Now that Julian Assange is free on bail, it is perhaps time to lighten up a little.
2084
A SHORT SATIRICAL STORY
Marty Hari was overwhelmed and it was 3rd March 2084. The man from http://www.dikkileaks.org/exposure had leaked the data from http://www.PublicControl.com/usa, exposing a horrible secret two days previously. All top US officials and politicians had exempted themselves from obeying CyberTrojan law. US authorities, highly embarrassed, were baying for his blood while he was sanitising the Swedish data in his London apartment and watching holographic TV around his computer.
Lieutnant Scheisserkopf at Pentagon Newspeak was organising parades of military solidarity and giving daily briefings on the threats to US national security posed by Dikkileaks, saying:
Marty Hari is an enemy of the state and Attorney General Holdup is examining the provisions of CyberTrojan-22.
CyberTrojan-22 states that agents enforcing CyberTrojan-22 need not prove that CyberTrojan-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating.
Marty found something else not to his liking, at all.
To avoid thinking of his worst nightmare come true, he reflected on world history from the early 21st century. Global warming, food shortages, water wars: a biblical pestilence of disease and floods, fires and famines. Governments had to take drastic action to curb population growth. It all came from an original idea of a president's wife, later a Secretary of State, lastly President who in her last will and testament gave her flash drive to Congress with all her accumulated ideas and proposals.
As reported by the BBC, The Sydney Morning Herald and The
Lawfare: Problems with the Espionage Act
The law also has two additional problems that receive relatively little attention but which are important in contemplating its use. The first is that it contains no limiting principle in its apparent criminalization of secondary transmissions of proscribed material. ...
By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations. It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them–in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all. As long as this deficiency remains, it will be a poor instrument against an outlet like Wikileaks, precisely because there will be no way in principle to distinguish between the prosecution of Assange and the prosecution of just about anyone else–from the New York Times to the guy on the street who reads the newspaper and talks about it. That will make Espionage Act prosecutions seem like far more of a menace to legitimate speech than would a prosecution under a better-drawn law. There are ways to fix this problem–an intent element and a clear limitation to material not already made public would be a start–but as long as it goes unfixed, I oppose any prosecutions under it for secondary transmissions.
The second problem is that the statute, by its clear terms, does not cover the overwhelming bulk of the material that Wikileaks disclosed. The Espionage Act is not a general bar against leaking or publishing classified information. It covers only material “relating to the national defense.”
Lawfare: Seven Thoughts on Wikileaks
But as all the hand-wringing over the 1917 Espionage Act shows, it is not obvious what law he has violated. It is also important to remember, to paraphrase Justice Stewart in the Pentagon Papers, that the responsibility for these disclosures lies firmly with the institution empowered to keep them secret: the Executive branch.
The Hill: Judiciary panel to take up Espionage Act, legal options against WikiLeaks
The Judiciary Committee will be looking at the World War I-era Espionage Act and the "legal and constitutional issues raised by WikiLeaks," as directed by Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).
It will be the first congressional hearing on WikiLeaks since the Nov. 28 publication of thousands of classified diplomatic cables, some of which have proven embarrassing to the U.S. government because of their frank tone. The witness list was not yet available.
Incoming Judiciary Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) also vowed to conduct hearings when he takes the gavel in the new Congress.
But the Justice Department is proceeding with caution: Most experts agree the case crosses into new legal territory where there is little certainty.
ARTICLE 19 is extremely concerned by the political pressure governments and elected officials are exerting on internet companies, to force them to deny provision of services to WikiLeaks without prior authorisation from a court. Recent actions by a number of internet companies against WikiLeaks raise several issues about the rights of free expression on the internet, which is largely controlled by private companies but still subject to state threats.
Intermediaries, such as internet companies, facilitate connections between the providers of information and the users of that information. Increasingly, they are the subject of legal and other actions whose actual end targets are their service-users. Where these companies can do so lawfully, they should resist such interference.
Any removal of information on internet, or blocking of internet access to information should be authorized only by a court. Actions that seek to limit freedom to donate to their service-users should only be allowed after a finding by a court that a service-user has violated the law. Internet companies in turn should be transparent in actions affecting users of their services.
I just had to watch Fox News talking about how Wikileaks was promoting anarchy. It’s not my fault, I was looking for ghouls. Anyway, when I went back to twitter everyone I follow had linked the first video below. We had been talking a lot about how the behaviour of the MIC in the last year will radicalize a generation that has been widely regarded as being completely self absorbed, spoiled, etc., etc., all the things old people usually call young people who haven’t done anything yet. But look at this.
As previously announced, the Personal Democracy Forum will be hosting an event titled "A Symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom" today from 10am - 2pm ET in New York City.
