WikiLeaks email release reveals hacking by governments worldwide

By Mike Head
July 13, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

WikiLeaks last week published more than one million emails from the Italian surveillance malware vendor Hacking Team, shedding further light on the extent of the spying being conducted by governments around the world against their populations.

Emails in the searchable database disclose the company’s negotiations with intelligence and police agencies to supply some of the advanced technology used to secretly hack into, take control over and monitor computers and smart phones.

In its emails, Hacking Team boasts that its programs can “attack, infect and monitor target PCs and smart phones, in a stealth way” and “bypass encryption, collect relevant data out of any device, and keep monitoring your targets wherever they are, even outside your monitoring domain.”

At least 46 countries are identified as purchasing, or preparing to purchase, Hacking Team software. The list features Western powers, such as the United States, Britain and Australia, along with openly repressive regimes around the world, including military dictatorships such as Egypt and Thailand.

On July 5 the company’s Twitter account was reportedly compromised. Over 400GB of data, featuring internal emails, invoices and source codes were revealed via BitTorrent. Revelations so far include that Hacking Team works with the major imperialist spy agencies, together with police units such as Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion, a paramilitary agency notorious for torture and extrajudicial killings.

The US is a customer via the FBI, the military and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Police agencies in the United Kingdom have trialled Hacking Team’s technology, despite acknowledging that its use could be illegal. Australia’s purchasers include the main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

According to a survey of the database published by the Intercept web site, Hacking Team’s biggest sales in recent years have come from these countries, in descending order of sales: Mexico, Italy, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Hungary, Malaysia, UAE, the US, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Panama, Ethiopia, Egypt, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Spain, Ecuador, Oman, Switzerland, Thailand, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, Cyprus, Honduras, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Poland, and Bahrain.

The company was pushing for contracts in Brazil, Belarus, Guatemala, Israel, Kuwait, Finland, Georgia, Greece, India, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere. Several intelligence and police agencies in India sought technology that was not just target-specific, but could create a sweeping net of surveillance.

One Hacking Team email sent to Maharashtra police provided an insight into the far-reaching capabilities of the company’s Remote Control System (RCS) to manipulate and monitor computer networks and smart phones.

“It allows you to covertly collect data from the most common desktop operating systems, such as: Windows, OS X, Linux,” the email claimed. “Furthermore, Remote Control System can monitor all the modern smart phones: Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows phone. Once a target is infected, you can access all the information, including: Skype calls, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Line, Viber and many more—device location, files, screenshots, microphone, virtual currencies and much more.”

A brochure for RCS stated: “Take control of your targets and monitor them regardless of encryption and mobility … Remote Control System is invisible to the user, evades anti-virus and firewalls, and doesn’t affect the devices’ performance or battery life.”

Other promotional material emphasised that RCS could remotely activate microphones and cameras and send the data back for analysis, and monitor people logging in to Gmail and Facebook.

Emails relating to Australia showed company representatives identifying state and territory police forces, and a Victorian state anti-corruption body, as well as ASIO and the AFP, as being in confidential negotiations with Hacking Team. Victoria’s anti-corruption commission was considering signing a $500,000 contract for monitoring software as recently as two weeks ago.

Another email chain named a Canberra company, Criterion Solutions, signing a non-disclosure agreement for access to information about the RCS program last November. The Hacking Team’s Singaporean representatives later said Criterion Solutions was acting for ASIO.

For further exposing the surveillance being conducted against millions of people internationally, WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, will come under renewed assault by the governments and agencies involved. WikiLeaks is already being branded as “criminal,” while the anti-democratic operations of the so-called security agencies are regarded as legitimate.

Eric Rabe, the chief marketing and communications officer for Hacking Team, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the hacking of the company’s data was “reckless and dangerous.” It was “a criminal attack” conducted with “no regard for public safety.” Rabe insisted that Hacking Team’s services helped police and investigators “keep the rest of us safe.”

