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3 Different Data Encryption Methods – DataShield blog

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Its no secret that we at DataShield are large proponents of data security. Not only are data breaches incredibly expensive, but there are also laws regarding data securitythat need to be followed if businesses want to avoid large fines.

And while we are obviously advocates of shredding hard drivesonce its time to get rid of your computer, doing that only guarantees the safety of your data once its time for new hard drives. So what about all the time in between?

Enter data encryption: a highly recommended way to keep your data out of the wrong hands the entire time its on your computer.

Encryption is a technique for transforming informationon a computer in such a way that it becomes unreadable. So, even if someone is able to gain access to a computer with personal data on it, they likely wont be able to do anything with the data unless they have complicated, expensive software or the original data key.

The basic function of encryption is essentially to translate normal text into ciphertext. Encryption can help ensure that data doesnt get read by the wrong people, but can also ensure that data isnt altered in transit, and verify the identity of the sender.

There are three different basic encryption methods, each with their own advantages (list courtesy of Wisegeek):

Any of these methods would likely prove sufficient for proper data security, and a quick Google search will reveal the multitude of software available for data encryption. Data encryption is a necessity (both for legal reasons and otherwise) when transmitting information like PHI, so no matter what method you choose, make sure youre doing everything you can to protect data.

Dont just stop with encryption, though. DataShield offers compliance consultingto ensure that all of your business data and policies are up-to-spec for local and federal laws.

Contact us today for more information on how DataShield can help your data stay safe through its entire life cycle, from its conception to its destruction, when your computer is finally thrown out.

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3 Different Data Encryption Methods - DataShield blog

Pursuing Julian Assange and the President – Antiwar.com …

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When the history of American foreign policy and the misery Washington has caused throughout its tenure as world policeman is written, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks will have many entries in the footnotes, not to mention the index. The publication of Chelsea Mannings treasure trove of US diplomatic history thousands of cables describing the interactions of US decision-makers with world leaders through the decades alone gives WikiLeaks the title of most important journalistic outlet of the new millennium. And that is just the crown jewel in a diadem of journalistic triumphs stinging exposures of the War Party and their corrupt enablers no other outlet can hope to match. It is therefore with very little surprise that one reads the news that the Justice Department has secretly indicted Assange and please pay special attention to how that has been revealed.

The New York Times had the scoop: in an unrelated case, the geniuses over at the Justice Department had mistakenly copied phrases from the secret indictment in publicly available court documents.

Really? That doesnt seem very credible, and the specific document the Times refers to throws the whole matter into serious question: the mention of Assange is simply inserted into text that is about someone who is alleged to have coerced a child, and asks for the documents in the case to be sealed. The insertion reads:

Another procedure short of sealing will not adequately protect the needs of law enforcement at this time because, 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.

How is this relevant to the case of the child-coercer? Is he really all that sophisticated? As sophisticated, say, as the founder of WikiLeaks?

And, more importantly, how did this weird mistake come to the attention of the New York Times and other media outlets? Who was trawling through months-old court documents about an obscure case and to what purpose?

The Times has been one of the chief conduits for the Deep States leaks designed to undermine Trump on every front, and this most recent scoop is no different. This is the way the national security Establishment announces its intention to destroy its two principal enemies: not just Assange but also the President, who has, after all, declared I love WikiLeaks!

Thats why liberals of the anti-Trump persuasion are already composing polemics justifying the prosecution of Assange for publishing government secrets think of campaign finance laws, they babble, dont they limit speech as well? And wasnt WikiLeaks part and parcel of the Trump campaign, a weapon in the Orange Monsters hands? The Louise Mensch crowd, i.e. the Democratic party and its crazed base are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Russo-Trumpian collusion being exposed at Assanges trial.

Thats why the pathetically weak take of the anti-Trump but pro-Assange left on the whole affair is so absurd: Glenn Greenwald is desperate to blame the Evil Trump for Assanges indictment: throughout his Intercept piece he refers to the Trump DOJ and the most extreme faction of the Trump administration as the culprits behind the move, but this ignores the outright warfare that the DOJ filled with Clintonite holdovers has engaged in with this administration since before Trump even took office.

Furthermore, we dont know the provenance of the Assange indictment: when was it composed, and by whom? The likelihood is that the DOJ is simply editing the previous draft indictments which were undoubtedly written during the Obama administration. The difference is that the Obama crowd concluded theyd lose in court: the authors of the current indictment seem more optimistic.

We dont even know what Assange is being charged with: speculation is that violation of the Espionage Act is at the top of a long list.

Espionage on whose behalf? The Times reports that the CIAs renewed pursuit of Assange began when Mike Pompeo took the helm and probed into the alleged collusion between WikiLeaks and the Russians. So is the Trump administration going to prosecute Assange for colluding with Vladimir Putin to get Donald Trump into the White House? This is what were asked to believe not only by the Times, but also by Greenwald and the NeverTrump left: Trump and his team are lemmings, and are running rapidly toward those cliffs.

I dont believe it for a minute. There is more to this story than meets the incurious eye not that anyone seems interested in following up on the several clues embedded therein. A major clue is the timing: why is this information coming out now just at the moment when the Mueller investigation is reportedly heating up, and a Democrat-controlled House is gearing up for renewed probes into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the ever-present and apparently omnipotent Russians, who managed to tip a presidential election with a few Facebook ads?

The left will never forgive Assange for supposedly being the decisive factor in Hillary Clintons humiliating defeat. The neoconservative Right which is even more vehemently anti-Trump than the leftist elements of the NeverTrump cult licks its chops at the prospect of his coming martyrdom. His biggest defenders are on the Trumpian Right: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and, of course, the President of the United States.

On the left, Assanges defenders consist of two people that I know of: Greenwald and the independent journalist Michael Tracey. (Oh yeah, and Noam Chomsky.)

