Assange could face espionage trial in US - Crime, UK. Mr Assange is in a British jail awaiting extradition proceedings to Sweden after being refused bail at Westminster Magistrates’ Court despite a number of prominent public figures offering to stand as surety.
His arrest in north London yesterday was described by the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates as “good news”, and may pave the way for extradition to America and a possible lengthy jail sentence. The US Justice Department is considering charging Mr Assange with espionage offences over his website’s unprecedented release of classified US diplomatic files. Several right-wing American politicians are pressing for his prosecution and even execution, with Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential candidate, saying he should be pursued the same as al-Qa’ida and Taliban leaders.
The Swedish government seeks Mr Assange’s extradition for alleged sexual offences against two women. Obama Crafts New Anti-WikiLeaks Law. Obama Crafts New Anti-WikiLeaks Law John Glaser, August 15, 2011 From Secrecy News:
Here’s The Legal Complaint WikiLeaks Is Threatening To File Against Visa, MasterCard - Andy Greenberg - The Firewall. Wikileaks: Swiss Bank Postfinance Under Criminal Investigation. The attorney general for the Canton and Republic of Bern has instigated a criminal investigation into PostFinance’s handling of the Wikileaks affair.
The investigation has nothing to do with the much vaunted and highly overrated banking secret usually on everybody’s mind when thinking of the banking gnomes of Switzerland. In fact, PostFinance is not even a bank. PostFinance devolved out of the postal service’s handling and delivering money for its customers. These days, they hold accounts for private customers, companies, and bodies of the public domain. It is not too far off the truth to assume that everybody in Switzerland has an account with PostFinance. PostFinance also handles Swiss interbank payments guaranteeing that a payment from on account in one bank arrives at another bank the same day. It is part of DiePost, the national mail company of Switzerland comparable to the Royal Mail.
As part of DiePost, PostFinance is subject to the postal secret which is absolute. Wrote to Paypal about Wikileaks. Their response... Wikileaks: Why Flattr didn’t budge to the pressure. Judge denies request to throw out order seeking WikiLeaks Twitter records. A judge presiding over the US government’s request for Twitter records relating to associates of Wikileaks has denied a motion to throw out the request, ruling that the associates don’t have standing to challenge it.
The judge also denied a request to unseal the government’s application for the Twitter order. Judge Theresa Buchanan, in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled that because the government was not seeking content of the Twitter accounts in question (PDF), the subjects did not have standing to challenge the government’s request for the records. Content, under the Stored Communications Act, is “any information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of that communication.” “The Twitter Order does not demand the contents of any communication,” Judge Buchanan writes in her opinion, “and thus constitutes only a request for records under [the law].” The disclosures sought are “relevant and material” to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. Rop.gonggri.jp/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Twitter_Unsealing_Order.pdf. WikiLeaks: US opens grand jury hearing.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange listens during a news conference at the Frontline Club in London.
Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters. News Desk: Manning, Assange, and the Espionage Act. The coming week will mark the one-year anniversary of an unusual chapter in the unfolding WikiLeaks saga: the naming of Bradley Manning, a young military-intelligence analyst and Private First Class in the United States Army, as the source of some of the most spectacular classified leaks in this country’s history.
Manning’s role as a WikiLeaks source, reported first at Wired.com, emerged from encrypted online confessions that he apparently made to Adrian Lamo—a former hacker who was secretly recording those confessions, and who later gave them to federal authorities and also made them public. By the time Wired.com published its story, on June 6, 2010, Manning had descended into a labyrinth of military detention, where he has remained (at first, for more than a month without charge). Very few people have been able to talk to him, and his personal defense has not been heard.