In reality, as documented by previous WikiLeaks releases, the US and its allies are engaged in criminal activities on a worldwide scale, including massacres, torture, regime-change operations and illegal bugging. In addition, their mass surveillance operations, spanning the globe, have been laid bare by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The UK-based Privacy International expressed shock at the scale of the Hacking Team’s operations disclosed by WikiLeaks. The organisation suggested that Western governments had not realised the “full picture” and needed to “ensure the integrity of their contractors.” It urged them to confine access to surveillance technology to “governments with strong human rights records,” rather than “governments with awful human rights records.”

The truth of the matter is that the US and other Western imperialist powers are leading the establishment of police-state conditions, ripping up basic legal and democratic rights in the process. Amid mounting political and social discontent, they are the most intent of all governments on utilising the technology now available to establish the scaffolding of a police state.

In Australia, the Abbott government, with the Labor Party’s bipartisan support, has pushed through parliament four major surveillance bills in the past six months, on the pretext of combating the threat of ISIS terrorism. The very first bill, brought forward last September, specifically allows ASIO to use listening, optical and tracking devices without warrants, and hack into and “disrupt” entire computer networks, while imposing lengthy jail terms for whistleblowers and journalists who alert the public to the undercover operations.

The fourth bill, passed this year despite widespread popular opposition, compels all Internet providers and social media platforms, including Google and Facebook, to retain vast amounts of data for two years so that the security services can trawl through it, permitting them to compile a full picture of everyone’s spending habits, political views, friends and associates and geographical locations.

The Ridiculous Nature of Saudi Intelligence: What the Saudi Cables Released by WikiLeaks Say and Don’t Say

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
June 23, 2015
Global Research

 

WikiLeaks released the first batch of the so-called “Saudi cables” on June 19, 2015. By June 22, a total of 61,214 of the documents were released online. More than half a million of these cables are in the hands of WikiLeaks.

The documents are believed to have been hacked from the Saudi Foreign Ministry in May 2015 by a group calling itself the Yemen Cyber Army as retaliation to the House of Saud’s war against Yemen. The Yemen Cyber Army probably is not Yemeni and almost certainly is an outward show for another actor wishing to either penalize Riyadh or even possibly manipulate it.

In the Arab World there is great interest about the documents. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akbar has also partnered itself with WikiLeaks to release the so-called Saudi cables, as it has with previous leaks. The Saudi cables, however, do not tell the world and Wikileaks readers anything new about Saudi Arabia.

 

The Buying Influence of Riyadh’s Petro-Dollar

The House of Saud has characteristically tried to buy influence. It wrongly believes that loyalty can be bought. Call them subsidies, grants, bursaries, or business contracts: they are all forms of bribery.

The documents released by WikiLeaks confirm that the House of Saud has used bribery as a major foreign policy tool by financing political figures in other countries—such as the pro-Israeli warlord Samir Geagea in Lebanon—and buying off individuals and organizations to secure its interests. This bribery includes co-opting and recruiting both Arabic and non-Arabic media outlets.

Additionally, the cables confirm that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been spying on its citizens abroad, closely following Saudi university students to see if they want changes in Saudi Arabia, watching dissidents, trying its hardest to handicap Iranian interests, destabilizing Iraq, helping the dictators of Bahrain, and using Saudi-financed media to sanitize its image and deceive Arab audiences. Again, none of this tells us anything new that we did not know about the Kingdom and its decadent rulers.

The House of Saud’s Information War

The documents depict the House of Saud as waging a perpetual and systematic campaign to influence and manage the media as part of a vulgar perception management strategy.  Not only are Saudi-owned media outlets like Al Arabiya and Asharq Al-Awsat part of this, the Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information has been central to this policy of “buying influence” using the revenues from Saudi Arabia’s oil sales.

The Saudi cables show that Riyadh’s rulers have used a gradient strategy. The House of Saud’s media strategy starts with co-optation through bribery by what we can call “agents of influence.” Agents of influence can include diplomats, public relations firms, and lawyers. The House of Saud has teams of lawyers, consultants, and public relations firms constantly working for it and monitoring the media and the House of Saud’s public image at all times.

It is the task of the agents of influence to find and contact the media outlets reporting negatively about the House of Saud. In some cases the agents of influence find them and in others Saudi officials in Riyadh order the agents of influence to contact the third parties. The preliminary task of the agents of influence is to “neutralize” the negative reporting about the House of Saud. This is primarily done through bribery. Riyadh has paid for massive subscriptions of Arab newspapers in countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, and Mauritania as a means of inducing the publications to self-censor themselves or to provide positive coverage about the House of Saud.