And doesnt that say all that needs to be said?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

Ive written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Justin Raimondo is editor-at-large at Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].View all posts by Justin Raimondo

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Pursuing Julian Assange and the President - Antiwar.com ...

Guide to Cryptography – OWASP

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Development Guide Table of Contents

To ensure that cryptography is safely used to protect the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive user data.

All.

DS5.18 Cryptographic key management

Initially confined to the realms of academia and the military, cryptography has become ubiquitous thanks to the Internet. Common every day uses of cryptography include mobile phones, passwords, SSL, smart cards, and DVDs. Cryptography has permeated everyday life, and is heavily used by many web applications.

Cryptography (or crypto) is one of the more advanced topics of information security, and one whose understanding requires the most schooling and experience. It is difficult to get right because there are many approaches to encryption, each with advantages and disadvantages that need to be thoroughly understood by web solution architects and developers. In addition, serious cryptography research is typically based in advanced mathematics and number theory, providing a serious barrier to entry.

The proper and accurate implementation of cryptography is extremely critical to its efficacy. A small mistake in configuration or coding will result in removing a large degree of the protection it affords and rending the crypto implementation useless against serious attacks.

A good understanding of crypto is required to be able to discern between solid products and snake oil. The inherent complexity of crypto makes it easy to fall for fantastic claims from vendors about their product. Typically, these are a breakthrough in cryptography or unbreakable or provide "military grade" security. If a vendor says "trust us, we have had experts look at this, chances are they weren't experts!

Cryptographic systems can provide one or more of the following four services. It is important to distinguish between these, as some algorithms are more suited to particular tasks, but not to others.

When analyzing your requirements and risks, you need to decide which of these four functions should be used to protect your data.

Using a cryptographic system, we can establish the identity of a remote user (or system). A typical example is the SSL certificate of a web server providing proof to the user that he or she is connected to the correct server.

The identity is not of the user, but of the cryptographic key of the user. Having a less secure key lowers the trust we can place on the identity.

The concept of non-repudiation is particularly important for financial or e-commerce applications. Often, cryptographic tools are required to prove that a unique user has made a transaction request. It must not be possible for the user to refute his or her actions.

For example, a customer may request a transfer of money from her account to be paid to another account. Later, she claims never to have made the request and demands the money be refunded to the account. If we have non-repudiation through cryptography, we can prove usually through digitally signing the transaction request, that the user authorized the transaction.

More commonly, the biggest concern will be to keep information private. Cryptographic systems were originally developed to function in this capacity. Whether it be passwords sent during a log on process, or storing confidential medical records in a database, encryption can assure that only users who have access to the appropriate key will get access to the data.

We can use cryptography to provide a means to ensure data is not viewed or altered during storage or transmission. Cryptographic hashes for example, can safeguard data by providing a secure checksum.

Various types of cryptographic systems exist that have different strengths and weaknesses. Typically, they are divided into two classes; those that are strong, but slow to run and those that are quick, but less secure. Most often a combination of the two approaches is used (e.g.: SSL), whereby we establish the connection with a secure algorithm, and then if successful, encrypt the actual transmission with the weaker, but much faster algorithm.

Symmetric Cryptography is the most traditional form of cryptography. In a symmetric cryptosystem, the involved parties share a common secret (password, pass phrase, or key). Data is encrypted and decrypted using the same key. These algorithms tend to be comparatively fast, but they cannot be used unless the involved parties have already exchanged keys. Any party possessing a specific key can create encrypted messages using that key as well as decrypt any messages encrypted with the key. In systems involving a number of users who each need to set up independent, secure communication channels symmetric cryptosystems can have practical limitations due to the requirement to securely distribute and manage large numbers of keys.

Common examples of symmetric algorithms are DES, 3DES and AES. The 56-bit keys used in DES are short enough to be easily brute-forced by modern hardware and DES should no longer be used. Triple DES (or 3DES) uses the same algorithm, applied three times with different keys giving it an effective key length of 112 bits (due to an attack that reduces the strength to the work that would be involved). Due to the problems using the DES algorithm, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hosted a selection process for a new algorithm. The winning algorithm was Rijndael and the associated cryptosystem is now known as the Advanced Encryption Standard or AES. It is advisable to use AES, as DES is deprecated.

Asymmetric algorithms use two keys, one to encrypt the data, and either key to decrypt. These inter-dependent keys are generated together. One is labeled the Public key and is distributed freely. The other is labeled the Private Key and must be kept hidden.

Often referred to as Public/Private Key Cryptography, these cryptosystems can provide a number of different functions depending on how they are used.

The most common usage of asymmetric cryptography is to send messages with a guarantee of confidentiality. If User A wanted to send a message to User B, User A would get access to User Bs publicly-available Public Key. The message is then encrypted with this key and sent to User B. Because of the cryptosystems property that messages encoded with the Public Key of User B can only be decrypted with User Bs Private Key, only User B can read the message.

Another usage scenario is one where User A wants to send User B a message and wants User B to have a guarantee that the message was sent by User A. In order to accomplish this, User A would encrypt the message with their Private Key. The message can then only be decrypted using User As Public Key. This guarantees that User A created the message Because they are then only entity who had access to the Private Key required to create a message that can be decrcrypted by User As Public Key. This is essentially a digital signature guaranteeing that the message was created by User A.

A Certificate Authority (CA), whose public certificates are installed with browsers or otherwise commonly available, may also digitally sign public keys or certificates. We can authenticate remote systems or users via a mutual trust of an issuing CA. We trust their root certificates, which in turn authenticate the public certificate presented by the server.

PGP and SSL are prime examples of a systems implementing asymmetric cryptography, using RSA or other algorithms.

