in 2009. Though this crime is no longer on the books, the crime of sedition is really what both governments are accusing Julian Assange of.

The campaign of smears, the weakness of the case and the language of his indictment proves it.

The imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher has been indicted on 17 counts of espionage under the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act on a technicality: the unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified materialsomething that has been performed by countless journalists and publishers over the decades. It conflicts head on with the First Amendment.

But espionage isnt really what the government is after. Assange did not pass state secrets to an enemy of the United States, as in a classic espionage case, but rather to the public, which the government might well consider the enemy.

Deep Roots

Assange revealed crimes and corruption by the state. Punishing such legitimate criticism of government as sedition has deep roots in British and American history.

Tybun Tree, place of execution near where Marble Arch now stands in London.

Sedition was seen in the Elizabethan era as the notion of inciting by words or writings disaffection towards the state or constituted authority. Punishment included beheading and dismemberment.

In their efforts to suppress political discussion or criticism of the government or the governors of Tudor England, the Privy Council and royal judges needed a new formulation of a criminal offence This new crime they found in the offence of sedition, which was defined and punished by the Court of Star Chamber. If the facts alleged were true, that only made the offence worse, wrote historian Roger B. Manning. Sedition fell short of treason and did not need to provoke violence.

Though the Star Chamber was abolished in 1641, the British Sedition Act of 1661, a year after the Restoration, said, a seditious intention is an intention to bring into hatred or contempt, or to exite disaffection against the person of His Majesty, his heirs or successors, or the government and constitution of the United Kingdom.

Part of the 1798 U.S. Sedition Act.

Under President John Adams, the first U.S. Sedition Act in 1798 put it this way:

To write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations against the government, or to resist it, or to aid or encourage hostile designs of foreign nations.

While WikiLeaks publications have never been proven false, the U.S. government is certainly portraying its work as scandalous and malicious writing against the United States and has accused him of encouraging hostile designs against the country.

Congress did not renew the Act in 1801 and President Thomas Jefferson pardoned those serving sentences for sedition and refunded their fines.

Second US Sedition Act

When President Woodrow Wilson backed the Espionage Act in 1917 he lost by one Senate vote on an amendment that would have legalized government censorship.

So the following year Wilson pushed for another amendment to the Espionage Act. It was called the Sedition Act, added on May 16, 1918 by a vote of 48 to 26 in the Senate and 293 to 1 in the House.

1918 protest in front of the White House against the Sedition Act.

The media at the time supported the Sedition Act much as it works today against its own interests by abandoning the seditious Assange. Author James Mock, in his 1941 book Censorship 1917, said most U.S. newspapers showed no antipathy toward the act and far from opposing the measure, the leading papers seemed actually to lead the movement in behalf of its speedy enactment.

Among other things, the 1918 Sedition Act stated that:

whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any language intended to incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the United States.

The U.S. has certainly seen revealing prima facia evidence of U.S. war crimes and corruption as being disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive towards the U.S. government and military.

Debs & Assange

A month after the 1918 Sedition Act was passed, socialist leader Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for publicly opposing the military draft. In a June 1918 speech he said: If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.

While in jail Debs received one million votes for president in the 1920 election. Assanges defiance of the U.S. government went well beyond Debs anti-war speech by uncovering war crimes and corruption.

Debs at a 1918 rally, shortly before being arrested for sedition for opposing the draft. (Wikimedia Commons)

For being seditious, Debs and Assange are the most prominent political prisoners in U.S. history.

Despite an attempt by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (of the anti-red Palmer Raids) to establish a peacetime Sedition Act, it was repealed in 1921but not before thousands of people were charged with sedition.

It was repealed because it was not seen as befitting a democratic society. Prosecuting Assange no longer arouses such widespread sentiment.

Except for a technicality in the Espionage Act, which needs to be challenged on constitutional grounds, the U.S. has no case against Assange. The weakness of the governments case points to it falling back on the abolished crime of sedition as the real, unstated charge.

The Accusations

The superseding indictment against Assange makes plain that official Washington is acting out of a fit of pique more than a sense of injustice. It is angry at Assange for revealing its dirty deeds.

He is seen not only as having acted disrespectfully to the U.S. government, but also stirring up popular opposition. In other words, he has committed an act of sedition. Because that crime is no longer on the books, it has to be described in a different way.