You can tune in live to the event via http://personaldemocracy.com/pdfleakslive
The discussion will feature Emily Bell, Esther Dyson, Charles Ferguson, Jeff Jarvis, Arianna Huffington, Gideon Lichfield Rebecca McKinnon, Marc Pesce, Jay Rosen, Carne Ross, Micah L Sifry, Dave Winer and more.
An Argument of the Heart.
I feel outclassed. I feel unbelievably inarticulate.
The information war is raging, and I am speechless.
The warring tribes have set their lines,
the corporations have told their lies.
I've starred in horror and disgust,
as Sen. Lieberman, defiles his elected office.
I've whispered praise of wiki-leaks and Assange,
and have thought hard as to what I would sacrifice.
For personal safety, I couldn't care less,
but to those connected, at this I wince.
It is a telling tale, in which one should shudder,
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Few hours ago it was reported that Julian Assange was arrested in London. His arrest is based on the rape charges in Sweden, so it is claimed it has nothing to do with Wikileaks' latest release, but it is of course very, very convenient. All we can hope for is that he is treated with respect according to law and that Sweden will not be coerced to hand him over to the U.S.
Sunday last week it started snowing again. It seemed like it would never stop as it was snowing the whole day. Yet another thick layer of snow. A layer that will sound-proof our streets. Snow has a funny effect like that, the ability to make you feel like you are in room that muffles sound -- while being outside. So you might say that snow adds a layer of silence in the streets. A barrier of silence, preventing sound to travel far, almost stopping sound from being heard -- and not to mention words.
So many people have said so many things in the last days against and in favor of secrets of state that it is really hard not to get lost between the words and the feelings that those words expose. And this is maybe one of the most frustrating realities of the debate: feelings are, instead of ideas, what determine the discussion, which could not be any worse. People from the spheres of political power—plus the military, the media and the most determinant group of the corporations—have reacted with embarrassment, which is understandable due to the nature of the secrets disclosed but unacceptable coming from institutions that carry such authority and therefore such responsibility. The embarrassment has turned into rage, a completely misguided idea of nationalism, abuse of power, and a sense of pride that in not so important circumstances would move us to spontaneous laughter.
I have tried, I have really tried, to explain the internet to the US DoD. I have said it was a flock of birds, some starfish, even a samizdat movement (ok that was Wikileaks twitter). Let’s try again. Remember when people used to “surf the net”? Well, that’s because it’s kind of like an ocean.
Death to Julian Assange, his offspring, the Wikileaks board, all of us, the internet, etc. Contrary to what these clowns have learned from video games and Hollywood, most countries do have laws. And public opinion works both ways. This is a list of the ghouls and it will soon contain what can be done about them. Sadly, I expect it to grow faster than the NOD. While reading this sickening post, please keep in mind that no one associated with Wikileaks has broken any laws, and Wikileaks’ work over the past four years has caused no physical harm to anyone.
While some of his colleagues are calling for Julian Assange to be prosecuted as a terrorist or assassinated, in an interview on Fox News' Freedom Watch on Thursday, Republican Rep. Ron Paul said that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks should get the same kind of protections as the mainstream media when it comes to releasing information.
"In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said, quoted by Politico. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."
"This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?” he added. “This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"
"What we need is more WikiLeaks about the Federal Reserve," he added. "Can you imagine what it'd be like if we had every conversation in the last 10 years with our Federal Reserve people, the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the central bankers of the world and every agreement or quid-pro-quo they have? It would be massive. People would be so outraged."
In a Twitter post on Friday, Ron Paul wrote: "Re: WikiLeaks — In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."
"WikiLeaks is the first global Samizdat movement. The truth will surface even in the face of total annihilation."
Thus spake the Wikileaks twitter, causing a bit of shock in readers who just got here when Julian Assange started wearing a suit and stopped talking about pissing in the corner of dragon caves.
Okay, I was writing something called the Anonymous Revolution, but Wikileaks twitter just renamed it samizdat. I can live with the slightly more highbrow name, it is more accurate.
The point in either case is this. Wikileaks is not a lone vandal hacker. It is an idea. We all have the idea. And you can’t bomb an idea, or send drones after it, or put it in jail.
The first wave of Wikileaks' Cablegate ground ashore Sunday night. (To search, visit rpgp.org's full text search site.) Coverage has been generally good. I have found Der Spiegel and The Guardian's websites invaluable.
The internet is slightly annoyed. In the euphoric highs of the weekend, people couldn’t wait for a giant document drop that would bring democracy to the world. But when it arrived, it was the biggest ton of documents we’d ever seen in our lives, formal documents yet, a brain crushing amount of work. So far we have 243 documents, which is not quite 0.1% of what we have to go through in just this batch. For democracy to be permanent, there will be an unending stream of these batches. Finals week, every week.
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