Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (26 page)
Read Julian Assange - WikiLeaks Online
Authors: Sophie Radermecker
During his campaign, Barack Obama promised to return the âFreedom of Information Act' (FOIA) to its former glory. This 1966 law was founded on the principle of the freedom of information and obliges federal agencies to provide their documents to anyone who asks for them. Throughout the history of the United States, this free access has been subjected to various restrictions. The future president promised to repress the secrecy cult protected by his predecessor George W. Bush. When he became president, Barack Obama asked the Minister of Justice to publish new directives for the government and apply principles of openness and transparency to the procedures for requesting access to government documents. His memorandum read as follows: “A democracy needs responsibility, and responsibility needs transparency.” But transparency and its application have not been seen the same way behind the scenes of power as they have been elsewhere. Today some adversaries say that the Obama government has been hiding more secrets than his predecessors ever did.
On November 28 2010, WikiLeaks exposed the conversations between Hillary Clinton and American diplomats from around the world to the light of day. Suspicions concerning employees of the Department of State spying on other diplomats had already been expressed, but by publishing the American diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks had written irrefutable proof forcing the government to explain itself publicly.
A dispatch from April 2009 signed by Hillary Clinton demanded that state department officials collect the biometric data, fingerprints, ID picture, DNA and retinal scans of African leaders.
Another dispatch from July 2009 ordered American diplomats, including those posted at the United Nations to obtain
the passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer mile account numbers, as well as other data linked to diplomats.
With the help of their embassies these cables show that the United States can weave a web that is separate from the country's usual espionage network.
According to international treaties, the United Nations are not supposed to harbor spies, but these revelations show that the United States have been secretly ignoring those rules. In fact, Hillary Clinton's State Department specifically targeted officials and diplomats of the United Nations, including Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the permanent members of the Security Council from China, Russia, France and United Kingdom, as revealed in the secret dispatch from July 2009.
The UN spokesperson denounced this major diplomatic breach. Hillary Clinton diverted attention by getting angry. She said the online posting of confidential documents by WikiLeaks was âillegal' and promised that the authors of the leaks would be prosecuted. She confirmed that the organization was sabotaging the pacific relations between nations, and endangering individuals.
The notion of transparency is relative. The vice is growing tighter around Julian. Comments from journalists and politicians were unleashed:
Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska at the time, compared him to an Al-Qaeda terrorist and called on the American government to hunt him down.
Political commentator Bob Beckel declared on FoxNews (one of the country's most popular network): “A dead man can't leak stuff! This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I'm not for the death penalty, so there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”
Republican Peter King, Chairman-elect of the Committee on Homeland Security, called on Mrs. Clinton to declare WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organization and asserted that appropriate governmental measures be taken.
Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, said on FoxNews: “The WikiLeaks guy should be in jail for the rest of his life. He is an enemy of the United States, endangering people, and he will get folks killed. I think that's a despicable act and we should treat him as enemy combatant and enemy of the United States.”
These comments had an impressive echo around the world as well as on the Internet.
Articles concerning WikiLeaks and especially Julian Assange appear every day on the Internet. Journalists were discovering a mysterious and charming stranger who, in the space of a few months, has become one of the most influential people on the planet. After publishing the diplomatic memos, China blocked access to WikiLeaks, while the American government suggested students not talk about it on their blogs and forbade the Air Force to read websites of newspapers affiliated with WikiLeaks.
“Assange implied that the diplomatic cables would reveal a bunch of secrets and could destabilize states, specifically the United States, claiming that they demonstrate a profound gap between the United States' public persona and what is said behind closed doors. In the end, they show that U.S. diplomats pursue pretty much the same goals in private as they do in public, albeit using more caustic language,” said Anne Applebaum, according her analysis in
Slate
.
American Defense Secretary Robert Gates evaluated the importance of having published these documents a lot more moderately: “Now, I've heard the impact of these releases on our
foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think â I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is that governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments â some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”
Despite Robert Gates' point of view, most American politicians remain divided on WikiLeaks and on its main representative, Julian Assange.
The Department of Justice announced that it would study possible prosecution according to the Espionage Act of 1917, considering WikiLeaks as a kind of terrorist cyber organization. This is a Draconian law adopted shortly after Word War I, which punishes people who spread prejudicial information about the security of the United States by death or lengthy imprisonment. They can only prosecute the sources that worked in bad conscience, having leaked information to the organization in the name of public interest at the risk of being accused of treason.
