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.


November 17 is a day of global support for Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Bradley Manning.
On the occasion of President Obama’s visit to Australia to mark the 60th anniversary of the Australian-US war alliance and the announcement of the expansion of U.S. Military presence in the country, an antiwar protest in Canberra, outside the Parliament House, will start at 10:30 am.

This protest is also in support of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, who currently risks extradition to the United States, should his application for a Supreme Court appeal be rejected by the High Court and extradition to Sweden granted. In which case the U.S. could apply for his ‘temporary surrender’. This would enable him to be extradited to the U.S.

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.


Today Julian Assange’s legal team filed an application to have his extradition case taken to the Supreme Court, based on the following points:

1) Whether a European Arrest Warrant issued by a partisan prosecutor working for the executive (i.e. not an independent judge or investigating magistrate in the civil law system) is a valid Part 1 Warrant issued by a "judicial authority" within the meaning of sections 2(2) & 66 of the Extradition Act 2003?
This point argues that the decision goes against parliamentary intent in the 2003 Extradition Act (see SwedenVsAssange).

2) Whether a person in respect of whom no decision to prosecute has been taken can be said to be ’accused’ within the meaning of sections 2(3)(a) of the Extradition Act 2003?

On December 5, in a public hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice (London), the High Court will decide whether these two points are 'of general public importance'. If that is considered to be the case, the appeal will then proceed to the Supreme Court.

After the eviction last night, thousands of people are swelling in front of a barricaded Zuccotti Park chanting "Open up the park!". The area is completely surrounded by police forces, however, protesters are waiting to see if a verdict from the court handling a demand against last nights eviction will allow them in again. The argument is that they can't evict the park before showing a decisive cause for it.

At around 1:00 AM, November 15th, police forces arrived in full riot gear, batons, pepper spray and tear gas as well as bulldozers to clear out the park. Protesters resisting peacefully chanting “Whose park? Our park!”. Media was systematically blocked from reporting after being penned in, they complained from receiving rough treatment from police, their credentials were ignored and airspace was closed for helicopters.

Liberty Square (a.k.a. Zuccotti Park) after being evicted.

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]

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.


Upcoming Appeal Hearing for WikiLeaks whistleblower Rudolf Elmer


On November 17, whistleblower Rudolf Elmer's appeal hearing will take place. Prosecution requests 'convicted on all charges' verdict and increased sentence:

"Prosecution Office Winterthur/Unterland wants to make the case that Swiss Bank Secrecy protects the data in the Cayman Islands and that based on a former employment agreement Swiss Bank Secrecy applies also to Rudolf Elmer working in the Cayman Islands.
Prosecution Office wants to make the case that Swiss industrial secrecy laws also apply to the Cayman Islands in the case of Rudolf Elmer and accuses him of disclosing Julius Baer’s secrets on how it uses the operation in the Cayman Islands providing Trust & Company, Mutual and Hedge Fund services as well as the administering of Special Purpose Vehicles e.g. offshore companies of Carlyle, Washington D.C. within the Julius Baer Cayman office.

While speculating about the fate of Julian Assange -- in the face of U.S. wrath over the massive WikiLeaks disclosures of politically-sensitive diplomatic materials -- most media reports have focused on the likelihood of Assange's extradition to the U.S. to face criminal charges. Less discussed, however, is the possibility of irregular rendition, which could pose a far greater threat to Assange's life and safety. Unfortunately for Assange, the key to his fate lies in the hands of his political foil U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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.


Collateral Murder changed U.S. army interrogator's perspective on the Iraq war

On Veterans day, The Atlantic interviews Michael Patterson, a former U.S. army interrogator whose decision to leave the military and current participation in the Occupy Movement (Michael is staying at Occupy DC) were motivated by the video Collateral Murder, released by WikiLeaks on the 5th April 2010:

"... I ask him what was the switch for him and when. He explained that it was WikiLeaks. It was the footage of the Apache helicopter gunning down Iraqis released by WikiLeaks in April of 2010. Up to that point he had been interrogating Iraqis and using what he describes as psychological torture. He was 10 years old when the World Trade Center was hit. He wanted to fight terrorism in Iraq. He bought into the whole thing, he tells me. He had been looking forward to signing up ever since the 5th grade and then, suddenly, last November, he found himself watching a video of his fellow soldiers gunning down Iraqis on the street and it all changed for him.

