Julian Assange is to be expelled from Ecuadors London embassy within hours or days, according to a high level source quoted by WikiLeaks.

In a tweet sent on Thursday, WikiLeaks claims the Ecuadoarian state has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.

The pavement opposite was lined with more than 20 members of the world's media, many with TV cameras.

A protest truck in support of Assage was briefly parked on Friday morning outside the embassy emblazoned with the words 'free speech, except war crimes'.

On the scene for Euronews was Victoria Smith who went over to speak to the people who had parked their van right outside the embassy door, effectively blocking most media from seeing the denouement, should Assange have come out at that point.

They didn't tell Victoria a great deal but we kept the camera rolling so you could hear the conversation, clink on the clip below.

In a statement on Friday, the WikiLeaks legal team said expelling Assange would "violate international refugee law and be an attack on the U.N. which has repeatedly called for Assange to be able to walk free."

"It will be a sad day for democracy if the UK and Ecuadorean governments are willing to act as accomplices to the Trump administration's determination to prosecute a publisher for publishing truthful information," said WikiLeaks.

Assange has been living inside the London-based embassy since 2012 seeking refuge after a British judge ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden for sexual assault allegations.

Sweden dropped the case in 2017 but Assange remains in the embassy following accusations of espionage.

He fears being extradited to the US to face charges over the WikiLeaks website's release of sensitive US government files.

The US wants Assange after Wikileaks hacked documents on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

In 2010, Wikileaks released footage from the Iraq war reportedly showing footage of soldiers shooting civilians. In the same year, the UK was on the verge of extraditing Assange.

Back in 1995, Assange was let off with a fine and escaped prison for hacking attempts in Australia.

He set up Wikileaks in 2006, protecting anonymous sources with highly encrypted devices.

Ecuador last year posed new rules for Assange's behaviour while in the embassy, which required him to pay his medical bills and clean up after his pet cat.

He challenged the rules in local and international tribunals, arguing they violated his human rights. Both courts ruled against him.

Assange didn't stepped out once from the embassy during his seven year stay, for fear of arrest by British police.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be expelled from Ecuador ...

A Twitter account for WikiLeaks, the document trove website founded by Julian Assange, said Thursday that Assange will be ousted from his sanctuary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London within "hours to days."

The websitetweeted Thursday claiming that a senior source with Ecuador's State Department had informed WikiLeaks that Assange would be removed from the embassy and subject to arrest by British authorities.

"BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within 'hours to days' using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest," WikiLeaks tweeted from its verified account.

BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.https://t.co/adnJph79wq

In a blog post on the organization's legal defense fund website, WikiLeaksclaimed that the move was an attempt by Ecuadorian PresidentLenn Moreno to cover up activities related to his use of an offshore tax haven created by his brother.

"The leak has sparked a congressional investigation into President Moreno for corruption. Moreno cant be summoned for a criminal probe while he remains president. He is currently being investigated and risks impeachment," the blog post read.

Assange's lawyer said this week, according to the blog post, that the former editor had nothing to do with the leak of the so-called INA Papers, which triggered the investigation.

Remember that WikiLeaks has an internal organization and Mr. Assange is no longer in the editor," the lawyer reportedly said.

Assange has come under scrutiny for publishing hacked emails from formerDemocratic presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonNote to Team Mueller: If you don't indict, you can't incite WikiLeaks: Assange will be expelled from Ecuadorian Embassy within 'hours to days' New Mexico gov signs bill granting electoral votes to national popular vote winner MORE's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 2016 election. He has dismissedscrutinyby stating that he acted as other journalists have when they decide to make confidential documents public.

Assange faces charges filed last year under seal in the U.S., and has been battling attempts by the Trump administration to extradite him to theU.S.

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WikiLeaks: Assange will be expelled from Ecuadorian Embassy ...