If bribery does not work then a strategy of “containment” involving slander is applied followed by a strategy of “confrontation” that involves litigation and sabotage.  Both the containment and confrontation strategies of the House of Saud involve falsely planting stories under what is generally categorized as black propaganda. Aside from promoting the image of the House of Saud, co-opted media outlets are important for the strategies of containment and confrontation because they launch attacks on those targeted by the House of Saud. Targets have included Arab activists, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, the newspaper Al-Akbar, and Syria.

The Obvious versus the Unmentioned

Again, it has to be noted that it widely known that bribery have been an important and central policy tool for the morally bankrupt Saudi princes. It also has to be emphasized that the information about the Saudi media strategy released by WikiLeaks is not a new revelation. These Saudi activities have widely been recognized.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia has reacted to the release of the cables by WikiLeaks by warning its citizens to refrain from reading the documents. Riyadh has emphasized that ignoring the documents is a matter of national security.  It has also declared that the documents being released by Wikileaks are doctored fabrications without even providing one example.

What is missing from the Saudi cables that WikiLeaks released heretofore are any documents about the House of Saud’s support for Al-Qaeda and the other armed gangs that are wreaking havoc inside Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. This is important and noteworthy.

The Timing of the Release: Targeting Rapprochement between Moscow and Riyadh?

There are some very important questions to be asked and thought over about the Saudi cables. Are the release of the Saudi cables retaliation for Saudi aggression in Yemen or punishment for efforts by the House of Saud to exert itself independently from Washington? Why is the crisis in Syria and Saudi support for the foreign fighters ravaging Syria largely left out of the leaks? If Saudi involvement in the fighting in Syria was seriously mentioned in the cables released by WikiLeaks it could incriminate other countries, such as the US, Britain, France, and Turkey.

The release of the Saudi cables may hurt Saudi Arabia economically and weaken its media strategy, which will lead to both economic and political instability for the Kingdom as it increasingly fails to control more information about the House of Saud’s actions. Furthermore, the Saudi cables have been released on the eve of important talks and negotiations between Saudi and Russian officials that follow agreements and earlier talks between the Russian Federation and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The bilateral talks are set to consolidate a series of agreements made on cooperation and trade between the Kingdom and the Russian Federation that will help boost the besieged Russian economy that Washington is trying to crash. This is why it is important to think over the origins and motives of the Yemen Cyber Army and ask who is pulling its strings? Is a genuine Saudi adversary behind the Yemen Cyber Army or an unhappy ally that wants to prevent any rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Russia?

One of the documents that is getting increasing focus is an agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to vote for one another to join the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Is it a mere coincidence that UN Watch decided to focus on this agreement to criticize Russia and even refers to it as a dictatorship in an article published by Hillel Neuer on June 21,2015? Conversely, UN Watch has remained silent about the multitude of similar agreements made by the US with the House of Saud and other dictatorships. What has UN Watch said about Bahrain or Gaza? Why does it oppose the Venezuelan government? In reality, the goal of UN Watch has been to use the United Nations Human Rights Council to further the interests of the US and Israel while it undermines the body for criticizing Israeli human rights violations. UN Watch even helped legitimize the war on Libya by NATO in 2011 and has pushed for a war with Syria. Now it is targeting Russia.

Although Riyadh could be manipulating Moscow for Washington, joint funds, space cooperation, nuclear agreements, investments, and arms deals all seem  to be in the works. The last time Saudi Arabia made major deals with the Kremlin nothing came out of them, either because the House of Saud was toying with the Russians or due to orders being sent from the US to Riyadh.

The Ridiculous Nature of Saudi Intelligence 

Another point that is worth mentioning is the unprofessional nature of the Saudi intelligence structure. This is not new information either, but it still worth mentioning. Reading the leaked documents it becomes very clear that the Saudi intelligence structure is sloppy, unsophisticated, and badly trained. The analyses made in the Saudi intelligence reports are ridiculous and even rely on both tabloids and unverified internet research from open sources.

