The Ecuadorian government who has protected 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee and award-winning publisher Julian Assange has caved to pressure from the U.S. government and allowed him to be arrested by the UK government inside the embassy.

A lawyer for Assange told the Gateway Pundit that the arrest was really quick.

The Ecuadorian ambassador invited the British police inside. Assange did not walk out of the embassy.

Assange has been living in the embassy since 2012 when when he was granted asylum. On Thursday evening, WikiLeaks had tweeted that a high-level source within the Ecuadorian state has informed the publisher that he will be expelled within hours to days over the INA papers offshore scandal as an excuse.

A high-level source within the Ecuadorian state has told WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within hours to days using the INA papers offshore scandal as a pretext and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.

On March 26, the official WikiLeaks Twitter account posted about it and stated that Moreno is attempting to hand over Assange in exchange for US debt relief, a fact which was reported by The New York Times.

The Ecuadorian government used fake evidence that WikiLeaks was involved in the release of the INA Papers leak. In reality, the WikiLeaks Twitter account had only announced that their President Lenin Moreno is being investigated by Ecuadors Congress for corruption.

On April 1, Ecuador submitted a request to the United Nations Rapporteur on Privacy to take urgent measures in response to the INApapers publication, listing WikiLeaks as the responsible party. This is a lie.

The INA Papers are a set of documents published in February 2019, allegedly uncovering the operations of INA Investment Corp, an offshore tax haven created by the brother of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. The trove of emails, phone communications and expense receipts are said to link the president and his family to a series of corrupt and criminal dealings, including money laundering and offshore accounts. 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, WikiLeaks website explains.

On April 2, the President claimed that Assange violated the conditions of his asylum and that he will take a decision in the short term. He said, In WikiLeaks there is proof of espionage, of hacking, of the fact that phones have been intercepted and private conversations, there are even pictures of my bedroom.

Assanges Ecuadorian lawyer, Carlos Poveda, responded by saying, Remember that WikiLeaks has an internal organization and Mr. Assange is no longer in the editor. We will now resort to other types of situations, especially the Inter-American Commission.

Last Monday, this journalist visited Assange in the embassy and was locked in a room as an argument ensued between the publisher and Ecuadors Ambassador Jaime Alberto Marchn.

Assange accused the ambassador of being an agent of the US government and colluding with the US government to help persecute him.

At one point, Marchn even told Assange that he wanted him to shut up.

I know you want me to shut up the Ecuadorian president has already gagged me, Assange fired back. I am banned from producing journalism.

View original post here:
URGENT BREAKING: Ecuador Caves to US Government Hands Over ...

For the first time since 2012, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange no longer has the legal protections of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He now faces the criminal charges he's always suspected and fearedalthough it's now clear that he's accused of criminal behavior not as a journalist, or even a spy, but a hacker.

On Thursday, London's metropolitan police physically dragged Assange out of his residence at the embassy and into a police van. Hours later, a grand jury unsealed an indictment against the WikiLeaks founder for one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The UK government has already made clear that it carried out Assange's arrest on behalf of the US government, implying that it intends to comply with his extradition to the US to face those hacking charges.

The indictmentwhich you can read in full belowcenters on an incident nine years ago ago, when Assange allegedly told his source, then Army private Chelsea Manning, that he would help crack a password that would have given her deeper access to the military computers from which she was leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.

"On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense Computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications," the indictment reads, referring to the Pentagon's SIPRNet network of computers that store classified information.

That brief alleged offer of active assistance from Assange may be all the US government needs to charge him not as a journalist recipient of Manning's leaks, but as a coconspirator with Manning in the theft of Pentagon data.

"It can be as simple as that," says Bradley Moss, an attorney for the Washington, DC, law firm Mark Zaid P.C. who focuses on issues in national security and intelligence community personnel.

"It seems thin to me."

Tor Ekeland, Lawyer

The password cracking incident has long loomed in the background of Assange's legal case. As WIRED first reported in 2011, prosecutors in Chelsea Manning's case asserted at the time that Assange had offered to help Manning crack a password "hash," a form of scrambling designed to protect stored passwords from abuse. Hashing irreversibly converts a password into another string of characters, but hackers often use lists of pre-computed hashes from millions of passwords, known as rainbow tables, to search for a matching hash, revealing the hidden password.

In a pretrial hearing in Manning's case, prosecutors presented evidence that Manning had asked Assangewho was instant messaging with Manning under the name Nathaniel Frankif he had experience cracking hashes. Assange allegedly responded that he possessed rainbow tables for that, and Manning sent him a hashed password string. According to Thursday's unsealed indictment, Assange followed up two days later asking for more information about the password, and writing that he'd had "no luck so far." The indictment further alleges that Assange actively encouraged Manning to gather even more information, after Manning said she had given all she had.