US

03:58 07.01.2017Get short URL

The US intelligence community report alleging that Russian hackers interfered in the 2016 presidential election lacks evidence and quality sources, WikiLeaks said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A public version ofthe comprehensive intelligence report assessing Russian activities and intentions inthe 2016 US presidential elections was released onFriday.

The released report has poor sourcing and no evidence, WikiLeaks stated ina Twitter post onFriday.

Earlier onFriday, the US Intelligence Community released a public version ofthe comprehensive intelligence report assessing Russian activities and intentions related tothe 2016 US presidential election.

The whistleblower organization pointed outhow mainstream American media outlets have even slammed the report forits lack ofsubstance.

The New York Times said inan article onFriday afterthe report was released that, "the declassified report contained no information abouthow the agencies had collected their data or had come totheir conclusions."

Russia has repeatedly denied the US allegations calling them absurd and characterizing them asan attempt todivert public opinion fromrevelations ofcorruption aswell asother pressing domestic issues.

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WikiLeaks: US Intel Report on Russia Hacking 'Has Poor ...

The Icelandic partner of Visa and MasterCard violated contract laws when it imposed a block against credit card donations to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks, a district court there has ruled.

The Reykjavk District Court ruled that Valitor, which handles Visa and MasterCard payments in Iceland, was in the wrong when it prevented card holders from donating funds to the site. The court ruled that the block should be removed within 14 days or Valitor will be fined the equivalent of about $6,000 a day.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told the Associated Press that it was a small but very important step in fighting back against these powerful banks. He said other lawsuits are ongoing in Denmark and Belgium.

Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America and other U.S. financial institutions began to block donations to WikiLeaks in 2010 after the controversial site began publishing more than 250,000 U.S. State Department cables that the group allegedly received from former Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. The financial services cited violations of their terms of service agreements as the reason for blocking the donations.

The U.S. State Department called the publication of the 250,000 diplomatic cables illegal, but no charges have been filed against the site. Publishing government documents, even classified ones, is not explicitly illegal in the United States, though it is in the United Kingdom.

WikiLeaks and its credit card processor, DataCell, sued Valitor in Iceland over the shutdown.

WikiLeaks and DataCell also filed a complaint with the European Commission. The Commission is expected to make a decision about what to do before the end of August, according to a statement from WikiLeaks.

"This is a significant victory against Washington's attempt to silence WikiLeaks," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a statement about the win in Iceland. "We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it's done outside of the rule of law it's doubly wrong. One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history."

The Associated Press reports that Valitor can appeal the decision, but even if it chooses to comply with the judgment, it's not clear that Visa or MasterCard will still allow customers to make donations to DataCell or WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks received $1.9 million in donations in 2010 but last year announced it was halting publication of documents due to claims that it was running short on funds. The site resumed publication of documents this month when it began publishing more than 2 million e-mails stolen from Syrian officials, government ministries and companies. Members of an Anonymous group have claimed responsibility for stealing the e-mails and giving them to WikiLeaks.

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WikiLeaks Wins Icelandic Court Battle Against Visa for ...

These media sources are slightly to moderately conservativein bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes)to favor conservativecauses. These sources are generally trustworthy for information, but may require further investigation. See all Right-Center sources.

Factual Reporting: MIXED

Notes:WikiLeaksis an international non-profit organization that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. Although it is believed that WikiLeaks publishing of classified/secret material is authentic they have been accused of promoting conspiracy theories against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of the United States (See Wikipedia). So, while the material dumps are unaltered and not biased they have demonstrated a political agenda through the information they choose to dump, which some believe tends to favor Russia. Further, The National Intelligence Council has found evidence of Wikileaks collaborating with Russian Government sponsored media outlet, Russia Today. Recently reports have surfaced that Julian Assange had direct e-mail contact with the Trump campaign. While we cant say the information Wikileaks dumps is not factual, we can state that there is at least a right of center bias in whom these leaks tend to benefit. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting based on selective leaks that result in spin. (11/19/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 11/17/2017)

Source:https://www.wikileaks.org/

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WikiLeaks - Media Bias/Fact Check

WikiLeaks, the controversial whistleblowing site that exposes secrets of governments and corporations, bootstrapped itself with a cache of documents obtained through an internet eavesdropping operation by one of its activists, according to a new profile of the organization's founder.