A case in point is the Saudi intelligence report that mentions this author. As one of the subjects inside the initial batch of Saudi cables that WikiLeaks released, I took particular interest in looking over the Saudi intelligence memorandum that I was wrongly mentioned in as “Mahdi Nazemroaya Darius.” This particular Saudi intelligence memo relies on internet research to look at the background of myself and several colleagues who have pointed out how Saudi Arabia has supported terrorism and worked with the US and Israel in a destabilization campaign in the Middle East and North Africa.

Probably based on an assumption that I am of Iranian origin based on the name Darius, the memo ambiguously and wrongly speculates that I could “be working for Iran” without giving any context to what that could mean. The description of others are also all vulgar caricatures that  simply refer to them as “anti-American” or “anti-Western.”

A Deficit of Critical Thinking in the Information Age 

The type of misanalysis that is exemplified by Saudi intelligence analysts is increasingly endemic of intelligence services and the consultative firms that governments around the world, including in the United States, are increasingly relying on. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that this is actually the second time that I found myself mentioned in a document released by WikiLeaks; the first time was in 2013 when WikiLeaks released a hacked email about the possible whereabouts of Muammar Qaddafi from the Texas-based intelligence consultation company Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). Stratfor was also off. The Texas-based company mistakenly listed me as an employee of the Associated Press inside Libya during NATO’s bombing campaign while it was discussing the situation in the Rixos Al-Nasr and making arguments based on association fallacies.

In regards to the Saudi intelligence memo, it is clear that no real efforts were made to do proper background checks outside of the internet. It makes one cynically ask if Saudi Arabia’s intelligence structure does much more than police the Kingdom’s local population and if it is the intelligence bodies of the US and other countries, including Britain and Israel, that are doing most the important intelligence work for Riyadh.

Looking over the documents released by WikiLeaks it becomes clear that they confirm what is already known about the House of Saud and that there is a serious problem of analysis in the organizational structures of Saudi Arabia. A lack of critical thinking is not a problem that money and bribery can solve either. With this type of mentality and lack of analytical thinking about the world, it is of little wonder that Riyadh got itself in a quagmire in Yemen. There, however, remain important questions about the motives for the release of the Saudi cables and about the background of the Yemen Cyber Army.

Google, Gag Orders and the WikiLeaks Investigation

By Binoy Kampmark
January 30, 2015
Dissident Voice

 

Google’s gargantuan presence on the Internet, be it in terms of search engines, archived data and the use of email, has become a problem.  Given that it traffics in information of virtually every shade and colour, it was bound to be on the attractive hit list for law enforcement authorities. Those who use its services had to be aware that, at some point, their subscriber information would become attractive.

Google took almost over two and a half years to disclose that it has handed emails and various forms of digital data belonging to three WikiLeaks staffers to the US government.  On December 23, 2014, investigations editor Sarah Harrison, section editor Joseph Farrell, and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson were told by the company that contents from their subscriber accounts had been handed over to US authorities.  The letter to Google, authored by Michael Ratner, counsel from the Center for Constitutional Rights representing WikiLeaks, expresses astonishment and a degree of disturbance at the fact.

The warrants, outlined in the letter of January 26, are said to have covered espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, the theft or conversion of property belonging to the United States government, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and conspiracy.

The extent of the disclosure required was staggering, “including stored or preserved copies of emails sent to and from the account; draft emails and deleted emails; all records or other information related to the identity of the account (associated phone numbers, IP addresses, types of services utilized, account status, log files, any credit or bank account numbers associated); all records or other information stored at any time using the account; any communications the person had with Google.”

Julian Assange’s suspicions that Google might well have been in the FBI bed were triggered after it was revealed that orders had been made requiring Twitter to disclose material connected with WikiLeaks affiliates.  The contents of the April 19, 2011 conversation held between Assange and Google’s Eric Schmidt are disclosed in the letter.

