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Archive for the ‘Wikileaks’ Category

Wikileaks lists ‘targets for terror’ against US | The Australian: “Wikileaks lists ‘targets for terror’ against US

* Deborah Haynes, Alexi Mostrous and Giles Whittell
* From: Times Online
* December 06, 2010 3:45PM

WIKILEAKS raised the stakes in its battle with America last night by releasing a secret list of all the global industries and assets that the US most wishes to protect.

Security experts said that the cable, published by the whistleblower website as part of an unauthorised package of diplomatic correspondence, was a gift for terrorist organisations.

It spelt out hundreds of pipelines, undersea cables and factories across the world, including a number in Britain, that would cause most damage to US interests if destroyed.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former British Defence and Foreign Secretary and chairman of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, said WikiLeaks had made no credible attempt to find out whether the material could assist terrorists.

‘This is further evidence that they have been generally irresponsible, bordering on criminal. This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing,’ he added.

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A spokesman for Downing Street condemned the unauthorised release of classified information, saying: ‘The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.

‘It is vital that governments are able to co-operate on the basis of confidentiality of information.’

In Washington, Philip Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State, said: ‘There are strong and valid reasons information is classified, including critical infrastructure and key resources that are vital to the national and economic security of any country.

‘Julian Assange [the founder of WikiLeaks] may be directing his efforts at the United States but he is placing the interests of many countries and regions at risk. This is irresponsible.’

But WikiLeaks said that the document, approved by Hillary Clinton, provided further evidence that the US Administration was hoarding sensitive information on countries without their knowledge. The Secretary of State faced embarrassment after earlier cables revealed that US diplomats were asked to collect information on high-ranking UN diplomats and other individuals.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for the website, said: ‘This further undermines claims made by the US Government that its embassy officials do not play an intelligence-gathering role.

‘In terms of security issues, while this cable details the strategic importance of assets across the world, it does not give any information as to their exact locations, security measures, vulnerabilities or any similar factors, though it does reveal the US asked its diplomats to report back on these matters.’

US embassies were told to update a 2008 list of critical infrastructure and key resources in their host countries whose loss would ‘critically impact the public health, economic security and/or national and homeland security of the United States’, according to the leaked cable.

The order was under the direction of the Department for Homeland Security in co-ordination with the Department of State.

The cable said: ‘Department is surveying posts for their input on critical infrastructure and key resources within their host country which, if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.

‘Posts are not/not being asked to consult with host governments with respect to this request.’

The leaked document, written in February last year, gives Washington’s 2008 list of key infrastructure and resources overseas, naming each relevant country and its factories, railways, ports or other areas of interest.

The file identifies where the US is reliant on a range of substances, from smallpox vaccines in Denmark to bauxite in Guinea and liquefied natural gas in the Middle East. Several underwater pipelines are listed in Japan, China and Britain, while Indonesia is flagged up for its tin mines and Iraq for its oil.

The embassies are specifically asked not to include US government or ‘war-fighting’ facilities, but a number of defence-related sites are listed, including three in Britain run by BAE Systems.

A spokeswoman for the company said: ‘BAE Systems recognises its role as a custodian of key industrial and military assets. We would be concerned at any activity which comprises this.’

The British sites identified in the latest cable, which include a telecommunications hub in Hereford, and one end of an undersea cable that stretches from Cornwall to New York, were already in the public domain, but it was not helpful to have them listed as being of such importance to the US, added Sir Rifkind.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired army officer with experience of intelligence issues, felt that the revelations were highly irresponsible and could cost lives. ‘I think it’s obviously not a great thing to have that kind of information in the public domain. It just helps the terrorists to do their job. If terrorist groups are looking to attack the UK’s critical infrastructure then this has given them a big steer,’ he said.

But Mr Hrafnsson said that the cable – as with the rest of the quarter of a million documents that comprise the website’s diplomatic stash – was available to 2.5 million people, including civilian, military and private sector personnel.

‘[This is] a very wide distribution for information claimed to be of such high sensitivity,’ he said.

