The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian La On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.” Lamo, who holds himself out as a “journalist” and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning’s detention. From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers. In other words, exactly what the U.S. Adrian Lamo and Kevin Poulsen have a long and strange history together.
Ocasio-Cortez stumps Zuckerberg with questions on far right and Cambridge Analytica | Technology Mark Zuckerberg faced a grueling examination from the Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, with questions over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook’s reluctance to police political advertising. Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers grilled the Facebook CEO during a hearing in front of the US House of Representatives financial services committee regarding the launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra. “In order for us to make decisions about Libra, I think we need to kind of dig into your past behavior and Facebook’s past behavior with respect to our democracy,” the New York congresswoman said, before asking Zuckerberg when he had first learned of Cambridge Analytica’s operations. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have declined to disclose when they found out the company was harvesting and selling user data to influence elections. “I believe some folks were tracking it internally,” Zuckerberg said.
Stephen Colbert - WikiLeaks Video Last night Stephen Colbert interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, which the other week published video of the US military killing 12 individuals in Iraq, two of whom were later revealed to be staff members of the Reuters. After a sort of jokey opening in which he had his face pixelated and voice altered, Colbert got down to business: Let’s talk about this footage that has gotten you so much attention recently. This is footage of an Apache helicopter attack in 2007. The army described this as a group that gave resistance at the time, that doesn’t seem to be happening. But there are armed men in the group, they did find a rocket propelled grenade among the group, the Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed, were not identified…You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called ‘collateral murder.’ That’s not satire: That’s serious journalism. Read more analysis of the interview at Mediaite.
Heather Heyer’s mom gives stirring funeral speech: “This is just the beginning of Heather’s legacy” Susan Bro, the mother of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer, honored her daughter with a powerful speech at Heyer’s funeral Wednesday, delivering a call to action in the wake of the 32-year-old’s tragic death. “They tried to kill my child to shut her up,” Bro said during the speech. “Well, guess what? You just magnified her.” Heyer was killed on Saturday in the wake of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as members of the “alt-right” and white supremacist groups gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. Hundreds of mourners gathered at the public memorial service on Wednesday, which was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the Paramount Theater. “They tried to kill my child to shut her up. “Remember in your heart: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” Bro said. “I’d rather have my child, but, by golly, if I got to give her up, we’re gonna make it count,” Bro concluded. Here’s Bro’s speech in full: So I have no regrets on that part.
Wikileaks asked to edit Afghan names from US files 10 August 2010Last updated at 23:31 More than 75,000 classified documents were posted on the whistle-blowing website Human rights groups are putting pressure on the website Wikileaks to remove the names of Afghan civilians from leaked US military reports. The groups, which include Amnesty International, say Afghans identified as suppliers of information to the US military could face reprisals. The Taliban has executed hundreds of Afghan civilians it accuses of collaborating with US-led forces. The huge cache of classified papers is one of the biggest leaks in US history. All are linked to the Afghan conflict and Wikileaks posted them last month under the title of the Afghan War Diary. The human rights groups also include the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the Open Society Institute and the International Crisis Group. They have e-mailed their requests to Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website, AP news agency reported.
Things Trump Has Condemned Other Than White Nationalists The president arrived to a lectern assembled at his New Jersey golf club on Saturday afternoon shortly after at least one person was killed and 19 others were injured when a car sped into counterprotestors opposing a Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstration by white nationalists and other far-right activists. He’d been scheduled to speak about Veterans Affairs, but first, he said, he wanted to discuss the violence he was “closely following” several hundred miles south. What came next was not a condemnation of white nationalism or white supremacism or Nazism or racism or any other synonym for the ideology of the primarily white men wielding torches to express their opposition to Charlottesville’s decision to remove Confederate symbols from the town. Instead, he said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, on many sides.” — Opinion polls that are unflattering to him; — Nordstrom; — The “fake news” media; — Leakers;
WikiLeaks preparing to release 15,000 more Afghanistan documents WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says the site is about halfway through preparing the additional documents. NEW: Reporters Without Borders slams WikiLeaks on Afghanistan documentsWikiLeaks' founder says group is about halfway through new batch of documentsPentagon warns WikiLeaks against releasing new batch of documentsSeveral humanitarian organizations have warned lives could be in danger (CNN) -- The founder of WikiLeaks said Thursday the whistle-blower website is preparing to release another roughly 15,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan. "We are about halfway through them," Julian Assange told reporters in London, England. "This is a very expensive process." The Pentagon on Thursday warned WikiLeaks against releasing more documents. "The only responsible course of action for them is to immediately remove all the stolen documents from their website and expunge all classified material from their computers," he said.
Charlottesville: man charged with murder after car rams counter-protesters at far-right event | US news | The Guardian A man has been arrested and charged with murder after a car rammed into a group of people peacefully protesting against a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 19. Police said a 32-year-old woman had died and that they were attempting to notify her family before releasing more details. Col Martin Kumer, the superintendent of Albemarle-Charlottesville regional jail, told the Guardian that 20-year-old James Fields, of Ohio, had been arrested following the attack on Saturday. “He has been charged with second degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop at an accident that resulted in a death,” Kumer said in an email. Donald Trump condemned the “violence on many sides”, but faced criticism for failing to directly denounce the far-right demonstrators. In a separate incident, two police officers died when their helicopter, which was monitoring the far-right rally, crashed outside Charlottesville.
Wikileaks: Giving Leaks a Bad Name Unauthorized disclosures of classified information (“leaks”) often play an important role in the proper functioning of American democracy. They can serve as a safety valve against official excess, and an implicit check against government misconduct. Even the mere possibility of a leak can have a salutary effect, because it imposes conscious or subconscious limits on what officials might try to do if they were certain they would be undetected. (The FAS Project on Government Secrecy began in 1991 with our unauthorized receipt and disclosure of records on a problematic unacknowledged special access program called Timber Wind (pdf) whose very existence was classified.) One initial response to Wikileaks’ clumsy disclosure has been to bolster public support of the classification system, which was presumably not the intended result. Rep.