Hash functions take some data of an arbitrary length (and possibly a key or password) and generate a fixed-length hash based on this input. Hash functions used in cryptography have the property that it is easy to calculate the hash, but difficult or impossible to re-generate the original input if only the hash value is known. In addition, hash functions useful for cryptography have the property that it is difficult to craft an initial input such that the hash will match a specific desired value.

MD5 and SHA-1 are common hashing algorithms used today. These algorithms are considered weak (see below) and are likely to be replaced after a process similar to the AES selection. New applications should consider using SHA-256 instead of these weaker algorithms.

Lastly, we have key exchange algorithms (such as Diffie-Hellman for SSL). These allow use to safely exchange encryption keys with an unknown party.

As modern cryptography relies on being computationally expensive to break, specific standards can be set for key sizes that will provide assurance that with todays technology and understanding, it will take too long to decrypt a message by attempting all possible keys.

Therefore, we need to ensure that both the algorithm and the key size are taken into account when selecting an algorithm.

Proprietary encryption algorithms are not to be trusted as they typically rely on security through obscurity and not sound mathematics. These algorithms should be avoided if possible.

Specific algorithms to avoid:

Cryptography is a constantly changing field. As new discoveries in cryptanalysis are made, older algorithms will be found unsafe. In addition, as computing power increases the feasibility of brute force attacks will render other cryptosystems or the use of certain key lengths unsafe. Standard bodies such as NIST should be monitored for future recommendations.

Specific applications, such as banking transaction systems, may have specific requirements for algorithms and key sizes.

Assuming you have chosen an open, standard algorithm, the following recommendations should be considered when reviewing algorithms:

Symmetric:

Asymmetric:

The difficulty of cracking a 2048 bit key compared to a 1024 bit key is far, far, far, more than the twice you might expect. Dont use excessive key sizes unless you know you need them. Bruce Schneier in 2002 (see the references section) recommended the following key lengths for circa 2005 threats:

Hashes:

NIST and other standards bodies will provide up to date guidance on suggested key sizes.

Design your application to cope with new hashes and algorithms

As highlighted above, crypto relies on keys to assure a users identity, provide confidentiality and integrity as well as non-repudiation. It is vital that the keys are adequately protected. Should a key be compromised, it can no longer be trusted.

Any system that has been compromised in any way should have all its cryptographic keys replaced.

Unless you are using hardware cryptographic devices, your keys will most likely be stored as binary files on the system providing the encryption.

Can you export the private key or certificate from the store?

Storage of keys in hardware crypto devices is beyond the scope of this document. If you require this level of security, you should really be consulting with crypto specialists.

In security, we assess the level of trust we have in information. When applied to transmission of sensitive data, we need to ensure that encryption occurs before we transmit the data onto any untrusted network.

In practical terms, this means we should aim to encrypt as close to the source of the data as possible.

This can be extremely difficult without expert help. We can try to at least eliminate the most common problems:

We have the possibility to encrypt or otherwise protect data at different levels. Choosing the right place for this to occur can involve looking at both security as well as resource requirements.

Application: at this level, the actual application performs the encryption or other crypto function. This is the most desirable, but can place additional strain on resources and create unmanageable complexity. Encryption would be performed typically through an API such as the OpenSSL toolkit (www.openssl.com) or operating system provided crypto functions.

An example would be an S/MIME encrypted email, which is transmitted as encoded text within a standard email. No changes to intermediate email hosts are necessary to transmit the message because we do not require a change to the protocol itself.

Protocol: at this layer, the protocol provides the encryption service. Most commonly, this is seen in HTTPS, using SSL encryption to protect sensitive web traffic. The application no longer needs to implement secure connectivity. However, this does not mean the application has a free ride. SSL requires careful attention when used for mutual (client-side) authentication, as there are two different session keys, one for each direction. Each should be verified before transmitting sensitive data.

Attackers and penetration testers love SSL to hide malicious requests (such as injection attacks for example). Content scanners are most likely unable to decode the SSL connection, letting it pass to the vulnerable web server.

Network: below the protocol layer, we can use technologies such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to protect data. This has many incarnations, the most popular being IPsec (Internet Protocol v6 Security), typically implemented as a protected tunnel between two gateway routers. Neither the application nor the protocol needs to be crypto aware all traffic is encrypted regardless.

Possible issues at this level are computational and bandwidth overheads on network devices.

Todays web servers typically deal with large numbers of users. Differentiating between them is often done through cookies or other session identifiers. If these session identifiers use a predictable sequence, an attacker need only generate a value in the sequence in order to present a seemingly valid session token.

This can occur at a number of places; the network level for TCP sequence numbers, or right through to the application layer with cookies used as authenticating tokens.

Any deterministic sequence generator is likely to be vulnerable.

The only way to generate secure authentication tokens is to ensure there is no way to predict their sequence. In other words: true random numbers.

It could be argued that computers can not generate true random numbers, but using new techniques such as reading mouse movements and key strokes to improve entropy has significantly increased the randomness of random number generators. It is critical that you do not try to implement this on your own; use of existing, proven implementations is highly desirable.

Most operating systems include functions to generate random numbers that can be called from almost any programming language.

Windows & .NET: On Microsoft platforms including .NET, it is recommended to use the inbuilt CryptGenRandom function (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/seccrypto/security/cryptgenrandom.asp.

Unix: For all Unix based platforms, OpenSSL is an excellent option (http://www.openssl.org/). It features tools and API functions to generate random numbers. On some platforms, /dev/urandom is a suitable source of pseudo-random entropy.

PHP: mt_rand() uses a Mersenne Twister, but is nowhere near as good as CryptoAPIs secure random number generation options, OpenSSL, or /dev/urandom which is available on many Unix variants. mt_rand() has been noted to produce the same number on some platforms test prior to deployment. Do not use rand() as it is very weak.