WikiLeaks site’s Swiss registrar dismisses pressure to take it offline | Media | guardian.co.uk

Swiss registrar Switch says there is ‘no reason’ why WikiLeaks should be forced off internet, despite French and US demands

* Josh Halliday
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 December 2010 20.23 GMT

WikiLeaks under the magnifying glass WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to five international media organisations. Photograph: WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks received a boost tonight when Switzerland rejected growing international calls to force the site off the internet.

The whistleblowers site, which has been publishing leaked US embassy cables, was forced to switch domain names to WikiLeaks.ch yesterday after the US host of its main website, WikiLeaks.org, pulled the plug following mounting political pressure.

The site’s new Swiss registrar, Switch, today said there was ‘no reason’ why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.

The reassurances come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing ‘illegal activity’. France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.

The Swiss Pirate Party, which registered the WikiLeaks.ch domain name earlier this year on behalf of the site, said Switch had reassured the party that it would not block the site.

An email sent by Denis Simonet, president of the Swiss Pirate Party, to international members of the liberal political group said: ‘Some minutes ago I got good news: Switch, the registrar for .ch domains, told us that there is no reason to block wikileaks.ch.’

Laurence Kaye, leader of the UK-based Pirate Party, tonight told the Guardian: ‘International Pirate Parties now have an integral role in allowing access to WikiLeaks. I wish some of our other politicians had the same guts.

‘We support the WikiLeaks project as access to information is the prerequisite for an informed and engaged democracy.’

WikiLeaks has been fighting to stay online since releasing a cache of sensitive diplomatic cables to the Guardian and four other international media organisations. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, dropped the site from its servers on Thursday after being contacted by staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the US Senate’s homeland security committee.

Everydns.net, the site’s US hosting provider, yesterday forced the site offline for the third time in under a week. A series of ‘distributed denial of attacks’ by unknown online activists still bring the site intermittently to its knees.

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, described the decision as ‘privatisation of state censorship’ in the US. Everydns.net said the attacks – which have been going on all week – threatened ‘the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites’.

Mega mirroring campaign started.

WikiLeaks: Internet backlash follows US pressure against whistleblowing site | Media | guardian.co.uk: “WikiLeaks: Internet backlash follows US pressure against whistleblowing site

Individuals redirecting parts of their own sites to Swedish internet host amid ‘censorship’

* Charles Arthur, technology editor
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 5 December 2010 14.49 GMT
* Article history

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks: American pressure to dissuade companies in the US from supporting the WikiLeaks website has led to an online backlash.

American pressure to dissuade companies in the US from supporting the WikiLeaks website has led to an online backlash in which individuals are redirecting parts of their own sites to its Swedish internet host.

Since early on Friday morning, it has been impossible to reach WikiLeaks by typing wikileaks.org into a web browser because everyDNS, which would redirect queries for the string ‘wikileaks.org’ to that machine address, removed its support for Wikileaks, claiming that it had broken its terms of service by being the target of a huge hacker attack. (See What is DNS?)

Without a DNS record, it is only possible to reach WikiLeaks by typing in the string of numbers which, for most web users, is too unmemorable to make it feasible.

That, campaigners say, points to the principal weakness in the internet’s pyramidial DNS setup, where a limited number of site registrars can control whether a site is findable by name or not.

Website hosts are being encouraged to add a ‘/wikileaks’ directory into their sites, redirecting to which redirects to http://88.80.13.160/, run by the Swedish hosting company Bahnhof.

At present, that location redirects users to a Wikleaks page at http://213.251.145.96/, which is run by a French company, but if pressure from the French government pushes Wikileaks off that host, it will still have the Swedish location.

At the same time, scores of sites ‘mirroring’ WikiLeaks have sprung up – by lunchtime today, the list was 74-strong and contained sites that have the same content as WikiLeaks and – crucially – link to the downloads of its leaks of 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

The backlash has also gained its own tag on the microblogging service Twitter, where people who have linked to the main site are using the hashtag #imwikileaks.

The technical details of how to make a site’s subdirectory point directly to the WikiLeaks site are described by Paul Carvill, a British developer, and Jamie McClelland.

