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Tuesday, 20 June 2017

On Line Privacy Guide for Journalists

Online Privacy Guide for Journalists 2017

You can see the eBook PDF-version of this guide here.

1. Introduction

Many veteran journalists, but not only these, surely noticed that we are all of a sudden bombarded again from all-over with mentions of Watergate. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 are on display at bookstores and an air of danger to freedom of speech and freedom of the press is spreading slowly like a dark cloud over the Western Hemisphere, raising old fears.
When an American serving president accuses a former president of surveillance; when he prevents central US media outlets access – so far always granted, and taken for granted – to press conferences he holds; and when he incessantly knocks and accuses the media of being the country’s enemy number one, it isn’t surprising that memories of President Nixon surface up more with every self-pitying tweet about SNL, and that even Republican Senators such as John McCain express fear for the future of democracy.
And McCain is not alone. Many journalists whom I have spoken with recently, expressed concern for whatever lays ahead for the freedom of the press. At a time when it’s possible to express the following statement – “Donald Trump controls the NSA” – and not be held a liar, anything’s possible. Add that to the fact that recent news on CIA taught us that almost all encryption systems can be compromised, if someone has the perseverance to crack them – and you are en route to envisioning an utterly Dystopian world, where you cannot even get too comfortable laying on your sofa, in front of your own smart TV.
The good news is that it is nevertheless possible to make it difficult for anyone to try and intercept your emails, the text messages you’re sending or your phone calls. You can take measures to make the lives of those who want to uncover your sources and the information being revealed to you, much harder. Of course, the degree of effort you’re prepared to take to protect your privacy, your sources’ anonymity and your data’s safety, should be commensurate to the likelihood of a real threat, be that hacking or spying.
“The old-fashioned promises – I’m not going to reveal my source’s identity or give up my notes – are kind of empty if you’re not taking steps to protect your information digitally”, says Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, whose source, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, helped uncover the scope of the NSA’s and British GCHQ’s operations, to his interviewer Tony Loci. Loci herself, who covered American judicial system for AP, The Washington Post and USA Today, and was herself held in contempt of court for refusing to identify sources, would probably endorse that.
So, what is it that needs to be done to ensure that a journalist’s sources and data are secure and well? Grosso modo, the tips can be described as falling within the following categories:
  1. Securing on-device applications and functions- This is known as reducing the “attack surface”, i.e. limiting the installed apps to the bare minimum, installing only from trusted sources, selecting apps that require minimal rights, keeping the system fully patched and updated, and having as many security controls (based on recent best-practices white papers) on the device.
  2. Isolating your devices and/or their environment– For example, the physical insulation of a computer for the purpose of checking files, or the use of prepaid mobile devices.
  3. Acting cautiously both in the digital and real world- This has a lot to do with common sense and a little less to do with software: For example, never write down the name of the source, certainly not on any app or on any document that’s stored on your computer – and most certainly not on anything stored on the cloud.