Government lawyers have been asked to be creative in searching for legal options for Julian Assange and his organization. The investigation of the Ministry of Justice is tedious, because legally speaking WikiLeaks cannot be differentiated from other online news organizations, making Julian the same as any other journalist.
Searching for sources of information is the main goal of journalism, along with inciting said sources to deliver their secrets so they can be published.
The goal of the American government is to uncover evidence that Julian Assange has âconspired,' to quote Vice President Joe
Biden. The goal is to effectively link the founder of WikiLeaks to Bradley Manning, the young soldier suspected of leaking confidential military documents to the organization. This would allow prosecutors to charge Julian Assange for conspiracy. The American administration would have the possibility of accusing him for breaching national security without bringing his journalist status protected by the First Amendment into it.
The Vice President was enraged that Julian compromised the lives of people while they were doing their jobs and even more so that he aggravated relations between the United States and its allies.
When questioned about this by
El PaÃs,
the founder of WikiLeaks simply said that Joe Biden associated truth about the United States to terrorism. He then turned the accusation against Biden's administration arguing that if the use of violence for political ends is considered terrorism, then the political and violent scandal against WikiLeaks and the press could also be akin to terrorism.
In December 2010, the United States was still searching for a way to prosecute Julian now labeled a âcyber terrorist.' Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more difficult to link Julian to any illegal activity, but a threat is looming over the heads of main figures of the American government.
In her speech on January 21, 2010 Hillary Clinton said: “Governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at the core of their national security and economic prosperity are safe and resilient. This is more than petty hackers who deface websites. [â¦] We have to take steps as a government and as a department to find diplomatic solutions to strengthen global cyber security.”
It takes outlaws to reinforce security and Julian could very well be evidence of the nation's insecurity, which would allow
the United States to monitor the exchange of information on the Internet and ultimately reduce world communication among Internet users.
Regardless of the comments made to the press, it's interesting to see that ten days after divulging the diplomatic documents, many American and European politicians tried to exert pressure on the Internet service providers that had WikiLeaks as a client. For those who already mistrust governments, this action is more than worrisome.
A discriminatory campaign against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange incites them to radicalize either toward a type of aggressive rebellion like attacking increasingly digital public structures, which has consequences on the world economy, or by joining a public group fighting for free Internet. Such a political movement already exists under the flag of the Pirate Party. In fact, many cells are active in Europe, advocating freedom on the Internet and relaxing copyright law.
P
OLITICAL
S
UPPORT
Interview in the chambers of the Swedish Pirate Party at the European Parliament with Christian Engström, Parliamentarian of the Pirate Party and his assistant, Henrik Alexandersson.
Ãlise
: First I would like to talk about the party. What's the story? How did it start?
Christian
: The Pirate Party was founded on January 1, 2006 by Rick Falkvinge in Sweden. At that time, Rick Falkvinge was just an IT manager working at a company, actually owned by Microsoft, basically a regular IT guy. He sort of, half as a joke and half seriously, put up a web page saying, âI've had enough. I'm starting the Pirate Party.' Within forty-eight hours, his webpage got three million hits.
Henrik
: It went viral around the world.
Christian
: And then he thought that, âOK, I'm probably onto something,' and he also thought, âNow I have the chance to try and do something, to make the world a better place. If I don't take it now, I can't complain
afterwards.' The goal was then exactly what the party is now: defend freedom on the Internet. We had general elections in September the same year. It was quite hectic to get everything organized, but we did take part in those elections and we got 0.6 per cent of the vote. In the next EU elections we got seven per cent of the national vote in Sweden, which is how I ended up here.
Henrik
: And it's very important for members of Parliament to have someone to talk to, because earlier on it was just telecoms or record company lobbyists. Now there is someone in the building that they can talk to when it comes to copyright reform, etc. We have answers to suggest for many of the questions that will arise concerning the future. We're also among those who incite new ideas.
Christian
: Many of the issues we work with are directly related to WikiLeaks. For instance, in many situations or proposals, or today in the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), we have concerns that Internet providers will have secondary liability. That means they could one day be responsible for the content of the traffic on their lines⦠As a comparison, the Post Office is not responsible for whatever you send through the mail.
Henrik:
But there are strong powers trying to change that, which would lead to all Internet service providers to check what traffic goes through their infrastructure so they don't get sued. In a situation like that, for instance, a site like WikiLeaks would be stopped immediately
because Internet service providers don't want to have to deal with these problems.