There is really only one technical infraction of the law that Assange is being accused of: unauthorized possession and dissemination. The rest of the indictment is about behavior that is not illegal, but what can be called seditious.

The Espionage Act indictment is so weak that it can only resort to an accusation that Assange endangered U.S. national security and aiding the enemy with no evidence to prove that that had ever happened.

Sedition Law Passed

Instead U.S. officials have been incensed with Assange for the embarrassment of uncovering their crimes and corruption. Since sedition is no longer on the books, they are only left with Section 793, paragraph (e) of the Espionage Act: the unauthorized possession and dissemination charge.

Innumerable journalists over the decades have possessed and disseminated classified information and continue to do so. Every citizen who has retweeted a WikiLeaks document has possessed and disseminated classified information. As the first journalist charged with this, a constitutional conflict is set up with the First Amendment, which will likely be challenged in court if Assange is extradited to the U.S. (A U.S. senator and a representative last month introduced a bill that would exempt journalists from paragraph (e)).

Left with no serious charge against him, the indictment is in line with the condemnation of Assange by U.S. officials, such as former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who called him a high-tech terrorist and a British judge who called him a narcissist.

In other words, Assange has insulted the powerful in the manner of an Elizabethan subject. Hes being accused of sedition, including stirring up dissent and unrest, such as in Tunisia, which sparked the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011.

Assange revealed what corporate media covers up: part of the long post-war U.S. history of overthrowing governments and using violence to spread its influence over the globe. He showed the U.S. motive is not spreading democracy but expanding its economic and geo-strategic interests. It is plainly seditious to do so contrary to a power-worshipping corporate media suppressing these historical facts.

Sedition is evidently a crime whose time has covertly come again.

Part Two in this series will be on The History of the Espionage Act and How it Ensnared Julian Assange.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached atjoelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

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ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Espionage is the Charge, But He's Really Accused of Sedition - Consortium News

The U.S. media has spent almost four full years loudly proclaiming its own devotion to defending press freedoms from any assaults by the Trump administration. And yet, with a few noble exceptions, they have largely ignored what is, by far, the single greatest attack on press freedoms by the U.S. Government in the last decade at least: the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange for alleged crimes arising out of WikiLeaks 2010 award-winning publication in conjunction with the worlds largest newspapers of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and U.S diplomatic cables.

Assange is currently being held in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London where he faces no charges of any kind other than the attempt to extradite him by the U.S. Government for those 2010 publications. There are no charges pending against him in Sweden, nor does this prosecution have anything to do with WikiLeaks publications during the 2016 election. The indictmentpertains solelyto those widely celebrated 2010 disclosures that revealed rampant war crimes, systemic corruption and official deceit by numerous governments around the world.

Our new episode of SYSTEM UPDATE explores Assanges case the latest updates to it and the reasons it is so pernicious with two guests: the international human rights lawyer Jen Robinson, who has long represented Assange in this and other legal proceedings, and the Washington Posts media reporter Margaret Sullivan, who is one of the few major media figures to have denounced the Assange indictment. The show begins with my own comprehensivereporting on this case in order to document what did and did not happen, what is and is not in question, and why this attempted extradition should deeply anger anyone who cares about press freedom: not just in the U.S. but internationally.

I believe the issues raised by this program are of vital importance across the political spectrum. You can watchit on the Intercepts YouTube channel (to which you can subscribe to see all content when its broadcast), or on the player below. A transcript will be posted later today:

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The dangers of the prosecution and attempted extradition of Julian Assange - The Intercept

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will make a bid to postpone his US extradition hearing due to ongoing lack of access to his lawyers in London's locked-down Belmarsh prison.

The Australian met his lawyers in person for the first time in a month in the holding cells of Woolwich Crown Court earlier this week.

Assange directed them to ask District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser to postpone his next hearing, which is set for May 18.

His lawyers will cite the ongoing lack of access to their client, the inability of key witnesses to attend and the lack of proper media scrutiny if the hearing continues amid lockdown.

WikiLeaks ambassador Joseph Farrell says it's clear the hearing can't go on in the current environment.

"Julian's lawyers cannot prepare adequately, witnesses will not be able to travel, and journalists and the public will not have free, adequate and safe access to the proceedings," he said in a statement on Friday.