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.

Update: Former and current WikiLeaks associates Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp's twitter records are to be disclosed, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady ruled today. The unsealing of docketing information pertaining to the case, and of relevance in the context of the Grand Jury investigation on WikiLeaks, was however refused.

Jacob Appelbaum reacted to the decision with the words: Today is one of those "losing faith in the justice system" kind of days.

(Photo) Wikileak's Julian Assange wearing an Anonymous mask on October 15th at #OccupyLXS camp in London

Now that the grassroots movement that started inadvertently with the Arab Spring has gone global, it is necessary to cast a backwards glance to try and figure out, with some perspective, the dynamics of what has happened, physically and conceptually, over the last year. We propose a simple vision of the process of uprising in 2011, which was consolidated on the past 15th of October as a new culture of popular resistance and creativity. We also aim to point out the recent or enhanced concepts born in the collective consciousness of society during this period.

“Under this plan, the decoy docs would undermine hackers’ trust in the integrity of data, make them question whether releasing it in the public domain would be worth it, and force WikiLeakers to do more work verifying their authenticity.” - Dawn Lim, ‘Darpa’s Plan to Trap the Next WikiLeaker: Decoy Documents’ Wired, November 4, 2011.

The recent revelations of work by DARPA to plant fake documents in official systems to put off or trick potential whistleblowers and the publishers who work with them is the latest in the US Government’s series of reactions to the work of WikiLeaks, including the recent issue of an Executive Order tightening procedures around the classification of government information, enabling administrators to quickly remove suspected whistleblowers from duty and establishing an Information Security Oversight Office within the National Archives and Records Administration with powers to monitor and enforce the Executive Order’s directives.

There are a number of tactics at work with the DARPA proposal: the identification and monitoring of anyone who accesses the decoy documents, the planting of seeds of uncertainty in the minds of potential whistleblowers as to the authenticity of the documents, and making it more difficult for a publisher to feel confident about the release of the leaked documents while increasing the efforts they need to go to to verify the documents’ authenticity.

Authored by William Shaub

Julian Assange has become more than an agent of transparency; he’s our resourceful David in a 21st century fight against thousands of steroid-enhanced Goliaths.

Australia’s The Age is reporting what many of us familiar with the WikiLeaks saga have foreseen:

Kevin Rudd and his foreign affairs department have been accused of all but ignoring pleas from Julian Assange’s legal team to protect the WikiLeaks founder from a possible death penalty in the US.

The foreign affairs department may have also been caught out in an embarrassing lie, after telling The Age they had replied to a letter from Assange’s British lawyer, Gareth Peirce, when they had not.

Tony Kevin, an Australian diplomat of three decades who served as ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, was critical of Mr Rudd’s handling of the Assange case, saying Australia appeared unprepared to grapple with its highly political nature.

Indeed, Australia is not the only country “unprepared to grapple” with the highly political nature of Julian Assange’s court case, but perhaps the most important. The US is not hesitating to use its ability of limiting the social sovereignty of other countries for the purposes of ‘security,’ and governments are clearly not interested in falling out of US favor. Thus, Australia is buckling to US political pressure and acquiring real complicity in Assange’s possible extradition to the US.

The result is the persecution of perhaps the most innovative web activist in history.

The privileged position held by the media in most democracies exists for one reason; in order to govern themselves, people need access to accurate and timely information on all topics relevant to their governance.

Once that information has been distributed, it is not sufficient for the citizens to passively absorb it as a means of entertainment, or even education. In order for self governance to occur, that information must be acted upon to correct flaws in governance.

