2011-08-05 WikiLeaks Notes: Latest News on #Cablegate Releases & #WikiLeaks

This is a "WikiLeaks News Update", a daily news update of stories that are obviously related to WikiLeaks and also freedom of information, transparency, cybersecurity, and freedom of expression. All the times are GMT.
- New Cable(s) were released today.

06:30 PM War veteran Ben Griffin will be joining peace campaigners tomorrow for a vigil in solidarity with Michael Lyons, outside Colchester Military Prison.
Michael Lyons, a Royal Navy medic, took a moral position against war in Afghanistan, having refused to undergo rifle training after reading material released by WikiLeaks. As a result he was sentenced to seven months' detention.

05:40 PM A fake list of Indian black money holder names purporting to have been published by WikiLeaks has been circulating on facebook and twitter.

WikiLeaks tweeted about this fake list:
WARNING: WikiLeaks and Indian black money: The following is a FAKE image and never appeared on WikiLeaks i.imgur.com/bO3dF.png

10:55 AM Kevin Gosztola analyses recently released White House strategy to 'counter violent extremism in the United States' and whether this strategy will make calls for the murder of Julian Assange less permissible.

'How violent extremism is addressed depends on Foreign Policy', he writes.
'None of the individuals who are calling for murder will be criminalized or sanctioned. And that’s because their calls for violence are not necessarily in conflict with any US policy toward WikiLeaks or groups/individuals that conspire to commit espionage (which the US government considers to be the commitment of WikiLeaks).'

Update: On the subject of public calls for the assassination of Julian Assange and use of diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks by the Washigton Times - as mentioned below - @WLLegal tweets:

Speaking of Washington Times & classified info, will they apologize for this atrocious "Assassinate Assange" op-ed now?

07:05 AM A cable published by WikiLeaks offers insight into Russia’s intelligence service intimidation campaign against U.S. officials and diplomats in the country, the Washington Times reports.

According to the cable, from January 2009, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) employees received an email with a doctored photo of a senior U.S. official in the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute (NDI). In the image he was shown reclining with an underage girl, the message accused him of having raped the minor.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was thought by the embassy to have been behind the smear attack at the time.
NDI’s director of public affairs Kathy Gest denied all allegations and added "We consider the matter closed and NDI, which is legally registered in Russia, continues its programs."

04:00 AM WikiLeaks is among the websites targeted by the U.S. National Operations Center for systemic monitoring of publicly available data, according to a report from January, obtained two weeks ago by Mexican newspaper El Milenio through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request. The report reveals plans for a program that would monitor a number of websites, including facebook and twitter for threats.

"NOC agents are authorized to “establish user names and passwords to form profiles and follow relevant government, media, and subject matter experts on social media sites.” Social networking sites are premised on the concept of “interacting with others.” Distinctions such as ‘following’ a user on Twitter and ‘connecting’ with such a user are not clear-cut.", writes Katitza Rodriguez for UpsideDownWorld.

The report reminds individuals that if they do not want the NOC to collect their public data, they should not make it public in the first place ('Information posted to social media websites is publicly accessible and voluntarily generated', the report reads) and states personally identifiable information will inadvertently be collected and shared.
The full document can be found here, full list of websites to be monitored under this program starts on page 14.