« First...102030...1,6181,6191,6201,6211,622...1,6301,6401,650...Last »

Chelsea Manning arrested after refusing to testify in …

Posted on by

Chelsea Manning, the former US army analyst and whistleblower who leaked troves of classified material to WikiLeaks in 2010, was arrested on Friday after she reportedly refused to testify in front of a Virginia grand jury about her interactions with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

"I've found you in contempt," Judge Claude M. Hilton told Manning at the public ruling, according to The Washington Post. He said Manning will be jailed "either until you purge yourself or the end of the life of the grand jury."

Manning said in a statement on Twitter that she had been summoned to appear before a secret grand jury on Wednesday. In response to each question, she said she answered, "I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights."

"All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010 answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013," her statement continued.

In January, WikiLeaks said federal prosecutors were working to get witnesses to testify against Assange in secret criminal proceedings being conducted by the Trump administration.

Read more: US prosecutors press witnesses to testify against Assange: WikiLeaks

Before the ruling, Manning told reporters, "I don't believe in the grand jury process; I don't believe in the secrecy of this."

Manning's lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, called the arrest an "an act of tremendous cruelty," according to The Post.

Manning was imprisoned for seven years out of a 35-year sentence stemming from multiple counts under the Espionage Act. In 2017, she was released after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Manning has said she suffered from mental-health problems in prison, where she attempted to commit suicide twice. During her incarceration, she spoke out about her treatment in the justice system as a transgender woman.

Throughout her sentence, she was housed in a men's prison despite undergoing hormone and speech therapy as part of her transition.

Meltzer-Cohen commended prosecutors in the current case for working to address Manning's medical needs, and Hilton said the court was available if US Marshals failed to address them, according to The Post.

Read more from the original source:
Chelsea Manning arrested after refusing to testify in ...

Chelsea Manning: US whistleblower jailed for refusing to …

Posted on by

US whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been jailed for contempt of court after refusing to give evidence to a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks.

Sending her to a federal prison on Friday, US District Judge Claude Hilton said she will remain behind bars until she testifies, or until the grand jury finishes its inquiry.

The former US Army intelligence analyst told the judge she "will accept whatever you bring upon me".

Manning, 31, has said she objects to the secrecy of the grand jury process, and that she already revealed everything she knows at her court martial.

Her lawyers had asked that she be sent to home confinement instead of jail, because of medical complications she faces.

The judge said US Marshals can handle her treatment needs.

Manning was convicted of espionage and other offences by court-martial in 2013.

She leaked some 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.

Sentenced to 35 years in jail, she was released in 2017 after former US president Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Previously known as Private Bradley Manning, the former soldier now chooses to identify as a woman and underwent gender transition while in jail.

Among the documents she released were millions of diplomatic cables and a 2007 video of a US helicopter in Baghdad firing on a group of civilians that killed two Reuters photographers and wounded two children.

On Wednesday, Manning appeared before the same grand jury, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, but refused to answer any questions.

The day before, Manning told The Associated Press that she didn't know what case she was being called to testify about and said: "Grand juries are terrible, to say the least."

Manning's support committee, Chelsea Resists!, called the grand jury system "dangerous and undemocratic".

"Grand juries operate in secret, allowing the government to retaliate against activists and dissidents behind closed doors," said a statement from the committee released by Manning's lawyers."

See more here:
Chelsea Manning: US whistleblower jailed for refusing to ...

Chelsea Manning loses bid to quash subpoena in Virginia | Reuters

Posted on by

FILE PHOTO: Chelsea Manning speaks at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, U.S., March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Suzanne Cordeiro/File Photo

(Reuters) - Chelsea Manning on Tuesday lost a bid to quash a subpoena compelling her to testify in front of a grand jury, according to media reports and a group supporting her.

Manning is a transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data while she was working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. She was granted clemency by former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Manning is expected to return to the courthouse in Alexandria on Wednesday, according to Chelsea Resists!, a group that supports her.

It is not clear why Manning is being compelled to appear in court. In remarks made outside the Virginia courthouse, Manning said she opposed grand juries in general and that her team thinks they still have grounds to litigate, the Washington Post reported.

Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other crimes because she furnished more than 70,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, an organization that publishes information from anonymous sources.

In November, U.S. prosecutors revealed they were pursuing a criminal case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and had obtained a sealed indictment against him.

Lawyers for Manning and representatives from the courthouse did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Tom Brown

Visit link:
Chelsea Manning loses bid to quash subpoena in Virginia | Reuters

Chelsea Manning Says She May Be Jailed for Contempt of Court …

Posted on by

WASHINGTON Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who sent archives of secret military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, said on Thursday that she had refused to answer questions about her interactions with the antisecrecy organization before a grand jury and might be sent to jail as soon as Friday.

Ms. Manning had been imprisoned for about seven years before President Barack Obama commuted most of the remainder of her 35-year sentence in 2017, and she was released from a military prison in May of that year. Her defiance of the subpoena means she may be imprisoned again after a judge holds a closed hearing about her legal arguments and whether to hold her in contempt of court.

The court may find me in contempt and order me to jail, she said in a statement, adding: In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available. My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.

Ms. Manning also confirmed that as widely suspected prosecutors wanted to ask her about WikiLeaks. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have been investigating the organization for years, and inadvertently revealed last year that they had charged its leader, Julian Assange, under seal.

All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010 answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013, Ms. Manning said.

Prosecutors had bestowed legal immunity on Ms. Manning for her testimony, she said, but she responded to each question by saying she refused to answer because it violated her constitutional rights.

It had not been clear what the charge against Mr. Assange, who has been living for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid arrest, pertained to: WikiLeaks role in publishing leaked, classified documents, or its role in publishing the Democratic emails stolen by Russian government hackers during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The disclosure that prosecutors are newly refocused on Ms. Mannings early interactions with the organization indicates that the case most likely relates to the publication of classified information a case that would raise novel First Amendment issues. The Obama administration had weighed charging Mr. Assange in connection with Ms. Mannings disclosures, but decided against it over fears of chilling investigative journalism.

After Ms. Manning disclosed her subpoena to The New York Times last week, The Daily Beast reported that David House, an activist and member of a support network for Ms. Manning during the 2010-11 era of legal and activist wrangling over WikiLeaks publication of her leaks, had been granted immunity and testified last year before the same grand jury about his interactions with the group.

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, declined to comment.

Judge Claude M. Hilton, who was appointed to the Federal District Court in that district by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, will decide whether to accept Ms. Mannings arguments for why she had a right to refuse to answer the questions or to send her to jail. He previously declined her request to quash the subpoena before she knew what she would be asked.

More here:
Chelsea Manning Says She May Be Jailed for Contempt of Court ...

Why Is Chelsea Manning Going to Jail? Activist Arrested for …

Posted on by

Chelsea Manning, an activist and former intelligence analyst for the United States Army who was convicted by court-martial for violating the Espionage Act, was jailed for refusing to testify to a grand jury that was investigating WikiLeaks.

On Friday, after Manning told U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton she would not testify and will accept whatever you bring upon me, he ordered her to jail, according to the Associated Press. Hilton said Manningwill remain in jail until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury concludes its work.

Former American soldier and whistleblower Chelsea Manning at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts on October 1, 2018. On March 8, 2019, Manning was ordered to jail after refusing to testify before a grand jury. Jack Taylor/Getty Images

The day before Manning was ordered to jail, she posted an updateon Twitter,explainingshe would return to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, for a closed contempt hearing. During the hearing, the judge would weigh the legality of her refusal to answer questions before the grand jury. If found in contempt, Manning acknowledged, she could be ordered to jail.

In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles, Manning said. I will exhaust every legal remedy available. My legal team continues to challenge the secrecy of these proceedings, and I am prepared to face the consequences of my refusal.

She also shared that during a secret grand jury on Wednesday, she responded to every questionwith, I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the questions is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was allegedly charged last year, though what he was charged with is unknown since its under seal, according to the Chicago Tribune. News of the charges was only brought to the publics attention after it was inadvertently released in a filing in an unrelated case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer wrote a statement urging the judge to keep the matter sealed, and said, according to The Washington Post, Due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.

Manning wasnt the only one called to testify.Stars and Stripes reported that David House, who is a friend of Mannings, testified before the grand jury in July 2018.

