Pentagon seeks WikiLeaks founder fearing cables will be published

[sharingwisdom]

Report: Pentagon seeks WikiLeaks founder Assange, fearing cables will be published
June 11, 2010, USA Today
https://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/report-pentagon-seeks... (https://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/report-pentagon-seeks-wikileaks-founder-assange-fearing-cables-will-be-published/1)
The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/) reports that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange, the elusive Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.org/), who they believe is preparing to publish several years of State Department cables allegedly passed by the 22-year-old Manning, now being detained in Kuwait. The cables contain "information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq," and they could do "serious damage to national security" if made public, government officials told the Beast. But even if they find him, it's not clear what they could do to stop publication. Daniel Ellsberg says Assange "is in danger." Meanwhile, Wired's Threat Level blog, which broke the Manning story, is reporting that Assange ... is arranging Manning's legal defense and says Manning is no spy. Assange, who first gained notoriety as a computer hacker, canceled an appearance today at an International Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas.

Wanted by the US: WikiLeaks founder keeps his head down
June 14, 2010, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wanted-by-the-us-wikileaks-founder... (https://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wanted-by-the-us-wikileaks-founder-keeps-his-head-down-20100613-y652.html)
Julian Assange, the Australian-born face of the [whistleblowers' website] WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.org/), is in hiding overseas after the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him of leaking a a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007. The video was released on Wikileaks this year, and the US is now desperate to find Mr Assange before he leaks thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables, which are believed to discuss the Middle East, its governments and leaders. Mr Assange, 38, is an enigmatic figure who moves frequently between countries and has bases in Iceland, Kenya, Australia and elsewhere. He was due to speak at a conference in Las Vegas on [June 11] but cancelled shortly before he was due to appear. At the same time [a US website] published an article (https://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak) claiming that Pentagon investigators were engaged in a "manhunt" for Mr Assange. There have even been suggestions that Mr Assange may be in physical danger. Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked a top secret US history of the Vietnam War dubbed the Pentagon Papers at the height of that war, told US television he had spoken to Mr Assange last week. "He … understood that it was not safe for him to come to this country," Mr Ellsberg said.

Note: For more of Daniel Ellsberg's assessment of the personal dangers to Assange from the Pentagon's manhunt for him, Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger" - The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-11/daniel-ellsberg-wikileaks-julian-assange-in-danger/) [From Ellsberg's assessment-"We’ve now been told by Dennis Blair, the late head of intelligence here, that President Obama has authorized the killing of American citizens overseas, who are suspected of involvement in terrorism. Assange is not American, so he doesn’t even have that constraint."]

[Thad]

Iceland's parliament approves legislation to make the country a haven for investigative journalists

Posted by Emma Heald (https://www.editorsweblog.org/emma-heald/) on June 21, 2010 at 12:22 PM
Iceland has passed a package of legislation that intends to make the country an international safe haven for investigative journalists, it was reported by the AFP (https://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5itXvKxXHfHSyMvlkS0iBXePjYmqw) and the Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-rewrites-law-to-create-haven-for-investigative-reporting-2002591.html) among others. The new laws, created with the help of Wikileaks (https://www.wikileaks.org/), were passed unanimously in the Icelandic parliament at 4am on Wednesday last week.

TheIcelandic Modern Media Initiative (https://immi.is/?l=en&p=vision) was first proposed in February (https://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/02/iceland_as_a_journalism_haven.php), by which time Julian Assange, founder and editor of whistleblower site Wikileaks, had already been consulting with MPs for two months on the proposal to implement some of the strongest protection in the world for the press and its sources. The idea is that the new package will also help bring an end to libel tourism, and make it much harder to censor stories before they are published.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, an investigative journalist with public broadcaster RUV, who has co-operated with Wikileaks, told the AFP that work on the IMMI had already created a secure environment for revealing sensitive information. The now well-known Wikileaks video showing the deadly US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that was released in April was edited in Reykjavik, seen as the safest place to prepare it, he said.

The Swedish-based Wikileaks publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other sources, and protects these sources' anonymity, thus providing investigative journalists with a potentially powerful resource. Tips and potential stories are fact-checked by an editorial team to ensure that they are accurate. This team also adds context, translates and promotes important leaks.