2. Communicating with your source and
safeguarding the sensitive data

Let’s begin by listing what you can do when it comes to communicating with a source, and storing sensitive information obtained thereof:
  1. Beware of big names: Presume that large companies’ encryption systems and possibly even big name operating systems (proprietary software) have back doors that secret services in their country of origin (at least in the US and the UK) can access. Bruce Schneier, Security Expert, explains it here.
  2. Always encrypt everything: Security experts use simple math to make their point: as you raise the cost of decrypting your files (say, for intelligence agencies like the NSA), you automatically increase the degree of effort expended on following you. If you’re not Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, or Edward Snowden and if you weren’t involved in active surveillance around Trump Tower apartments, They may give up the effort even if your encrypted communications were stored. And should anyone decide to track you despite your efforts, it will be more of a headache if you use strong encryption like AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and tools like PGP or openVPN, which are the strongest widely available encryption methods (VPN’s are used by the US government itself).But if you want bullet-proof security, you will need more than the AES encryption method. P.S. if you want to discover the year your information landed at the NSA’s hands, just have a peek here.
  3. Perform full disk encryption: This is done just in case someone gets their hands on your computer or phone. Full disk encryption can be done using FileVault, VeraCrypt or BitLocker. Putting a computer to “Sleep” (instead of Shutdown or Hibernate) may allow an attacker to bypass this defense. Here, Mika Lee gives a complete guide for encrypting your laptop.
  4. Avoid chatting with sources on the phone: All phone companies store data related to the caller and the receiver’s numbers, as well as the location of the devices at the time calls were made.  In the US and several other countries, they’re required by law to disclose information on registered calls in their possession.What can be done? You should use a secure call service, such as the one the Signal app – which was tested repeatedly for security – possesses. Although this may mean that both the source and the editor need to download the app as well, the process takes just a few minutes. Here is a guide on how to use it. Just for the hang of it, check out how many of your non-journalist friends are hanging out there.However you choose to communicate with your source, do not bring your mobile phone to sensitive meetings. Buy a disposable device and find a way to convey its number to the source in advance. The source needs to have a disposable safe device too. Authorities can track your movement through cellular network signals and it’s advised to make it harder on them to locate you retroactively in the exact same cafe where the source was sitting. If you fail to follow this rule, all local authorities will be required to do is ask (politely and legally) for the video filmed by the café’s security camera at the time of your meeting.
  5. Choose secure messengers: your calls (cellular ones and via landlines) can be monitored by law enforcement agencies and each SMS is like a postcard – all text is fully visible to those who may intercept it. Therefore, use Messengers that allow for secure end to end call: signal, which was already mentioned above, and Telegram are considered to be the safest (although Telegram as well as WhatsApp’s web apps were compromised once and then fixed). According to some experts, you can  also consider using SMSSecure, Threema and even Whatsapp.The Signal Protocol has been actually implemented into WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Allo, making conversations using them encrypted. However, unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Google Allo and Facebook Messenger do not encrypt by default, nor notify users that conversations are unencrypted – but offer end-to-end encryption in an optional mode. You should also keep in mind that Facebook messenger and WhatsApp are both owned by Facebook.Adium and Pidgin are the most popular Mac and Windows instant messaging clients that support the OTR (Off the Record) encryption protocol and Tor – the web’s best encrypted browser, which we will get to in detail later (See how to enable Tor in Adium here and in Pidgin here). Naturally, you could also use the Tor Messenger itself, which is probably the safest of them all.Two final notes on texting: A cyber security expert I’ve discussed this with, says you should also have a working hypothesis that text is encrypted but the fact that these specific two individuals are talking, at this present time, might not go unnoticed.The second note is you should also remember to delete the messages in your phone (although this may not be enough to withstand a forensic check), just in case your device falls in the wrong hands, to avoid exposing them.
  6. Do not use organizational chats: Slack, Campfire, Skype and Google Hangouts should not be used for private conversations. They are easy to break in, and are exposed to disclosure requests for courts use, to resolve legal issues at the workplace. Therefore, it’s best to avoid them, not only when it comes to conversations with sources, but also conversations between colleagues, editors, etc., when you need to pass information received from your source, whose identity must be kept under cover. Many popular VoIP services like Jitsi have built-in chat features, and several of them are designed to offer most of Skype’s features, which make them a great replacement.
  7. In extreme cases, consider using a Blackphone: This phone, which strives to provide perfect protection for web surfing, calls, text messages and emails, is probably the best substitute for a regular phone if you are about to topple your government or getting ready to publish secret military files. An anti-bullet vest may also come in handy. Alternatively, try to do without a cell phone, Or opt for a cellular phone RFID signal-blocking bag. There’s always an option that even the Blackphone can be tracked using its IMEI (the mobile phone’s ID).
  8. Protecting Data on your computer: It’s very easy to break regular passwords, but it can take years to break passphrases – i.e., random combinations of words. We recommend trying secure password management tools like: LastPass and 1Password and KeePassX. You’ll need to remember only one password, versus too many Passwords. And still, when handling important services such as your email, do not rely on password managers: Just make sure you remember the password.In an interview to Alastair Reid in journalism.co.uk, Arjen Kamphuis, an information security expert, recommended that for encrypted hard drives, secure email, and unlocking laptops, one should choose a password of over 20 characters. Of course, the longer the password, the harder it is to crack – but the harder it is to remember too. That’s why he recommends the use of a passphrase. “It can be anything, like a line of your favorite poetry,” Kamphuis says, “maybe a line from something you wrote when you were nine that no one else will know about”.Reid reports this thought provoking calculation, using the Gibson Research Corporation’s password strength calculator: A password like “F53r2GZlYT97uWB0DDQGZn3j2e”, from a random password generator, seems very strong, and indeed it is, taking 1.29 hundred billion trillion centuries to exhaust all the combinations even when the software is making one hundred trillion guesses per second.Screenshots from GRC.com, showing the difference in strength between a password and a passphraseThe phrase: “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, he points out, is so much easier to remember and is also more secure, taking the same software 1.24 hundred trillion centuries to exhaust all possibilities. Well, passphrase it will be.
  9. Two-factor authentication is also a very good idea. In a regular two-stage authentication you sign in with your password and receive a second code, often via a text message to your smartphone. You can use Yubikey, as well as hardware tokens to further secure sensitive files on your computer.  For more information, read the 7 golden rules for password security.
  10. Assign a computer for inspecting suspicious files/attachments: The easiest way to distribute malware and spyware is through installation via USB or through attachments and email links. It is recommended therefore you use one air-gapped computer to examine these threats under quarantine. With this computer, you can freely use a USB and download files from the Internet, but do not transfer the files to your regular computer or re-use that USB.
  11. How to buy your own secured computer: Security expert Arjen Kamphuis recommends purchasing a pre-2009 IBM ThinkPad X60 or X61. These are the only modern enough laptops with modern software systems, which enable replacing low level software. Another point to take into account is that you should not buy your computer online, as it may be intercepted during delivery. Kamphuis recommends buying it from a second-hand store for cash. He also points out that you should abolish all connectivity: Remove all Ethernet, modem, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities. Personally, I know security experts who wouldn’t trust such a computer.