"Grand juries are terrible tools," Manning told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday. "The idea that there is an independent grand jury is long gone; it's run by a prosecutor There is no adversarial process ... I am generally opposed to the existence of a grand jury."

Manning was granted immunity for her testimony, and under Rule 42(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a witness who refuses to testify can be convicted of criminal contempt.

During her court-martial, Manning said she acted alone.The Chicago Tribune reported she said she'd approached other news organizations about the material beforeapproaching WikiLeaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking the largest cache of classified documents in United States history, as reported by Stars and Stripes. But after seven years, former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past seven years. If he were to leave, he could face possible extradition to the United States, althoughthe United States has not publicly charged him with a crime.

Visit link:
Why Is Chelsea Manning Going to Jail? Activist Arrested for ...

Fidelity’s new cryptocurrency company is up and running …

Posted on by

An ongoing cryptocurrency bear market is not dampening interest for Fidelity's new institutional cryptocurrency products.

Fidelity Digital Assets, a new company created by the investing giant last year, has quietly rolled out its cryptocurrency custody and trade execution operations. In the past few months it has been up and running with institutional investors like hedge funds and family offices, according to its top executive.

The collapse in cryptocurrency prices over the last year "haven't had an impact" on getting up and running, Tom Jessop, head of Fidelity Digital Assets told CNBC at the DC Blockchain Summit this week. "If you started a crypto fund at the height of the market you're probably hurting right now."

Bitcoin, along with thousands of other digital coins, sparked a buying frenzy among retail investors in late 2017. The world's largest cryptocurrency has dropped more than 80 percent since its high of almost $20,000 at the end of 2017 and was trading near $3,789 on Friday.

Still, Jessop said there's long-term interest from institutional investors to add some form of cryptocurrency to their portfolios. It's often seen as an uncorrelated risk, or a store of value in a crisis. Others see a trading opportunity given the sector's volatility. Fidelity commissioned research to gauge the level of that interest.

The firm interviewed roughly 450 institutions, everyone from wealthy families to hedge funds, pensions and endowments. About 22 percent of the respondents already own cryptocurrency, according to the findings. Those that already own it expect to double their allocation over five years.

"If anything, they are as encouraged now as they were when prices were higher," Jessop said.

Fidelity's new company will execute trades on multiple exchanges for these professional investors. It also handles custody, or the safe storage of digital assets. Until Fidelity, there had been a noticeable lack of a big U.S.-based company in that business.

Jessop said while the company is live, certain aspects are still a work in progress. Fidelity is expanding the jurisdictional coverage of where it can do business. And its offerings are not one-size-fits-all. Some customers were using the platform in January, while for other customers, it was March. Others may wait until September, he said.

"It really depends on the facts and circumstances of each client," Jessop said.

Fidelity, a roughly 72-year-old family-controlled firm, is known for managing retirement plans and mutual funds. But it also spends $2.5 billion per year on technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain. The new digital asset company was born out of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, or FCAT as employees call it.

Jessop said many institutional investors are still in "wait and see" mode when it comes to putting money into crypto.

"At some point, there will be an attractive entry point," Jessop said. "But by the same token people don't want to be early even if we're well off the highs."

Much of that hesitation has to do with volatility, he said. The digital currency market has been known to jump or sink by 10 percent in a single day. While prices in 2019 have been relatively stable, institutions are still wary of those sudden price moves, according to the Fidelity survey. That issue should be solved as the market structure matures, Jessop said.

Education is another roadblock to greater acceptance by investors. Jessop said the more educated a firm was on the topic, the more likely they were to be holding cryptocurrency.

"They've approached us wanting to learn, which is an encouraging sign," Jessop said. "That's not to say that there's a cohort of people that once they get educated will still have a negative view."

WATCH:How to start your very own cryptocurrency

View original post here:
Fidelity's new cryptocurrency company is up and running ...

NSA spying scandal: what we have learned | US news | The …

Posted on by

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been empowered by a secret order issued by the foreign intelligence court directing Verizon Communications, a mobile phone provider with 98.9 million wireless customers, to turn over all its call records for a three-month period.

