« First «...10 20 30...1,591 1,5921,5931,594 1,595...1,600 1,610 1,620...»Last »

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange indicted for leaks of U.S …

Posted on May 26, 2019 by admin

After seven years of self-imposed exile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London. The U.S. and Sweden both want him extradited. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Federal prosecutors charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with espionage Thursday for conspiring to revealnational security secrets in what they described as one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.

The Justice Department revealed18 charges against Assange. They include allegations that he aided and abetted former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning's efforts to leak classified documents to the anti-secrecy group and committed a crime by publishing them on the internet.

This release made our adversaries stronger and more knowledgeable, and the United States less secure," said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security.

The charges are an escalation of the government's efforts to combat leaks of its secrets, and raised the difficult question of how or whether to distinguish WikiLeaks from journalists who frequently publish information the government would rather keep secret. They drew quick condemnation from advocates for press freedom.

Bruce Brown, the executive director of theReporters CommitteeforFreedom of the Press, said criminalizing the receipt and publication of classified documents threatens all journalists."Any government use of the Espionage Act to criminalize the receipt and publication of classified information poses a dire threat to journalists seeking to publish such information in the public interest," he said.

Assange has argued that he should be immune from prosecution as a journalist, authorities said he was chargedfor releasing a narrow class of documents that dealt with people who provided the United States with intelligence in war zones. TheWikiLeaks databases containapproximately 90,000 Afghanistan War-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq War-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefsand 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables, according to prosecutors.

The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy, and we thank you for it. It is not and never has been the department'spolicy to target them for reporting," Demers said. "But Julian Assangeis no journalist."

Indeed, no responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones," Demers said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures from the window of a prison van as he is driven into Southwark Crown Court in London on May 1, 2019.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

The Justice Department revealed in April that it had filed a criminal case against Assange after Ecuador expelled him from its embassy in London. That charge alleged that he conspired with Manning to crack a password to a military computer where classified information was stored. The case was filed in 2018 but kept secret for more than a year.

The allegations revealed on Thursday were more wide-ranging and more directly related to WikiLeaks' efforts to obtain and publish U.S. government secrets.

Barry Pollack, Assange's lawyer, said it is unprecedented for the government to charge someone under the Espionage Act for encouraging sources to provide truthful information and then publishing it.

"The fig leaf that this is merely about alleged computer hacking has been removed," Pollack said. "These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have taken by the U.S. government. "

WikiLeaks tweeted that the case marked the end of national-security journalism.

"This is madness," the group said. "It is the end of national security journalism and the First Amendment."

Nearly all of the new charges against Assange accuse him of violating the Espionage Act, a federal law meant to safeguard defense information. It's unusual for prosecutors to bring such a case against someone who does not work for the government and has not promised to keep its secrets.

The charges include one count of conspiracy to receive national security information, seven counts of obtaining it, nine counts of disclosing it and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Prosecutors alleged that Assange also revealed the names of intelligence sources in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Assange is alleged to have created grave and imminent risk to their lives and liberty, Demers said.

Assange is not charged simply because he was a publisher, said Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, where the charges against Assange were filed.

Assange was arrested April 11in London after Ecuador's government ended his seven years of self-imposed exile and expelled him from its London embassy. He is fighting extradition to the United States.

Over four months in 2010, Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of secret reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as State Department cables and information about detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Manning turned the records over to WikiLeaks, which passed them to journalists and published them on the internet.

Assange had been holed up with political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012. After his arrest, he was sentenced in Britain to 50 weeks in jail for jumping bail while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual-assault allegations.

Assange also faces sexual misconduct allegations in Sweden. While one Swedish case of alleged sexual misconduct against Assange was dropped in 2017, when the statute of limitations expired, a rape allegation remains. The statute of limitations in the rape case expires in August 2020. Assange has denied wrongdoing, asserting that the allegations were politically motivated and that the sex was consensual.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange indicted on 17 new …

Posted on May 26, 2019 by admin

Breaking News Emails

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

May 23, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC/ UpdatedMay 24, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

By Ken Dilanian and Doha Madani

The Department of Justice announced 17 new charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange on Thursday, including a virtually unprecedented move to charge him with publishing classified material a move that could pose challenges to First Amendment protections.

