By RANDELL A. MONACO, Esq.
December 4, 2010
How much influence has Corporate America had on the recent efforts and mobilization of the international community and the U.S. Justice Department to censor WikiLeaks who has become an important international transparency organization?
Media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Saturday condemned the personal attacks on Assange and "the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure" in what it called the first "attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency."
The question being begged is to what extent have the recent intervention efforts been stepped up out of concern of exposed wrong doing and the promised WikiLeaks release of information come Monday about conduct on Wall Street and in the U.S. Banks? It seems more than coincidence that the intervention of US Senator Joseph Lieberman resulted in the decisions of Dynamic Network Services Inc., PayPal and Amazon Inc..
On December 2, 2010 American owned EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks from its entries, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure". The validity of that concern should be questioned. The site's 'info' DNS lookup remained operational at alternative addresses for direct access respectively to the Wikileaks and Cablegate websites.
In step with Dynamic Network Services Inc., Amazon Inc. severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to which it was providing infrastructure services. As reported by Dylan Welch of theAge.com.au this followed the intervention of an aide on behalf of US Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Then, on December 4, 2010 PayPal, the payment processor owned by eBay, permanently cut access to WikiLeaks.org. In a blog posting PayPal claimed that WikiLeaks violated its "Acceptable Use Policy".
There seem plenty of reasons to question PayPal’s claims and Amazon’s denial of acting under political pressure following the intervention of Senator Lieberman’s aide. Senator Lieberman, who later praised Amazon's decision and called for other companies to follow suit, has also proposed new legislation to amend the Espionage Act to include the “publication” of “human intelligence” targeting similar cases — Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act, also known as the SHIELD Act .
Without discussion or public statement of review of obvious constitutional concerns related to the freedoms of speech and press, corporate America and the international community have acted to censor what should have been recognized as a public service to our Nation. The vulnerability and release of this information has exposed the real concern, NOT the publication which was after the fact.
Also, access to WikiLeaks has been blocked in the United States Library of Congress. Importantly, on December 3, 2010, the White House Office of Management and Budget dispatched a memo forbidding all unauthorized federal government employees and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites. Presumably this would include off hours access from personal non-public computers.
Is seems that what is being focused on is the embarrassing wrong doing possibly by, and between, both Wall Street and government officials. This is speculation but this sequence of events is beginning to look and walk like a duck!
The temporary shutdown of WikiLeaks seems an end to an extraordinary week for Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, and possibly a warm up of things to come in the week ahead for Wall Street and others yet to be named.
A call to action for the boycott of Amazon, PayPal and eBay this Christmas Season would be a worthy stand for Global Democracy.
Mr Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, cast doubt on whether Mr Assange could be extradited, saying the case's handling had been ''utterly irregular''. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs said it would offer consular assistance to Mr Assange if he was arrested.
ReplyDeleteSwedish authorities sought and were granted an Interpol ''red notice'' earlier this week to extradite him from England, but the British police rejected it due to paperwork errors. Yesterday the Swedish prosecutor's office said it had corrected those errors and resubmitted the warrant to the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, which will then instruct Scotland Yard to arrest Mr Assange.
ReplyDeleteWikiLeaks data analyst James Ball revealed a cache of documents relating to Australia was to be released late next month.
ReplyDeleteUS Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to issue yet another apology, this time declaring her ''deep respect and admiration'' for the British military after US criticism of their efforts in Afghanistan was published.
ReplyDeleteMr Assange, 39, said his treatment by the federal government raised questions about what it meant to be an Australian citizen. ''Are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties?''
ReplyDeleteA call to action for the boycott of Amazon, PayPal and eBay this Christmas Season would be a worthy stand for Global Democracy.
ReplyDeleteJoe Lieberman WikiHates The Press
ReplyDeleteWikiHates The Press - defended the men and women defending our Constitution abroad by attacking the First Amendment.
Prosecutors have used the Espionage Act to convict officials who leaked classified information. They have never successfully convicted any leak recipient who then passed the information along, however, and the Justice Department has never tried to prosecute a journalist —which Mr. Assange portrays himself as being — under either a Republican or a Democratic administration.
ReplyDeleteAmerica should be more concerned about the less that adequate security proceedures than the publication of the diplomatic cable! After the fact embarassment deflects the real issue!
On Tuesday, The Lede continues to follow the fallout from the publication of American diplomatic cables obtained by the WikiLeaks Web site, and the legal problems of its founder, Julian Assange. (The final installment in a 9-day New York Times series on the cables concluded on Monday night, but documents continue to be published by WikiLeaks and other news organizations. For an overview of the revelations and reactions so far, see our previous live-blog posts.)
ReplyDelete"To me, the New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship," Lieberman said. "Whether they've committed a crime, I think that bears very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department." Sen. Joesph Lieberman acknowledged that the issue is "sensitive" as it "gets into the First Amendment." You don't say.
ReplyDeleteJoe Lieberman suggested to Fox News today that media outlets that have publicized the Wikileaks cables should be investigated.
ReplyDelete