The Great Debate UK
from Reuters Investigates:
WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, GreenLeaks and more leaks
A Reuters exclusive details the emergence of two anti-corporate, WikiLeaks-style websites in Europe, both called GreenLeaks. The sites promise to leak confidential documents regarding environmental abuses by a host of industries.
The report by Mark Hosenball also reveals the rise of other possible WikiLeaks copycats that would focus on specialized topics or regions -- from Russia and the European Union bureaucracy to international trade, the pharmaceutical industry and the Balkans.
The two rival GreenLeaks sites were set up by Mads Bjerg (left) in Copenhagen (greenleaks.org) and Scott Millwood (below) in Berlin (greenleaks.com) -- and neither is happy about the competition.
Over lunch in a Berlin sushi bar, Millwood told Reuters his group acquired the domain name GreenLeaks in 36 countries where it also has registered GreenLeaks internet addresses under the ".com" and ".biz" designators. Millwood said he also has applied to the European Union to register "GreenLeaks" as a trademark, but recently learned that Bjerg's Denmark-based group had made a similar move within days of Millwood making his own application.
What WikiLeaks reveals about the changing map of global power
-Andrew Hammond is a Director at ReputationInc. The opinions expressed are his own-
The WikiLeaks release last month of around a quarter of a million classified U.S. State Department documents has, by critics, been variously characterised as the “September 11 of world diplomacy” (Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini); an “attack on the international community” (U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton); and a threat to “democratic sovereignty and authority” (French Government Spokesman Francois Baroin).
from Reuters Investigates:
How Mendax made WikiLeaks a sensation
By Mark Hosenball
On Tuesday, Julian Assange, the controversial Australian-born founder and frontman of the WikiLeaks website is scheduled to appear in a London courtroom for the latest hearing on a request by Swedish authorities that he be extradited to Sweden for questioning in a sexual misconduct investigation.
Assange has denied any wrongdoing in Sweden, and some of his supporters have dropped dark hints that the Swedish investigation could be part of some sinister conspiracy by the CIA or other WikiLeaks enemies to shut down both Assange and the website, which has lately roiled the world of international diplomacy by disclosing a cache of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
On WikiLeaks, India, Pakistan and a partisan media
Reading through some of the WikiLeaks cables, I have been struck by how easy it might be to take the fragmentary and often outdated information contained in them and make a case to support either side of the India-Pakistan divide. Now it turns out someone did, but without even the support of the underlying cables, according to this version of Pakistani media reports by the Pakistan blog Cafe Pyala of alleged Indian skulduggery, including in Baluchistan.
As Cafe Pyala notes, Pakistan's The News and various other papers cited the alleged cables as proof of alleged Indian involvement in creating trouble in Baluchistan and Waziristan. These allegations were included amongst others that anyone who follows the subject closely hears being bandied about between India and Pakistan. (Reporting on those allegations is much harder, for reasons I will discuss below.)
from FaithWorld:
Saudi king, religious police, Islam and donkeys – via WikiLeaks
(Photo: Religious police perform dusk prayers with Saudi youth outside a Riyadh cafe on June 27, 2010 during half-time of the Germany-England World Cup soccer match. The police ensured that people watching matches in cafes said their prayers during the tournament/Fahad Shadeed)
WikiLeaks has come up with an interesting insight into the way King Abdullah views his own kingdom's religious police, the mutaween who enforce Islamic behaviour in public. A cable from the Riyadh embassy entitled IDEOLOGICAL AND OWNERSHIP TRENDS IN THE SAUDI MEDIA and dated 11 May 2009 mentions what appears to be a U.S. diplomat's visit to a Saudi newspaper editor whose name is XXXed out. The Saudi says the king had visited the office and complained about how ignorant the religious police were about Islam and how they treated people like donkeys:
//Okaz//
¶18. (S) In a meeting with Jeddah CG and XXXXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXXXXX was blunt when asked about SAG efforts in countering extremist thinking. “King Abdallah was here,” he said, pointing around his well-appointed office XXXXXXXXXXXX in Jeddah. “He told us that conservative elements in Saudi society do not understand true Islam, and that people needed to be educated” on the subject. King Abdallah, he said, used a metaphor of a donkey to explain how the religious police use the wrong approach. “They take a stick and hit you with it, saying ‘Come donkey, it’s time to pray.’ How does that help people behave like good Muslims?” XXXXXXXXXXXX quoted the king as saying.
from Reuters Investigates:
WikiLeaks: What really happened in Sweden
Some supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange see a conspiracy behind Swedish prosecutors' efforts to question him there on sexual misconduct charges. The prosecutors deny their move is political.