We at WL Central have had a goal throughout this year of media scandal and indifference, where the most reputable mainstream outlets in the world have been shown to fall far short of the justly elevated position of media in a democracy. The WLC slogan is News, Analysis and Action, and the name was meant quite literally, as wiki ... leaks ... central. In other words, we wanted a place for a collaborative effort, but a very dynamic, Twitter speed effort, to handle all important information and news (the news we require in order to govern ourselves). We would then take that information, analyze it against what we already know, match that to relevant law etc., and create action to stop corruption. A combination of a new form of crowdsourced news platform and a new forum for citizen government.

Our dream is far bigger than our reality. A News Commons, owned and operated and answering to the people, serving a global audience, requires mass participation and a structure that would enable that. Our hope for the future is as follows:

Freedom of speech should be free. It should not have a price tag, but it does in the world we live in, and it is a high one. For the course of its five year history, Wikileaks has been bearing the astronomical legal and adminstrative costs of exercising freedom of expression in the pursuit of justice. Now it needs your help.

Wikileaks' explicit mission is to publish material whose reform-potential is so great that powerful organizations and governments are willing to expend their resources to prevent that material ever entering the public record - to prevent you and I from ever hearing of it.

As a whistleblower organization, Wikileaks' primary function is to facilitate conscientious leaks. The first line of defense for powerful organizations is to cloak their wrongdoing in secrecy. Secrecy is achieved by using coercive means to deter the disclosure of information to the public. Individuals are often compelled to conceal evidence of wrongdoing within powerful factions because the personal consequences of doing so would be dire.

By providing - at cost - a secure and robust mechanism by which conscientious individuals can leak such materials anonymously, Wikileaks ensures that secrecy can never be so complete as to suppress evidence of the misconduct of the powerful. It creates, in effect, a safety-valve for secrecy, so that there will always be a conduit by which people of good conscience can get information to the public, at reduced risk to themselves. To date, no other single organization has performed this function as effectively, or as consistently.

The second line of defense, for powerful organizations, is to attack Wikileaks, and to prevent it from publishing the information it receives. The whistleblower group, therefore, draws upon itself the fire that would otherwise be directed at the whistleblowers whose identity it is sworn to protect. At various times in the past few years, this has taken the form of:

I have the greatest respect both for Jennifer Robinson and Julian Assange, both stalwarts in the field of human rights, the former in her capacity of legal representation and advocacy, and the latter as arguably the greatest whistleblower on abuses of human rights, of all times.

Their joint recent article at the Sydney Morning Herald I found to be well argued but I am not yet wholly convinced that the law is wrong on the issue of free speech, (the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 - "RDA" - being the subject of contention here) which they both oppose in law and disagree with the particular decision in Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103, (Federal Court of Australia.)

It's not that I necessarily oppose the abolition of the RDA, simply I advance the proposition that minorities still need some kind of protection from personal vilification and personal defamation, and that the debate needs more people to become politically involved. On the other hand that cannot or should not extend to the creation of a special category of 'religious defamation' that Islamic nations have recently tried to get up at the UN.

Photo credit Fatima.

The world has seen a year of global struggle for real democracy, transparency and individual human rights. Essential to this struggle is respect for human life and living conditions, including environments. These are basic rights which have been denied by a global mafia with the power to control the legal and government systems.

Innocent and untried individuals are tortured and killed by autonomous machines in the name of the greater good. Families are deprived of their food, shelter and basic medical needs. In every country, people are being unjustly imprisoned for their beliefs and for attempting to defend the rights we were promised. Many others are unjustly imprisoned as a result of the corruption of our legal system, which acts, not to defend society but to defend the interests of the powerful. Once imprisoned, these people are subjected to treatment such as torture, slavery and medical experimentation. No one is safe now from the spectre of unjust imprisonment and far too many of our brightest leaders and most important speakers have been silenced this way. We need to stand in solidarity with them and demand their release before we join them.

A proposal on how to perpetuate the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform them into lasting forms of social organization.

This is a proposal made by a group of concerned global citizens who also act as volunteers for Take the Square, United for Global Change, 15october.net, European Revolution, WL Central and Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR). We do not pretend to represent or speak on behalf of anyone but ourselves.