Java: java.security.SecureRandom within the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) provides secure random numbers. This should be used in preference to other random number generators.

ColdFusion: ColdFusion MX 7 leverages the JCE java.security.SecureRandom class of the underlying JVM as its pseudo random number generator (PRNG).

UUIDs (such as GUIDs and so on) are only unique if you generate them. This seems relatively straightforward. However, there are many code snippets available that contain existing UUIDS.

Cryptography is one of pillars of information security. Its usage and propagation has exploded due to the Internet and it is now included in most areas computing. Crypto can be used for:

A web application can implement cryptography at multiple layers: application, application server or runtime (such as .NET), operating system and hardware. Selecting an optimal approach requires a good understanding of application requirements, the areas of risk, and the level of security strength it might require, flexibility, cost, etc.

Although cryptography is not a panacea, the majority of security breaches do not come from brute force computation but from exploiting mistakes in implementation. The strength of a cryptographic system is measured in key length. Using a large key length and then storing the unprotected keys on the same server eliminates most of the protection benefit gained. Besides the secure storage of keys, another classic mistake is engineering custom cryptographic algorithms (to generate random session ids for example). Many web applications were successfully attacked because the developers thought they could create their crypto functions.

Our recommendation is to use proven products, tools, or packages rather than rolling your own.

http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/007.pdf

http://seclists.org/bugtraq/1999/Dec/208

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0204.html#3

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/secure_hashing.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/07/21/441417.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2005/01/14/353379.aspx

The following section describes ColdFusions cryptography features. ColdFusion MX leverages the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) of the underlying J2EE platform for cryptography and random number generation. It provides functions for symmetric (or private-key) encryption. While it does not provide native functionality for public-key (asymmetric) encryption, it does use the Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) for SSL communication.

Pseudo-Random Number Generation

ColdFusion provides three functions for random number generation: rand(), randomize(), and randRange(). Function descriptions and syntax:

Rand Use to generate a pseudo-random number

rand([algorithm])

Randomize Use to seed the pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) with an integer.

randomize(number [, algorithm])

RandRange Use to generate a pseudo-random integer within the range of the specified numbers

randrange(number1, number2 [, algorithm])

The following values are the allowed algorithm parameters:

CFMX_COMPAT: (default) Invokes java.util.rand

SHA1PRNG: (recommended) Invokes java.security.SecureRandom using the Sun Java SHA-1 PRNG algorithm.

IBMSecureRandom: IBM WebSpheres JVM does not support the SHA1PRNG algorithm.

Symmetric Encryption

ColdFusion MX 7 provides six encryption functions: decrypt(), decryptBinary(), encrypt(), encryptBinary(), generateSecretKey(), and hash(). Function descriptions and syntax:

Decrypt Use to decrypt encrypted strings with specified key, algorithm, encoding, initialization vector or salt, and iterations

decrypt(encrypted_string, key[, algorithm[, encoding[, IVorSalt[, iterations]]]]))

DecryptBinary Use to decrypt encrypted binary data with specified key, algorithm, initialization vector or salt, and iterations

decryptBinary(bytes, key[, algorithm[, IVorSalt[, iterations]]])

Encrypt Use to encrypt string using specific algorithm, encoding, initialization vector or salt, and iterations

encrypt(string, key[, algorithm[, encoding[, IVorSalt[, iterations]]]]))

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Guide to Cryptography - OWASP

The State of Cryptography in PHP – Paragon Initiative …

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With the release date for PHP 7 drawing near, let's take a look at everything good and bad about developing cryptography features in PHP, what got fixed in PHP 7, and what remains to be fixed in a future version of PHP.

The PHP programming language has come a long way throughout the lifetime of PHP 5. In the beginning, you had to implement your own ciphers and CSPRNG interfaces or install a PHP extension to offer basic security. As the language matured, it has become easier to implement secure cryptographic protocols without writing your own low-level features.

PHP 5 has several CSPRNG interfaces, but it's not immediately clear which one should be used (or even can):

To make things clear, simple, and unambiguous, PHP 7 ships with two simple functions powered by your operating system's CSRPNG.

If you'd like to give these new functions a whirl and don't have PHP 7 installed yet, Paragon Initiative Enterprises maintains a polyfill for PHP 5 projects called random_compat.

We've previously covered common uses for CSPRNGs if you need a starting point.

The PHP bindings for the Sodium cryptography library has finally reached the stable channel in PECL. To help developers get acclimated with this library, we wrote an online book about libsodium development in PHP. You can read it for free online; downloadable copies are coming soon.

There have been great leaps and bounds in the maturity of the PHP programming language, especially when it comes to cryptography features. With PHP 7.0 arriving in the coming months, we've been thinking about what we could build to make PHP 7.1 or 8.0 continue this momentum.

It's great that the PHP bindings for libsodium can be installed via pecl install libsodium (assuming you already installed the underlying library), but in future versions of PHP it would be even better if it were bundled with the rest of the language.

Three reasons:

Our Chief Development Officer has opened an RFC to add libsodium to PHP.

One of the initiatives our team has been leading is the development of a simple cryptography frontend for 7.1. Our idea is to make the interface simple and backend-agnostic (like PDO rather than MySQLi). The current draft will support OpenSSL and Libsodium and only allow authenticated encryption (Encrypt then MAC) or AEAD constructions.

The development of a prototype is currently being discussed and conducted at paragonie/pco_prototype. Everyone is welcome to join this discussion.

Although our Chief Development Officer previously opened a feature request on the PHP bug tracker for new hash functions in PHP 7, this did not get discussed in time for inclusion in 7.0. We would instead like to make it happen in PHP 7.1.

Later versions of PHP (7.1, maybe 7.2) should be updated so that password_hash() and password_verify() supports Argon2, the winner of the Password Hashing Competition. Whether or not this will be the new PASSWORD_DEFAULT algorithm remains to be decided.