It's not clear if Assange ever successfully cracked the password. According to the indictment, that password would have given Manning administrative privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull more files from it while concealing the traces of her leaks from investigators.

Is one failed attempt to crack a password really enough to embroil Assange in a felony hacking case? "For the CFAA, unfortunately yes," says Jeffrey Vagle, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor and current affiliate scholar at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He points to a long history of using the overly expansive wording of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to hit hackers accused of even trivial acts with serious charges. "The fact that his involvement is de minimus isn't enough to stop an indictment, because the CFAA is just so broad."

"I think the press freedom issues are moot now."

Susan Hennessey, Brookings Institute

That doesn't make the charges against Assange an open-and-shut case, argues Tor Ekeland, a well-known hacker defense attorney. The indictment only charges Assange with one count, with a maximum of five years in prison. And due to the complicating factor of his extradition from the UK, prosecutors wont be able to pile on more charges with a so-called superseding indictment, since they have to justify any charges they make now to British authorities. Ekeland also says there could still be venue issues with the charges; prosecutors would have to prove that the case affected residents of the Eastern District of Virginia, the relatively conservative district where the case would be tried. "It seems thin to me," Ekeland says.

Ekeland also points out that to expand the statute of limitations for the CFAA from the normal five years to the necessary eight in this case, given the indictment's date of March 2018, the Justice Department is charging Assange under a statute that labels his alleged hacking an "act of terrorism." He sees that as another suspect element of the case, if not one that would necessarily hinder prosecution. "To get the benefit of the eight years, theyre trying to call this a terrorist act," Ekeland says. "That seems a little weird."

But prosecutors have at least skirted a potentially bigger source of controversy: the First Amendment. Assange's defenders have long argued that prosecuting him would set a dangerous new precedent, breaking with a long history in the US that has spared journalists from prosecution when they report on leaks of classified secrets. By focusing its indictment solely on Assange's alleged role in Manning's computer intrusion, the Justice Department has essentially separated Assange from the journalistic pack.

"I think the press freedom issues are moot now," argues Susan Hennessey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former legal counsel for the NSA. "There are ways the government could have brought these charges that would have still posed concerns; for example, conspiracy to steal government records. But they didnt do that. These are charges for ordinary computer hacking. The conduct the government alleges here is behavior that is well outside any reasonable definition of journalism."

The charges against Assange represent, in fact, the second time in his life he's been charged with computer hacking. As a teenage hacker in Australia going by the name "Mendax," he was turned in by a fellow member of his three-person hacking group called the International Subversives, and he spent the next five years awaiting sentencing, a bleak period hes described as a formative period. Such prosecution in youth is a defining peak experience, he wrote in a 2006 blog entry. To know the state for what it really is!

Eventually, a judge noted that Assange's intrusions had been mostly harmless explorations, rather than profit-focused or malicious. He was given a $2,000 fine. This time, he may not be so lucky.

Read the rest here:
Breaking Down the Julian Assange Hacking Case | WIRED

The arrest of Julian Assange by British authorities was met with nearly unanimous hosannas by U.S. politicians who gave their requisite soundbites cum gravitas on Capitol Hill Thursday. The self-styled journalist, they almost all said, should be extradited to the U.S. as quickly as possible to face the proverbial music for having exposed state secrets of our country or at least the Democratic Party. Well, not exactly that more accurately for havingconspired with former U.S. intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to download classified databases, a legal distinction.

Ironically, not a peep has been heard from the same people (or almost anybody for that matter) thus far about another recent egregious misuse of journalism that resulted not in arrests but in the awarding of its most famous prize, the Pulitzer. As Beth Baumannnoted for Townhall:

The "award winning" journalists include Maggie Haberman, Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Mark Mazetti from The Timesand Rosalind Helderman, Tom Hamburger, Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous and Greg Miller from WaPo.

They received the award "For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nations understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elects transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)"

Deeply sourced? What a laugh. As we now know post-Mueller report, these "respected" journalists were simply trafficking in collusion lies whispered to them by biased informants. In other words, they were a bunch of gullible, over-zealous propagandists. For that they received their Pulitzers, as yet unreturned, needless to say (just as the Pulitzer for Walter Duranty still hangs on the New York Times' wall despite decades of pleas from Ukrainians whose countrymen's mass murder by Stalin was bowdlerized by Duranty).

So, in other words, these mainstream media reporters have gotten off with nary a slap on the wrist (indeed received fame and fortune) for lying while Julian Assange may be headed for prison for telling the truth. There's a bit of irony in that, no?

No one, as far as I know, has ever accused Assange of not publishing the truth. In fact, that's part of the problem. He's meticulously accurate, publishing verbatim material usually without comment, unlike the reporters from the NYT and WaPo who were perfectly happy to print whatever came their way as long as it made Donald Trump look bad or, as some have put it, like "Putin's asset."