In a superseding indictment, a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has accused Assange of breaking the law by inducing Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning to send him classified documents and then publishing material that included the names of confidential sources who provided information to American diplomats.

The 17 counts were tacked on to a single count accusing Assange of conspiring with Manning to crack a Department of Defense password. Assange, who was taken out of the Equadorian embassy in London in April, is being held in a London jail for jumping bail on a sex charge and awaiting extradition to the United States.

The government says Manning provided Assange and WikiLeaks with databases containing about 90,000 Afghanistan War-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq War-related reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables.

The material, which began to be published in 2010, made headlines across the world and shed light on U.S. government activities.

The decision to charge Assange in connection with publishing secrets crosses an important line. The U.S. government has never successfully prosecuted anyone other than a government employee for disseminating unlawfully leaked classified information, according to University of Chicago Law Prof. Geoffrey Stone, even though the Espionage Act has long been on the books.

Journalists publish classified material regularly, yet the government has opted not to prosecute a journalist even when government officials have been deeply angered by the revelations of classified intelligence information.

"Today the government charged Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for encouraging sources to provide him truthful information and for publishing that information," Assange's attorney Barry J Pollack said in a statement. "The fig leaf that this is merely about alleged computer hacking has been removed. These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government."

In a briefing for reporters, Justice Department officials said they do not consider Assange a journalist, and they took pains to say they will not target journalists.

The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy, Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said.

Demers and other officials said they only charged Assange with publishing a narrow subset of material that included the names of confidential sources, including people who risked their lives talking to the U.S. government.

Assange thereby is alleged to have created grave and imminent risk to their lives and liberty, Demers said.

While that action by Assange and Wikileaks has long been criticized, press freedom advocates have worried that criminalizing the act of publishing opens the door for the government to charge journalists who make publishing decisions government officials dont like.

For example, CIA officials were furious when The New York Times in 2015 published the true name of a longtime CIA counterterrorism official, Mike DAndrea, who had been in charge of the agencys targeted killing program. The Times said the move was justified because of his leadership role in one of the governments most significant paramilitary programs and because his name was known to foreign governments and many others.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization Assange founded, tweeted, This is madness. It is the end of national security journalism and the first amendment.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked secrets and is now living in Moscow, tweeted, The Department of Justice just declared warnot on Wikileaks, but on journalism itself. This is no longer about Julian Assange: This case will decide the future of media.

Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. attorney who brought the charges, told reporters that the United States has not charged Assange for passively obtaining or receiving classified information.

Rather, he said, Assange is charged for his alleged complicity in illegal acts to obtain or receive voluminous databases of classified information.

Any government use of the Espionage Act to criminalize the receipt and publication of classified information poses a dire threat to journalists seeking to publish such information in the public interest, irrespective of the Justice Departments assertion that Assange is not a journalist, said Bruce Brown, executive director Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Manning is in jail in Alexandria, having refused to testify before the grand jury in the case.

After Assange helped Manning purloin classified documents, the superseding indictment charges, Assange published on WikiLeaks material that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world. These human sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes.

The indictment says that act put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention.

Asked by a reporter whether they could point to an example of a U.S. source who had been harmed by the publication, the Justice Department officials were unable to do so. But they said they were prepared to prove that the sources were at risk.

Ken Dilanian is an NBC News correspondent covering intelligence and national security.

Doha Madani is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.

Originally posted here:
WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange indicted on 17 new ...