The Global Square: Towards an Online Platform for the Occupy Movement

In its most recent tactical briefing for the Occupy movement, Adbusters correctly pointed out that, “of the many questions swirling around #OCCUPY, the most challenging is how to gel into a global movement without sacrificing the decentralized, leaderless model.” In the wake of the global day of action on October 15, the question now arises how our movement can evolve new organizational structures that will allow the assemblies — and their highly innovative participatory model of decision-making — to survive beyond the occupations and become a permanent fixture of our emerging global society.

How, in other words, can we perpetuate the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform them into lasting forms of social organization — at the global as well as the local level?

Authored by Bella Magnani

Since the 100-page Swedish police protocol file leaked onto the internet in February 2011, it has been widely known that the SKL (Sweden's national forensic laboratory) failed to find any chromosomal DNA -- either male or female -- on the torn, used condom that Complainant AA gave to police 12 days after the event as evidence of her allegations. For anyone who doubts this fact, it's on page 77 of the police protocol (FUP), attached below [pdf].

Now, at that point -- 25 October, 2010 -- one would hope that a competent and impartial investigations team would turn toward investigating how this forensic finding came about. Sweden takes very seriously the issue of making false claims or presenting false evidence in sex crime cases, which is punishable with a 2-year prison sentence. In this particular case, however, the lead investigation officer, Mats Gehlin, simply asked the SKL to run the test again (page 81 of the FUP). In fairness, the first result does mention a tiny speck that might be "something," which a second test later found to be a very small sample of mitochondrial DNA.

This is significant for two reasons: first, mitochondrial DNA is not uniquely identifying in the same way as chromosomal DNA; and, more importantly, a sample which contains mitochondrial DNA but no chromosomal DNA can only come from hair and nails. And, of course, a used condom should be awash with chromosomal DNA from both participants -- but this one has none.

Authored by David J Campbell

Creating a fluid society is the way to pull the OCW’s 99% movement together with pluralism.

The occupy Wall Street movement has been lambasted for not having one set of demands but their lack of hierarchical organisation and lack of demands (an absolute is loved by an opponent wanting to pick apart rather than build) is their message. “[We] are a open, participatory and horizontally organized process through which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective forces within and against the constant crises of our times”. As The Economist put it when commenting on this “[it] sounds a bit academic , that’s because it is”. The Economist points out that an ethnographer and reader of anthropology David Greaber had studied the people of Betafo in Madagascar and liked the way they could rule themselves without a leader through “consensus decision-making”. According to The Economist Mr Greaber has spent some time organising the OCW’s movement.

Sydney Stop the War Coalition is organizing a bus trip to Canberra on Thursday November 17 when US President Barack Obama will address the Australian Parliament.

The visit – his first to Australia as President – marks the 60th anniversary of the Australian-US war alliance. Bipartisan Australian governmental support for this war alliance has meant that Australia has been the US' “deputy sheriff” in the Asia-Pacific region, and beyond.

This has entrenched a bipartisan sycophancy which has included sending Australian troops to join wars for oil - Iraq - and other natural resources and political leverage –Afghanistan.

Australian governments are therefore not only complicit in the deaths of Australian soldiers, but of countless civilians. This bipartisanship has also led to complicity in the rendition of Australian citizens.Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president, with Australia
compliance.

In the case of Bradley Manning, the US Army is preparing a pretrial hearing which will disclose the details of the government case against him. This case has been unfairly prejudiced by Obama’s public statement that “he broke the law”. As this case accelerates, Obama’s visit provides an opportune time to call for Bradley Manning to be released.

Julian Assange will face judgement on November 2. Should the outcome not be
favourable, he is in danger of eventual extradition to the United States, due to a legal device known as Temporary Surrender. In the event of a good outcome, Assange's visa is about to expire and, due to the US government’s financial block, Wikileaks is in jeopardy. In deference to the United States, the Australian government has given scant protection to one of its citizens.