{"id":174148,"date":"2020-12-07T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=174148"},"modified":"2020-12-02T08:10:25","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T08:10:25","slug":"in-closing-argument-for-assanges-extradition-prosecutors-cast-wikileaks-as-criminal-enterprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/in-closing-argument-for-assanges-extradition-prosecutors-cast-wikileaks-as-criminal-enterprise\/","title":{"rendered":"In Closing Argument for Assange\u2019s Extradition, Prosecutors Cast WikiLeaks as Criminal Enterprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Crown Prosecution Authority lawyers representing the US government contend WikiLeaks was in the \u201cbusiness of encouraging individuals to hack into computers.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Dec 2020 – <\/em>A United States counterintelligence strategy document signed by President Donald Trump warned the \u201cnumber of actors targeting the United States is growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lumped in with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and terrorist groups were \u201cideologically motivated entities, such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public disclosure organizations\u201d that U.S. intelligence agents view as \u201csignificant threats.\u201d [PDF<\/a>]<\/p>\n

In the closing argument for the extradition case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Crown Prosecution Authority lawyers cast WikiLeaks as an ideologically motivated entity that was in the \u201cbusiness of encouraging individuals to hack into computers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors further allege Assange encouraged the \u201cmass and indiscriminate theft of a vast number of documents,\u201d and they sidestep issues of freedom of expression by maintaining WikiLeaks \u201ccannot be compared to the New York Times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWikiLeaks\u2019 very purpose and design was to recruit persons to break the law\u2014by circumventing classification restrictions and computer and access restrictions,\u201d the submission states. They solicited classified information through a \u201cMost Wanted Leaks\u201d list and invited insiders to break the law or outsiders to hack into government agencies.<\/p>\n

Referring to a third indictment that was announced in June and served on the defense weeks before the extradition trial, prosecutors claim Assange told an audience of hackers there was a \u201csmall vulnerability within the Congress document distribution system.\u201d He publicized materials he wanted \u201cobtained by hacking\u201d and \u201cexhorted\u201d the public to \u201cjoin the CIA in order to steal information.\u201d<\/p>\n

It mentions a 17-year-old who Assange allegedly asked to \u201ccommit computer intrusions and steal audio recordings of conversations between high ranking officials of a NATO country.\u201d He also allegedly instructed this minor to \u201cbreak into someone\u2019s computer and delete chat logs.\u201d<\/p>\n

This minor referred to as the \u201cTeenager\u201d is Sigurdur \u201cSiggi\u201d Thordarson was, according to the defense, \u201cconvicted in Iceland of fraud, theft, and impersonation of Julian Assange.\u201d He sold merchandise through a WikiLeaks store without authorization and embezzled $50,000.<\/p>\n

The Iceland Monitor reported<\/a> in 2015 that Thordarson was sentenced to three years in prison for \u201csexual violations against nine boys.\u201d He \u201cabused one boy over forty times over the period of two years when the boy was aged 15-17.\u201d Each boy was promised \u201cpayment in exchange for oral and anal sex,\u201d and he also offered to \u201cpay for things such as internet connections, telephone bills and television subscription and even to open up overseas bank accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thordarson was an FBI informant, who begged<\/a> agents for money. They eventually paid him $5,000 for the \u201cwork he missed while meeting with agents\u201d in Alexandria, Virginia, where the grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks was empaneled.<\/p>\n

The defense recalled, \u201cThe Icelandic Interior Minister of the time is reported to have ordered a number of FBI prosecutors, who had arrived in Iceland to investigate the \u2018Teenager\u2019s\u2019 claims, to leave Iceland. The Interior Minister made statements at the time and has made statements since that he believed the investigation was in order to \u2018frame Assange.’\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Hacking at Random conference in the Netherlands in 2009, Assange allegedly said WikiLeaks identified<\/a> \u201ca small vulnerability\u201d inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress\u201d that could be used to download \u201creports of the Congressional Research Service that were not available to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until 2016, unclassified CRS reports<\/a> were needlessly kept secret by Congress. WikiLeaks posted nearly 7,000 of the reports in 2009 to subvert a \u201cgray market\u201d around the documents, where opportunists smuggled out reports and offered them to lobbyists, law firms, multinational corporations, and foreign governments.<\/p>\n

The inspector general of the Library of Congress investigated<\/a> the publication of CRS reports but was apparently unable to connect the leak\u2014or exploitation of a security vulnerability\u2014to WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n

Following NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations on U.S. mass surveillance programs, Assange addressed the Chaos Computer Club conference in Germany in December 2013. He encouraged young systems administrators to \u201cjoin the CIA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo in there,\u201d Assange said. \u201cGo into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out\u2014with the understanding, with the paranoia, that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, by an ideology that is spread across the Internet. And every young person is educated on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the Justice Department, Assange\u2019s comment \u201cexhorted\u201d the next generation of people to become CIA employees to \u201csteal\u201d classified information and hack into government computer systems. However, Assange did not specifically ask anyone to engage in any conspiracy. He appealed to young people to address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when governments universally use secrecy regimes to conceal crimes, unlawful programs, and other abusive acts.<\/p>\n