Chelsea Manning director: ‘She’s a kind of punk rock figure …

Posted on May 25, 2019 by admin

The night Chelsea Manning was released from Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas, her first steps as a free woman were being filmed. It was May 2017 and she had just served nearly seven years of a 35-year sentence for disclosing 750,000 classified documents to Julian Assanges WikiLeaks. It was nerve-racking, says the man who filmed her, the British artist and documentary-maker Tim Travers Hawkins, from his apartment in New York. I knew it was the money shot, if you like. It was such an important historical moment.

Hawkins kept his camera rolling, assembling XY Chelsea (the title is Mannings social media handle) from more than 250 hours of footage. He was there when Mannings legal team jetted her out of Fort Leavenworth on a private plane to a safe house, a cabin in the woods, to readjust to life outside prison. He filmed her hello world first steps into public life after being invisible for seven years: a New York Times interview and a Vogue photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz. He was there when Manning made a bid to run for the Senate less than eight months after release. But it is the unguarded, private moments in the film that strike home, as she finds her identity, becoming Chelsea Manning.

At the time of her arrest in 2010, Manning presented as male: Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old US army intelligence analyst and tech geek responsible for the biggest leak of secret material in history. In the army photograph, Bradley looks like a kid dressing up in a soldiers uniform. Manning came out as trans the day after her sentencing her lawyers advised against it, arguing it would complicate her case, but she had had enough of secrecy. In prison, she successfully sued the government for access to hormone treatment, but was held in all-male facilities and forced to have her hair cut into a short conservative mans style. Manning said guards would walk in on her changing her shirt or putting on her bra.

The happiest Manning ever looks in XY Chelsea is at the safe house as her young lawyer, Chase Strangio, styles her hair for her social media profile picture. Afterwards, Manning giggles, wondering if theres too much boobage in the shot. You could see how exhilarated she was just being able to use a mirror, Hawkins says. They didnt have mirrors in the prison, just beaten metal sheets.

In October last year, Manning underwent gender confirmation surgery. An early edit of the film included footage of her convalescing but, after speaking with the trans community, Hawkins decided it wasnt appropriate to include it. One thing I really wanted to avoid with the trans narrative was this kind of idea that transition represented a before and after. The idea that she only became a woman because she had surgery, or that she wasnt a woman before.

Manning grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. Her childhood was unstable emotionally both her parents drank heavily and split up when she was 12. She had a complicated relationship with her father and, tellingly, the film doesnt give us a Manning family reunion, although Hawkins interviews her Welsh mum, who speaks with difficulty after a stroke. In the film, while testing lipsticks, Manning explains that she enlisted in the army on a whim at 19 running away from gender dysphoria: I was trying to man up I saw it like going cold turkey, but you cant stop being who you are. She stops, looks in the mirror. This is a fantastic shade.

When Hawkins conceived the film, Manning was not meant to be in it. An artist-activist, Hawkins was making an experimental digital art piece about prisoners who were unfilmable due to the restrictions of their captivity. He sent Manning a letter in prison, and she agreed to take part, sending him her prison diaries.

During her sentence, Manning was repeatedly held in solitary confinement and subjected to conditions described by the UNs torture envoy as cruel, inhuman and degrading. In 2016, feeling depressed and hopeless, she twice attempted suicide. By this point she had given up on a miracle and expected to serve out every one of the 35 years of her sentence. Then, in a surprise move, President Barack Obama commuted it. The feeling among everyone was that this was something that would never happen, says Hawkins.

While Manning was still in prison, one of her close friends kept a sign above her desk, a reminder for their telephone calls: Dont rush Chelsea. Remember shes weak. Did Hawkins worry that filming would heap pressure on someone already in a fragile mental state? Absolutely. One thing we were really clear on as a production team was that Chelsea had been let down throughout her life. The last thing we wanted was to be the latest people to let her down. We were extremely aware not to push it and to give her space.

He adds: I felt my role in this film was not to try and do a Wikipedia page of everything that has happened in this case. I wanted to try to find an emotional connection and an emotional truth. A lot of times that meant just being gentle and just being there and present and allowing things to unfold.