Now I'm not saying I entirely approve of Assange. I don't support hacking in the slightest. But he's certainly a far more interesting character and presents more stimulating intellectual challenges than the uber-conventional journeymen and women in our mainstream media who wasted two years of everybody's lives parroting made-up stories about Trump. I have considerable interest in what Assange will have to say. By now it's almost impossible to have the slightest interest in what most, if not all, reporters from the NYT or WaPo have to say ever. They've disqualified themselves. And, yes, given that they hide behind name brand organizations with immense networks of distribution, I think they're worse.

Roger L. Simon co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media is an award-winning novelist and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.

Read more from the original source:
Who's WorseJulian Assange or the New York Times and ...

Julian Assange is being held in a notorious UK prison previously referred to as 'Britain's Guantanamo Bay.'

The WikiLeaks founder spent nearly seven years in a 330-square-foot room in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he had been seeking political asylum. On Thursday, Ecuador revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him.

As Assange awaits potential extradition to the US, he's been sent to Belmarsh, considered to one of the UK's most high-profile prisons.

Located in southeast London, Belmarsh rose in prominence following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Under anti-terrorism laws created soon after September 11th, foreign nationals suspected of terrorism could be detained in the prison, according to a BBC News story in 2003. As a result, the prison garnered the nickname 'Britain's Guantanamo Bay,' a nod towards the US detention camp at a military base in Cuba of the same name that gained notoriety for some of its torture tactics.

A report on an unannounced inspection of the prison by the UK's chief inspector of prisons in early 2018 paints a complicated picture. The report acknowledges that over 100 prisoners have an indeterminate sentence, in addition to those who have committed serious offenses.

Read more:US asks to extradite Julian Assange over leaked state secrets after he was arrested and forcibly removed from Ecuador's London embassy

"The high security unit (HSU), in effect a prison within a prison, held some of the highest-risk prisoners in the country, adding a further layer of complexity," the report stated. "In addition, there were a large number of foreign national prisoners, others who needed to be protected because of their offence, and a small number requiring specific management arrangements because of their public and media profile. Meeting the demands and priorities of these various groups remained a hugely complicated task."

While the report determined the prison was generally "well run," it did determine areas of weakness.

The prison failed to meet 37 of the 59 recommendations the report made to the staff following its inspection. And while rehabilitation and release planning had improved since the last visit and safety remained "reasonably good," the prison faltered in other areas. "Respect," a measurement of whether or not "Prisoners are treated with respect for their human dignity" decreased from "reasonably good" to "not sufficiently good" and "purposeful activity" dropped from "not sufficiently good" to "poor."

Violence in the prison also reportedly increased, but Belmarsh noted similar increases in other area prisons at the time.

The 2018 report made 40 recommendations for improvements, of which the prison agreed or partially agreed to attempt to improve upon in its action plan published in June of that year.

Of the recommendations not agreed upon by the prison, one included the need to no longer house three men in cells meant for only two individuals. While the prison acknowledged holding three men in a double cell was not a "desirable practice," it did not breach standards.

"There is no prospect of meeting this recommendation in the medium term," the report stated. "The wider problem of crowding in prisons is a longstanding national issue that can only be addressed through sustained additional investment in the estate over the long term."

Despite the findings of the report that suggest somewhat cramped conditions, individuals on Twitter mocked the comparison of Belmarsh to Guantanamo Bay, noting that the prisoners have access to "education, workshops, two gyms, and a library" along with "therapy and counselling groups," according to a 2006 BBC article.

English actress, writer, and TV personality Emma Kennedy pushed back on the comparison by writing, "We don't have a version of Guantanamo Bay... it was where they sent prisoners detained under the Terrorism Act. Which has now stopped."

More:
Julian Assange being held in Belmarsh, 'Britain's Guantanamo ...

Breaking News Emails

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

April 12, 2019, 3:14 PM GMT/ UpdatedApril 12, 2019, 3:17 PM GMT

By Patrick Smith

LONDON For the first time in almost seven years, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange woke up outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Friday morning. He had spent 2,487 consecutive days living in two small rooms to avoid being arrested after skipping bail.

Hes now in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison in southeast London after Ecuador withdrew political asylum and British police arrested him on Thursday.

He faces an extradition request from the U.S., where he is charged with conspiring to hack into secret files a crime that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

So what's next for the renegade transparency activist?

Assange will soon be sentenced for failing to surrender to British police in 2012, when he was fighting an extradition order to Sweden on charges of sexual assault and rape.

At a hearing Thursday, District Judge Michael Snow accused Assange of being a narcissist and found him guilty of having broken his bail agreement. Assange faces up to a year in jail on the charge. Snow also called Assange's assertion that the hearing wasn't fair laughable comments that may become the subject of a formal complaint.

In 2012, Assange was due to appear at a police station according to the terms of his bail, but instead went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London dressed as a motorcycle messenger, knowing that police wouldnt enter and arrest him due to diplomatic custom.