The activist siphoned more than a million documents as they traveled across the internet through Tor, also known as "The Onion Router," a sophisticated privacy tool that lets users navigate and send documents through the internet anonymously.

The siphoned documents, supposedly stolen by Chinese hackers or spies who were using the Tor network to transmit the data, were the basis for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's assertion in 2006 that his organization had already "received over one million documents from 13 countries" before his site was launched, according to the article in The New Yorker.

Only a small portion of those intercepted documents were ever posted on WikiLeaks, but the new report is the first indication that some of the data and documents on WikiLeaks did not come from sources who intended for the documents to be seen or posted. It also explains an enduring mystery of WikiLeaks' launch: how the organization was able to amass a collection of secret documents before its website was open for business.

Tor is a sophisticated privacy tool endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil liberties groups as a method for whistleblowers and human rights workers to communicate with journalists, among other uses. In its search for government and corporate secrets traveling through the Tor network, it's conceivable that WikiLeaks may have also vacuumed up sensitive information from human rights workers who did not want their data seen by outsiders.

The interception may have legal implications, depending on what country the activist was based in. In the United States, the surreptitious interception of electronic communication is generally a violation of federal law, but the statute includes a broad exception for service providers who monitor their own networks for legitimate maintenance or security reasons. "The statutory language is broad enough that it might cover this and provide a defense," says former U.S. federal prosecutor Mark Rasch.

The New Yorker article did not indicate whether WikiLeaks continues to intercept data from the Tor network. Assange did not immediately return a call for comment from Threat Level.

WikiLeaks uses a modified version of the Tor network for its own operations, moving document submissions through it to keep them private. WikiLeaks computers also reportedly feed "hundreds of thousands of fake submissions through these tunnels, obscuring the real documents," according to The New Yorker.

The intercepted data was gathered from Tor sometime before or around December 2006, when Assange and fellow activists needed a substantial number of documents in their repository in order to be taken seriously as a viable tool for whistleblowers and others.

The solution came from one of the activists associated with the organization who owned and operated a server that was being used in the Tor anonymizing network. Tor works by using servers donated by volunteers around the world to bounce traffic around, en route to its destination. Traffic is encrypted through most of that route, and routed over a random path each time a person uses it.

Under Tor's architecture, administrators at the entry point can identify the user's IP address, but can't read the content of the user's correspondence or know its final destination. Each node in the network thereafter only knows the node from which it received the traffic, and it peels off a layer of encryption to reveal the next node to which it must forward the connection.

By necessity, however, the last node through which traffic passes has to decrypt the communication before delivering it to its final destination. Someone operating that exit node can therefore read the traffic passing through this server.

According to The New Yorker, "millions of secret transmissions passed through" the node the WikiLeaks activist operated believed to be an exit node. The data included sensitive information of foreign governments.

The activist believed the data was being siphoned from computers around the world by hackers who appeared to be in China and who were using the Tor network to transmit the stolen data. The activist began recording the data as it passed through his node, and this became the basis for the trove of data WikiLeaks said it had "received."

The first document WikiLeaks posted at its launch was a secret decision signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali rebel leader for the Islamic Courts Union. The document, which called for hiring hit men to execute government officials, had been siphoned from the Tor network.

Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?"

The documents authenticity was never determined, and news about Wikileaks quickly superseded the leak itself.

Since then, the site has published numerous sensitive documents related to the U.S. military, foreign governments and corporations. WikiLeaks made headlines in April when it published a classified U.S. Army video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in an Iraqi neighborhood. The raid killed at least 18 people including two Reuters employees and injured two children.

