Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind. -- George Orwell

Update: On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with disclosing this video (after allegedly speaking to an unfaithful journalist). The whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has called Mr. Manning a 'hero'. He is currently imprisoned in Kuwait. The Apache crew and those behind the cover up depicted in the video have yet to be charged. To assist Private Manning, please see bradleymanning.org.

5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.

WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.

WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.

WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.

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Collateral Murder

The media is overlooking the details of an investigation that could have implications for all news organizations

Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia began investigating WikiLeaks in 2010 after the site posted some of the quarter-million State Department cables leaked by Chelsea Manning.

Last month, an official from the Department of Justice publicly confirmed the investigation is still ongoing. It was the first time anyone, including WikiLeaks own defense team, has gotten such confirmation since April 2014.

Its an important sign that what may be the biggest criminal investigation into a publisher in US history continues to grow. Yet the news was buried 18 paragraphs deep in a Washington Post article that instead focused on Googles multi-year fight to be allowed to inform WikiLeaks staffers that the government had requested their data.

Free-press advocates and a few independent journalists fear that kind of coverage is a sign the media is overlooking the details of an investigation that could have implications for all news organizations.

The WikiLeaks investigation has really been unprecedented in its scope and its scale, and also its secrecy, Carey Shenkman, a constitutional lawyer and an associate to WikiLeaks counsel Michael Ratner, said in a phone interview. Creating ambiguity around the investigation has a chilling effect. It leaves open questions and I think it makes any publisher wonder if they will suffer a similar fate, investigated for releasing classified information in a way the government finds unacceptable.

Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, argued in 2013 that virtually every move made by the Justice Department against WikiLeaks has now also been deployed on mainstream US journalists. For example, the Department of Justice tried to secretly subpoena information from the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks staffers more than two years before the Associated Press found the same thing had been done to its phone records.

Mannings arrest in the summer of 2010 coincided with the peak of the Obama administrations use of the Espionage Act as a weapon against leakers. Reports at the time indicated the DOJ was looking to prove that Assange had been a co-conspirator in the leak, perhaps with the idea of also charging him under the Espionage Act. Several years later, Timm noted, the world learned that Fox News reporter James Rosen had also been labeled a co-conspirator in a search warrant in the Espionage Act case against Stephen Kim.

I think the strategy is that in a certain way the DOJ can sort of build legal precedent for future activity by even traditional media organizations trying to compete in a digital environment, Alexa OBrien, an investigative journalist covering both Manning and WikiLeaks, said in a phone interview. OBrien is involved in a lawsuit aiming to unseal a dozen more court orders and search warrants related to the WikiLeaks investigation.

She also wants to see the governments underlying applications for six court orders, which she hopes will shed light on its criminal theory in going after WikiLeaks, she said. One key question is whether prosecutors see the internet-native publisher as analogous to more traditional news publications or as a different kind of entity all together. Either answer has implications for the future of digital news.

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Why the secret criminal investigation of WikiLeaks is troubling for journalists

Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their emails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents, an attorney representing the tech firm said this week.

The tech firm's challenges date to January 2011 and include an attempt to overturn gag orders accompanying search warrants issued in March 2012 for the emails of three WikiLeaks staff members, said the attorney, Albert Gidari, in an interview.

Google's long battle to inform its customers about the warrants and court orders has been fought largely in secret because of the court-imposed gags, hampering its effort to counter the impression that it has not stood up for users' privacy, Gidari said.

In the latest instance, the three WikiLeaks staff members revealed this week that Google notified them on Dec. 23 that their emails were the subject of search warrants almost three years after the broad warrants were issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.

"We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers," Michael Ratner, an attorney for the staff members, wrote in a letter Monday to Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

Google says it challenged the secrecy from the beginning and was able to alert the customers only after the gag orders on those warrants were partly lifted, said Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm.

"From January 2011 to the present, Google has continued to fight to lift the gag orders on any legal process it has received on WikiLeaks," he said, adding that the company's policy is to challenge all gag orders that have indefinite time periods.