That softly-softly approach will disappoint anyone expecting the film to be a tell-all. What does Manning think about WikiLeaks publishing stolen Democratic campaign emails in 2016, boosting Donald Trumps election chances? (As president, Trump has banned transsexuals from the military.) The Mueller report? Or the rape allegations against Assange in Sweden? We are left none the wiser. Manning has never spoken publicly about Assange, and she keeps schtum in XY Chelsea. She is writing a memoir, due out late next year, which may reveal more.

People will be frustrated, I think, watching the film because there are all sorts of burning questions about her relationship [with Assange] that people want answered, Hawkins admits. By way of explanation, he restates one of Mannings justifications for her continued silence that the two never met in person. Their communication was pretty limited and based on anonymous chat, says Hawkins. Assange was not this big figure when she was in communication with him. He was pretty much an unknown. He was this kooky guy who was known in the tech circles.

Besides, Hawkins says he wanted to wrestle the narrative from WikiLeaks and re-centre it on Manning. He makes the point that, by the time she contacted the site, Manning had already decided to turn whistleblower. I think the way that Chelsea approached the disclosures was incredibly intuitive, rather than calculated in perhaps the way that [Edward] Snowden approached his disclosures. I feel it was almost a more kind of punk rock act of direct action. Shes like that. She is a kind of punk rock figure for me.

XY Chelsea is out on Friday.

See the article here:
Chelsea Manning director: 'She's a kind of punk rock figure ...

NSA spying fiasco sending customers overseas | Computerworld

Posted on May 23, 2019 by admin

The spectacle of National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposing the covert spying nature of US federal officials has sent ripple waves through the technology industry -- especially in the outsourcing arena.

Experts predict the NSA fiasco could result in the loss of business for some hosting vendors, but it's hard to say exactly what the impact has been or will be.

The head of a European cloud computing provider said recently though that he's seen a "measurable impact" from companies looking to use its services to escape what they fear could be the prying eyes of the US NSA.

"It has not been a profound surge, but there is definitely a measureable impact," says Robert Jenkins, co-founder and CTO of Cloud Sigma, which is headquartered in Switzerland and has data centers across Europe and the United States. "We've definitely seen cases where people are turning to us because of this."

[MORE NSA SPYING:Reported NSA actions raise serious questions about tech industry partnerships

IN THE NEWS:NSA wants even closer partnership with tech industry]

Forrester analyst and cloud tracker James Staten predicted this could happen in a blog A post in the summer. Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimated in a report that the US cloud computing market could stand to lose up to $35 billion by 2016 because of vendors bypassing US providers and looking to overseas competitors. Staten says that's the low end of an estimate though.

It's "naA-ve" to believe that other countries don't have similar surveillance programs ongoing, which could depress not just the US cloud market, but the international outsourcing market as well. If those concerns do turn into real impacts, he estimates the worldwide outsourcing market could stand to lose up to $180 billion. That's the high-end of his prediction and he doesn't necessarily believe it will happen, but it could, he says. A

Some users are already getting out of US providers though. Take Alexander Ljungberg, co-founder, WireLoad, which is an online service that specializes in e-mail migrations the company can take massive stocks of email systems and translate them from one platform to another. Ljungberg and his partner did not want to use a U.S. cloud provider for the massive computing power that are needed for these jobs because of concerns over peering officials potentially being able to intercept his customer's e-mail communications. WireLoad uses CloudSigma's Swiss data center for all its migrations.

"Privacy laws in Switzerland are internationally known to be very good, so we're just more comfortable knowing that it's less likely there will be some kind of prying by the government," he says, adding that it's a selling point for customers. WiredLoad was using CloudSigma's services even before the NSA stories broke this summer, but he says privacy and security concerns were a major factor in deciding to use a European provider. If the company had been in a U.S. provider this summer, Ljungberg says he would have switched over.

Staten, the analyst who advises cloud users, says it's a judgment call as to whether users should be concerned about this issue. If they are, then switching to an international outsourcing provider is one solution, but one that should be considered carefully.