Note that Argon2 is already being added to libsodium.

PHP has come a long way, and it has a long road ahead of it. Whatever challenges or opportunities await us, the development team at Paragon Initiative Enterprises will continue to do everything we can to make security as easy as PIE for software developers the world over.

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The State of Cryptography in PHP - Paragon Initiative ...

Bradley Manning dumped info into enemy hands, prosecutor says …

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Updated: 10:45 p.m. ET

FORT MEADE, Md. Pfc. Bradley Manning put U.S. military secrets into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself, prosecutors said Monday as the Army intelligence analyst went on trial over the biggest leak of classified material in American history.

Manning's lawyers countered by arguing that he was a "young, naive but good-intentioned" soldier whose struggle to fit in as a gay man in the military made him feel he "needed to do something to make a difference in this world."

Manning, 25, has admitted turning over hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, pleading guilty earlier this year to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars. But the military pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

Prosecutors said they will present evidence that bin Laden requested and obtained from another al Qaeda member Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables published by WikiLeaks.

"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information onto the Internet into the hands of the enemy," prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said.

He said the case is "about what happens when arrogance meets access to sensitive information."

Wearing his dress blue uniform, the slightly built Manning peered through his small eyeglasses at a slide show of the prosecutor's hour-long opening statement, watching on a laptop computer at the defense table. The slide show also was projected on three larger screens in the courtroom, which had seats for only about 50 people.

Later, almost motionless, the soldier from Crescent, Okla., sat forward in his chair, looking toward his defense attorney, David Coombs, throughout his 25-minute opening statement.

Coombs said Manning struggled to do the right thing as "a humanist," a word engraved on his custom-made dog tags. As an analyst in Baghdad, Manning had access to hundreds of millions of documents but selectively leaked material, Coombs said. He mentioned an unclassified video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack that mistakenly killed civilians, including a Reuters photographer.

"He believed this information showed how we value human life. He was troubled by that. He believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled," Coombs said.

Coombs did not address whether bin Laden ever saw any of the material. The soldier has said he did not believe the information would harm the U.S.

Coombs said Manning struggled privately with gender identity early in his tour of duty, when gays couldn't openly serve in the military.

"His struggles led him to feel that he needed to do something to make a difference in this world," Coombs said. "He needed to do something to help improve what he was seeing."

Later in the day, the court also heard from two Army investigators and Manning's roommate in Iraq, who testified the soldier was online whenever he was in their quarters.

CBS News' Julia Kimani reports that the government is expected to call 141 witnesses throughout the trial, while the defense is expected to call 46.

Manning chose to have his court-martial heard by a judge instead of a jury. It is expected to run all summer. Much of the evidence is classified, which means large portions of the trial are likely to be closed to reporters and the public.

Federal authorities are looking into whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can also be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.

"This is not justice; never could this be justice," Assange said in a statement Monday. "The verdict was ordained long ago.Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relationsexercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warningto people of conscience."

In February, Manning took the stand and read from a 35-page statement in which he said he leaked the material to expose the American military's "bloodlust" and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case is the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on leakers. The six cases brought since Obama took office are more than in all other presidencies combined.

The WikiLeaks case is by far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history, and certainly the most sensational since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the Vietnam War. Their leak to The New York Times set off an epic clash between the Nixon administration and the press and led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment.

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia -- a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

The Obama administration has said the release of the material threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments.

Manning's supporters -- including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg -- have hailed him as a whistleblowing hero and political prisoner. Others say he is a traitor who endangered lives and national security.

Some 20 Manning supporters were in the courtroom, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West and Medea Benjamin, a member of protest group Code Pink.

"I think it's a show trial," Benjamin said. She and others complained about the small courtroom, saying the government was trying to make it look as if Manning had less support than he really has.

"It's important to support him," said Anne Wright, a retired Army colonel. "I spent 29 years in the military, and what Bradley Manning has done is exposed government corruption and brutality."

Supporters were told by the military to turn their TRUTH T-shirts inside out before entering the courtroom.

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Edward Snowden, v 1.0: NSA Whistleblower William Binney Tells All

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"Where I see it going is toward a totalitarian state," says William Binney. "You've got the NSA doing all this collecting of material on all of its citizens - that's what the SS, the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, and the NKVD did."

Binney is talking about the collection of various forms of personal data on American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA), where he worked for 30 years before quitting in 2001 from his high-placed post as technical leader for intelligence. A registered Republican for most of his life, Binney volunteered for military service during the Vietnam War, which led to his being hired by the NSA in the early '70s.

In 2002 - long before the revelations of Edward Snowden rocked the world - Binney and several former colleagues went to Congress and the Department of Defense, asking that the NSA be investigated. Not only was the super-secretive agency wasting taxpayer dollars on ineffective programs, they argued, it was broadly violating constitutional guarantees to privacy and due process.

The government didn't just turn a blind eye to the agency's activities; it later accused the whistleblowers of leaking state secrets. A federal investigation of Binney - including an FBI search and seizure of his home and office computers that destroyed his consulting business - exonerated him on all charges.

"We are a clear example that [going through] the proper channels doesn't work," says Binney, who approves of Edward Snowden's strategy of going straight to the media. At the same time, Binney criticizes Snowden's leaking of documents not directly related to the NSA's surveillance of American citizens and violation of constitutional rights. Binney believes that the NSA is vital to national security but has been become unmoored due to technological advances that vastly extend its capabilities and leadership that has no use for limits on government power. "They took that program designed [to prevent terrorist attacks] and used it to spy on American citizens and everyone else in the world," flatly declares Binney (33:30).