Christian
: Many efforts are being made to regulate the Internet, regulate content on the Internet, make service providers liable and use various means to check what people are doing on the Internet and punish them if they do things that the government doesn't like.
Henrik
: And, of course, politicians have three official reasons for trying to limit the freedom on the Internet. It's file sharing, the war on terror and child pornography. But often we come to suspect that there are many more reasons, for instance the interest of trying to keep things secret, to keep people out of the discussion. It could also be to limit the freedom of citizen journalism and stuff like that. Of course, they can't say it officially, because that would be disastrous. But we really have the impression that that's the case.
Christian
: It's very much all part of the same trend. This morning I was at a seminar organized by the ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe). The seminar was about Hungary, where they just introduced a new media law where everybody, including bloggers, must be registered before they're allowed to express themselves. Therefore, Hungarians will have a small administrative body appointed by the ruling party that can decide if somebody's saying things that they don't want to be said and give them unlimited fines for it. And, of course, that is not how it should be in a Western democracy or in any democracy for that matter. I think
this is the underlying problem in society. The Internet and new information technology have opened up fantastic possibilities for democracy, for transparency, for citizen participation in the democratic process, as well as fantastic opportunities for the spread of culture. All the culture of the world is just one click away. That's something fantastic. If politicians had invented it, they would be so proud of it. Now it sort of happened by itself and instead the politicians are trying to stop it. As with any change in society, the winners of the last century will either be the new losers, or will have to at least adapt their business to the established mode of governance. Nobody wants to change, especially if you're the king of the hill, you want everything to remain exactly as it is. That's why conflicts are erupting everywhere. In the end, I know we will win, âWe' being the ones standing for openness, sharing, etc., because the technology makes that a historical necessity. I know full well how unpopular it makes you with more or less everybody if you talk about historical necessities. I'm sure that will happen, but whether it happens in five years or fifty will depend on political decisions.
Henrik:
It's very interesting because in Parliament there have been issues about Iran, Cuba and other countries where the government muzzles the opposition. Iran and Cuba are just using the technology that we have here, because our governments have demanded the possibility of monitoring them.
Christian
: I think that these double standards are very annoying, but very important. For example, take
Swedish Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, member of the Swedish Liberal party since the 1980s. When she was a member of this Parliament, she was very good at standing up for freedom of speech, freedom of whatever, etc. She was the first person to criticize China for censoring the Internet and blocking certain sites, etc. That's when she was a parliamentarian. Now she's a commissioner. One of the very first directives she proposed was for the introduction of censorship on the Internet and she's using child pornography to break open the doors. It's very easy to criticize China for censoring the Internet, but once this alleged liberal person was in power, she tried to do the exact same thing. You see this in most Member States. A lot of parties are quite good as long as they are in opposition. It's not really a left/right issue. But then when they get into government, they want more control, less transparency. I think that is part of the way power corrupts. It's a very positive development for citizens to have access to a technology that can be used as a counterforce. It's even more positive that some people, like the WikiLeaks members, are taking advantage of that possibility. For this reason, all of us in the Pirate Party see WikiLeaks as real heroes.
Ãlise
: What is the link between the Pirate Party and the actions of Birgitta Jónsdóttir in Iceland? And between Iceland and Sweden?
Christian
: This IMMI thing is absolutely brilliant. If we could transform that into European modern media initiative, that would be really great. At least it's a very
good thing that Iceland is setting a positive example. It's exactly what the Pirate Party would want to see happen. We feel that the openness of society is threatened. It's ironic because we have this marvelous technology that's opened up the possibility, but instead has led to political repression.
Exactly the same thing happened five hundred years ago with the printing press. Up until then, only scribes in monasteries could copy books. Gutenberg came along, it became much cheaper by the standards of those days and pretty much the first thing that happened was that various governments wanted to regulate it. The Church wanted to regulate the printing press so that heretics wouldn't be allowed to use it to spread things like Lutheranism or whatever they would consider even worse. The word âcopyright' first appeared in the U.K., under Henry the VII. I think it was one of his daughters who wanted to make sure that only their side and their political struggle got to print books. So they gave a monopoly to the London Company of station the guild for printers, and they got the copyright, the right to make copies on provision that they could only print the right kind of religious text.