"Justice will neither be done, nor seen to be done."

WikiLeaks also said Assange won't attend Monday's hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in person or via videolink due to medical advice that "moving to, and using, the video link room in the prison is too great a risk".

Judge Baraitser has previously knocked back Assange's bid to sit with his lawyers in the courtroom, rather than the dock.

She also denied his bail application two weeks ago, when his lawyers argued Assange was in danger of contracting the coronavirus in prison.

Assange faces 17 charges of violating the US Espionage Act and one of conspiring to commit computer intrusion.

He's accused of publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic and military files, some which revealed alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The charges carry a total of 175 years' imprisonment.

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Julian Assange in bid to postpone court hearing - 9News

An unintended consequence of the pandemic appears to be the revealing of the dark underbelly of our corporate farming system. I refer to Shift in egg demand shuts down a farm (Business, April 22).

The unfortunate farmer mentioned in the article has a contract to raise and care for 61,000 egg-producing chickens. Due to decreased demand, the entire flock of 61,000 chickens was euthanized all at one time. Why couldnt some of those chickens be given away to people that are experiencing food insecurity? The farmer is left with nothing, and since he is not an employee but rather only has a contract, he is eligible for nothing from his employer and that is exactly what he got. What a dehumanizing portrait this story paints of the large-scale food chain we have come to accept in our never-ending quest for cheap nutrition.

The next section of the story continues on down the supply chain, to the facility in Big Lake where all those eggs were previously processed for institutional use. The entire workforce of 300 people was laid off. The factory is owned by Cargill, one of the biggest food companies in the world. It doesnt answer to stockholders because its privately owned. Cargill has tried hard to promote a reputation of philanthropy and concern for the environment, but maybe keeping employees on the payroll for a few months instead of putting them on the public dole would also be a noble effort. Again, a very telling portrait of a corporation that has tried so hard to make itself look like it cares about people.

Catherine Fuller, Minneapolis

DECISIONS AMID DISEASE

Then, like now, intertwined events. Now, also: competing interests.

We learned a lesson of the 1918 flu pandemic at an early age (Let us learn from those who died in 1918, Opinion Exchange, April 22) as related by our mother who was 9 at that time. In horse and buggy, she and an aunt fled from their Kettle River home as fire raged from Moose Lake to Duluth in October of that year. More than 350 people perished. However, this environmental disaster also led to the death of many who survived the fire.

With soldiers returning home from the Great War bringing the disease with them, the flu virus spread throughout the area where survivors of the fire had crowded into the few remaining buildings, unable to heed the advice given by officials to remain apart. Many died in those buildings, including my mothers mother and uncle.

Today we have these deadly three intertwined types of events again plaguing us climate change, bringing fires and floods; armed conflicts, and pandemics. Comprehensive solutions are needed, as each affects the others.

Kathleen Laurila, Crystal, and Anita Kovic, Lakeville

Watching, reading and listening to stories about the demonstrations to #OpenMN, I just assumed that this is the second side of the story about our current situation. The first side is the need to stay at home and open businesses based on a plan that keeps our many front-line angels safe and prevents overloading our health care services. The second, but no less critical, side is the need to get people back to work so they can afford rent or mortgage, groceries, utilities, child care and other essentials of life.

Then I saw an open up the state clip on television (it wasnt local) that included a brief comment from a person participating in the demonstration. This person said that the businesses should be opened because we want to buy what we want to buy and go get our hair cut. This was my awakening to there being a third side to this story self-interest.

Rebecca Fuller, Woodbury

PRESIDENTS AND THE PRESS

Of classified information, espionage and Julian Assange

William Beyer (Obamas war on media was more harmful, counterpoint, April 22) criticizes the Obama administration for prosecuting 10 government employees and contractors for disclosing classified information to the press. Part of his argument is that the Espionage Act should not be used to prosecute U.S. citizens because it was enacted during World War I to protect the country against spies for foreign governments.

Elsewhere in the article, he talks about the odious and patently unconstitutional use of the Espionage Act to suppress free speech .

Stealing classified information from the government and making it public is espionage, not leaking. It is completely appropriate and not at all unconstitutional to prosecute people who do such activities. The issue is not free speech, it is the protection of government secrets.