‘I’ve done this as a simple gesture of my support for WikiLeaks and my opposition to arbitrary censorship of the web by governments and corporations,’ Carvill says on his page, while McLelland says that adding his support ’seems like a good way for us all to really pitch in and share the risk that the folks at WikiLeaks are taking all by themselves’.

State Department Official Warns Students Against Discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook, Twitter

A State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger their employment prospects.

The official, a former student of the school, called the career services office of his alma mater to advise students not to post links to WikiLeaks (Wikileaks) documents, nor to make comments on social networks such as Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook), as ‘engaging in these activities would call into question [a student's] ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,’ he was quoted as saying in an e-mail sent to students by the career services office on Tuesday.

The warning coincided with WikiLeaks’s release of thousands of secret U.S. embassy cables on Sunday, November 28. The site has since been plagued by multiple DDoS attacks, and termination of service notifications from its DNS provider, EveryDNS.net, its temporary website host, Amazon (Amazon.com), and PayPal, which handled many of the donations the organization received.

Student Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog on Thursday, the same day Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers proposed legislation that would hold those who publish the names of any U.S. intelligence sources ‘criminally accountable.’ A full copy of the e-mail, which the career services office has since confirmed sending, is pasted below:

From: ‘Office of Career Services’

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,


Office of Career Services

According to an e-mail sent by spokesperson Phillip J. Crowley to The Huffington Post, the warning does not, however, represent a formal policy position. ‘We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified. We condemn what Mr. Assange is doing, but have given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge,’ he wrote.

Employees in the State Department are among the many government workers who were told by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget not to view the leaked documents without the required security clearance on Friday.

Although you may not be going for a job at the State Department any time soon, does the warning nevertheless make you wary of discussing WikiLeaks on public forums such as Facebook and Twitter?

LHC dismisses petition seeking Wikileaks ban | Pakistan | DAWN.COM

December 3, 2010 (3 days ago)

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Friday dismissed a petition registered by one Arif Gondal seeking a ban on the Wikileaks website.

Gondal in his petition termed the leakage of secret information by WikiLeaks (a not-for-profit media organisation) a conspiracy to create a rift among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim and Western countries.

Requesting the court to issue orders for imposing a ban on the website, the petitioner argued that since Pakistan had good bilateral relations with a number of countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the leakage of secret information would adversely affect these ties.

LHC’s Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed dismissed the petition, calling it non-maintainable.

We must bear the truth, no matter how harmful it is, television reports quoted Justice Saeed as saying.

WikiLeaks ousted from Amazon US: “

Homeland Security Senator boots Assange

WikiLeaks is no longer mirroring its trove of confidential US diplomatic cables on US-based servers run by Amazon.com, and according to US Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Amazon agreed to remove the mirrors after complaints from his office.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

CBC News: WikiLeaks blocked in China:

Last Updated: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 | 9:02 AM ET

The Associated Press
In China, attempts to access wikileaks.org and cablegate.wikileaks.org were met with a notice saying the connection had been reset. That’s the standard response when a website is being blocked by Chinese authorities who exert rigid controls over internet content.In China, attempts to access wikileaks.org and cablegate.wikileaks.org were met with a notice saying the connection had been reset. That’s the standard response when a website is being blocked by Chinese authorities who exert rigid controls over internet content. (Associated Press)

Links to the WikiLeaks website were blocked within China on Wednesday amid potentially embarrassing claims made in leaked U.S. diplomatic cables posted to the site.

Attempts to access wikileaks.org and cablegate.wikileaks.org were met with a notice saying the connection had been reset. That’s the standard response when a website is being blocked by Chinese authorities who exert rigid controls over internet content.

It wasn’t clear when the blocks were imposed, although a vast swath of the internet is inaccessible behind China’s firewall, including social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Human rights and political dissent-themed sites are also routinely banned, although technologically savvy users can easily jump the so-called ‘Great Firewall’ with proxy servers or other alternatives.

WikiLeaks may have been singled out because of some of the assertions made in the leaked cables, including some sent from the U.S. Embassies in Seoul and Beijing, focusing on China’s ally North Korea.

Those included suggestions that North Korea’s communist regime would likely collapse within three years of the death of ruler Kim Jong Il, and that Chinese leaders were prepared to accept South Korea’s eventual rule over the entire Korean peninsula.