WikiLeaks, whose website is hosted primarily through a Swedish Internet service provider called PRQ.se, never reveals the sources of its documents, and in the case of the Apache video, Assange has said only that it came from someone who was angry about the military's frequent use of the term "collateral damage."

The New Yorker doesn't identify the WikiLeaks activist who was the source for the documents siphoned from Tor, but the description of how the documents were obtained is similar to how a Swedish computer security consultant named Dan Egerstad intercepted government data from five Tor exit nodes he set up in 2007 months after WikiLeaks launched in Sweden, Asia, the United States and elsewhere.

Egerstad told Threat Level in August 2007 that he was able to read thousands of private e-mail messages sent by foreign embassies and human rights groups around the world by turning portions of the Tor internet-anonymity service into his own private listening post. The intercepted data included user names and passwords for e-mail accounts of government workers, as well as correspondence belonging to the Indian ambassador to China, various politicians in Hong Kong, workers in the Dalai Lama's liaison office and several human rights groups in Hong Kong.

Egerstad, who says he has no association with WikiLeaks and was not the source for the intercepted Tor documents the site received, told Threat Level at the time that he believed hackers were using the Tor network to transmit data stolen from government computers and that he was able to view the data as it passed through his node unencrypted.

Egerstad was never able to determine the identity of the hackers behind the data he intercepted, but it's believed that he may have stumbled across the so-called Ghost Net network an electronic spy network that had infiltrated the computers of government offices, NGOs and activist groups in more than 100 countries since at least the spring of 2007.

The Ghost Net network was exposed by other researchers last year who discovered that hackers believed by some to be based in China were surreptitiously stealing documents and eavesdropping on electronic correspondence on more than 1,200 computers at embassies, foreign ministries, news media outlets and nongovernmental organizations based primarily in South and Southeast Asia.

It's not known if the data the WikiLeaks activist siphoned was data stolen by the Ghost Net hackers.

Photo: Julian AssangeLily Mihalik/Wired.com

Wired.com and The New Yorker* are both owned by Cond Nast.*

See also:

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WikiLeaks Was Launched With Documents Intercepted From Tor ...

English |

Today, September 19th 2017, WikiLeaks starts publishing the series "Spy Files Russia" with documents from the Russian company - (PETER-SERVICE). This release includes 209 documents (34 base documents in different versions) dated between 2007 and 2015.

PETER-SERVICE was founded 1992 in St. Petersburg as a provider for billing solutions and soon became the major supplier of software for the mobile telecommunications industry in Russia. Today it has more than 1000 employees in different locations in Russia, and offices in major cities in Russia and Ukraine. The technologies developed and deployed by PETER-SERVICE today go far beyond the classical billing process and extend into the realms of surveillance and control. Although compliance to the strict surveillance laws is mandatory in Russia, rather than being forced to comply PETER-SERVICE appears to be quite actively pursuing partnership and commercial opportunities with the state intelligence apparatus.

As a matter of fact PETER-SERVICE is uniquely placed as a surveillance partner due to the remarkable visibility their products provide into the data of Russian subscribers of mobile operators, which expose to PETER-SERVICE valuable metadata, including phone and message records, device identifiers (IMEI, MAC addresses), network identifiers (IP addresses), cell tower information and much more. This enriched and aggregated metadata is of course of interest to Russian authorities, whose access became a core component of the system architecture.

The base architecture of the software from PETER-SERVICE (SVC_BASE) includes components for data retention (DRS [en], [ru]), long-term storage in SORM (SSP, Service -), IP traffic analysis (Traffic Data Mart, TDM) and interfaces (adapters) for state agencies to access the archives.