There may be some value in using an international provider for outsourcing needs, but sometimes international providers open their books at the demands of other governments, he says. "You can't conclude (that international) hosting providers would be immune to the same pressures," that U.S. providers are subject to, he says. Plus, there could be significant costs for migrating workloads to an international outsourcer, including latency concerns that could arise.

The better approach if there is a worry, he says, is to work with the security team on ways to secure the data adequately. "Only if they conclude they cannot sufficiently protect this data should they then look to move that data elsewhere," he says.

Jenkins, with Cloud Sigma says he's seen "a handful" of customers drop a US provider in favor of their offering since the NSA allegations were revealed. It's a strategic decision to look into an international provider instead of one hosted in the U.S., he says.The tone by Jenkins is somewhat of an opportunistic one the company and other European providers are happy to provide what customers consider to be a safer haven compared to U.S. providers.

But U.S. technology executives say they're pushing back on the government too.

In a recent interview Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said the company begrudgingly complies with U.S. orders to hand over information, but the company pushes back to ensure there is the proper court oversight on requests for data. Not complying with such court-ordered requests could result in incarceration, she said.

Noted security expert Bruce Schneier said soon after the NSA leaks came out that he believes the issue could be a thorn in the side of outsourcing providers. "Cloud computing is precedent on the notion of trust us with your data,'" he says. "If you don't trust the vendor, you can't do it." These NSA allegations are making it more difficult to "trust your vendor," he says. (Read what Schneier has to say about encryption related to NSA spying.)

The bigger impact, he believes, will likely be on non-US entities not wanting to put information in U.S. cloud providers. If you're a company really concerned about any government peering into your computer systems, perhaps not using an outsourcing provider at all is the best way to go though, he notes.

Senior Writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing for Network World and NetworkWorld.com. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW. Read his Cloud Chronicles here.

This story, "NSA spying fiasco sending customers overseas" was originally published by Network World.

MyOpenSource | Open source software for windows

Posted on May 22, 2019 by admin

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)Database Schematics can be drawn, and exported to SQL statements. Import SQL descriptions and visualise them using DDT. Map ERD relationships visually.ScreenshotOfficial...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)TortoiseCVS can directly check out modules, update, commit and see differences by right clicking on files and folders within Explorer;check the state of a file...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems,...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)Jext Featuresproject management;workspaces;open zip and internet files;mail source code;system commands within the console;fast typing with HyperTyper...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)SharpDevelop features a Forms designer and code completion both C# andVB.NET. Expect Code AutoInsert (Alt+Ins), C# toVB.NETconverter, as well...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)XAMPP includes Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)NetBeansIDEis a tool for Java programmers to develop cross-platform desktop, mobile and web applications.NetBeansIDESome Featuressyntax highlighting...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)DBDesigner has features to create a visual model of any database. Starting from a reverse engineering engine to automatically retrieve a model from existing databases,...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)Just released; Blender 2.36, with over 5 weeks of only stabilizing and bug fixing. This is the definite version to use to enjoy the new full undo system, complete...

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)Dev-C++IDEuses theMingwport ofGCCas its compiler. It creates native Win32 executables, either console or GUI. Dev-C++ can also be used in combination...

See the article here:
MyOpenSource | Open source software for windows

Chelsea Manning to ask court to quash new grand jury subpoena …

Posted on May 20, 2019 by admin

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge found former U.S. soldier and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning in contempt of court and ordered her back to jail on Thursday for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury, a law enforcement official and her legal team said.

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning is seen speaking to reporters outside the U.S. federal courthouse in this frame grab from video taken shortly before she entered the coourthouse to appear before a federal judge regarding a federal grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. May 16, 2019. REUTERS/Courtesy of NBC News

Manning was convicted by Army court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for leaking an enormous trove of military reports and State Department cables to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Former President Barack Obama later reduced Mannings sentence and she was released in May 2017.