Binney sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie to discuss "Trailblazer", a data-collection program which was used on American citizens (1:00), why he thinks the NSA had the capability to stop the 9/11 attacks (7:00), his experience being raided by the FBI in 2007 (12:50), and why former President Gerald Ford, usually regarded as a hapless time-server, is one of his personal villians (41:25).

Approx. 50 minutes.

Produced by Amanda Winkler. Camera by Todd Krainin and Winkler.

Go to reason.com for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material goes live

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Edward Snowden, v 1.0: NSA Whistleblower William Binney Tells All

Snowden Archive – Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)

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The Snowden Archive is a collection of all documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have subsequently been published by news media.

The Snowden Surveillance Archive is a complete collection of all documents that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked in June 2013 to journalists Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and subsequently were published by news media, such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Mundo and The Intercept. The leaked documents and their coverage have raised significant public concerns and had a major impact on intelligence policy debates internationally over issues of freedom of expression, privacy, national security and democratic governance more broadly. The Archive also contains some documents that the U.S. Government has published which are helpful in understanding the leaked documents. The Archive does not contain any documents that have not already been published in other sources. The approximately 400 documents currently in the Archive are a small fraction of the estimated 50,000 documents Snowden turned over. Most of these will likely not be published, but as new documents are published, they will be added to the Archive.

Our aim in creating this Archive is to provide a tool that would facilitate citizen and researcher access to these important documents. Indexes, document descriptions, links to original documents and to related news stories, glossary and comprehensive search features are all designed to enable a better understanding of state surveillance programs within the wider context of surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) along with its partners in the Five Eyes countries U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Our hope is that this resource will contribute to greater appreciation of the broad scope, intimate reach and profound implications of the global surveillance infrastructures and practices that Edward Snowdens historic document leak reveals.

The Archive was designed and built by George Raine, a graduate of the Master of Information program in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, with the assistance of Jillian Harkness, currently a student in this program.

Important note: The descriptions contained in this archive are the work of interested amateurs in the area of state intelligence, without detailed insight into the legal and technological issues that the documents describe. If readers identify any potential inaccuracies, they are encouraged to contact the curators, who will endeavour to improve the collection. The curators of the Archive have no special access to documents that are not already in the public domain. Redactions that occur in the documents have been performed either by government classifiers, or by the media outlets that first published the documents.

Project Partners Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) The Politics of Surveillance Project in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, led by Dr. Andrew Clement, a sub-project of The New Transparency: Surveillance and Social Sorting project, based at Queen's University, led by Dr. David Lyon

Supporters Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen's University Digital Curation Institute, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto Centre for Freedom of Expression, Faculty of Communications and Design, Ryerson University

The official launch of the Snowden Archive, "Snowden Live: Canada and the Security State," featuring a live Q&A with Edward Snowden, took place on March 4, 2015, at Ryerson University in Toronto. The event video can be watched at cjfe.org/asksnowden.

If you think we are missing any documents in the archive, spot errors or otherwise have comments and suggestions to make, please contact us at: cjfe@cjfe.org VISIT THE ARCHIVE

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Snowden Archive - Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)

Julian Assange charged under seal by the US Justice …

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The US government has filed sealed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Washington Posts Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett confirmed Thursday.

The specifics of the charges arent yet known. The news only became public now due to a government slip-up: an unrelated legal filing contained references to sealing charges against Assange, apparently because of a cut-and-paste error. Seamus Hughes flagged the filing on Twitter, spurring the Post reporters to confirm the information.

Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has resided for six years in an attempt to avoid extradition. But his relationship with his hosts has frayed, and there are some indications that he may lose their protection soon.

Over the past decade, WikiLeaks has posted a plethora of leaked material from the State Department, the US military, the CIA, and various corporations and emails from the DNC and John Podesta that were stolen by Russian government hackers.

So far, theres no indication that the Assange charges are part of special counsel Robert Muellers probe. (The errant government filing mentioning him was from another office, the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.)

And its not clear which of WikiLeaks document dumps, if any, the charges against Assange relate to, or what law hes been accused of breaking. Thats tremendously important because there have long been serious concerns about what prosecuting WikiLeaks founder for publishing stolen information would mean for freedom of the press.

Assange is an Australian hacktivist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, with the stated goal of publishing information the powerful were trying to keep secret. The group had its greatest successes in obtaining and posting US military, national security, and foreign policy documents, and Assange was a harsh critic of what he deemed the USs imperialist ambitions.

Starting in 2010, WikiLeaks published a video of an airstrike in Iraq that killed civilians, military documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and State Department cables in which diplomats gave candid assessments of foreign governments all provided by US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning. The unprecedented leaks gained enormous attention and made Assange a sort of celebrity and a target, as top US officials like Attorney General Eric Holder publicly mused about how they could charge him.

So in June 2012, Assange, a citizen of Australia who had lived abroad for several years, showed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and asked for political asylum. His imminent danger was extradition to Sweden, where authorities were investigating a rape allegation against him. But Assanges pitch was that he truly needed asylum from the United States, because of WikiLeaks work. The Ecuadorian government granted his request, and hes been holed up inside the embassy ever since for more than six years now.

In that time, WikiLeaks has continued to post new material and grown more controversial. Assange roiled the 2016 presidential campaign by posting hacked emails from, first, the Democratic National Committee and then Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. (Mueller has since charged several Russian intelligence officers with carrying out these hacks.)

Was Assange simply bringing more transparency by publishing powerful peoples communications? Was he effectively just helping out the Russians and Donald Trump? Was he engaged in a project to weaken the US politically? Perhaps it was all of the above. (We believe it would be much better for GOP to win, Assange wrote privately in late 2015, according to messages obtained by the Intercept. Hillary Clinton, he continued, was a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.)

But Assanges leaks didnt stop once Trump was elected. In early 2017, WikiLeaks posted a new set of material about the CIAs hacking capabilities, in a leak referred to as Vault 7. The New York Times wrote that this appeared to be the largest leak of CIA documents in history, and a former CIA software engineer, Joshua Schulte, has been charged in connection with it.