The order is untargeted, meaning that the NSA can snoop on calls without suspecting anyone of wrongdoing. It was made on 25 April, days after the Boston Marathon bombing.

Under the order, the NSA only gains access to the "metadata" around calls when they were made, what numbers they were made to, where they were made from and how long the calls lasted.

Obtaining the content of the calls, or the names or addresses of the callers would make the surveillance wiretapping, which would count as a separate issue legally. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the data collection of mobile phone records extends to AT&T (107 million users) and Sprint (55 million). Verizon's advertising catchphrase "Can you hear me now?" has become the butt of instant jokes on Twitter and other social media.

Internal NSA documents claim the top secret data-mining programme gives the US government access to a vast quantity of emails, chat logs and other data directly from the servers of nine internet companies. These include Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Apple. The companies mentioned have all denied knowledge of or participation in the programme.

It is unknown how Prism actually works. A 41-slide PowerPoint presentation obtained by the Guardian and classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the programme. Unlike the collection of Verizon and other phone records, Prism surveillance can include the content of communications not just metadata.

President Barack Obama described the programmes as vital to keeping Americans safe and said the US was "going to have to make some choices between balancing privacy and security to protect against terror". The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President George Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012.

Prism is involved in the collection of data, but Boundless Informant organises and indexes metadata. The tool categorises communications records rather than the content of a message itself. A fact sheet leaked to the Guardian explains that almost 3bn pieces of intelligence had been collected from US computer networks in the 30-day period ending in March this year, as well as indexing almost 100bn pieces worldwide. Countries are ranked according to how much information has been taken from mobile and online networks, and colour-coded depending on the extent of the NSA's spying operation.

Users are able to select a country on Boundless Informant's "heat map" to view details including metadata volume and different kinds of NSA information collection. Iran, at odds with the US and Israel over its nuclear programme and other policies, is top of the surveillance list, with more than 14bn data reports in March. Pakistan came in a close second at 13.5bn reports. Jordan, a close US ally, as well as Egypt and India are also near the top.

Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping centre has had access to the Prism system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year, prompting controversy and questions about the legality of it. The prime minister, David Cameron, insisted that the UK's intelligence services operated within the law and were subject to proper scrutiny. The foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that "law-abiding citizens" in Britain would "never be aware of all the things agencies are doing to stop your identity being stolen or to stop a terrorist blowing you up".

GCHQ and the NSA have a relationship dating back to the second world war and have personnel stationed in each others' headquarters Fort Meade in Maryland and Cheltenham in Gloucestershire.

For many observers the key question is the exposure of a troubling imbalance between security and privacy, against a background of rapid technological change that now permits clandestine surveillance on a massive and Orwellian scale. Legal safeguards and political oversight appear to be lagging behind. The Guardian revelations have underlined the sheer power of electronic snooping in the internet era and have injected new urgency into the old debate about how far a government can legitimately go in spying on its own people on the grounds that it is trying to protect them.

The leaks have led the NSA to ask the US justice department to conduct a criminal investigation. The department has said it is in the initial stages of an inquiry. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former CIA employee, outed himself as the Guardian's source for its series of leaks on the NSA and cyber-surveillance. He is now in Hong Kong. "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," he told the Guardian.

Read the original:
NSA spying scandal: what we have learned | US news | The ...

Clapper claims he didnt lie about NSA spying on …

Posted on by

NSA director-turned-cable-news-pundit James Clapper is still insisting he wasnt lying when he told a congressional panel the NSA wasnt spying on American citizens three months before Edward Snowden told everyone it was.

I didnt lie, I made a big mistake. I just simply didnt understand what I was being asked about, Clapper told CNNs New Day, marking the third time hes changed his story regarding his notorious pre-Snowden testimony. He further explained hed been thinking of another dubiously constitutional surveillance program section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rather than section 215 of the Patriot Act, perhaps hoping the audience had forgotten the context of his response six years earlier.

Asked in early 2013 whether the NSA had gathered any type of data at all on millions of Americans, Clapper responded not wittingly. Just a few months later, Snowden released his first explosive trove of documents exposing the NSAs massive covert data collection program. Oops!