In one, a Chinese diplomat is quoted describing North Korea as a ’spoiled child’ for attempting to win U.S. attention with a provocative missile test.

The leaks also claimed that China’s Politburo directed a cyber intrusion into Google’s computer systems, and expressed concern over attempts by Iranian front companies to obtain Chinese nuclear technology.
Foreign Ministry not commenting

China’s government has taken a low-key approach to the leaks, with the Foreign Ministry saying it would not comment on specific assertions in the cables.

‘China takes note of relevant reports. We hope the U.S. side will properly handle the relevant issue. As for the content of the documents, we do not comment on that,’ ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday.

The Global Times, a provocative tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party mouthpiece Peoples Daily, labelled the disclosure a ‘nefarious slander against China’ on Wednesday.

It also questioned the U.S. government’s perceived inability to block the posting of the leaks, saying it raised questions as to whether it had reached some form of tacit understanding with WikiLeaks.

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, said Beijing shared Washington’s concern about the release of sensitive diplomatic communications. But he said the WikiLeaks blocking was motivated more by the need to stifle further rumour mongering, rather than suppressing specific revelations.

‘The website is blocked because the information is both unprovable and sensitive,’ Shi said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the documents. Officials around the world have said the disclosure jeopardizes national security, diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships between foreign governments.

The massive leaks were ‘embarrassing’ and ‘awkward,’ but the consequences for American foreign policy should be limited, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.

US orders data lock down in wake of Wikileaks release: “

Shuts stable door on ‘largest data spillage in American history’

The US government on Monday enacted new policies designed to prevent mass leaks similar to one rolled out over the weekend, when Wikileaks released thousands of classified diplomatic cables.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

WikiLeaked US cables link China to Google hack: “

Clinton ordered surveillance of UN leadership

A Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing that China’s Politburo ‘directed’ last December’s hack on Google’s internal systems, according to the confidential US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and various news organizations on Sunday.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

ARTICLE 19 – 10 September 2010

WikiLeaks and Internet Disclosures

The current debate around WikiLeaks highlights the potential of the internet to make previously secret information of public interest widely available. ARTICLE 19 calls for governments to improve their regimes for public access to information, refrain from punishing WikiLeaks and other sites that are releasing information in the public interest, and to protect and encourage whistleblowers.

ARTICLE 19 welcomes the use of the internet by new and established organisations as a mechanism to expand and democratise the availability of sources of information. We believe that this represents a powerful extension of the media’s role to receive information from confidential sources and make it available to the public.

The recent debate around WikiLeaks and the disclosure of secret US government documents related to the Afghan War Diary and Baghdad airstrike video underscores the need for strong legal rights to be in place in all countries for the public to seek, receive and impart information as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international, regional and national human rights instruments. This includes recognition of the right to information, protection of whistleblowers, and facilitating the media’s ability to obtain and publish information without barriers.

It should be recognised that WikiLeaks is not the only site on the Internet that provides a forum for whistleblowers. Other sites, including Cryptome.com and FAS.org, have provided an important public service making information of this type available for many years.

ARTICLE 19 believes that the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, developed by a group of experts and endorsed by the UN Human Rights Commission, is a proper starting point for evaluating concerns related to national security information in the Wikileaks debate. Moreover, we identified the following issues that must be considered in ensuing that the public’s rights under international law are respected:

1. Ensuring the Public’s Right to Information

It is well established that the right of the public to information held by government bodies is essential in ensuring democracy. Over 90 countries have adopted laws that guarantee that right and it has been recognised in international agreements including the UN Convention against Corruption, the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, and by many international bodies including the UN, Council of Europe, African Union and the Organisation for American States.

However, while there has been a significant increase in laws and other instruments guaranteeing the public’s right to information around the world in recent years, access to information is still inadequate in many counties, even those such as the United States with its long history of right to information. This is particularly a problem in the area of information classified as ‘state secrets’.

Under international law, governments must show that any restrictions on access to information are prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society to protect a national security interest. Limits on access to information should only apply to information that governments can demonstrate would cause a specific and articulated harm.