Mark Hosenball's special report "Fear of STDs sparked case against WikiLeaks boss" tells the story of what happened in August when Assange was visiting Sweden.
from Afghan Journal:
Denuclearising Pakistan
At about the time WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including one related to a secret attempt to remove enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor, a top Pakistani military official held a briefing for journalists that focused on U.S.-Pakistan ties.
Dawn's Cyril Almeida has written a piece based on the officer's comments made on the condition of anonymity, and they offer the closest glimpse you can possibly get of the troubled ties between the allies.
from Global News Journal:
WikiLeaks Scandal: Is the United Nations a Den of Spies?
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has dismissed suggestions that her diplomats are part-time spies, as suggested by the latest batch of documents released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
"Let me be very clear -- our diplomats are just that, they're diplomats," Rice told reporters at the United Nations where she was peppered with questions about the latest chapter in the WikiLeaks scandal. "Our diplomats are doing what diplomats do around the world every day, which is build relationships, negotiate, advance our interests and work to find common solutions to complex problems."
She didn't exactly deny the charges of espionage. But the top U.S. diplomat in New York did reject the idea that there would be any diplomatic fallout from the release of thousands of documents obtained by WikiLeaks, some of which have been published by The Guardian and other newspapers.
One U.S. diplomatic cable published by The Guardian shows how the State Department instructed diplomats at the United Nations and elsewhere around the world to collect credit card and frequent flyer numbers, work schedules and biometric data for U.N. officials and diplomats. Among the personalities of interest was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as were the ambassadors of the other 14 Security Council member states.
There is nothing new about espionage at the United Nations, but it's always embarrassing when classified documents proving it happens surface in the media.
Most Security Council envoys declined to comment on the WikiLeaks documents as they headed into the council chambers on Monday for a meeting on North Korea. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, however, told reporters, "Surprise, surprise."
Churkin should know. One of the diplomats in his charge was implicated earlier this year in a high-profile Russian espionage case in the United States in which nearly a dozen people were accused of being part of a Russian spy ring that carried out deep-cover work in the United States to recruit political sources and gather information for Moscow. The U.S. Justice Department said that an unnamed diplomat at the Russian mission to the United Nations had delivered payments to the spy ring.
And then there was the man known as "Comrade J", a Russian spy based in New York from 1995 to 2000. Working out of Russia's U.N. mission, Comrade J directed Russian espionage activity in New York City and personally oversaw all covert operations against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. According to a book about his exploits, Comrade J eventually became a double agent for the FBI.
Nor does the history of U.N. espionage end there. In 2004, a former British cabinet minister revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on Ban Ki-moon's predecessor Kofi Annan, who fell afoul of Washington and London by opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was also the victim of a phone-bugging operation, according to media reports from 2004. He had also opposed the invasion of Iraq and angered the United States by saying that their intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged revival of his nuclear arms program was not only incorrect but partly based on falsified evidence. U.S. officials pored over transcripts of ElBaradei's telephone intercepts in an attempt to secure evidence of mistakes that could be used to oust him from his post, the reports said. Not only did they fail to unseat him, he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
from Breakingviews:
Global risk of U.S. impotence at heart of WikiLeak
The biggest secret to be revealed by WikiLeaks should have been the easiest to spot without the website's classified document dump: American hegemony is on the wane. That underscores a heightened risk for global investors that without U.S. leadership, regional rivalries may turn nasty, trade barriers rise and fiscal policies destroy wealth.
It's hard to avoid the overall impression from the disclosure of 250,000 secret State Department cables that the 1990s vision of U.S. supremacy and peaceful globalization is irrevocably ending. There are a number of risk-reducing advantages to the world in having a clearly defined hegemon, provided its intentions are reasonably benevolent.
from The Great Debate:
The WikiLeaks story and criminal liability under the espionage laws
The following is a guest post by Gilead Light, a member of the white collar criminal defense group with law firm Venable LLP in Washington. He has worked on numerous criminal defense representations, including a jury trial on charges of espionage and other national security violations.
WASHINGTON, DC – The legal pursuit of WikiLeaks, a trans-national website devoted to publishing secret government documents worldwide, is reaching a boiling point. After publishing tens of thousands of classified U.S. documents revealing details of the war in Afghanistan, the group is now promising to publish more of the same.