Beyer says that the U.S. government has harassed Julian Assange. It appears that he regards Assange as a leaker or whistleblower who is merely exercising his right to free speech. Assange is accused of helping Chelsea Manning steal classified information, then publishing that information. Helping someone to steal classified information is espionage, not free speech.

James Brandt, New Brighton

Though their articles were positioned as point and counterpoint, both John Rash (A pointed report on Trump and the media, April 18) and Beyer actually wrote strong complementary defenses of the First Amendment. And thats a good thing, because the prognosis is not looking rosy, is it?

Our bellwether is the imperiled Julian Assange, founding publisher of WikiLeaks. Assange has been the target of a ferocious smear campaign over the past decade, such that arguing in his defense nowadays can feel like talking with 12-year-olds about Slenderman.

The Assange smears are rooted in the Swedish sex-crime allegations of August 2010. However, the investigation was upended last September by Nils Melzer (U.N. special rapporteur on torture) in a 19-page report (bit.ly/2NXUAEN).

Melzer revealed that the Swedish government shopped prosecutors, manipulated evidence, disregarded exculpatory evidence and refused to guarantee non-rendition. Bureaucratic procrastination was pervasive throughout, amid interference from British and U.S. security services. Sweden closed its Assange investigation shortly after Melzers authoritative report was published.

Whatever your imagined complaint against Assange (careless redaction, Russian agent, blood on his hands, not a journalist), please be skeptical of tainted information and dig deeper. Its time to let the sunshine in the reason, after all, that the First comes First.

Drew Hamre, Golden Valley

We want to hear from you. Send us your thoughts here.

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Readers Write: Corporate farming, decisions amid disease, presidents and the press (and Julian Assange) - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The UK has now fallen to 35th position in the latest World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders (RSF). One reason for scoring the UK behind 34 other countries was that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange received a disproportionate prison sentence of 50 weeks for breaking bail.

Regarding Assange, the latest report said:

The Home Secretary gave the green light to the court to consider the US extradition request, and Assange remained in custody at the high security Belmarsh Prison despite widespread international concern for his health and treatment, including by the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture.

The persecution and detention of Julian Assange has faced much criticism. Hip-hop artist Lowkey, for example, previously spoketoThe Canary about the importance of whistleblowers and media freedom. A statement from Veterans for Peace UK (VfP UK) in 2019, meanwhile, explainedhow theIraq War LogsandAfghan War DiariesfromWikiLeakshad:

revealed the true human cost of our wars in the Middle East. Wikileaks acted in the public interest by releasing these documents and Julian Assange, as a journalist, was right to publish in association with newspapers including The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel.

RSF has long criticised Washingtons determination to hound Assange. Back in 2010, meanwhile, it called on the UK to guarantee respect for his defence rights despite the extreme tension surrounding this case; and it slammed the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at WikiLeaks. It also stressed:

WikiLeaks has played a useful role by publicising serious human rights violations that were committed in the name of the war against terror during the past decade.

RSF has criticised the UK governments treatment of Assange ever since. The last time the UK ranked above 30 in the index was 2013, when it came in 29th place.

RSF explained:

the UKs domestic press freedom record remained cause for concern throughout 2019. The killing of journalist Lyra McKee whilst observing rioting in Derry in April, and continued threats to journalists covering paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, underscored the need for urgent attention to the safety of journalists; however there was no apparent progress towards the establishment of a National Committee for the Safety of Journalists and a National Action Plan on Safety of Journalists as announced by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in July.

It also mentioned that:

Counter-terrorism and crime legislation adopted during the year contained worrying provisions that could restrict reporting and put journalists data at risk. The London Metropolitan Police pursued the publication of leaked information from diplomatic cables as a criminal matter. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) were used as a means to attempt to silence public interest reporting, such as in defamation cases brought by Arron Banks against journalist Carole Cadwalladr. During the general election campaign, the Conservative Party threatened to review the BBCs licence fee and Channel 4s public service broadcasting licence if the party returned to government.

Featured image via Flickr dgcomsoc

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UK slips down press freedom index, partly due to ongoing persecution of Julian Assange - The Canary

The coronavirus pandemic is worsening global threats to press freedom, watchdog group Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday as it released its latest annual Press Freedom Index.

"The public health crisis provides authoritarian governments with an opportunity to implement the notorious 'shock doctrine'to take advantage of the fact that politics are on hold, the public is stunned and protests are out of the question, in order to impose measures that would be impossible in normal times," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said in a statement.