The Traffic Data Mart is a system that records and monitors IP traffic for all mobile devices registered with the operator. It maintains a list of categorized domain names which cover all areas of interest for the state. These categories include blacklisted sites, criminal sites, blogs, webmail, weapons, botnet, narcotics, betting, aggression, racism, terrorism and many more. Based on the collected information the system allows the creation of reports for subscriber devices (identified by IMEI/TAC, brand, model) for a specified time range: Top categories by volume, top sites by volume, top sites by time spent, protocol usage (browsing, mail, telephony, bittorrent) and traffic/time distribution.

The data retention system is a mandatory component for operators by law; it stores all communication (meta-)data locally for three years. State intelligence authorities use the Protocol 538 adapter built into the DRS to access stored information. According to PETER-SERVICE, their DRS solution can handle 500,000,000 connections per day in one cluster. The claimed average search time for subscriber related-records from a single day is ten seconds.

In SORM call monitoring functions are concentrated in control points ( , ) which are connected to network operators. The Service - is a data exchange interface based on HTTPS between components in SVC_BASE/DRS and SORM. The interface receives search requests from state intelligence authorities and delivers results back to the initiator. Search requests for lawful interceptions (based on a court order) are processed by the operator on the same system.

As a related document, this first release contains a publically available slide show presentation given by (Valery Syssik, Director of Development) from PETER-SERVICE at the Broadband Russia Forum in 2013. Titled "National stacks of DPI / BigData / DataMining technologies and solutions for collection and analysis of information, as well as means of predicting social and business trends - the key to digital and financial sovereignty of the state and business in the XXI century", the presentation - which appears to already be publicly available on PETER-SERVICE's website - is not targeted at the usual telecom provider, but at a closed group of people from the (FSB, Russian Federal Security Service), (Interior ministry of Russia) and the ("three pillars of Power" - legislature, executive and judiciary).

The presentation was written just a few months after Edward Snowden disclosed the NSA mass surveillance program and its cooperation with private U.S. IT-corporations such as Google and Facebook. Drawing specifically on the NSA Prism program, the presentation offers law enforcement, intelligence and other interested parties, to join an alliance in order to establish equivalent data-mining operations in Russia. PETER-SERVICE claims to already have access to a majority of all phone call records as well as Internet traffic in Russia, and in the description of the current experiences, it claims to have deployed technology for Deep Packet Inspection "with not just the headings of IP packets, but the contents of whole series". PETER-SERVICE is presented as a natural ally for intelligence agencies in "the most lucrative business [of] manipulating minds".

However, the core of the presentation is about a new product (2013) called DPI*GRID - a hardware solution for "Deep Packet Inspection" that comes literally as "black boxes" that are able to handle 10Gb/s traffic per unit. The national providers are aggregating Internet traffic in their infrastructure and are redirecting/duplicating the full stream to DPI*GRID units. The units inspect and analyse traffic (the presentation does not describe that process in much detail); the resulting metadata and extracted information are collected in a database for further investigation. A similar, yet smaller solution called MDH/DRS is available for regional providers who send aggregated IP traffic via a 10Gb/s connection to MDH for processing.

PETER-SERVICE advertises its experience in SORM technologies - especially DPI - and its ability to collect, manage and analyse "Big Data" for commercial and intelligence purposes. "From DPI solutions for SORM to contextual advertising, we have the experience and the solution. We are offering to coordinate a scalable national solution for control of the digital network. We strive for effective cooperation within a symbolic network alliance: operator - vendor - search engine - business - state organs."

The above graphics shows the Internet backbone infrastructure in Russia and the nodes at various providers that run components of the proposed DPI*GRID system in different locations. The node TopGun most likely refers to a multi terabit DPI system developed by PETER-SERVICE.

SORM is the technical infrastructure for surveillance in Russia. It dates back to 1995 and has evolved from SORM-1 (capturing telephone and mobile phone communications) and SORM-2 (interception of Internet traffic, 1999) to the current SORM-3. SORM now collects information from all forms of communication, providing long-term storage of all information and data on subscribers, including actual recordings and locations. In 2014, the system was expanded to include social media platforms, and the Ministry of Communications ordered companies to install new equipment with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capability. In 2016, SORM-3 added additional classified regulations that apply to all Internet Service providers in Russia. The European Court for Human Rights deemed Russia's SORM legislation in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2015 (Zakharov v. Russia).