In Assange’s words, WikiLeaks was “fighting this case now, with Twitter, we’ve done three court hearings now, trying to get the names of the other companies that fulfilled the subpoenas for the grand jury in the US. Twitter resisted and so that’s how some of us became aware.  They argued that we should be told that there was a subpoena.”  Schmidt’s response: “I can certainly pass on your specific request to our general counsel.”  The Google chief was left in no doubt that “Google argue legally that WikiLeaks as an organization should be informed… Ok, I’ll pass that along.”

Unlike Twitter, which challenged the US government over notification protocols to its subscribers in the event orders were made on the company, Google remained tardy. The technology beast was not for turning.  In the words of Ratner’s letter, “We are surprised that Google appears to have failed to act upon this request, causing notice to our clients to be delayed more than two and a half years.”  Lists on materials provided to law enforcement, or any pending legal proceedings, were not submitted.

The Twitter episode crystallised an approach that seems to have infected Google. In December 2010, Twitter received a court order for subscriber information covering five WikiLeaks staff members and supporters. The US Justice Department was sought out and pressed on the issue: those individuals concerned would be informed that their data was the subject of interest.  Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia did not, at that point, seek a gag order on Twitter.  Disclosures were subsequently made to the supporters and staff.

It transpired that assistant US Attorney, Tracy Doherty-McCormick, turned up in the material that was subsequently published. The lid on the prosecutors had been lifted, ensuing a degree of fury and alarm.  The US Attorney’s office duly hit the roof with the ensuing publicity.  According to attorney Albert Gidari, who has represented both Twitter and Google at various stages, they even “went through” it.  A precedent had thus been set: the desire to seek gag orders over warrants disclosing material connected with WikiLeaks and coming through the conduit with Google, was born.

Gidari, as is to be expected, treads softly regarding his client. Google, he claimed, has repeatedly contested the gag order on the WikiLeaks warrants.  “From January 2011 to the present, Google has continued to fight to lift the gag orders on any legal process it has received on WikiLeaks.”  Their response to WikiLeaks says nothing of the sort.

The nature of these warrants has been deemed by Alexander Abdo, privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, to be “shockingly broad”.  “This is basically ‘Hand over anything you’ve got on this person.’” The pressing point here, however, is how the conduct of WikiLeaks, in this case, hardly seems different from “what major newspapers do every single day in speaking to government officials and publishing still-secret information.” Editors and journalists beware – and very wary.

The gag order itself is also problematic, an aberration that stalks the First Amendment with its threatening fetters. The ACLU has argued that such orders must “be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.”  But authorities keen on getting the loot can’t help themselves, and tend to fall into generalising any associated risks.

There is the other, broader picture at stake here.  Even as Schmidt attempts to remove the contents of any egg that has found its way onto his face, the Google revelations simply point to the continued interest in WikiLeaks by US authorities.  The Eastern District of Virginia continues to busy itself with the publishing outfit.  Around a dozen outstanding search warrants and court orders remain under seal, a situation attorney Ahmed Ghappour, who acts for journalist Alexa O’Brien, is attempting to redress.

Google has refused to disclose the details of its conduct towards the three WikiLeaks staff members, suggesting rather darkly that it does protect “all our users”.  But the gag orders present a classic bind.  Google won’t reveal to its subscribers that it will, in fact, hand their data to the authorities, even if it assures them legal action will be taken on their behalf to prevent that. In failing to do so, their own escape route is that there was a gag order to begin with. This suggests an incentive to get parsimonious when using the technology giant’s services.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Google Draws Wikileaks’ Ire for Secretly Providing Private Email Data to DOJ

“Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick,” says journalist Sarah Harrison

By Jon Queally
January 26, 2015
Common Dreams

 

According to Wikileaks, the warrants reveal for the first time a clear list of the alleged offences the US government is trying to apply in its attempts to build a prosecution against Julian Assange and his staff. The offences add up to a total of 45 years of imprisonment. (Image: Wikileaks)

 

In what non-profit media organization Wikileaks is calling a “horrifying precedent for press freedoms,” internet giant Google has confirmed it complied with a request by the U.S. government to hand over the complete content and data attached to email accounts belonging to three Wikileaks staffers under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge in 2012.