Manning was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury hearing evidence collected by prosecutors who have for years been investigating WikiLeaks, and who recently unsealed a criminal indictment against its founder, Julian Assange.

Manning refused to testify and earlier this year was jailed for 62 days for contempt of court.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga sent her back to jail on Thursday and ordered that, if she does not comply with the subpoena, after 30 days she will be fined $500 a day.

The fine would go up to $1,000 a day if she continues to refuse to testify after 60 days, the law enforcement official and a spokesman for her attorneys said.

Manning was taken immediately to a local jail in Alexandria, Virginia.

Attempting to coerce me with a grand jury subpoena is not going to work. I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury, Manning said before entering the federal courthouse for the hearing on Thursday. Facing jail again, potentially today, doesnt change my stance.

The indictment against Assange alleges that he conspired with Manning to try to crack a password stored on U.S. Defense Department computers connected to a classified government data network. Mannings lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, said after the hearing that her client would not back down.

We are of course disappointed with the outcome of todays hearing, but I anticipate it will be exactly as coercive as the previous sanction which is to say not at all, she said.

U.S. prosecutors publicly released the indictment against Assange after he was evicted from Ecuadors London embassy, where he took refuge in 2012 fearing extradition to the United States or Sweden.

Assange is now serving a 50-week British prison sentence for jumping bail. Both U.S. and Swedish authorities are seeking his extradition.

Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Tom Brown

Julian Assange: Sweden files request for arrest over rape …

Posted on May 20, 2019 by admin

The Swedish prosecutor leading an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange has filed a request with a local court for him to be detained in absentia.

If granted, the court order would be the first step in a process to have the WikiLeaks founder extradited from the UK, where he is serving a 50-week sentence for skipping bail.

Sweden reopened the rape investigation last week. It was begun in 2010 but dropped in 2017 after Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange, who denies the accusation, was arrested in London last month after spending seven years inside the embassy.

I request the district court to detain Assange in his absence, on probable cause suspected for rape, the deputy chief prosecutor, Eva-Marie Persson, said in a statement on Monday.

She said she would issue a European arrest warrant for Assange to be surrendered to Sweden if the court decided to detain him.

Swedens decision to reopen the rape investigation casts doubt on where Assange may eventually end up, with US authorities already seeking his extradition over conspiracy charges relating to one of the biggest leaks of classified information.

A lawyer representing Assange in Sweden said he would tell the district court it could not investigate the prosecutors request until he had conferred with his client and learned whether or not he wished to oppose a detention order.

Since he is in prison in England, it has so far not been possible even to speak to him by telephone, Per Samuelson told Reuters.

WikiLeaks releases about 470,000 classified military documents concerning American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It later releases a further tranche of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.

A Swedish prosecutor issues a European arrest warrant for Assange over sexual assault allegations involving two Swedish women. Assange denies the claims.

A British judge rules that Assange can be extradited to Sweden. Assange fears Sweden will hand him over to US authorities who could prosecute him.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says Assange has been 'arbitrarily detained' and should be able to claim compensation from Britain and Sweden. Britain and Sweden rebuff the non-binding ruling.

Assangeis questionedin a two-day interview over the allegations at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities.

Nigel Farage is spotted visiting the Ecuadorian embassy.

Britain refuses Ecuador's request to accord Assange diplomatic status, which would allow him to leave the embassy without being arrested.

Police arrest Assange at the embassy after his asylum was withdrawn. Scotland Yard confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition. Assange has been charged by the US with 'a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer.'

Assange, an Australian national, took refuge in the embassy after fighting unsuccessfully through the British courts to avoid extradition to Sweden.

The British courts will have to rule on the Swedish and US extradition requests. Sajid Javid, the UK home secretary, will have the final say on which takes precedence.

Persson said: The outcome of this process is impossible to predict. Citing information from UK authorities, she said Assange would serve 25 weeks of his UK sentence before he could be released.

