Child Stealing By The State: A Social Worker Speaks. Matt DeHart claims he’s wanted for working with Anonymous. MILTON, ONT., APRIL 2014 Guards at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex, a maximum-security jail near Toronto known to inmates as the Milton Hilton, came to rouse their newest prisoner from a concrete bed in the intake holding cells.
Pulling back the hoodie covering his face, they found his T-shirt had been yanked up and twisted around his throat as a ligature. The distraught prisoner was Matt DeHart, a 29-year-old American who had been brought to jail days earlier by a Canada Border Services Agency official and five police officers, who arrested him at the apartment he shares with his parents while fighting for refugee protection here. Pulled from the cell and taken to hospital, he appeared to suffer no serious physical injury but underwent a mental health assessment. After returning to jail, Matt then dived headfirst from his bunk onto the concrete floor of his cell, requiring another urgent hospital visit.
The Government War Against Reporter James Risen. The vendetta against him and whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling reflects an antidemocratic goal: the uninformed consent of the governed.
Ever since New York Times reporter James Risen received his first subpoena from the Justice Department more than six years ago, occasional news reports have skimmed the surface of a complex story. The usual gloss depicts a conflict between top officials who want to protect classified information and a journalist who wants to protect confidential sources. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Sterling—a former undercover CIA officer now facing charges under the Espionage Act, whom the feds want Risen to identify as his source—is cast as a disgruntled ex-employee in trouble for allegedly spilling the classified beans. The Next Battleground in the War on Whistleblowers. Robert MacLean, a US Air Marshal fired for allegedly leaking sensitive government documents, in Dana Point, California.
(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi) This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. The Obama administration has just opened a new front in its ongoing war on whistleblowers. It’s taking its case against one man, former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Air Marshal Robert MacLean, all the way to the Supreme Court.
Meet John Tye: the kinder, gentler, and by-the-book whistleblower. The way John Tye tells it, we’ve all been missing the forest for the trees.
Over the course of two phone calls, the former State Department official told Ars that anyone who has been following the government surveillance discussion since the Snowden disclosures has been too concerned with things like metadata collection. Since last summer, journalists, politicians, and the public have been inundated with largely-unknown terminology, like “Section 215” and “Section 702.” (For a recap: The first disclosure to come from the documents provided by Snowden described the bulk metadata programs, whose legal authority derives from Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the legal authority which the NSA uses as the basis for PRISM and other surveillance and data collection programs.)
But according to Tye, what we should be really worried about is Executive Order 12333 (EO 12333)—or “twelve triple three” in government parlance. Gateway. New leaker disclosing US secrets, government concludes. Your video will begin momentarily.
FIRST ON CNN: New documents formed the basis of story on news site, InterceptThe site is run by Glenn Greenwald, who published leaks by Edward Snowden Article focuses on the growth of names on terror databases during the Obama administration (CNN) -- The federal government has concluded there's a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN.
Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden's leaks. NSA leaker Edward Snowden asks to extend Russia asylum One year of Edward Snowden's revelations Snowden: 'I was trained as a spy' The Price of Whistleblowing: Manning, Greenwald, Assange, Kiriakou and Snowden. My kitchen We were eating dinner last night around my kitchen table when the news of the dustup between Wikileaks and the Intercept came through the tubes.
As I read the details to the people who came here to share food and conversation, everyone’s eyebrows raised. The eyebrows at a lot of tables probably raised as Wikileaks took the Intercept to task for its latest story, and failing to release the name of one of the countries in which the United States is spying on its citizens. The Intercept maintained they had been shown compelling evidence that led them to redact the name; Wikileaks maintained the citizens of the country have a right to know. The eyebrows at my kitchen table were somewhat unique as it relates to the story, however. After More Than a Decade, Congress Finally Sends Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act to President Obama for Signature.
Dana Milbank: The price Gina Gray paid for whistleblowing. But it’s a load of nonsense.
Ask Gina Gray. Gray is the Defense Department whistleblower whose case I have been following for five years. She was the Army civilian worker who, before and after her employment, exposed much of the wrongdoing at Arlington National Cemetery — misplaced graves, mishandled remains and financial mismanagement — and she attempted to do it through the proper internal channels. Pentagon sources have confirmed to me her crucial role in bringing the scandal to light. For her troubles, Gray was fired.