On Sunday, attorneys representing Wikileaks sent a letter (web) to executives at Google  demanding answers related to what they termed the “serious violation of the privacy and journalistic rights” of their three employees–Investigations editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell and senior journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Wikileaks was notified on Christmas Eve of 2014 by Google that the order had been fulfilled, citing a gag order the company said prevented it from informing the three individuals, or their employer, earlier. Wikileaks is only making the details of the situation public now.

The letter from Wikileak’s legal team to Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt states, “We are astonished and disturbed that Google waited over two and a half years to notify its subscribers that a search warrant was issued for their records.”

According to Wikileaks, the warrants reveal for the first time a clear list of the alleged offenses the US government is trying to apply in its attempts to build a prosecution against Julian Assange and his staff for their role in revealing secrets that have proved damaging to the nation’s reputation. The possible criminal offenses cited by the order, according to the group’s analysis, could total 45 years of imprisonment.

Assange, in a statement, aimed his ire at the White House for seeking out access to the private communications. “WikiLeaks has out endured everything the Obama administration has thrown at us,” Assange said, “and we will out endure these latest ‘offenses’ too.”

Though Wikileaks has said that its staffers do not use their gmail accounts for communications related to their work, the group argues the search warrants represent a clear violation of their personal privacy and an assault on press freedoms.

For her part, Sarah Harrison told the Guardian, “Knowing that the FBI read the words I wrote to console my mother over a death in the family makes me feel sick.”

The Guardian reports:

When it notified the WikiLeaks employees last month, Google said it had been unable to say anything about the warrants earlier as a gag order had been imposed. Google said the non-disclosure orders had subsequently been lifted, though it did not specify when.

Harrison, who also heads the Courage Foundation, told the Guardian she was distressed by the thought of government officials gaining access to her private emails. […]

She accused Google of helping the US government conceal “the invasion of privacy into a British journalist’s personal email address. Neither Google nor the US government are living up to their own laws or rhetoric in privacy or press protections”.

The court orders cast a data net so wide as to ensnare virtually all digital communications originating from or sent to the three. Google was told to hand over the contents of all their emails, including those sent and received, all draft correspondence and deleted emails. The source and destination addresses of each email, its date and time, and size and length were also included in the dragnet.

According to the statement from Wikileaks:

WikiLeaks’ legal team has written to Google expressing its dismay that Google failed to notify the warrants’ targets immediately. The failure to notify has prevented the three journalists from “protect[ing] their interests including their rights to privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches”. The “take everything” warrants are unconstitutionally broad and appear to violate the Privacy Protection Act so would have a good chance of being opposed; however, Google handed everything over before that was possible.

Although Google claims that it was at some stage under a gag order from the US government, there is no indication that Google fought the gag and it is unlikely that the gag just happened to expire the day before Christmas. Similar gags for warrants against WikiLeaks journalists have been successfully fought by Twitter in much shorter time-frames.

While WikiLeaks journalists, perhaps uniquely, do not use Google services for internal communications or for communicating with sources, the search warrants nonetheless represent a substantial invasion of their personal privacy and freedom. The information handed over to the US government included all email content, metadata, contacts, draft emails, deleted emails and IP addresses connected to the accounts. Google redacted the search warrants before sending them to WikiLeaks staff.

Speaking with the Guardian, Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney and privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the warrants were “shockingly broad” and deeply troubling.

“This is basically ‘Hand over anything you’ve got on this person’,” Abdo told the Guardian. “That’s troubling as it’s hard to distinguish what WikiLeaks did in its disclosures from what major newspapers do every single day in speaking to government officials and publishing still-secret information.”

Journalist Kevin Gosztola, writing at FireDogLake, expanded on this point. “The broadly tailored search warrants are evidence of the fact that the government refuses to recognize that WikiLeaks is staffed by journalists and editors. It refuses to recognize that the organization’s act of publishing US government documents is an act of journalism.”

The implications of this, according to Gosztola, are profound. He explained:

Imagine the US government had served search warrants on the editors of The New York Times. Imagine Google received these warrants, and they were as broad as the ones issued against WikiLeaks editors—and Google did not fight back. The entire US press corps would be livid, as they rightfully were when it became known that the Justice Department had seized the Associated Press’ phone records for a leak investigation.