Top US officials have explored charging Assange for many years, but no action ended up being taken during the Obama administration. Shortly after the Vault 7 leak in early 2017, though, CNN reported that charges against Assange had been prepared.

Then the discussion was revived this Thursday, when the Wall Street Journals Aruna Viswanatha and Ryan Dube reported that the Justice Department is preparing to prosecute Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a US courtroom suggesting, perhaps, that Ecuador might withdraw their protection of him so he could be extradited.

But in a twist, the Journal piece spurred Seamus Hughes to point out on Twitter that there were odd, seemingly errant mentions of Assange in recent court filings for an unrelated case.

The filing, from an assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in August, is about why a criminal complaint and arrest warrant against someone else should be sealed. But then it starts talking about why charges against Assange should be sealed:

Another procedure short of sealing will not adequately protect the needs of law enforcement at this time because, 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.

The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.

The mistake seemed likely to have been due to cutting and pasting language from an earlier, similar document that was about Assange.

So Washington Post reporters Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett asked about what happened and were told by people familiar with the matter that, yes, Assange had in fact been charged under seal (and that the court filing disclosure was unintentional).

We dont know. And its really important.

The US government has already charged people whom theyve accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, like Manning and Schulte. But charging Assange or WikiLeaks solely for publishing such information is a more troubling thing to do, due to its implications for freedom of the press.

Never in the history of this country has a publisher been prosecuted for presenting truthful information to the public, the American Civil Liberties Unions Ben Wizner told CNN last year. Any prosecution of WikiLeaks for publishing government secrets would set a dangerous precedent that the Trump administration would surely use to target other news organizations.

Indeed, many journalists often publish important and newsworthy stories based on leaked classified information. This was one reason why the Obama Justice Department opted not to charge Assange they called it a New York Times problem, the Washington Posts Sari Horwitz reported in 2013.

If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britains Guardian newspaper, Horwitz wrote, describing the officials conclusions.

However, it is possible that prosecutors are alleging that Assanges conduct goes beyond simply receiving and publishing of stolen information the Lawfare team and Marcy Wheeler have each floated various other possibilities. Depending on what exactly the governments legal theory is, the implications for journalists could be enormous, or relatively minor.

We dont even know which of the leaks, if any, the charges are about. Its entirely possible that they pertain to the CIA hacking tool leaks (theres been a lot of action in the prosecution of accused leaker Joshua Schulte lately), rather than the DNC or Podesta emails. To get a better idea, well have to wait for the charges to be unsealed.

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Julian Assange charged under seal by the US Justice ...

Julian Assange charges prepared in US, "error" in Eastern …

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WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department inadvertently named Julian Assange in a court filing in an unrelated case that suggests prosecutors have prepared charges against the WikiLeaks founder under seal.

As CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti reports, Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London -- in large part out of fear that if he leaves he'll be extradited to the U.S., and this latest revelation could be an indication that his fear is well founded.

Assange's name appears twice in an August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.

In one sentence, the prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant "would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter." In another sentence, the prosecutor said that "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."

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia, told CBS News on Friday that the court filing, "was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing." The Eastern District has been investigating Assange's actions.

Any charges against Assange could help illuminate whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. It would also suggest that, after years of internal wrangling within the Justice Department, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tact against the secret-sharing website.

The Washington Post reported late Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Assange had indeed been charged. CBS News has not been able to confirm that.

It was not immediately clear what charges Assange, who has been holed up for more than six years in the embassy, might face.

But recently ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year declared the arrest of Assange a priority. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Trump campaign associates had advance knowledge of Democratic emails that were published by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the 2016 election and that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia. Any arrest could represent a significant development for Mueller's investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election.

Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, told the AP earlier this week that he had no information about possible charges against Assange.

In a new statement, he said, "The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed. The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take."

WikiLeaks condemned what it referred to as "public confirmation" of pending U.S. charges against its founder in a statement on Friday.

"U.S. authorities have consistently refused to confirm the existence of any such charges, while the U.K. government has been unwilling to confirm or deny that an extradition request for Mr. Assange has been received," the organization said. "Mr. Assange has consistently stated his desire to engage with any legal processes in the U.K., as long as there is a guarantee of no extradition to the U.S. where he could face life in prison, or worse."

The filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who posted it on Twitter hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department was preparing to prosecute Assange and said, "To be clear, seems Freudian, it's for a different completely unrelated case, every other page is not related to him, EDVA just appears to have Assange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name."

Assange, 47, has resided in the Ecuadorian Embassy in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he was wanted to sex crimes, or to the United States, whose government he has repeatedly humbled with mass disclosures of classified information.

The Australian ex-hacker was once a welcome guest at the Embassy, which takes up part of the ground floor of a stucco-fronted apartment in London's posh Knightsbridge neighborhood. But his relationship with his hosts has soured over the years amid reports of espionage, erratic behavior and diplomatic unease.

Any criminal charge is sure to further complicate the already tense relationship.

Ecuadorian officials say they have cut off the WikiLeaks founder's internet access and will restore it only if he agrees to stop interfering in the affairs of Ecuador's partners -- such as the United States and Spain. Officials have also imposed a series of other restrictions on Assange's activities and visitors and -- notably -- ordered him to clean up after his cat.

With shrinking options (an Ecuadorian lawsuit seeking to reverse the restrictions was recently turned down) WikiLeaks announced in September that former spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who has long served as one of Assange's lieutenants, would take over as editor-in-chief.

WikiLeaks has attracted U.S. attention since 2010, when it published thousands of military and State Department documents from Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning. In a Twitter post early Friday, WikiLeaks said the "US case against WikiLeaks started in 2010" and expanded to include other disclosures, including by contractor Edward Snowden.

