2011-11-14 #WikiLeaks News: Call-in for Bradley #Manning Starts Today, Online Privacy Compromised
This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a news update of stories relating directly to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression.
Starting today: a Call-in to The White House and Military to Demand UN Access to Bradley Manning will take place throughout the week: Each day of the week you can help by calling the number for a different official with key influence on the outcome of the case.
The Bradley Manning Support Network announces: "we will expand our efforts by organizing mass call-ins to five different government offices, disrupting activities of those whose job it is to silence whistle-blowers with specific demands that can lead to a fairer trial."
The first two contacts, whose phone lines are to be flooded with calls demanding justice for Bradley are:
* Secretary of the Army Public Affairs Officer Lt. Anne Edgecomb: 703-697-3491
[email: Anne.edgecomb@us.army.mil]
* Army Chief of Staff Public Affairs Officer Lt. Col Alayne Conway: 703-693-4961
[email: Alayne.conway@us.army.mil]
More information at bradleymanning.org
Other Campaigns in Support of Bradley Manning
* Vigil for Bradley Manning on his 24th Birthday:
Saturday, December 17 · 12:00am - 11:30pm
On the 17th of December - his 24th birthday - Bradley Manning will have been incarcerated for 571 days.
On this day stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning whose only crime was revealing the truth - congregate at the White House, your city hall or town square, or your nearest US Embassy or Consulate - peacefully and solemnly.
[For more details, see Vigil for Bradley Manning on his 24th Birthday's facebook page.]
Everyone is also encouraged to gather support for Bradley Manning on this day and to send small gifts and birthday cards to the following address
Bradley Manning 89289
830 Sabalu Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 6602
WikiLeaks/Julian Assange Support Campaigns (updated)
Australian supporters: click here to complain to the ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) about the Banking Blockade against WikiLeaks.
Others have already taken action, namely @nicsha, who has been tweeting about the experience:
November 17: Led by Christine Assange, Julian Assange's mother, a protest against Julian's extradition and US government actions against WikiLeaks will occur in front of the Parliament House in Canberra on the occasion of US President Obama's visit to Australia. Please join.
Know more about this protest.
On November 24 the UK Parliament will debate the extradition of Julian Assange, among other cases. If you live in the UK, contact your MP on the subject today. All details about this case at Sweden vs. Assange.
Please take the time to read and send these letters, or to compose your own, and demand justice for Julian Assange and others affected by the same legislations and procedures.
Julian Assange has been under house arrest for 343 days without having been charged of a crime.
Bradley Manning has spent 560 days detained without trial.
A Fair Trials International campaign was launched to end pre-trial detention within the EU. Fair Trials International also advocate the reform of the European Arrest Warrant.
The ruling on the Twitter/WikiLeaks case prompted a series of news articles addressing the issue of lack of Online Privacy.
In ‘Court makes it official: You have no privacy online’, Matthew Ingram writes:
"What is the rationale behind this request for information from the U.S. government? We don’t know, and the judge in this case decided that the three targets of the court order didn’t have a right to know either, since he declined to force the Justice Department to reveal the purpose of its request. All we know is that the government wanted personal data about their activity on Twitter — including their IP addresses, any “contact information” related to the account, as well as “records of session times and durations,” and could even include the content of individual messages (including private messages). And it did this despite the fact that none of them have been charged with any kind of criminal offence in the U.S., and neither have WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.
As Soghoian has pointed out, most social networks and web services such as Twitter, Google+ and Facebook — and particularly the latter — are focused on getting their users to share more of their information, because doing this enhances the value of the network (and makes it more valuable to advertisers and marketers). Google has said that it wants to make its new network part of everything it does, and connect it to everything that its users do on any Google service as a kind of central “identity platform.” Based on the decision in the Twitter case, any and all of that information could theoretically be available to someone, including the government."
An article by Kris Kotarski, ‘Twitter ruling reveals extent of surveillance’, draws attention to the scale of the problem: "the case is much bigger than just WikiLeaks and the fate of three Twitter accounts because of the dangerous precedent that it sets for the rest of us.
(…) Obviously, the idea that any government could secretly ask for computer records without a warrant is troubling, but it is made especially so by advances in data storage and data mining that can automate what once took multiple people to do.
Without legal checks and balances - such as warrants granted by a judge - to protect user data from prying eyes, there is no reason why the U.S. government (and any imitator) cannot begin to simply trawl through everyone's computer data indiscriminately, effectively placing all of society under electronic surveillance.
Just last week, The Associated Press reported that the CIA monitors Twitter and Facebook as sources of intelligence and that the CIA has several hundred "ninja librarian" analysts in an industrial park at some unspecified location in Virginia."
Video: St Paul’s Cathedral’s walls covered in WikiLeaks cables
U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks are on display at Occupy London.