It was hard to spin what appeared to be naked perjury, but the bejowled national security director has certainly tried his best since then. Back in 2014, Clapper was claiming Sen. Ron Wyden had put him on the spot by asking him about a classified program in an unsecure setting, implying he had to keep quiet about the program, because terrorism (even though Stellar Wind and its replacement have never led to the apprehension of a single terrorist).

Clapper had initially claimed he gave the least untruthful answer to a complicated question, splitting hairs over the definition of collection and complaining about the When did you stop beating your wife-type question. But Wyden quickly dispelled that excuse, pointing out that the NSA director had received the senators questions a day in advance, to provide time to prepare his answers, and had even been given a chance to qualify his response.

Wydens response, incidentally, also disqualifies Clappers most recent excuse for lying. But you almost have to feel sorry for a guy whos been reduced from running the nations most powerful spy agency to making guest appearances on CNN. Whats his next response going to be, blaming his evil twin? Oh, right. He already tried that, too.

Clapper, faced with an absence of evidence to back up the conspiracy theory that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, once told NBC that Russians are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever. Perhaps that statement was a cry for help.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

See original here:
Clapper claims he didnt lie about NSA spying on ...

NSA spying program ended six months ago, maybe permanently …

Posted on by

The NSA spying program to analyze logs of the domestic calls and texts of US citizens is reportedly no longer in use, and the legislation which made it legal may not be renewed when it expires at the end of the year.

The National Security Agencys mass monitoring of logs of phone calls and texts relating to US citizens first began in 2006, some five years after the 9/11 attacks. The program was revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, and was later declared illegal by a federal appeals court

Congress responded in 2015 by passing new legislation, the Freedom Act, to legalize a revised version of the program. Under the 2015 terms, carriers would not hand over phone logs en-masse to the NSA, but would retain the data and hand over specific records on receipt of a court order.

The New York Times reports that this latter program ended some six months ago. The claimwas made by a senior Republican congressional aide.

The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leaders national security adviser []

Security and privacy advocates have been gearing up for a legislative battle over whether to extend or revise the program and with what changes, if any.

Mr. Murry, who is an adviser for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, raised doubts over the weekend about whether that debate will be necessary. His remarks came during a podcast for the national security website Lawfare.

Mr. Murry brought up the pending expiration of the Freedom Act, but then disclosed that the Trump administration hasnt actually been using it for the past six months.

Im actually not certain that the administration will want to start that back up, Mr. Murry said.

It was already known that the program has never prevented a terrorist attack, and the fact that it hasnt been used for some months means it would be hard to justify renewing the act, argues one civil liberties group.

The disclosure that the program has apparently been shut down for months changes the entire landscape of the debate, said Daniel Schuman, the policy director of Demand Progress, an advocacy group that focuses on civil liberties and government accountability.

Since the sky hasnt fallen without the program, he said, the intelligence community must make the case that reviving it is necessary if, indeed, the National Security Agency thinks it is worth the effort to keep trying to make it work.

The whole piece which also describes accidental collection of illegal data is an interesting read.

Photo: Shutterstock

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

The rest is here:
NSA spying program ended six months ago, maybe permanently ...

Clapper: I Didnt Lie to Congress About NSA Spying I …

Posted on by

Tuesday on CNNs New Day, host John Berman asked former National Intelligence Director James Clapper aboutThe Intercepts Glenn Greenwald saying he lied to Congress about the NSA program used to spy on Americans phone records.

Clapper denied lying to Congress in 2013, explaining he simply just didnt understand the question he was asked.

[T]he original thought behind this, and this program was put in place as a direct result of 9/11, and the point was to be able to track quickly a foreign communicant talking to somebody in this country who may have been plotting a terrorist plot, and was put in place during the Bush administration for that reason. I always regarded it as kind of a safeguard or insurance policy so that if the need came up youd have this to refer to, Clapper told Berman.

As far as the comment, the allegation about my lying: I didnt lie, I made a big mistake and I just simply didnt understand what I was being asked about, he added. I thought of another surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when I was being asked about Section 215 of the Patriot Act at the time. I just didnt understand that.

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter@MagnifiTrent

See the original post here:
Clapper: I Didnt Lie to Congress About NSA Spying I ...


« First...102030...1,6181,6191,6201,6211,622...1,6301,6401,650...Last »