The \u201cMost Wanted Leaks\u201d list is a central part of the government\u2019s conspiracy theory against Assange. But Pfc. Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army whistleblower who was the source of materials at issue in this case, never provided any of the \u201cbulk databases\u201d that were included in the list.<\/p>\n

As David Coombs, who was Manning\u2019s defense attorney, stated during her court-martial, military prosecutors were only able to \u201cremotely\u201d tie her to \u201cfour of the things on the list.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 8, 2013, at her trial, her defense heavily disputed whether Manning had ever seen a draft of the \u201cMost Wanted Leaks\u201d list. Manning did not mention the list at all in her statement to the court when she pled guilty to some offenses.<\/p>\n

Rainey Reitman and Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) highlighted<\/a> this aspect of the case. \u201cUnlike much of Wikileaks.org, the \u2018Most Wanted\u2019 Leaks was actually a publicly-editable wiki.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than viewing this document as a wishlist generated by Wikileaks staff or a reflection of Assange\u2019s personal priorities, we must understand that this was a publicly-generated list developed by contributors who felt each \u2018wanted\u2019 document offered information that would be valuable to the public,\u201d Reitman and Opsahl contended.<\/p>\n

Or put another way: Coombs described the list as \u201cWikiLeaks saying, look, tell us, humanitarians, activists, NGOs, fellow reporters, what do you want to know in your country? What in your country is being hidden from the public that you believe the public should know? Give us a list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to compile that list, and we are going to work to obtain that list. What does this sound like? Any journalistic organization that has like a hotline or anything else says, call us. You got a story. Call us. We\u2019ll investigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. government is dependent on the \u201cMost Wanted Leaks\u201d list to create the impression that Manning was \u201cworking for WikiLeaks.\u201d If Manning was not recruited, it becomes harder to argue that Assange aided, abetted, or conspired to steal classified documents.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors tried to address this dilemma by subpoenaing Manning to testify before a grand jury and jailing her for a year. Manning held to her principles and resisted prosecutors, believing they intended to set a perjury trap that would force her into additional legal jeopardy.<\/p>\n

The Crown Prosecution Authority deals with this in their closing argument by relying on Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg and maintaining the U.S. prosecution is not \u201cbound to accept the account given by Ms. Manning in her own defense or mitigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Ms Manning\u2019s guilty pleas, a \u201cprovidence inquiry\u201d was initiated to ensure that the plea was voluntary and grounded in fact. This was a limited enquiry into the facts which Ms Manning had chosen to admit, and she was not subjected to exhaustive questioning about the offences or surrounding circumstances [Kromberg 1, CB2 \u00a7\u00a7142-3, Kromberg 4, CB8 \u00a742]. Thereafter Ms. Manning refused to testify before a grand jury and has been found to be in contempt [\u00a7\u00a7145-156]. The second affidavit of Gordon Kromberg [CB3 \u00a7\u00a712 and 13] maintains the factual position of the prosecution. Ms. Manning is alleged to have responded to requests made in the \u201cMost Wanted\u201d list.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is unclear what \u201callegations\u201d Kromberg or the Justice Department are referring to in their case. None, in particular, were relied upon by military prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser is likely to find this is a dispute between prosecutors and defense attorneys that could be settled at trial.<\/p>\n

The defense submitted<\/a> their closing argument on November 6, and they had an opportunity to submit a rebuttal to the prosecution after November 20.<\/p>\n

Baraitser will rule on the extradition request on January 4.<\/p>\n

Assange was charged in April 2019 with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer intrusion that contains elements of an Espionage Act offense. He is detained at the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he recently endured<\/a> a COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n

Charges against Assange generally criminalize the act of receiving classified information, as well as the publication of state secrets from the U.S. government. It targets common practices in newsgathering, which is why the case is widely opposed by press freedom organizations throughout the world.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of <\/em>Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “<\/em>Unauthorized Disclosure.”<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dissenter.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Dec 2020 – In the closing argument for the extradition os Julian Assange, Crown Prosecution Authority lawyers cast WikiLeaks as an ideologically entity in the \u201cbusiness of encouraging individuals to hack into computers.\u201d Prosecutors further allege Assange encouraged the \u201cmass and indiscriminate theft of a vast number of documents,\u201d maintaining WikiLeaks \u201ccannot be compared to the New York Times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":147369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[229,918,910,942,487,378,651,234,911,454,572,639,292,70,126,921,113],"class_list":["post-174148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-activism","tag-assange","tag-big-brother","tag-ecuador","tag-human-rights","tag-journalism","tag-justice","tag-media","tag-surveillance","tag-sweden","tag-torture","tag-uk","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}