"The prosecutor on the order is not from Mr. Mueller's team and WikiLeaks has never been contacted by anyone from his office," WikiLeaks said.

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Julian Assange charges prepared in US, "error" in Eastern ...

Defend Julian Assange against US charges! – World Socialist …

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17 November 2018

A court document dated August 22 was made public Thursday night which confirms that the US Department of Justice is in possession of sealed criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange. As soon as he is forced out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought political asylum in 2012 and is now being denied any right to communicate with the outside world by the Ecuadorian government, a warrant will be issued for his extradition to the United States.

The court document, which related to a case that had no remote connection to Assange, contained two paragraphs that named him. It stated that the sealing of an indictment was necessary because no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged. It requested that the charges remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.

The Department of Justice would only tell media that Assange was named in the document in error. It did not deny that charges against him have been filed and sealed. Sources told the Washington Post that they have definitely been laid.

Regardless of how the existence of charges has been revealed, it confirms all the warnings that Assange and his legal and political defenders have made since Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against him, in November 2010, to purportedly answer questions over allegations he had committed sexual offences.

The Swedish allegations were fabricated against Assange under conditions in which WikiLeaks had published explosive leaks that exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and imperialist intrigues around the world.

The allegations had two purposes. Firstly, they were intended to malign Assange as an individual and undermine public support for WikiLeaks. Secondly, they were to be used to force him to Sweden from where he would have been extradited on to the US to face espionage charges.

Assanges decision to seek political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy is the only reason he has avoided a lengthy prison term or potentially even a death sentence.

The court document verifies what has been obvious since Swedish prosecutors finally dropped their groundless case against Assange in May 2017, without ever laying any charges against him. The only other criminal complaint against Assange is the British charge that he breached bail conditions when, out of necessity, he sought asylum. The plan of the US state has been to wait until he can be imprisoned by British authorities and then issue its indictment against the journalist and publisher.

The fact that the existence of charges has now been made public may well be an indication that Ecuador has agreed to hand Assange over.

The court document does not reveal the nature of US charges. As well as espionage accusations relating to the 2010 leaks, it is also possible that Assange has been indicted for conspiracy.

In 2016, WikiLeaks published leaked emails that exposed how the Democratic National Committee sought to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders on behalf of Hillary Clinton. The documents also provided evidence of Clintons sordid relations with Wall Street banks.

As part of the hysterical campaign in the US establishment to blame Clintons election defeat on Russian interference, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has impliedwithout a shred of credible evidencethat WikiLeaks received the leaks from Russian intelligence and published them to assist the election of Donald Trump.

In fact, Assange publicly compared the choice presented to American voters of Trump or Clinton as like choosing between gonorrhea or syphilis. In a statement issued on the eve of the 2016 election, Assange stressed that having received the Democratic Party leaksfrom a source he denied had any Russian connectionsWikiLeaks believed it was obligated to publish them.

Assange wrote: The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaksan organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the publics right to be informed.

WikiLeaks, Assange declared, remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it It must publish and be damned.

The relentless persecution of Assange has not only been aimed at preventing WikiLeaks from publishing the truth. It is part of an attempt by the ruling class to intimidate and silence all critical and independent journalists and media organisations, as well as would-be whistleblowers around the world.

The attempt to paint Assange as a criminal has been at the forefront of sweeping censorship and an assault on fundamental democratic rights under way around the world. The lurch towards dictatorial forms of rule is being driven by the terror of the capitalist oligarchs and their governments that a mass movement of the working class is developing internationally against ever widening social inequality and the growing danger that economic and strategic conflicts between the major powers will lead to war.

As Leon Trotsky noted in 1937, the true criminals hide under the cloak of the accusers.

The US state, however, under both the Obama and Trump administrations, has only been able to conduct and sustain its vendetta against Assange because of the shameless support it has received internationally.

The establishment media, particularly publications such as the Guardian and the New York Times, has completely aligned with the effort to destroy WikiLeaks and suppress all other independent publications.

Successive Australian Labor and conservative governments have refused to defend Assangean Australian citizen. The entire official Australian political and media establishment, including the Greens, parliamentary independents and the trade unions, has thrown Assange to the wolves. None gave support to the rally organised by the Socialist Equality Party and addressed by filmmaker John Pilger on June 17 this year, which demanded that the government use its legal and diplomatic powers to secure Assanges freedom and right to return to Australia.

In Britain, the role of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been particularly pernicious. Corbyn, who once mouthed support for WikiLeaks, has refused to publicly demand that the Tory government drop the bail charges against Assange, guarantee he will not be extradited to the US and allow him to leave both the Ecuadorian embassy and the United Kingdom if he chooses.

The Ecuadorian government, under its current president, Lenin Moreno, has turned on Assange in order to ingratiate itself with Washington. In March this year, it cut off his ability to communicate and has taken additional vindictive measures to pressure him to leave the embassy.

Most striking, however, has been the abandonment of Assange by virtually all the middle class pseudo-left organisations in the US, Australia, Britain and around the world. Flowing from their support for gender- and race-based identity politics and for the imperialist intrigues in Ukraine and Syria, which Assange opposed and exposed, they either maintain a complete silence on his persecution or have joined in slandering the WikiLeaks publisher as a rapist or stooge of Russia or Trumpeven as Trumps administration has stepped up the US effort to silence him.

The line-up of forces serves only to underscore that the defence of Assange, WikiLeaks and all democratic rights requires the independent political mobilisation of the international working class against the entire existing political establishment and the capitalist system it serves.

Every effort must be made to alert workers and youth to the immense implications of the persecution of Julian Assange and the necessity for the most wide-ranging campaign to demand his immediate and unconditional freedom.

James Cogan

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