The affidavits and applications underlying the orders are still sealed. The company said it is seeking to unseal them.

Google's belated disclosure contrasts with the way in which Twitter, the microblogging platform, was able to quickly inform several of its customers in 2011 that the federal government had demanded their subscriber data in the WikiLeaks inquiry.

According to Gidari, whose firm has represented both companies, Google's delay was not the result of foot-dragging but of opposition from prosecutors who were upset by the backlash that followed the disclosure of their court orders to Twitter.

Read more from the original source:
Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case

Google Didn #39;t Tell WikiLeaks it Gave Data to Officials Until Almost 3 Years Later
WikiLeaks is criticizing Google for taking nearly three years to disclose that it surrendered data belonging to three WikiLeaks employees and handed it over to federal law-enforcement officials....

By: WochitGeneralNews

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Google Didn't Tell WikiLeaks it Gave Data to Officials Until Almost 3 Years Later - Video

Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their e-mails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents, an attorney representing the tech firm said this week.

The tech firms challenges date to January 2011 and include an attempt to overturn gag orders accompanying search warrants issued in March 2012 for the e-mails of three WikiLeaks staff members, the attorney, Albert Gidari, said in an interview.

Googles long battle to inform its customers about the warrants and court orders has been fought largely in secret because of the court-imposed gags, hampering its effort to counter the impression that it has not stood up for users privacy, Gidari said.

In the latest instance, the three WikiLeaks staff members revealed this week that Google notified them on Dec. 23 that their e-mails were the subject of search warrants almost three years after the broad warrants were issued by a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia.

We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers, Michael Ratner, an attorney for the staff members, wrote in a letter Monday to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Google says it challenged the secrecy from the beginning and was able to alert the customers only after the gag orders on those warrants were partly lifted, said Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie.

From January 2011 to the present, Google has continued to fight to lift the gag orders on any legal process it has received on WikiLeaks, he said, adding that the firms policy is to challenge all gag orders that have indefinite time periods.

The affidavits and applications underlying the orders are still sealed. The company said it is seeking to unseal them.

Googles belated disclosure contrasts with the way in which Twitter, the microblogging platform, was able to quickly inform several of its customers in 2011 that the federal government had demanded their subscriber data in the WikiLeaks inquiry.

According to Gidari, whose firm has represented both firms, Googles delay was not the result of foot-dragging but of opposition from prosecutors who were upset by the backlash that followed the disclosure of their court orders to Twitter.

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Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation

Google accused of giving information to journalists from WikiLeaks
Google has revealed that almost three years secretly handed the content of emails and other private information of several members of the US Government WikiLeaks Google ha revelado que hace...

By: LexusONE

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Google accused of giving information to journalists from WikiLeaks - Video

WikiLeaks Says Google Handing Over Emails to US - TOI
WikiLeaks says Google handing over emails to US WikiLeaks on Monday accused internet giant Google of handing over the emails and electronic data of its senior staff to the US authorities,...

By: The Times of India

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WikiLeaks Says Google Handing Over Emails to US - TOI - Video

"We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited" 2.5 years to notify us, WikiLeaks said today.

WikiLeaks is a little peeved that Google handed over details about WikiLeaks staffers to the feds, and failed to inform the whistleblower organization for more than two years.

According to WikiLeaks, Google provided the U.S. government with email content, metadata, contacts, draft emails, deleted emails, and IP addresses connected to the accounts of Investigations editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell, and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.

That document turnover apparently happened 2.5 years ago, but WikiLeaks was not informed until Dec. 23, 2014, the organization wrote in a Monday letter to Google.

"We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify subscribers that a search warrant was issued for their records," WikiLeaks said.

According to WikiLeaks, the U.S. government is trying to build a case against WikiLeaks for espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, theft or conversion of property belonging to the U.S. government, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violations, and conspiracy.