    ThinkPad X60. Don’t buy it online
  12. Educating your Sources: It’s possible that by the time the original and valuable information reaches you, it’s already too late. Your source may have made every possible mistake, leaving behind a trail of evidence. But beyond the need to secure the information once it’s in your hands, you should strive to teach your sources how to hide the information: store it securely and communicate safely via safe devices. Most people have no clue how to handle sensitive information, and in general what they’re up against the moment they get in touch with you.
  13. Use a designated secure system for receiving documents: Replace Dropbox or Google Drive and use something less popular but more secure. For example, SecureDrop is a designated system allowing you to receive files from anonymous sources and to safely scan and check them. Edward Snowden described Dropbox as “hostile to privacy” and recommended Spideroak instead. OnionShare is another free service that allows transferring files easily and anonymously.
  14. Don’t keep notes: neither on a laptop, nor calendars or contact lists on your cellphone or computer or in the cloud – do not keep record of your sources name, initials, phone number, email or user name in messengers. Just don’t.
  15. Visual tracking: On the way to sensitive meetings, avoid using public transportation and guide your source to do the same. You should also avoid meeting places such as modern malls, where video cameras are spread all over the place.
  16. Evading social media: Some people prefer to opt for radical anonymity. If for some reason, you need to vanish from the face of the earth without leaving a fully blown profile behind on every social media, totally delete your accounts. It’s different from ‘deactivating’ them, a state in which all your info is stored and can be re-activated.
  17. Make friends among hackers: This will help you avoid big mistakes, save time and headaches and keep you up to date on the technological arms race.
  18. Payment method: Pay for everything in cash, consider using Bitcoins – buy them anonymously (use this Business Insider guide for that purpose) – and, if you have somebody willing to accept them at the other end of the transaction, use Dash. A pre-paid credit card from an online store is also an option.
  19. Scribble wisely: If you jotted down information on a piece of paper, what they used to call a note in the Precambrian world, destroy it. And don’t forget even that wrinkled one at the bottom of your pocket. Yes, right next to that gum.