In fact, the government recently concluded their relentless pursuit of Times reporter James Risen. They spent years arguing in court that he had no reporter’s privilege and had to reveal his confidential sources so the government could prosecute former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for a leak. They seized many of records of his personal communications and even some detailing financial transactions.

While comparatively there may be more of a political cost to the Justice Department if they were to go after The New York Times, one never knows when there might be a presidential administration that does not buckle to public pressure, as was the case with Risen. The legal precedents created as the government pursues WikiLeaks are the same legal precedents that can always be used to go after other journalists in the future. American journalists maintain their collective silence at their profession’s own peril.

In his statement released on Sunday, Assange said, “I call on president Obama to do the right thing and call off his dogs—for his own sake. President Obama is set to go down in history as the president who brought more bogus “espionage” cases against the press than all previous presidents combined.”

Leaked Internal CIA Document Admits US Drone Program “Counterproductive”

Document published by Wikileaks reveals agency’s own internal review found key counter-terrorism strategy “may increase support” for the groups it targets

By Jon Queally
December 19, 2014
Common Dreams, December 18, 2014

 

Wikileaks has released a 2009 internal CIA review of its clandestine “targeted killing” operations. (Image: Screenshot with overlay)

 

Wikileaks on Thursday has made public a never-before-seen internal review conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that looked at the agency’s drone and targeted assassination programs in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.

The agency’s own analysis, conducted in 2009, found that its clandestine drone and assassination program was likely to produce counterproductive outcomes, including strengthening the very “extremist groups” it was allegedly designed to destroy.

Here’s a link to the document, titled Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Toolocument (pdf).

In one of the key findings contained in the CIA report, agency analysts warn of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT).

“The potential negative effect of HLT operations,” the report states, “include increasing the level of insurgent support […], strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”

Wikileaks points out that this internal prediction “has been proven right” in the years since the internal review was conducted near the outset of President Obama’s first term. And despite those internal warnings—which have been loudly shared by human rights and foreign policy experts critical of the CIA’s drone and assassination programs—Wikileaks also notes that after the internal review was prepared, “US drone strike killings rose to an all-time high.”

Reached by the Washington Post on Thursday for response, CIA spokesperson Kali J. Caldwell said the agency would not comment “on the authenticity or content of purported stolen intelligence documents.”

According to a statement released by Wikileaks:

The report discusses assassination operations (by various states) against the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, the FARC, Hizbullah, the PLO, HAMAS, Peru’s Shining Path, the Tamil’s LTTE, the IRA and Algeria’s FLN. Case studies are drawn from Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

The assessment was prepared by the CIA’s Office of Transnational Issues (OTI). Its role is to provide “the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support”. The report is dated 7 July 2009, six months into Leon Panetta’s term as CIA chief, and not long after CIA analyst John Kiriakou blew the whistle on the torture of CIA detainees. Kiriakou is still in prison for shedding light on the CIA torture programme.

Following the politically embarrassing exposure of the CIA’s torture practices and the growing cost of keeping people in detention indefinitely, the Obama administration faced a crucial choice in its counter-insurgency strategy: should it kill, capture, or do something else entirely?

Given exclusive access to the CIA document ahead of its public release, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Philip Dorling reported earlier on Thursday:

According to a leaked document by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, “high value targeting” (HVT) involving air strikes and special forces operations against insurgent leaders can be effective, but can also havenegative effects including increasing violence and greater popular support for extremist groups.

The leaked document is classified secret and “NoForn” (meaning not to be distributed to non-US nationals) and reviews attacks by the United States and other countries engaged in counter-insurgency operations over the past 50 years.

The CIA assessment is the first leaked secret intelligence document published by WikiLeaks since 2011. Led by Australian publisher Julian Assange, the anti-secrecy group says the CIA assessment is the first in what will be a new series of leaked documents relating to the US agency.

The 2009 CIA study lends support to critics of US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by warning that such operations “may increase support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders’ lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent”.

Drone strikes have been a key element of the Obama administration’s attacks on Islamic extremist terrorist and insurgent groups in the Middle East and south Asia. Australia has directly supported these strikes through the electronic espionage operations of the US-Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.