The more serious charge facing him now, however, is that he conspired with Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst, to hack into U.S. military intelligence files the subject of Washington's extradition request.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks released a video provided to them by Manning showing a 2007 U.S. airstrike that killed more than 10 Iraqis and two journalists. Manning was later arrested and sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking the trove of military intelligence records. Her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017 after seven years.

Assange will appear via video link in court on May 2 to hear the extradition order and again on June 12. Don't expect an outcome soon: This process could take up to two years and possibly longer. Depending on the outcome of Brexit, Assange could potentially take his case from the U.K. courts all the way to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg, the ultimate legal arbiter for E.U. states.

Assange describes himself as a journalist and it is likely that his legal team will focus on his role as publisher of material in the public interest, which was presented in partnership with mainstream news organizations including The Guardian and The New York Times.

It is not certain that this approach will work.

My understanding of the European Court case law is that there are cases where there have been prosecutions against journalists usually theyre for things like defamation of public figures or publishing things that they shouldnt have, said Adam Wagner, a leading human rights lawyer who is not connected to the Assange case.

I dont think theres been any case involving a developed democracy with sophisticated national security laws where a journalist, or whatever you want to call Assange, has avoided a prosecution for hacking into or breaking into national security files, he added. It just seems really unlikely.

Assanges team could also argue that what the indictment accuses him of trying to do creating a new password to access the secret files under a different username was an attempt to give Manning greater anonymity.

I suppose Assanges best free expression argument, which I expect they will be making, is its all about protection of sources, Wagner said. It is possible to argue that was what he was doing, not conspiring to get the files it was about ensuring that Manning wasnt identified and wasnt caught.

Wagner also pointed out that while some journalists have been highly skeptical of Assanges journalistic defense, many big stories in the past have been legally questionable.

Some journalists are saying, 'We all know the difference between illegality and nonillegality.' But some of the great scoops of the past, such as the Pentagon Papers, were very much in a gray area of legality.

British legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg said it was unlikely Assanges public interest defense would be well received by the U.K. courts.

He does have rights of freedom of expression, sure, but it doesnt mean that you are able to change passwords and all that stuff just because you think that the ultimate aim justifies the means. He may try this, but I dont think he will get very far, he said.

The scope for argument is over whether what hes accused of doing in the U.S. is the equivalent of a crime in the U.K. Im not sure what the equivalent crime would be, but Im sure there must be one. But will he try to fight it all the way? Im sure he will.

Ecuador said Thursday that it had extracted a promise from the U.K. that Assange wouldnt be sent anywhere he could face the death penalty or torture. This could be an element that crops up in the hearings ahead.

It also remains possible that Assange could face extradition to Sweden. Prosecutors there confirmed that while the sexual assault charge against him had lapsed, the rape charge remains active until August 2020, should Assange set foot in Sweden.

However, its likely the U.K. will consider the extradition requests in the order they were received, and the U.S. got there first.

In the meantime, Assange has to get used to life in a different kind of captivity.

Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter from NBC News Digital.

Michele Neubert contributed.

Read the original post:
What's next for Julian Assange after Ecuadorian Embassy eviction?

The indictment of Julian Assange unsealed today by the Trump Justice Department poses grave threats to press freedoms, not only in the U.S. but around the world. The charging document and accompanying extradition request from the U.S. government, used by the U.K. police to arrest Assange once Ecuadorofficially withdrew its asylum protection, seeks to criminalize numerous activities at the core of investigative journalism.

So much of what has been reported today about this indictment has been false. Two facts in particular have been utterly distorted by the DOJ and then misreported by numerous media organizations.

The first crucial factabout the indictment is thatits key allegation that Assange did not merely receive classified documents from Chelsea Manning but tried to help hercrack a password in order to cover her tracks is not new. It was long known by the Obama DOJ and wasexplicitly part of Mannings trial, yet the Obama DOJ not exactly renownedfor beingstalwart guardiansof press freedoms concluded that it could not and should not prosecute Assange becauseindicting him would pose serious threats to press freedom. In sum, todays indictment contains no new evidence or facts about Assanges actions; all of it has been known for years.

The other key fact being widely misreported is that the indictment accuses Assange of trying to help Manningobtain accessto documentdatabases to which she had no valid access:i.e., hacking rather than journalism. But the indictment alleges no such thing. Rather, it simply accuses Assange of trying to help Manning log into the Defense Departments computers using a different username so that she could maintain her anonymity while downloading documents in the public interest and then furnish them to WikiLeaks to publish.

In other words, the indictment seeks to criminalize what journalists are not only permitted but ethically required to do: take steps to help their sources maintain their anonymity. As longtime Assange lawyer Barry Pollack put it: The factual allegations boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.

Thats why the indictment poses such a grave threat to press freedom. It characterizes as a felonymany actions that journalists are not just permitted but required to take in order toconduct sensitive reporting in the digital age.