The rules should not be used to hide other interests. Indeed, the existing US rules on secrecy prohibit classifying information about crimes and as a means to prevent embarrassment. Those rules are ignored far too often.

A number of military logs in the Afghan War Diary and the Baghdad airstrike video footage appear to demonstrate attacks on civilians by coalition forces which might amount to violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Full official disclosure of information about the allegations of ill treatment of civilians by the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq would allow light to be shed on what has occurred. It would also enable a transparent and fair judicial review. Hence, the Baghdad video and much of the material in the Afghanistan War Diary should have been subject to mandatory disclosure under access to information laws in the respective countries of coalition governments, where, again, the overall public interest should trump secrecy exceptions.

2. Prosecution of Web Sites for Releasing National Security Information

There has been considerable discussion about the possible prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks activists under state secrets or espionage legislation in the United States or other countries. ARTICLE 19 believes that this would be an improper use of these laws and urges all governments to refrain from taking this step.

The statements of defence and state officials, calling for or warning of prosecution, might amount to censorship of media at a time and on issues – the war in Iraq and Afghanistan -– where transparency and the public right to know should govern the government’s relationships with the media and the public.

Moreover, it is a well established principle that public authorities bear sole responsibility for protecting the confidentiality of official information. Other persons and entities, including WikiLeaks and journalists, should never be subject to liability for publishing leaked information, unless it was obtained through fraud or another crime.

3. Protection of Whistleblowers

ARTICLE 19 also believes that those who provide information to WikiLeaks should not be prosecuted if there is a strong public interest in the release of the information.

Officials who act as whistleblowers and release information in the public interest without authorisation should not be prosecuted for releasing information that reveals crimes, abuses, mismanagement and other important issues in the public interest. Although we recognise that civil servants may legitimately be placed under obligations of secrecy, these should be limited by their obligation to serve the overall public interest. Anyone disclosing classified information should benefit from a public interest defence whereby, even if disclosure of the information would cause harm to a protected interest, no liability should ensue if the benefits of disclosure outweigh the harm. Instead, there should be strong legal protections and structures to facilitate disclosure.

Countries should adopt comprehensive whistleblowing laws which apply to the public and private sector and apply in national security cases. Secrets laws should recognise that whistleblowers should be protected from prosecution and should include public interest exemptions for revealing information such as human rights abuses and corruption.

Countries should also enact laws based on international standards protecting journalists from revealing their confidential sources and materials and those laws should apply to every person who is engaged in the business of making information available to the public.

4. Ethical Obligations of New Media

ARTICLE 19 believes that new media – including WikiLeaks and similar sites, should follow good ethical practices to ensure that the information made available is accurate, fairly presented and does not substantially harm other persons. While such ethical codes have not yet been developed for new media, we believe that existing journalistic codes provide a useful basis from which to begin.

Sites such as WikiLeaks should also recognise that technical protections to protect the anonymity of sources only have limited effectiveness. If the whistleblower is identified through other means, they can face serious employment and legal sanctions and even physical danger.

ARTICLE 19 is not qualified to take a position on whether the release of all of the Afghan documents by WikiLeaks was appropriate in these terms. To date, no credible information has been made public that links the release of the information to the harm of any individual.

Recommendations:

ARTICLE 19 therefore recommends:

• The governments of coalition forces and other states should refrain from criminal investigation and prosecution of WikiLeaks activists for the publishing of the materials on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as their sources
• All states should adopt and properly implement right to information laws which recognise the public interest in disclosure of information. Restrictions on access for national security reasons should be strictly limited
• All states should adopt comprehensive whistleblower-protection laws
• State Secrets Acts should only apply to those public officials and others who have agreed to be subject to them. Journalists and publishers should not be liable under these laws for disclosing information of public interest. The laws should also include public interest defences for protecting whistleblowers
• Internet sites should follow good ethical practices in their reporting activities.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

• For more information, please contact David Banisar, Senior Legal Counsel, ARTICLE 19, at banisar@article19.org, +44 207 324 2500
• The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information are available at

http://www.article19.org/pdfs/standards/joburgprinciples.pdf