The 2020 global analysis from the group, known by its French acronym, RSF, put Norway at the top of the indexthe fourth year in a row it's had the honor of being named the most free country in the world for the press.

The United States ranked 45, an improvement from the 48th spot the country had on the 2019 index. But the U.S. still came in for criticism by RSF, with the group saying that in the Americas, the U.S. and Brazil "are becoming models of hostility towards the media."

"Press freedom in the United States continued to suffer during President Donald Trump's third year in office," said RSF, citing ongoing "[a]rrests, physical assaults, public denigration, and the harassment of journalists."

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Thanks to the Trump team, the "United States is no longer a champion of press freedom at home or abroad," RSF added. The index cites as examples the White House's curtailing of journalists' ability to question the administration, including by denying press access to specific journalists or outlets and the Justice Department's indictment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act. If Assange is convicted, RSF said, it risks setting "a dangerous precedent for journalists who publish classified U.S. government information of public interest moving forward."

RSF pointed to five crisesgeopolitical, technological, democratic, trust, and economicthat stand to affect how press freedom fares in the next decade.

"The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the negative factors threatening the right to reliable information, and is itself an exacerbating factor," Deloire added in his statement.

"What will freedom of information, pluralism and reliability look like in 2030?" he said. "The answer to that question is being determined today.

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Coronavirus Pandemic Exacerbating Global Threats to Press Freedom: Watchdog Group - Common Dreams

There was one piece of happy news on a doleful Easter day in Britain: Julian Assange had managed to father two children whilst locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy. This proves that love will find a way, even if your self-isolation is being enforced by the British police and the CIA.

It drew attention to the plight of this Australian publisher, who faces charges in America carrying a maximum of 175 years' imprisonment, all for revealing, back in 2010, truthful facts of considerable public interest.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Gabriel, the first of the two children that he was said to have fathered while in the embassy.Credit:Stella Morris

He now languishes, probably for several years, in Belmarsh, Britains toughest (and mainly for terrorist suspects) prison while he fights the US attempt to extradite him for trial in Maryland. If convicted there, on essentially the same espionage act charges which brought his source, Chelsea Manning, a 35-year sentence, he can expect a somewhat heavier term 50 years, perhaps time enough for him to die in an American Supermax jail. Manning was pardoned by US president Barack Obama, but there is little prospect that Assange would receive clemency from a second-term President Trump.

His defence is, principally, that the extradition proceedings are brought for political purposes, to deter other publishers from revealing what US forces do, even illegally and what US diplomats know (but the media does not) about human rights abuses. This argument will be developed later in the year at Westminster Magistrates Court.

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Babies now on board in Julian Assange's mammoth US extradition tussle - The Age

The spying that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was subjected to during the seven years that he lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London extended to his most intimate relations.

The Spanish security firm Undercover Global SL, which had been tasked with protecting the embassy, monitored every visit that Assange received, and even investigated whether he might have fathered a child during this period.

A few days ago, a 37-year-old lawyer named Stella Morris, who is a member of Assanges legal team, told The Mail on Sunday that Assange, 48, is the father of her two children, aged one and two. Morris said they were conceived while the WikiLeaks founder was staying at the embassy to avoid extradition to the United States on charges of leaking thousands of classified intelligence documents.

There was an attempt to take the babys pacifier

David Morales, a former military official who owns the security firm Undercover Global SL, is under investigation by Spains High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, for spying on Assanges meetings with his lawyers and allegedly handing information to the CIA.

Morales suspected that a baby who was repeatedly brought into the embassy by Stephen Hoo, an actor friend of Assanges who paid him regular visits, might really be the cyberactivists own child, and these visits were recorded.

Morales even issued orders to steal the babys diapers to analyze the contents for DNA, although the task was never carried out. Reports were drawn up about Stella Morris and about Stephen Hoo, according to video and documentary material to which EL PAS has had access.

It was an employee of the Spanish security firm who alerted Assanges partner about the plans: They wanted to prove that it was his child in a bid to harm him. There were talks with three Madrid labs to see how the parental connection could be proved. One of them said that DNA cannot be extracted from feces. There was an attempt to take the babys pacifier, said a former employee of Undercover Gobal SL.