But because the DOJ issued a press release with a headline that claimed that Assange was accused of hacking crimes, media outlets mindlessly repeated this claimeven though the indictment contains no such allegation. It merely accuses Assange of trying to help Manning avoid detection. Thats not hacking. Thats called a core obligation of journalism.

The history of this case is vital for understanding what actually happened today. The U.S. government has been determined to indict Julian Assange and WikiLeaks since at least 2010, when the group published hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables revealing numerous war crimes and other acts of corruption by the U.S., the U.K., and other governments around the world. To achieve that goal, the Obama DOJ empaneled a grand jury in 2011 and conducted a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks, Assange, and Manning.

But in 2013, the Obama DOJ concluded that it could not prosecuteAssange in connection with the publication of those documents because there was no way to distinguish what WikiLeaks did from what the New York Times, The Guardian, and numerous media outlets around the world routinely do: namely, work with sources to publish classified documents.

The Obama DOJ tried for years to find evidence to justify a claim that Assange did more than act as a journalist that he, for instance, illegally worked with Manning to steal the documents but found nothing to justify that accusation and thus, never indicted Assange (as noted, the Obama DOJ since at least 2011 was well-aware of the core allegation of todays indictment that Assange tried to help Manning circumvent a password wall so she could use a different username because that was all part of Mannings charges).

So Obama ended eight years in office without indicting Assange or WikiLeaks. Everything regarding Assanges possible indictment changed onlyat the start of the Trump administration. Beginning in early 2017, the most reactionary Trump officialswere determined to do what the Obama DOJ refused to do: indict Assange in connection with publication of the Manning documents.

As the New York Times reported late last year, Soon after he took over as C.I.A. director, [current Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo privately told lawmakers about a new target for American spies: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The Times added thatMr. Pompeo and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed an aggressive campaign against Mr. Assange, reversing an Obama-era view of WikiLeaks as a journalistic entity.

In April, 2017, Pompeo, while still CIA chief, delivered a deranged speech proclaiming that we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleaguesthe latitude to use free speech values against us. He punctuated his speech with this threat: To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.

From the start, the Trump DOJ has made no secret of its desire to criminalize journalism generally. Early in the Trump administration, Sessions explicitly discussed the possibility of prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information. Trump and his key aides were open about how eagerthey were to build on, and escalate, the Obama administrations progress in enabling journalism in the U.S. to be criminalized.

Todays arrest of Assange is clearly the culmination of atwo-year effort by the U.S. government to coerce Ecuador under its new and submissive president, Lenn Moreno to withdraw the asylum protectionit extended to Assange in 2012. Rescinding Assanges asylum would enable the U.K.to arrest Assange on minor bail-jumping charges pending in London and, far more significantly,to rely onan extradition request from the U.S. government to send him to a country to which he has no connection (the U.S.) to stand trialrelating toleaked documents.

Indeed, the Trump administrations motive here is clear. With Ecuador withdrawing its asylum protection and subserviently allowing the U.K. to enter its own embassy to arrest Assange, Assange faced no charges other than a minor bail-jumping charge in the U.K. (Sweden closed its sexual assault investigation not because they concluded Assange was innocent, but because they spent yearsunsuccessfullytrying to extradite him). By indicting Assange and demanding his extradition, it ensures that Assange once he serves his time in a London jailfor bail-jumping will be kept in a British prison for the full year or longer that it takes for the U.S. extradition request, which Assange will certainly contest, to wind its way through the British courts.

The indictment tries to cast itself as charging Assange not withjournalistic activities but with criminal hacking. But it is a thinly disguised pretext for prosecuting Assange for publishing the U.S. governments secret documents while pretending to make it about something else.

Whatever else is true about the indictment, substantial parts ofthe document explicitlycharacterize as criminal exactly the actions that journalists routinely engage in with their sources and thus, constitutes a dangerous attempt to criminalize investigative journalism.

The indictment, for instance, places great emphasis on Assanges alleged encouragement that Manning after she already turned over hundreds of thousands of classified documents try to get more documents for WikiLeaks to publish. The indictment claims that discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information. During an exchange, Manning told Assange that after this upload, thats all I really have got left. To which Assange replied, curious eyes never run dry in my experience.

But encouraging sources to obtain more information is something journalists do routinely. Indeed, it would be a breach of ones journalistic dutiesnot to ask vital sources with access to classified information if they could provide even more information so as to allow more complete reporting. If a source comes to a journalist with information, it is entirely common and expected that the journalist would reply: Can you also get me X, Y, and Z to complete the story or to make it better?As Edward Snowden said this morning, Bob Woodward stated publicly he would have advised me to remain in place and act as a mole.

Investigative journalism in many, if not most, cases, entails a constant back and forth between journalist and source in which the journalist tries to induce the source to provide more classified information, even if doing so is illegal. To include such encouragement as part of a criminal indictment as the Trump DOJ did today is to criminalize the crux of investigative journalism itself, even if the indictment includes other activities you believe fall outside the scope of journalism.