In 2010, WikiLeaks released 250,000 cables from the State Department, as well as U.S. Army field reports about the Iraq War and military logs of the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks said its staff does not use Google services "for internal communications or for communicating with sources, [but] the search warrants nonetheless represent a substantial invasion of their personal privacy and freedom."

Companies like Google are often unable to disclose when it receives requests for information - and releases that data - due to gag orders. WikiLeaks said "there is no indication that Google fought the gag, and it is unlikely that the gag just happened to expire the day before Christmas."

According to WikiLeaks, Twitter fought a similar gags for warrants "in much shorter time-frames." Those documents were unsealed in 2011.

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Google Gave WikiLeaks Data to Feds...2.5 Years Ago

WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison addresses the media at the Geneva Press Club on Tuesday. Photograph: Pierre Albouy/Reuters

WikiLeaks is fighting back in an escalating war with both Google and the US government, threatening legal action the day after demanding answers for the tech giants wholesale handover of its staffers Gmail contents to US law enforcement.

The targets of the investigation were not notified until two and a half years after secret search warrants were issued and served by the FBI, legal representatives for WikiLeaks said in a press conference on Monday.

Were looking at legal action not only with Google but to those who actually turned in the order, said Baltasar Garzn, the head of Julian Assanges legal defence team. Calling the order illegal and arbitrary, Garzn said insisted any information that would be used from the taking of documents [this way] will be considered as biased, illegal and will cancel the whole proceedings.

Im not sure what craziness what desperation went into the US to make them behave this way, but this is a clear violation of rights, Garzn said.

Our policy is to tell people about government requests for their data, except in limited cases, like when we are gagged by a court order, which sadly happens quite frequently, a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the Guardian. Weve challenged many orders related to WikiLeaks which has led to disclosures to people who are affected. Weve also pushed to unseal all the documents related to the investigation.

Michael Ratner, a member of the Assange legal team in the US and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that WikiLeaks had sent a letter to Googles executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, asking why the company waited so long before notifying the targets of the warrants.

On Monday, Ratner went further, saying that WikiLeaks would decide on what legal action to take depending on Googles response to the letter, which he said was expected within a week.

The notification of the court order was sent by email from Google to WikiLeaks on 23 December 2014 just before Christmas, a typically quiet time for the news cycle and was published on WikiLeaks site. Google said the legal process was initially subject to a nondisclosure or gag order that prohibited Google from disclosing the existence of the legal process.

Ratner told the Guardian that there were several questions as to what that legal process entailed. Did Google go to court at all? Ratner said. Would they have notified us that that we went to court and we lost? I dont know.

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WikiLeaks threatens legal action against Google and US after email revelations

Lawyer for Julian Assange Melinda Taylor, WikiLeaks journalists Kristinn Hrafnsson and Sarah Harrison and director of Julian Assange's legal team Baltasar Garzon address the media at Geneva Press Club. Photo: Reuters

WikiLeaks is fighting back after revelations Google handed over the emails and electronic data of the whistleblowing website's senior staff to the US authorities without providing notification until almost three years later.

Google was apparently acting in response to warrants issued by the US Department of Justice, which is investigating WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic files.

"Today, WikiLeaks' lawyers have written to Google and the US Department of Justice concerning a serious violation of the privacy and journalistic rights of WikiLeaks' staff," the site said in a statement.

Wikileaks is reportedly looking at legal action against both Google and the US government.

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"Any information that would be used from the taking of documents [this way] will be considered as biased, illegal and will cancel the whole proceedings," saidJulian Assange's lawyer Baltasar Garzn, as reported by The Guardian.

""I'm not sure what craziness what desperation went into the US to make them behave this way, but this is ... a clear violation of rights."

WikiLeaks said the allegations against it point to a far broader investigation into its activities than the US authorities have previously indicated.

Alleged offences range from espionage to theft of US government property and computer fraud and abuse, it said.

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WikiLeaks ponders legal action against Google, US after 'privacy violation'