When technology opens up a new possibility for ordinary citizens, you would expect the old establishment to try to do whatever they can to stop it and maintain its own privilege. We can expect them to fail completely in the long run, because we know what happened to the printing press. My hope is that we'll be able to make that same transition to the Internet society and the information society quicker and cheaper, especially in terms of lives. That is the goal of the Pirate Party: avoid
a large number of heretics being sent to the gallows before society accepts the change.
Ãlise
: What are your daily activities like here?
Henrik
: I bury Christian in papers and act as anything from political advisor to the guy who gets Christian his sandwiches when he is in a meeting. Christian also wants me to keep blogging, as I have one of the biggest political blogs in Sweden, if not the biggest.
Christian
: I blog as well. I think it's a good indication on how helpful the new technology is, because the job of a parliamentarian, whether here in the European Parliament or in national parliament, doesn't really have any power. The power is on a national level with the government or at the European Commission level.
Henrik
: Let's not forget the Council.
Christian
: True, but I would say primarily with the Commission. But at least a parliamentarian has access to some power; is closer to it and can find out more about what's going on. For me, both on the European Union and national level the parliamentarian is the link between ordinary citizens and the ones actually in power. However, I think that a blog is very useful both ways. Henrik and I blog about things happening here. Some journalist might pick it up. There's no blog that can compete with mainstream media in terms of reach. Still, for people who are interested, the blogs have much more space to devote to one single issue at
a time. If you're very interested in something, you'll find more information on the blogs than in mainstream media. But on the other hand, when some proposal comes along, it comes as a white paper or green paper or whatever color paper from the commission, often very technical. It's always like that in politics: the devil is in the details⦠always. It can be very difficult to spot the nasty things, if you just read it. To be able to take that and put it on the blog and say âThis is what the commissioner is proposing. I'll report on this. Do you have any comments?' People who are interested or are specialized can give feedback. I find it extremely useful.
Henrik:
It's very interesting because much of this work is actually intertwined with WikiLeaks. For instance, the SWIFT agreement about transferring information about European bank transactions to the terrorist hunters in the United States. Parliament was opposed, but national governments turned on parliamentarians and the Parliament had to approve the agreement or adjust its modifications. Afterward, we had found out, thanks to the âCablegate' telegrams, that the Swedish government was very much involved in the matter. Just like for ACTA, which might infringe the liberty on the Internet. This agreement was negotiated behind closed doors. In the end, the Parliament will have to say yes or no to it, but for a long time the only way to get information on these documents was via WikiLeaks.
Christian:
Even for me as a parliamentarian, I had to rely on leaks to obtain information. It's obviously an
aspect of the European Union that I find completely unacceptable. But sttill, it's the reality of it all.
Ãlise:
What is the link between politics and what WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, or other similar groups do? You think that they have a political agenda?
Henrik
: They have political consequences. Many people say that Assange is a Leftist or that he hates the U.S. or whatever. I don't think that's the case. I think he's just in it for the open information and transparency mission. That, of course, it will have its consequences. The video
Collateral Murder
was terrible for the United States PR-wise. And now âCablegate.' All of this has political consequences. But you can also see the openness ideology behind WikiLeaks. I would say it's more philosophical than political. It's some kind of purity when it comes to democracy. The other day I wrote on my blog and reminded people that the key to this story that we must always remember is that it's WikiLeaks that is providing the truth. It might be an inconvenient or embarrassing truth, but it's WikiLeaks who is providing it. It's the politicians and their functionaries who are lying and trying to cover things up. It's extremely important to have that single thought in mind.
Ãlise
: Do you think that Julian Assange is a âWarrior of Truth'?
Henrik
: Yes.
Christian
: At the moment, of course, Americans consider him to be a Leftist. I don't believe that myself. For instance, if you take it from the green perspective, since we're in the Green Group, among the documents they did publish, a lot of them were about an environmental scandal in the Ivory Coast where big companies had basically taken lots of really toxic stuff and just dumped it somewhere. From a green perspective, that leak, when it happened, would have been very popular politically, because it highlighted green issues. But WikiLeaks also published these âClimate-Gate' e-mails that were a lot less popular within the Green Group. To me, that strongly indicates that Mr. Assange himself is just in it for the truth. He doesn't pick sides, instead he shows everything and from all angles.
Henrik
: A person with very strong integrity, I would say.
Ãlise
: Do you think he would make a good politician and get into politics?