As Northwestern journalism professor Dan Kennedyexplained in The Guardianin2010 whendenouncing as a press freedom threat the Obama DOJs attempts to indict Assange based on the theory thathe did more than passively receive and publish documents i.e., that he actively colluded with Manning:

The problem is that there is no meaningful distinction to be made. How did theGuardian, equally, not collude with WikiLeaks in obtaining the cables? How did the New York Times not collude with the Guardian when the Guardian gave the Times a copy following Assanges decision to cut the Times out of the latest document dump?

For that matter, I dont see how any news organisation can be said not to have colluded with a source when it receives leaked documents. Didnt the Times collude with Daniel Ellsberg when itreceived the Pentagon Papersfrom him? Yes, there are differences. Ellsberg had finished making copies long before he began working with the Times, whereas Assange may have goaded Manning. But does that really matter?

Most of the reports about the Assange indictment today have falsely suggested that the Trump DOJ discovered some sort of new evidence that proved Assange tried to help Manning hack through a password in order to use a different username to download documents. Aside from the fact that those attempts failed, none of this is new: As the last five paragraphs of this 2011 Politico story demonstrate, that Assange talked to Manning about ways to use a different username so as to avoid detection was part of Mannings trial and waslong known to the Obama DOJ when they decided not to prosecute.

There are onlytwo new events that explain todays indictment of Assange: 1) The Trump administration from the start included authoritarian extremists such as Sessions and Pompeo who do not care in the slightest about press freedom and were determined to criminalize journalism against the U.S., and 2) With Ecuador about to withdraw its asylum protection, the U.S. government needed an excuse to prevent Assange from walking free.

A technical analysis of the indictments claimssimilarly provesthe charge against Assange to be a serious threat to First Amendment press liberties, primarily because it seeks to criminalize what is actually a journalists core duty: helping ones source avoid detection. The indictment deceitfully seeks to cast Assanges efforts to help Manning maintain her anonymity as some sort of sinister hacking attack.

The Defense Department computer that Manning used to download the documents which she then furnished to WikiLeaks waslikely running the Windows operating system. It had multiple user accounts on it, including an account to which Manning had legitimate access. Each account is protected by a password, and Windows computers store a file that contains a list of usernames and password hashes, or scrambled versions of the passwords. Only accounts designated as administrator,a designation Mannings account lacked, have permission to access this file.

The indictment suggests that Manning, in order to access this password file, powered off her computer and then powered it back on, this time booting to a CD running the Linux operating system. From within Linux, she allegedly accessed this file full of password hashes. The indictment alleges that Assange agreed to try to crack one of these password hashes, which, if successful, would recover the original password. With the original password, Manning would be able to log directly into that other users account, which as the indictment puts it would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.

Assange appears to have been unsuccessful in cracking the password. The indictment alleges that Assange indicated that he had been trying to crack the password by stating that he had no luck so far.

Thus, even if one accepts all of the indictments claims as true, Assange was not trying to hack into new document filesto which Manning had no access, but rather trying to help Manning avoid detection as a source. For that reason, the precedent that this case would set would be a devastating blow to investigative journalists andpress freedom everywhere.

Journalists have an ethical obligation to take steps to protect their sources from retaliation, which sometimes includes granting them anonymity andemploying technical measures to help ensure that their identity is not discovered. When journalists take source protection seriously, they strip metadata and redact information from documents before publishing them if that information could have been used to identify their source; they host cloud-based systems such as SecureDrop, now employed by dozens of major newsrooms around the world, that make it easier and safer for whistleblowers, who may be under surveillance, to send messages and classified documents to journalists without their employers knowing; and they use secure communication tools like Signal and set them to automatically delete messages.

But todays indictment of Assange seeks to criminalize exactly these types of source-protection efforts, as it states that it was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used a special folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified records containing information related to the national defense of the United States.

The indictment, in numerous other passages, plainly conflates standard newsroom best practices with a criminal conspiracy. It states, for instance, thatit was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used the Jabber online chat service to collaborate on the acquisition and dissemination of the classified records, and to enter into the agreement to crack the password []. There is no question that using Jabber, or any other encrypted messaging system, to communicate with sources and acquire documents with the intent to publish them, is a completely lawful and standard part of modern investigative journalism. Newsrooms across the world now use similar technologies to communicate securely with their sources and to help their sources avoid detection by the government.

The indictment similarly alleges that it was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, including by removing usernames from the disclosed information and deleting chat logs between Assange and Manning.

Excerpt from:
Julian Assange Indictment Poses Grave Threats to Free Press

James Ball: You dont have to like Julian Assange to defend him

According to Interior Minister Mara Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrementalas, we still dont know whether it was Assanges or someone elsesrefusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the internal political matters in Ecuador, as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the countrys former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patio, to destabilize the Moreno administration.

