2011-06-07 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

Mentor and friend Greg Mitchell at TheNation.com is on vacation. While he is away, I am pinch-hitting and blogging WikiLeaks updates here. All the times are EST. You can contact me at kgosztola@hotmail.com with any news tips. Twitter username is @kgosztola. Also, if you are looking for something good to listen to, I encourage you to check out the catalog of podcasts posted here at WL Central from the "This Week in WikiLeaks" show I produce every week.

For the WikiLeaks Notes update post for June 8, go here.

11:00 PM I spent the last two days attending #PDF11 Conference in New York City. It was truly a remarkable and well-done conference that covered just about every aspect of the convergence of technology, media and society that one could imagine.

One particular talk is worth sharing with those who regularly view this blog. The talk was given by Mark Pesce, who is an Australian inventor, writer, and theorist. He gave a talk on hyperpolitics.

This is what I tweeted as he was giving the talk:

This @mpesce talk kind of makes me feel like I am watching a message from Anonymous on YouTube. Anybody else feel this way? #pdf11

Govts making mystery of the obvious & placing it beyond reproach @mpesce #pdf11

I believe @mpesce just presented best narrative for telling & explaining story of Julian Assange & #WikiLeaks creatively to audiences #pdf11

This talk is so steeped in hacker culture. I love all subversive aspects of it. @mpesce #pdf11 #wikileaks

Now enjoy this great presentation:

10:30 PM Former Obama campaign adviser suggests WikiLeaks releasing classified information "a blessing for the US government. Also says, "other government should take heed of lessons when it comes to information sharing." Who is this guy? Professor Mike Nelson, "who spent four years as Senator Al Gore's science advisor and served as the White House director for technology policy on IT."

The story posted on Computerworld also features him suggesting "in a year and a half, the documents would mean a "net positive" for US foreign policy in the Middle East."

10:10 PM Both WSJ and Al Jazeera English's "leak portals" inspired by WikiLeaks provide "false promises of anonymity," according to Hanni Fakhoury in a post on EFF's website

9:45 PM New York Times has story up on 40th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers, which were released by ardent WikiLeaks supporter and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg says he *was* Bradley Manning.

The Times writes, "That it took until the era of Wikileaks for the government to declassify the Pentagon Papers struck some participants as, to say the least, curious." For the full story, go here.

9:25 PM Homeland Security stalling on Freedom of Information Act requests concerning domain seizures. See blog post at Techdirt.

9:15 PM Nigeria now has a Freedom of Information Act. This is a victory and cause for celebration, according to Ayo Oyoze Baje for the Nigeria Daily Independent. Nigeria is now one of over 77 countries with Freedom of Information Act laws in place.

9:05 PM Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Egypt says there is still much change that needs to happen. On freedom of expression, they recommend "abolishing penal code provisions that criminalize freedom of expression, as well as the new law criminalizing strikes and demonstrations, the assembly law of 1914, which gives the government the right to dismiss any assembly of more than five people, and the association laws, which allow the government to interfere in nongovernmental organizations."

6:10 PM Security firm Sophos issues warning on Facebook enabling facial recognition technology on accounts without notifying users of this change.

Seeming like Julian Assange is more and more right about Facebook being an automated gathering intelligence agency. I'll add that if it is more like an intelligence agency than it is less and less like a social media tool for connecting users and democratizing society.

6:05 PM The Dancing Cowboy Whistleblower in the New Yorker

5:00 PM CNN to air a documentary called "WikiWars: The Mission of Julian Assange." The documentary, according to article, indicates Kaj Larsen looks at "unconventional life and mission of the WikiLeaks revealer-in-chief."

1:30 PM UC Davis now with report on Gitmo Files released by WikiLeaks. Report finds the US has detained more children than the government has officially reported. Andy Worthington, media partner with WikiLeaks on the Gitmo Files, has been tracking this reality for years.

This is the power of the WikiLeaks releases: a trove of documents can be released giving a university the ability to do a data journalism project to see what is revealed.

10:20 AM WikiLeaks Humor: Ben Trovato at Sunday Times writes out a cable that reveals a conversation between Jacob Zuma and Muammar Gaddafi that could have happened. Pretty good, although to make it more authentic he could have followed the format of a cable a bit more closely. But this idea for satire has a lot of potential. Maybe someone at The Onion should start doing these kind of writings regularly.

8:05 AM I will be present at an "Aftermath of WikiLeaks" breakout session at the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City. Heather Brooke, Gabriella Coleman, Jeff Jarvis and Micah Sifry will be speaking during the session. Check my Twitter for tweets from the session as it will not be streaming live on the PDF website.

7:50 AM The Jang Group in Pakistan, according to the cables, has been accused by the US of "consciously publishing and broadcasting false and inflammatory stories” against the US and its interests despite having a contract with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and airing Voice of America (VoA) on Geo TV."

7:40 AM Dawn Media Group, which partnered with WikiLeaks to cover the Pakistan cables, now with slide show that presents a nice portrait of the key revelations with illustrations

7:30 AM Julian Assange's case to be debated in European Parliament in a debate on the European Arrest Warrant

7:10 AM Whistleblower award given by the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) and the German Section of the Bar Association IALANA ("lawyers against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons") in Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the seventh time. This year the award goes to "Anonymous" or the person who released the "Collateral Murder" video. The award is to be given as soon as the identity of the whistleblower is established. "Until then, the prize money - along with additional funds raised for this purpose Donations - deposited in trust and to support those uses, which the publication of this video is made for criminal or disciplinary charges." So, does this mean Bradley Manning can possibly use the money for his legal expenses?

7:00 AM Still, no real information to support the charge that Afghanistan informants have been killed. But, don't expect anyone in the US media to abandon this talking point. They will just go from considering it true to implying it's true by saying, "It's believed WikiLeaks has killed informants because of the released information." And, that's if we're lucky.

12:15 AM Three cables published on the anniversary of Khaled Said's killing. Said is, of course, part of what truly sparked the Egypt uprising. Egypt activists display pessimism that there will be change, thinking the Egypt government is responsible. A US diplomat urges clemency for three bloggers. And, details on human rights attorney Gamal Eid

...who represents all of Egypt's detained bloggers, told us September 15 he had learned through third party sources that prison officials have tortured jailed Coptic blogger Hany Nazir to pressure him to convert to Islam. The prison has not allowed Eid access to Nazir since his October 2008 arrest under the Emergency Law.

12:10 AM The growing issue of whether the First Amendment limits government's ability to obtain information on users from social network sites like Facebook and Twitter: Joshua E. Engel writes, "Wikileaks founder Juilan Assange summed up the value of Facebook to investigators. He said that on Facebook, authorities can find 'the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives ...'" Engel goes on to discuss the legal issues surrounding the provision of user data to authorities.