A company report dated October 27, 2017 details Hoos visits to the Ecuadorian embassy and sheds light on Morales obsession with getting to the bottom of Assanges best-kept secret during his life as a recluse.

The report noted that Hoo always showed up for his visits in the company of a minor that he tells the security team is his own child. The author of the report also wrote that attempts at seeing identification for the child were fruitless, and that Stella Morris always arrives a few minutes before Stephen Hoo, and departs a few minutes after the latter leaves, although normally she stays for entire days with the host [codename for Assange] and even spends entire nights with him.

After the unnamed employee alerted Morris, the babys visits to the embassy ended.

They wanted to prove that it was his child in a bid to harm him

Stella Morris arrives at the Hotel [the embassy] at 1.49pm and leaves at 4.11pm while Stephen Hoo arrives at 2.06pm and leaves at 3.56pm on November 25, reads the report, which includes two photographs of Hoo walking into the embassys entrance hall and carrying one of Assanges children in a baby carrier.

The report provides details about the actor obtained from the British press, and speculates that Hoo might not really be the babys father. Based on information regarding the possibility that the host [Assange] may have fathered a child during his confinement at the embassy, and given the recent visits by this baby, always in the company of Stella Morris, we posit that, due to the ties of affection between the latter and the host, it cannot be ruled out that the baby could have some kind of relationship between both. The data obtained so far does not allow us to make this assertion, and we continue to work on collecting evidence that might lead to a more accurate result.

Morris, who said she and Assange are planning to get married, made her revelations to The Mail on Sunday after first telling a judge in the hopes that the cyberactivist will be granted bail. Assange has been in Belmarsh Prison ever since he was forcibly evicted from the embassy a year ago. If he were extradited to the US, he would be facing up to 178 years in prison.

Morales was arrested in October and released while the courts investigate him for alleged violations of privacy and client-attorney privilege, besides misappropriation, bribery and money laundering. The criminal investigation was launched a few weeks after EL PAS revealed video, audio and documentary material showing that the Spanish company had spied on Assanges meetings with his lawyers and aides.

English version by Susana Urra.

Given the exceptional circumstances, EL PAS is currently offering all of its digital content free of charge. News related to the coronavirus will continue to be available while the crisis continues.

Dozens of journalists are working non-stop to bring you the most rigorous coverage possible and meet their mission of providing a public service. If you want to support our journalism, you can do so here for 1 for the first month (10 from June). Subscribe to the facts.

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Spanish firm that spied on Julian Assange tried to find out if he fathered a child at Ecuadorian embassy - EL PAS in English

By Oscar Grenfell 18 April 2020

Spanish daily ElPasand the Italian newspaper Fatto Quotidiano this week revealed new details of the intensive surveillance and dirty tricks operations targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was a political refugee in Ecuadors London embassy.

Both articles indicated that a particular focus of the spying, which was allegedly orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, was identifying Assanges immediate family members. It raises the ominous possibility that plans were afoot to harm Assanges relatives, including his infant child.

The reports are the latest exposures of the spying, which was conducted by UC Global, a private Spanish firm contracted by the Ecuadorian authorities to provide security to the embassy building.

The companys director David Morales, a former Spanish military officer, is accused of having met with US authorities in early 2015 and agreed to secretly furnish the CIA with material gathered within the embassy in an operation that escalated over the ensuing three years.

Morales was arrested last year and charged with a raft of offenses, including over the surveillance. Assange has taken out a criminal complaint against the mercenary over the activities, which allegedly breached the legally-enshrined right to attorney-client privilege, along with the privacy of Assange and dozens of others.

Last week, Stella Morris, a 37-year-old lawyer, revealed that she has been in a personal relationship with Assange since 2015 and that the couple have two young children together.

The ElPasreport indicates that the older child, Gabriel, born in 2017 while Assange was still in the embassy, was a particular focus of UC Globals surveillance.

The Spanish-daily stated that detailed reports were prepared on Morris visits to and from the embassy. Stephen Hoo, a friend of Assange, often brought Gabriel to the building and was also subjected to surveillance. Hoos relationship status and even his sexual orientation were scrutinised.

ElPas wrote: Moraless suspicion was that a minor who entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London hanging on a baby carrier carried by actor Stephen Hoo could be the son of the cyber-activist (48 years old) and Morris (37 years old).