, 19- 2017 , WikiLeaks " " - (PETER-SERVICE). 209 (34 ), 2007 2015 .

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Excerpt from:
WikiLeaks - Spy Files Russia

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

Theatrical release poster

Productioncompany

Jigsaw ProductionsGlobal Produce

Release date

Running time

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a 2013 American independent documentary film about the organization started by Julian Assange, and people involved in the collection and distribution of secret information and media by whistleblowers. It covers a period of several decades, and includes considerable background material.

The 1989 WANK worm attack on NASA computers, originally thought to threaten the Galileo spacecraft, is depicted as the work of Australian hackers, including Assange. The founding of Wikileaks in 2006 is followed by coverage of several key events: its 20092010 leaks about the Icelandic financial collapse, Swiss banking tax evasion, Kenyan government corruption, toxic-waste dumping, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's communications with Adrian Lamo, uploads to Wikileaks of the Iraq and Afghanistan war documents, diplomatic cables, and video, exposure to the FBI by Lamo, and the accusations of sexual assault made against Assange. Interview subjects include Julian Assange, Heather Brooke, James Ball, Donald Bostom, Nick Davies, Mark Davis, Jason Edwards, Timothy Douglas Webster, Michael Hayden, Adrian Lamo, J. William Leonard, Gavin MacFadyen, Smri McCarthy, Iain Overton, Kevin Poulsen and Vaughan Smith.[4]

Assange did not participate in the production, so previously recorded interviews were used.[5] Manning was also unavailable.[6] John Young and Deborah Natsios contributed contacts and research material, but declined to be interviewed for the film upon learning it was tentatively titled "Unnamed Wikileaks Project".[7] About 35 minutes of chat animations, headline effects, and other visual effects were designed and rendered by Framestore in New York.[8]

The film previewed in December 2012,[9] and debuted January 21, 2013 at the Sundance Film Festival.[1] It was scheduled to be released May 24, 2013 in New York and Los Angeles, and widely in June.[10][11]

We Steal Secrets has been widely praised by film reviewers, with film review site Rotten Tomatoes noting that 92% of critics have reviewed the film positively.[12] Nonetheless it has been criticized by journalists and professors including Chris Hedges,[13] Alexa O'Brien,[14] and Robert Manne[15] who was interviewed in the documentary.

The Hollywood Reporter writer David Rooney found the film to be a "tremendously fascinating story told with probing insight and complexity".[16] David Edelstein of New York Magazine wrote that the film is a "twisty, probing, altogether enthralling movie," adding that it is "a documentary with the overflowing texture of fiction." [17] Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who calls the film "riveting and revelatory," notes that the director "lines up an A-list of experts, observers, cohorts, and adversaries, tracing how Assange's and Manning's worlds collide - virtually, and violently - and how a noble quest for transparency and truth turned into a tale of conspiracy and paranoia."[18]

Several reviewers have noted that despite the film's strengths, some flaws remain. In the UK Guardian, Jeremy Kay gave the film 3 of 5 stars, asserting that, although the film explored facts and themes thoroughly and thoughtfully, and provided "insightful commentary" from government, media, and WikiLeaks insiders, the film revealed little about Assange, who remained unavailable to be interviewed by the director. Kay wrote, "It's probably too soon for a meaningful perspective on the WikiLeaks saga."[5] In Variety, Peter Debruge found the film "dramatically lacking" a central core conflict, especially when compared with Gibney's previous work. Like Kay in The Guardian, Debruge found Manning's story the most compelling part of the film.[4]

We Steal Secrets was among five films nominated for the 2013 International Documentary Association ABC News Videosource Award.[19]