We dont yet know whether Romos allegation is true (Patio denied it) or simply a pretext for booting a nuisance from state property. But Assanges ties to Russian hackers and Russian intelligence organs are now beyond dispute.

Special Counsel Robert Muellers indictment of 12 cyberoperatives for Russias Main Intelligence Directorate for the General Staff (GRU) suggests that Assange was, at best, an unwitting accomplice to the GRUs campaign to sway the U.S. presidential election in 2016, and allegedly even solicited the stolen Democratic correspondence from Russias military intelligence agency, which was masquerading as Guccifer 2.0. Assange repeatedly and viciously trafficked, on Twitter and on Fox News, in the thoroughly debunked claim that the correspondence might have been passed to him by the DNC staffer Seth Rich, who, Assange darkly suggested, was subsequently murdered by the Clintonistas as revenge for the presumed betrayal.

Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and, as an official in Donald Trumps Cabinet, an indirect beneficiary of Assanges meddling in American democracy, went so far as to describe WikiLeaks as a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. For those likening the outfit to legitimate news organizations, Id submit that this is a shade more severe a description, especially coming from Americas former spymaster, than anything Trump has ever grumbled about The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Russian diplomats had concocted a plot, as recently as late 2017, to exfiltrate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, according to The Guardian. Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the planincluding the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions. The plan was scuttled only because it was deemed too dangerous.

Read: The radical evolution of WikiLeaks

In 2015, Focus Ecuador reported that Assange had aroused suspicion among Ecuadors own intelligence service, SENAIN, which spied on him in the embassy in a years-long operation. In some instances, [Assange] requested that he be able to choose his own Security Service inside the embassy, even proposing the use of operators of Russian nationality, the Ecuadorian journal noted, adding that SENAIN looked on such a proposal with something less than unmixed delight.

Read this article:
Julian Assange Got What He Deserved - The Atlantic

With Alec Baldwins Donald Trump nowhere to be seen, Saturday Night Live featured a different cameo during last nights cold open: Michael Keaton, who played the recently arrested Julian Assange. He was joined by Kate McKinnons Lori Loughlin, who interrupted three jailbirds stories of how they ended up behind bars to brag, You think thats insane? I paid $500 grand to get my daughter into USC.

Related

Met with incredulity by her new cellmates, the former Aunt Becky repeated herself: You heard me. I paid $500 grand to a womens crew coach to say my daughter was good at rowing. Im loco. Loughlin then reminded them that the hefty sum is not even including the $300 grand I blew on tuition before stunning them even further by revealing that, not only is her daughter a Communications major, but shes put that ongoing education to use by becoming, of all things, an Instagram influencer.

You think prison is hard? Ive done 68 Hallmark movies Ive seen hell, man, she said. And in half those Hallmark movies, I marry Santas son, so I have lost all sense of reality. Im gonna take your heart and Im gonna cut it out.

Aunt Becky may be the prisons new kingpin, but she isnt the only high-profile inmate. Pete Davidson is there as Michael Avenatti, but even his crimes cant compare to the craziness of Assanges. Thats right, its me, he said by way of introduction. Im the architect of anarchy. Im the king of chaos. Im the scourge of the cleaning staff at the Ecuadorian embassy.

They arent impressed yet, so he takes it further: Im wanted in the U.S. and Sweden. Im from Australia and I live in London in Ecuador you try figuring that one out. Then the capper: I attacked the U.S. military, bitches. Im an actual James Bond supervillain and Im one step away from destroying the goddam moon! Watch the full skit below.

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Go here to see the original:
SNL Cold Open: Michael Keatons Julian Assange Goes to Jail ...

Julian Assange is facing extradition to the United States and up to five years in prison after he was forcibly dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday, bringing an extraordinary seven-year diplomatic stalemate to an end.

Assange, an Australian citizen, will receive consular assistance on Friday but wont be given any special treatment, the countrys prime minister, Scott Morrison, said. The countrys foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said officials had been advised that Britain would not agree to extradition if an individual would face the death penalty. Australia is completely opposed to the death penalty and that is a bipartisan position, she said. The matter for the extradition itself is one between the United States and the United Kingdom.

After 2,487 days in the embassy, the 47-year-old was arrested after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and invited Metropolitan police officers inside their Knightsbridge premises, where he has stayed since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations which Assange has always denied.

Later on Thursday, he was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court and faces up to 12 months in a British prison.

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.'

At a central London police station, Assange was further arrested at the request of the US seeking his extradition over allegations he conspired with former US military analyst Chelsea Manning to download classified databases in what the US justice department called one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.

The arrest provoked a fierce debate over Assanges future and possible extradition. While the government defended the arrest over breaching bail as evidence that no-one is above the law, Labour and civil liberties groups condemned the US extradition request.