According to documents just obtained by Gray’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, Army Secretary John McHugh rejected the inspector general’s suggestion. Gray, who worked in Iraq as an Army contractor and Army public affairs specialist, is now unemployed and living in North Carolina. Dana Milbank - Putting Her Foot Down and Getting the Boot. The ghost of Rummy is proving difficult to exorcise.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to sweep out the symbols of his predecessor's capricious reign, firing acolytes of Donald Rumsfeld and bringing glasnost to the Pentagon. But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead. When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations. Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted.
Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last night, said he couldn't comment on Gray's firing. What’s the Point of a Source Protection Law That Wouldn’t Protect Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden? By Carey Shenkman Whistle-blower Chelsea Manning.
(AP/Patrick Semansky) Laws are bad when they don’t do what they are meant to and even worse when they cause harm instead. The journalist-source protection law being debated by Congress—the Free Flow of Information Act (FFIA or “federal shield law”) fails in both respects. Despite being pushed by media organizations after Associated Press reporters and other journalists were served court orders last summer, it is doubtful that the proposed law will meaningfully protect anyone. Would Proposed Federal Shield Law Have Protected New York Times Reporter James Risen? New York Times reporter James Risen at “Obama’s War on Leaks” panel at the National Press Club in May 2012 A proposed federal shield law that would grant journalists covered by the legislation a level of protection has passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee and moved to the full Senate.
The shield law would likely protect reporters from subpoenas intended to force them to give up confidential information about their sources, but the protection national security journalists would be able to enjoy is debatable. Aside from the fact that the law would define “covered journalists” who are “real reporters” and deliberately exclude leaks-based media organizations like WikiLeaks, a critical question is whether the proposed shield law would have protected someone like New York Times reporter James Risen.
Intelligence Directive Bars Unauthorized Contacts with News Media. The Director of National Intelligence has forbidden most intelligence community employees from discussing “intelligence-related information” with a reporter unless they have specific authorization to do so, according to an Intelligence Community Directive that was issued last month. “IC employees… must obtain authorization for contacts with the media” on intelligence-related matters, and “must also report… unplanned or unintentional contact with the media on covered matters,” the Directive stated. The new Directive reflects — and escalates — tensions between the government and the press over leaks of classified information.
It is intended “to mitigate risks of unauthorized disclosures of intelligence-related matters that may result from such contacts.” See Intelligence Community Directive 119, Media Contacts, March 20, 2014. ICD 119: Media Contacts - icd-119. Democracy needs whistleblowers. That's why I broke into the FBI in 1971. I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch that there would be incriminating material there, as the FBI under J Edgar Hoover was so bureaucratic that we thought every single thing that went on under him would be recorded.
But we could not be sure, and until we found it, we were on tenterhooks. Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers. The NSA Four reveal how a toxic mix of cronyism and fraud blinded the agency before 9/11. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War I–era Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. The latest example is John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer serving a thirty-month term in federal prison for publicly identifying an intelligence operative involved in torture.
The campaign against whistleblowers in Washington. Washington, DC - On January 23, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort. Kiriakou's plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don't go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organised strategy to deprive those in the US of any knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does.
How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy. Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S. WASHINGTON — Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach.
It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct. Sealing Loose Lips: Charting Obama’s Crackdown on Leaks. Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning. A whistleblower salutes Bradley Manning - Thomas Andrews Drake. The Dangerous Logic of the Bradley Manning Case. After 1,000 days in pretrial detention, Private Bradley Manning yesterday offered a modified guilty plea for passing classified materials to WikiLeaks.
Homeland Insecurity: Seven Years, Untold Dollars to Silence One Man. (Photo: Bradley Manning Support Network / Flickr)What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? 29C3 Panel: Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, William Binney on whistleblowing and surveillance. USDA Whistleblower Delivers Turkey & Chicken Rule Petition Before Thanksgiving. A week before many American families eat their turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, retired poultry inspector Phyllis McKelvey made a trip to the nation's capital to raise the alarm about a pending threat to chicken and turkey safety. BREAKING: The Back Story to Kiriakou's Imminent Guilty Plea. Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak. In his years as a operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas.
The Torturer, the Spy, and the Journalist: How the U.S. Jailed the Waterboarding Whistleblower. A decade ago, long before Edward Snowden trolled the depths of a classified surveillance program, John Kiriakou was learning about another government practice as secret and troubling and a lot more gruesome. On the night of March 28, 2002, Mr. Kiriakou, then a decorated officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, led a team that raided a suspicious house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and made what the U.S. would call its first post-9/11 capture of a major al-Qaeda leader. National Whistleblowers Center - Justice for Birkenfeld. #1 Source for Leaks Around the World! The Whistle-Blowers of 1777.