Robert Manne, who was interviewed in the film, considered it to be a "superficially impressive but ultimately myopic film". He detailed his criticism in The Monthly.[15] Based on this article Manne and Gibney had a written debate.[20]

In his Truthdig review, journalist Chris Hedges called the film "agitprop for the security and surveillance state," adding that it "dutifully peddles the state's contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Chelsea Manning, who passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower."[13] Salon reporter Andrew O'Hehir claimed that many of Hedges's statements about the film are patently false, and that his "alarming accusations and peculiar misreadings of the film" are "an attempt to attack Gibney's integrity and sabotage his reputation."[21]

WikiLeaks published a transcript of the film, annotated with comments, asserted to be corrections, by WikiLeaks.[22][23] Director Gibney responded that the transcript was incomplete, lacked Private Manning's words, and was from an unreleased, incomplete version of the film.[24] Later, Gibney published his own annotated version of the WikiLeaks transcript, responding to the criticisms and assertions made by Assange and his supporters.[25][26]According to the film's executive producer Jemima Khan, We Steal Secrets was "denounced before seeing" by Assange,[27] who tweeted "an unethical and biased title in the context of pending criminal trials. It is the prosecution's claim and it is false".[27] Khan asserted the title was based on a quote in the film "from Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, who told Gibney that the US government was in the business of 'stealing secrets' from other countries".[27]

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We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks - Wikipedia

WikiLeaks has served notice that it will enter the fray of the French presidential election.

On Tuesday, its Twitter account promoted 3,630 documents from its archives on center-right presidential candidate Franois Fillon.

None were of the salacious variety, yet the move has stoked fears among European security officials that WikiLeaks will repeat its U.S. electoral influence performance in France and perhaps elsewhere in Europe. Some even worry that the propaganda apparatus will partner again with Russian operatives with the aim of tilting the outcome of elections in favor of Kremlin-friendly candidates.

According to Martin Michelot, the deputy director of Europeum, there is definitely concern that WikiLeaks will try to influence the French election. During the U.S. election, WikiLeaks served as a central dumping ground for Russian operatives, according to American intelligence officials.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said this month that France is no less vulnerable to Russian meddling than the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not come out and campaigned for Fillons main opponent, Marine Le Pen, leader of Frances far-right National Front. But the two seem to be simpatico.

Le Pen has called Russias annexation of Crimealegal and said a Trump-Putin-Le Pen triumvirate would be good for world peace. In 2014, she took a loan fromaMoscow-based lender, First Czech Russian Bank, to pay for National Front expenses. And media reports said she was looking again to Russia for funding after that bankfailed. Le Pen is understood to be the candidate with the backing of Russia, Michelot said.

This isnt WikiLeaks first foray into European presidential politics. In December, the propaganda apparatus released a trove of documents describing recent intelligence cooperation between the United States and Germany, a move seen as an attempt to harm German Chancellor Angela Merkels re-election bid.

To date, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has provided only a smattering of material targeting the French election. The Fillon documents do not constitute a new leak but a collection of material on the center-right candidate scattered across the groups archives.

And Fillon isnt WikiLeaks only target. It also highlighted 1,138 documents in its archives featuring Le Pen.

But perhaps tellingly, the documents on Le Pen include such pieces as Marine Le Pen more popular than President Sarkozy, says French poll.

To be sure, Fillons campaign had already hit some headwinds. On Tuesday, he claimed to be the victim of a professional operationmeant to weaken his campaign with three months to go before the election. This came after French media reports alleged his wife and children had received roughly 1 million euro inpublic funds to serve as parliamentary aides to Fillon.

Photo credit:ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images

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WikiLeaks Turns Its Attention to the French Elections ...