UC Global was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to identify the paternity of the baby. An anonymous ex-employee of the company confirmed that UC Global had considered stealing one of the infants used diapers or a pacifier to test for DNA.

The former employee stated: They wanted to prove that it was his son to try to harm him. One got to speak with three laboratories in Madrid to see how the parental issue could be accredited. One of the labs told us that DNA could not be obtained from the stool. Then they tried to get his pacifier.

It is not clear whether the witness meant that UC Global intended to harm Assange, the baby or both. However given the sordid history of the CIA, nothing can be excluded. Morris stopped bringing Gabriel to the embassy after being alerted by an employee of the operation and has since stated that she feared for his safety.

Writing in Fatto Quotidiano, longtime WikiLeaks collaborator Stefania Maurizi revealed that the targeting of Morris and her young family extended far beyond the walls of the embassy. Maurizi cited an email by Morales to his staff, ordering them to pay special attention to Morris. It noted that the company believed that Morris was not using her original name. The lawyer had, in fact, legally changed her name to avoid the operations of the intelligence agencies.

Morales wrote: If necessary I want a person fully dedicated to this activity, so if you have to hire someone to do it, tell me. All this has to be considered top secret so that the diffusion is limited.

In other words, UC Global was apparently planning to assign a full-time investigator to follow Morris. Morales also stated that the company had identified a relative of her mother in Catalonia, in an indication that the company was seeking to track down Morris family members around the world.

There have been previous indications that UC Global, acting on behalf of the CIA, was not only seeking to monitor every aspect of Assanges life, but also plotting physical attacks against him.

In the most detailed public overview of the embassy spying, Andy Mller-Maguhn, a German computer expert and close collaborator of Assange, explained that the UC Global operation dramatically escalated in 2017.

In December that year, Morales ordered that staff conduct a survey of the building, aimed in part at finding new areas where hidden cameras and microphones could be placed, in a bid to overcome measures Assange had taken to stymie the spying.

Most ominously, Morales also passed on to his staff a request from his American friends for a list of potential physical access points to the embassy. According to Mller-Maguhn, Morales asked his employees about the possibility of leaving the door of the diplomatic mission open, arguing that it was an accidental mistake, to allow the entry and kidnapping of the asylum-seeker.

The timing of these CIA operations is significant. They followed WikiLeaks publication, beginning in March 2017, of Vault 7, a vast trove of CIA documents exposing the global spying and hacking operations of the agency.

Then CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately responded by branding WikiLeaks a hostile non-state intelligence agency. At the same time, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation put together a counter-espionage squad to investigate WikiLeaks. Its work would culminate in the issuing of 18 charges against Assange, including 17 under the Espionage Act.

FBI special agent Megan Brown, who played a leading role in the taskforce, filed an affidavit against Assange, laying the basis for at least some of the charges against him, in December 2017.

In other words, at the same time that the CIA and its proxies were violating the privacy of Assanges family and considering illegally kidnapping the WikiLeaks founder, the FBI and the Justice Department were finalising a legal case against him.

Morales appears to have played a central role in both. ElPas previously reported that metadata from Morales emails placed him in Alexandria, Virginia, on March 1 and 2, 2017. This was just weeks after the establishment of the FBI squad. Alexandria is home to the largest concentration of intelligence employees in the US and was, at the time, the site of a secret grand jury impaneled to help concoct charges against Assange.

The close connection between illegal activities targeting Assange and his infant child, and the preparations for a US indictment of the WikiLeaks founder, further underscores the fact that he is the subject of what can only be termed an attempted extraordinary rendition. The charges and the formal extradition process are only a figleaf for a CIA operation aimed at destroying Assange because of his exposure of US government crimes.

As he awaits a show trial for his extradition to the US, scheduled to resume on May 18, Assange faces the imminent danger of being infected by the coronavirus pandemic as it sweeps through Britains prison system.

Earlier this month, Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser rejected an application for Assange to be released from Belmarsh Prison on bail, despite the fact that he has not been convicted of a crime and suffers from a raft of medical issues, rendering him vulnerable to COVID-19.

Maurizi published portions of Morris previously unreleased statement to the bail hearing. Morris stated: I have feared with strong reason for a long time that I will lose Julian to suicide if there is no way in which he can stop his extradition to the USA. I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus. I know very well that his health is extremely poor and can detail the different aspects of that poor health.