A British judge has given the US government a deadline of 12 June to outline its case against Assange.

Continue reading here:
Julian Assange: Sweden files request for arrest over rape ...

Chelsea Manning Ordered Back to Jail for Refusal to Testify …

Posted on May 19, 2019 by admin

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who provided secret military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, was sent to jail again on Thursday after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the organization, which publishes leaks online.

Ms. Manning was jailed for similar reasons in March, but was released last week when the term of the grand jury that had served her with a subpoena in January expired.

This month she was served with another subpoena to appear before a new grand jury. At a closed hearing on Thursday, she told a federal judge that she would not answer questions, and he ordered her to be sent back to Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia, either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jurys term expires in 18 months.

The judge, Anthony J. Trenga of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, also ordered Ms. Manning to be fined $500 for every day she remains in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days.

We are of course disappointed with the outcome of todays hearing, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, a lawyer for Ms. Manning, said in a statement. But I anticipate it will be exactly as coercive as the previous sanction which is to say not at all.

Prosecutors have granted immunity to Ms. Manning for her testimony, but she has said that she had already answered pertinent questions during a court-martial in 2013, and will not cooperate with a grand jury no matter how long she is detained.

As a general principle, I object to grand juries, she said in a video statement after being released last week. Prosecutors run grand juries behind closed doors and in secret without a judge present. Therefore, I declined to answer any questions.

Prosecutors said the jail time was meant to persuade Ms. Manning to testify. After the hearing on Thursday, G. Zachary Terwilliger, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said that Ms. Manning was being treated like any other citizen who might have relevant information, The Associated Press reported.

All we want is for her to truthfully answer any questions, he said.

But lawyers for Ms. Manning have argued that jail time is pointless and punitive because she refuses to answer questions no matter what.

I would rather starve than change my principles in this regard, Ms. Manning said to Judge Trenga on Thursday.

Both the subpoenas served to Ms. Manning by the Eastern District of Virginia this year came after prosecutors inadvertently disclosed in November that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had been charged under seal in that district.

The investigation into Mr. Assange is part of a criminal inquiry that began during the Obama administration. Mr. Assange evaded the investigation for seven years by sheltering in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he continued his activities with WikiLeaks, including working on the release of thousands of Democratic Party emails stolen by Russian hackers during the presidential campaign of 2016.

But Ecuador suspended the citizenship it had granted him and kicked Mr. Assange out of the embassy last month. He was arrested to face allegations in the United States that he had conspired to hack into a Pentagon computer network in 2010.

During her 2013 court-martial, Ms. Manning admitted sending secret documents to WikiLeaks, including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and Army reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She also confessed to interacting online with someone who was probably Mr. Assange, but she said she had acted on principle and was not working for WikiLeaks.

A military judge sentenced Ms. Manning to 35 years in prison in 2013. She served seven years, including pretrial custody, by the time President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of her sentence in 2017. It was the longest amount of time that any American had served in prison for leaking government secrets to the public. Ms. Manning, who was known as Bradley at the time of her conviction and transitioned to life as a woman while in a prison for men, was lauded by some free speech advocates as well as gay and transgender activists while she was incarcerated.

Ms. Manning spent 63 days in jail when she was detained earlier this year, including 28 days in solitary confinement conditions, her lawyers said in a statement on Thursday.

See the original post:
Chelsea Manning Ordered Back to Jail for Refusal to Testify ...

‘This Is Unprecedented’: Judge Orders Chelsea Manning Jailed …

Posted on May 19, 2019 by admin

In a move press freedom advocates and progressive critics decried as an "outrageous" and "unprecedented" escalation of a prolonged government harassment campaign, a federal judge on Thursday ordered U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning back to jail for refusing to testify before a secretive grand jury and imposed a $500 fine for every day she is in custody after 30 days.