Assanges lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told the BBCs Newsnight programme her clients arrest set a dangerous precedent that should concern free speech advocates.

In the US, Donald Trump said I know nothing about WikiLeaks, adding, its not my thing. In the final month of the 2016 election, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks 164 times. His opponent in that election, Hillary Clinton, said the WikiLeaks founder needs to answer for what he has done.

Jeremy Corbyn tweeted the extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Freedom of speech advocates including US whistleblower Edward Snowden said that an extradition over the leaks constituted a risk to press freedom. Meanwhile, as others argued that the US charges should be considered separately to the Swedish allegations, prosecutors in Stockholm said that his arrest was news to us.

Events moved at pace as Assange later appeared at Westminster magistrates court to deny failing to surrender to court. Finding him guilty, district judge Michael Snow said his behaviour was the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest. He faces up to 12 months in jail when sentenced, and will face a separate extradition hearing via videolink on 2 May.

The US accuses Assange of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, alleging that he assisted Manning in cracking a password to help her infiltrate Pentagon computers and download material to share with WikiLeaks. If convicted, Assange faces a maximum sentence of five years .

Dramatic footage showed him handcuffed, heavily bearded and with his hair tied back, gesticulating and shouting UK must resist as plainclothes officers carried him from the embassy shortly after 10am to a waiting police van. He was clutching what appeared to be a copy of Gore Vidals History of the National Security State.

One Assange supporter, who witnessed the arrest, said: There were at least six men dragging Julian out and more uniformed police standing by. Julian was talking but he was bundled into a van. He looked dazed.

Westminster magistrates court heard that when police arrived inside the embassy, Assange barged past them in an attempt to return to his private room. He had to be restrained after resisting arrest and claiming this is unlawful.

Judge Michael Snow was highly scathing of Assange, saying His behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.

Outside court, Robinson said they had warned since 2010 that Assange would face extradition to the US. Unfortunately, today we have been proved right. She said Assange thanked his supporters, and had said: I told you so.

Assange was initially arrested for failing to surrender to the court after losing an appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faced two separate 2010 sexual assault allegations.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, lawyer for one of the two women accusers, said they would seek to get the Swedish police investigation re-opened so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape. One of the women told the Guardian she would be very surprised and sad if Assange was extradited to the US. For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me and other women, she said.

Theresa May told MPs that she welcomed the arrest: This goes to show that in the United Kingdom, no one is above the law. Downing Street said the prime minister and the government were aware in advance that Ecuador intended to revoke Assanges asylum status. A No 10 spokeswoman said while there had been a dialogue with the Ecuadorian government from the start the decision to revoke asylum was one for them entirely.

Explaining the decision, Ecuadors president, Lenn Moreno, said: In a sovereign decision Ecuador withdrew the asylum status to Julian Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols. He accused Assange of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and added: The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit.

An arrest warrant for Assange was issued in August 2010 for two separate sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Police questioned him in Stockholm, where he denied the allegations. After returning to the UK, he feared that if he were extradited to Sweden he might be extradited on to the US, where he could face charges over WikiLeaks publication of secret US government files.

In December 2010 he appeared at an extradition hearing in the UK, where he was granted bail. Following a legal battle, the courts ruled Assange should be extradited to Sweden. The WikiLeaks founder entered the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2012. He was granted political asylum, and remained there until his arrest.

In May 2017, Swedish authorities dropped their investigations. However, the British police warrant for his arrest for skipping bail still remained. Lawyers for Assange failed in January 2018 to have the warrant torn up, arguing it had lost its purpose and its function.

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

Jamie Grierson, Home affairs correspondent

The Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said: He was continually a problem to us, he was very disrespectful to the authorities, he has said that we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States.

However, there was condemnation of the arrest from many quarters. Amnesty International UK said that if Sweden pursues extradition over sexual assault allegations, then assurances should be made over not sending Assange to the US. There is a very real risk that he could face human rights violations due to his work with WikiLeaks, a spokesperson said.

Ecuadors former president, Rafael Correa, accused his successor of being the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history.

Snowden, the former US government contractor wanted for leaking details of US surveillance programmes, called the arrest a dark moment for press freedom. Meanwhile, actor Pamela Anderson, one of a diverse range of public figures and celebrities to have visited Assange, tweeted that she was in shock, and accused the UK of being Americas bitch and of seeking a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bullshit.

Manning downloaded four databases from US departments and agencies between January and May 2010, the indictment said, with the information provided to WikiLeaks. Some selected and edited material from WikiLeaks was published by the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, El Pas and Der Speigel.

Assanges arrest came one day after WikiLeaks accused the Ecuadorian government of an extensive spying operation against him, during which, it claimed, meeting with lawyers and a doctor inside the embassy over the past year were secretly filmed. Assange supporters reported increased police activity at the embassy last weekend.

Additional reporting: David Crouch in Gothenburg

Read more:
Julian Assange faces US extradition after arrest at ...