Documents released by WikiLeaks today shed light on a power struggle within the highest offices of the Catholic Church. Amongst the documents is a private letter written by Pope Francis. The existence of this letter, addressed to the papal envoy Cardinal Raymond Burke, has been the source of much speculation in the media [1]. It is now published for the first time in full and with the Popes signature.

This letter concerns the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, also known as the Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta, originally founded in Jerusalem during the Crusades in 1099. As the name indicates, it has been widely recognised as a sovereign entity in itself despite theoretically being subject to papal authority as a Catholic institution.

This ambiguous status cuts to the heart of the dispute as it reached a fever pitch after Pope Francis forced the abdication of Matthew Festing as Prince and Grand Master of the Order in January 2017. A month earlier Festing had dismissed the Orders Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager.

The reason for the dismissal is said to be that Boeselager, who served as health minister for the Order, was held personally responsible for having approved funds for an aid mission in Africa that distributed condoms, amongst other things. This directly contravenes Church teachings on contraception and Festing was adamant that Boeselager be held responsible.

Boeselager, however, appealed to Pope Francis, who in turn deeply undermined the Orders independence and sovereignty by appointing a papal commission to investigate the matter and report back to the Holy See. Boeselager was subsequently reinstated at the same time as Festing was ousted. The papal letter, published by WikiLeaks today, shows the Pope was aware of and involved in the dispute since at least November 2016 when he met with Cardinal Burke.

The Popes dramatic moves in January 2017 effectively abolished the sovereignty of the Order and have been described by its harshest critics as the annexation of one country (the Order) by another (the Holy See) [2]. Members of the Order even went so far as to challenge papal authority on the matter and refused to co-operate with the Vaticans investigation [3]. This is seen by many observers as part of a larger power struggle between conservative and liberal elements within the Church, represented by Festing and Boeselager respectively (for example, [4]).

Adding yet more intrigue to the tale are rumours that some high-ranking members of the Order have also attended Masonic lodges or other organisations deemed suspect by the Church [5]. Some of this seems to be confirmed by the Popes letter, which is dated 1 December 2016 (over a month before Boeselager was reinstated and Festing dismissed).

In the letter Pope Francis states: In particular, members of the Order must avoid secular and frivoulous (sic) behaviour, such as membership to associations, movements and organisations which are contrary to the Catholic faith and/or of a relativist nature. He goes on to state that any members of such organisations need to be removed from the Order.

Regarding the condom scandal at the heart of this matter, the Pope states: I would be very disappointed if as you told me some of the high Officers were aware of practices such as the distribution of any type of contraceptive and have not yet intervened to end such things. He further states that: I have no doubts that by following the principle of Paul and speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), the matter can be discussed with the Officers and the necessary rectification obtained.

The letter also confirms that Cardinal Burke had an audience with the Pope on 10 November 2016 to discuss the mounting crisis. This was before Boeselager was even removed by Festing.The text of the letter makes clear that the Pope was already committed to asserting his authority over the Order at this early stage. He writes: Your Eminence, together with the leaders of the Order, will have to make ever more clear the close connection which unites the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Roman Pontiff, both from a structural and operational point-of-view. Along with the Popes letter to Cardinal Burke, WikiLeaks has published several other documents relating to the dispute. These include internal communications and memos, some of which have been quoted in the media.

[1] https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/01/25/the-vatican-has-destroyed-the-order-of-maltas-sovereignty-what-if-italy-does-the-same-to-the-vatican/

[2] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/02/07/why-the-pope-has-taken-control-of-the-knights-of-malta

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/11/knights-of-malta-condom-scandal-stretches-from-myanmar-to-the-vatican

[4] http://www.italy24.ilsole24ore.com/art/panorama/2017-01-30/pope-francis-imposes-pacification-on-the-order-of-malta-100122.php

[5] https://catholiccitizens.org/news/69506/pope-ordered-card-burke-clean-freemasons-knights-malta

Read more from the original source:
WikiLeaks - Pope's Orders - theworldtomorrow.wikileaks.org