Confidentiality of sources was recently questioned in Canada when Canadian newspaper the National Post was ordered by the country's Supreme Court to hand over documents to the police from a confidential source (https://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2010/05/canadian_newspaper_the_national_post.php). "The bottom line is that no journalist can give a source a total assurance of confidentiality. All such arrangements necessarily carry an element of risk that the source's identity will eventually be revealed," AFP quoted the court as saying.

And debate over journalistic shield laws recently emerged in California when Gizmodo journalist Jason Chen, who had obtained a prototype of Apple's then unreleased new iPhone, had computers and servers confiscated from his home by police (https://www.editorsweblog.org/web_20/2010/04/the_iphone_v4_and_media_sheild_laws_why.php). Gawker argued that this was illegal under the state's laws to protect journalists.

Will news organisations based outside Iceland try to take advantage of the new laws? The Independent reported that Icelandic MP and the new legislation's key supporter Birgitta Jonsdottir had said that Germany's Der Spiegel and America's ABC News have discussed the possibility of moving the publication of their investigative journalism to Iceland.

However, it will take some time before the legislation comes into effect: Jonsdottir told Nieman Journalism Lab (https://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/what-will-icelands-new-media-laws-mean-for-journalists/) that the laws are currently being drafted and changes should be passed in about a year. And as Nieman's Jonathan Stray noted, it may well be years before it becomes clear what the new laws mean for journalists worldwide.


Report: Pentagon seeks WikiLeaks founder Assange, fearing cables will be published
June 11, 2010, USA Today
https://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/report-pentagon-seeks... (https://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/report-pentagon-seeks-wikileaks-founder-assange-fearing-cables-will-be-published/1)
The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/) reports that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Julian Assange, the elusive Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.org/), who they believe is preparing to publish several years of State Department cables allegedly passed by the 22-year-old Manning, now being detained in Kuwait. The cables contain "information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq," and they could do "serious damage to national security" if made public, government officials told the Beast. But even if they find him, it's not clear what they could do to stop publication. Daniel Ellsberg says Assange "is in danger." Meanwhile, Wired's Threat Level blog, which broke the Manning story, is reporting that Assange ... is arranging Manning's legal defense and says Manning is no spy. Assange, who first gained notoriety as a computer hacker, canceled an appearance today at an International Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas.

Wanted by the US: WikiLeaks founder keeps his head down
June 14, 2010, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wanted-by-the-us-wikileaks-founder... (https://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wanted-by-the-us-wikileaks-founder-keeps-his-head-down-20100613-y652.html)
Julian Assange, the Australian-born face of the [whistleblowers' website] WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.org/), is in hiding overseas after the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him of leaking a a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007. The video was released on Wikileaks this year, and the US is now desperate to find Mr Assange before he leaks thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables, which are believed to discuss the Middle East, its governments and leaders. Mr Assange, 38, is an enigmatic figure who moves frequently between countries and has bases in Iceland, Kenya, Australia and elsewhere. He was due to speak at a conference in Las Vegas on [June 11] but cancelled shortly before he was due to appear. At the same time [a US website] published an article (https://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak) claiming that Pentagon investigators were engaged in a "manhunt" for Mr Assange. There have even been suggestions that Mr Assange may be in physical danger. Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked a top secret US history of the Vietnam War dubbed the Pentagon Papers at the height of that war, told US television he had spoken to Mr Assange last week. "He … understood that it was not safe for him to come to this country," Mr Ellsberg said.

Note: For more of Daniel Ellsberg's assessment of the personal dangers to Assange from the Pentagon's manhunt for him, Daniel Ellsberg: Wikileaks' Julian Assange "in Danger" - The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-11/daniel-ellsberg-wikileaks-julian-assange-in-danger/) [From Ellsberg's assessment-"We’ve now been told by Dennis Blair, the late head of intelligence here, that President Obama has authorized the killing of American citizens overseas, who are suspected of involvement in terrorism. Assange is not American, so he doesn’t even have that constraint."]