Morris outlined the dire impact that long stretches of effective solitary confinement in Belmarsh had on Assange. When in the Healthcare unit he was taken from a ward into a single cell for many months in a form of isolation save for a very few hours each day I noticed how he, as I described at the time was visibly very diminished like a withering flower.

Baraitser was unmoved, decreeing not only that Assange must remain behind bars, but also that it would be in the public interest for Morris and her young children to be named in the media, denying their right to anonymity.

The author also recommends:

Julian Assanges partner Stella Morris speaks out: His life is on the brink[13 April 2020]

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Intensive CIA spying on Assange targeted his infant child - World Socialist Web Site

This week, like usual, we, VICE UK, hosted a Netflix Party for the fifth edition of our weekly Corona Film Club series. For those who havent been involved, we screen a film every Wednesday, chat along with the readers and post the responses in a follow-up blog the next day. Anyway: this time we were hacked.

Halfway through our viewing of Shrek the Third, the film disappeared and was replaced by a looping one and a half minute Dailymotion video that implored viewers to write to their local MP to appeal against the UK-US extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Shrek never returned. The video which began with 2010 Wikileaks footage showing a US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians and ended with a 2019 news clip of Assange being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy played again and again. There's a screenshot above.

It was very bizarre. But this isnt the only time Netflix Party has been targeted with the same video. UK indie band Glass Animals encountered a similar video when they hosted a Netflix Party on 5th April. I don't know exactly what happened, but we were watching Spirited Away for our weekly cinema club, got five minutes in, then the whole website glitched and went to a Dailymotion site just playing some of Julian Assange's WikiLeaks videos. On repeat, Glass Animals singer Dave Bayley told us.

Twitter user @chachisays also seems to have come across the same video at their Netflix Party on March 21. They tweeted: 15 minutes in and I got redirected to an ad telling me to contact my MP to stop extradition on Julian Assange

The Wikileaks video we encountered in VICEs viewing party of US troops shooting Iraqi civilians was released in full-length form on 5th April, 2010 exactly ten years before Glass Animals hosted their viewing party. VICE has reached out to Wikileaks for comment.

Like video apps Houseparty and Zoom, Netflix Party has been touted by publications like the New York Times and the Guardian as a communication lifeline for those in lockdown during the pandemic. But the widespread adoption of new platforms rarely goes as planned: random users can pop up uninvited on Zoom chats a practice known as Zoombombing and the same goes for Houseparty.

VICE has seen several reports from Netflix Party users who say their private viewing sessions were interrupted by strangers who proceeded to send threatening messages using the apps chat function. Asli Ali, 18, was watching You Get Me a 2017 thriller film starring Bella Thorne as an emotionally disturbed stalker when toward the end of the film an unknown user who hadnt joined the party previously began typing.

Netflix Party usually alerts everyone when someone new joins the group, but this time it didn't. The user sent a message to the group that said the next victim. They then alluded to the film's plot and referred to themselves as Bella Thornes character.

Everyone else was in the party already, so they couldn't have been pranking us, says Asli, who explains their Netflix Party link was private and hadnt been shared with anyone beyond those already in the virtual room, and that "the next victim" message just popped up. It doesn't add up and it left me and my friends on a call for hours trying to figure out who it was.

Georgia Weidman, a cybersecurity expert and author of A Hands-on Introduction to Hacking, told VICE that were seeing more of these hacks because the numbers of users on these platforms have increased exponentially. There were always attackers attacking online meetings, mobile devices, etc. but now thats where the most users and the most sensitive data can be found.

Combine the amount of growth these apps are getting and the state of the economy and how much security budgets are being slashed right now, and I find it impressive that Zoom has been able to respond as well as they have to the security issues that have been raised. It seems its now Netflix Partys turn to beef up their security and privacy program.

When VICE reached out to Netflix Party, they said they were taking steps to repair the situation. A spokesperson told us that they have identified the issue and have posted a fix in the most recent update (V.1.7.9) to Netflix Party: It may take a few days for Google to review the extension, but the new version should automatically update and roll out in a few days.

@ryanbassil & @IamHelenThomas

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Netflix Party Got Hacked With Threats and Mysterious Pro-WikiLeaks Videos - VICE UK