"It is a point of pride for this administration to be publicly hostile to the press. It is up to the press to stand up for themselves, to stand up for the practice of journalism, and to stand up for Chelsea." Moira Meltzer-Cohen, attorney for Chelsea Manning

If Manning refuses to comply with the grand jury subpoena after 60 days, the fine will increase to $1,000 per day.

During a court hearing on Thursday, Manning told Judge Anthony Trenga that she has no intention of giving in to government pressure.

"I would rather starve to death than to change my opinion in this regard," said Manning. "And when I say that, I mean that quite literally."

Manning's imprisonment Thursday came exactly one week after she was released following a 62-day stint in jailincluding a month in solitary confinementfor refusing to testify before a grand jury that, as the Guardian reported, "is presumed to relate to the criminal prosecution" of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who is currently fighting the Trump administration's attempt to extradite him to the United States.

"This is unprecedented," read a tweet from Manning's official Twitter account.

BREAKING: the US governments harassment of whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning is intensifying. The fines they are threatening her with are unprecedented. Read her legal teams statement and retweet this til it breaks https://t.co/5QR5bnhchi

Evan Greer (@evan_greer) May 16, 2019

This is outrageous. https://t.co/2GvhUK0My6

Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) May 16, 2019

Moira Meltzer-Cohen, an attorney for Manning, said in a statement Thursday that while she is "disappointed" with the judge's decision, she expects "it will be exactly as coercive as the previous sanctionwhich is to say not at all."

"In 2010 Chelsea made a principled decision to let the world see the true nature modern asymmetric warfare," said Meltzer-Cohen. "It is telling that the United States has always been more concerned with the disclosure of those documents than with the damning substance of the disclosures."

"The American government relies on the informed consent of the governed, and the free press is the vigorous mechanism to keep us informed. It is a point of pride for this administration to be publicly hostile to the press," she added. "It is up to the press to stand up for themselves, to stand up for the practice of journalism, and to stand up for Chelsea in the same manner she has consistently stood up for the press."

View post:
'This Is Unprecedented': Judge Orders Chelsea Manning Jailed ...

Chelsea Manning’s Statement on Release from Jail and Second Grand Jury Subpeona

Posted on May 19, 2019 by admin

Two months ago, the federal government summoned me before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

As a general principle, I object to grand juries. Prosecutors run grand juries behind closed doors and in secret, without a judge present. Therefore, I declined to cooperate or answer any questions. Based on my refusal to answer questions, District Court Judge Hilton ordered me held in contempt until the grand jury ended.

Yesterday, the grand jury expired, and I left the Alexandria Detention Center. Throughout this ordeal, an incredible spring of solidarity and love boiled over.

I received thousands of letters, including dozens to hundreds of them a day. This means the world to me, and keeps me going.

Jail and prisons exist as a dark stain on our society, with more people confined in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. During my time, I spent 28 days in solitary confinement--a traumatic experience I already endured for a year in prison before.

Only a few months before re-incarceration, I received gender confirmation surgery. This left my body vulnerable to injury and infection, leading to possible complications that I am now seeking treatment for.

My absence severely hampers both my public and private life. The law requires that civil contempt only be used to coerce witnesses to testify.

As I cannot be coerced, it instead exists as an additional punishment on top of the seven years I served. Last week, I hand-wrote a statement outlining the fact I will never agree to testify before this or any other grand jury. Several of my closest family, friends and colleagues supported this fact. Our statements were filed in court. The government knows I can't be coerced. When I arrive at the courthouse this coming Thursday, what happened last time will occur again.

I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury.

Throughout the last decade, I accepted full responsibility for my actions. Facing jail again, this week, does not change this fact. The prosecutors deliberately place me in an impossible situation: I either go to jail, or turn my back on my prisons.

The truth is, the government can construct no prison worse than to betray my conscience or my principles.

More:
Chelsea Manning's Statement on Release from Jail and Second Grand Jury Subpeona

« First «...10 20 30...1,591 1,5921,5931,594 1,595...1,600 1,610 1,620...»Last »