3. How to become anonymous online

Beyond securing the communications with your source, and protecting possible breaches of the sensitive data you get hold of, you should also avoid being tracked while browsing. Online habits can disclose or provide hints as to the story you’re working on, or worse, hint or disclose the identity of your source. Here are the golden rules for surfing the net safely and then, at the next chapter, for securing your email account:
  1. Private browsing mode: There are two basic ways to maintain anonymity while surfing the web. The first, most basic and popular, yet insufficient way is to browse the information in private mode, an option that most browsers allow. Your browsing history will not be saved, and basic tracking technologies, which advertisers use, such as HTTP cookies, will be prevented from creating your detailed profile. But this is more of a nice to have privacy: It basically hides your browsing history from family members who can access your computer. Your IP address can still be monitored and information regarding all the sites you visited is still exposed to your ISP.
  2. Use alternative browsers: browsers, such as Dooble, Comodo Dragon or SRWare Iron, which focus on user privacy, are limited in capabilities. You can achieve a similar degree of privacy offered by these browsers simply by deleting cookies – bits of code which have been downloaded to your system by websites you visit, that monitor your activity and sometimes even follow which content you consume; Another way to remain anonymous is by neutralizing your browser’s location settings, and installing various features aimed at achieving anonymity. To check whether you disabled all cookies effectively, you can use the app CCleaner, which also handles Flash cookies, but none of these browsers are fully encrypted. The only standard browser that ensures total privacy is the Tor browser. Tor is ugly and slow, but it will protect you and your sources. The next section will give a more detailed account of it.
  3.  TOR: This “notorious” browser, which was developed by the US Navy, allows you to operate in a hidden network, carry out private communications and set up web sites anonymously. Tor’s browser, which can be downloaded at Torproject.org, makes it very difficult to monitor your activities on the internet, or let governments or your ISP pinpoint your location. The only drawback is that it’s slow at times, a bit cumbersome – but that’s only because Tor routes you through three encrypted random relays around the world, before landing you at your destination site. You should also bear in mind that your neighbors may be shady characters.
    Another option related to Tor is to download Whonix, a secure operating system that is focused on privacy. It works as an access gate to Tor, and only allows connections with Tor sites and users. But the most popular Tor OS is Tails (The Amnesiac Incognito Live System). Tails can be booted from a USB stick or DVD, and it anonymizes all information. Edward Snowden is considered a fan of this software. Qubes is another OS that supports Whonix and is recommended by Snowden.
  4. Alternative search engines: Google, the most popular search engine, saves your search history in order to optimize the results. To stop this personalization you should click on: Search Tools > All Results > Verbatim. Or you sign into your Google account on www.google.com/history, find a list of your previous searches and select the items you want to remove by clicking the ‘Remove Items’ button.

    DuckDuckGo. A search engine that doesn’t store your info

    But to avoid being monitored entirely, it’s preferable to use a search engine such asDuckDuckGo. If you find it difficult to give up Google, download Searchlinkfix to at least keep away URL Trackers.
  5. Direct treatment of “short-term” computer memory: Another way to neutralize options for monitoring your surfing is by deleting the DNS (domain name system) cache. Deletion is done using simple commands in the operating system. Rebooting the router – which sometimes has a DNS cache – or rebooting the computer can also reboot both their respective DNS cache, if the router has one.
  6. Try to avoid HTML Web Storage: Web Storage is built into HTML5, and unlike cookies, the stored information is impossible to monitor or selectively remove. Web storage is enabled by default, so if you’re using Internet Explorer or Firefox, simply turn it off. You can also use the add-on Better Privacy for Firefox to remove the stored information automatically. The Click and Clean extension will do the same job for Google Chrome.
  7. Use a VPN:  As I mentioned already, your ISP can monitor the sites you surf, and anyone who wants to eavesdrop on you, can also intercept your communications. To protect all incoming and outgoing communications, it’s important to make use of a VPN (For a complete explanation, click here). VPN encrypts all your communications, so that even the ISP or the secret services, or just hackers hovering around your favorite coffee shop’s Wi-Fi, won’t be able to know who you sent an email to, which service you used, etc.The use of a VPN is very common among people who, for example, wish to see the complete Netflix movies catalog outside of the United States, but not every VPN is suitable for journalists. A VPN for journalists won’t necessarily be the fastest one or have the best support, but it has to be trusted not to keep VPN logs – that is, it cannot determine who you are, what sites you’ve visited and so on.A safe VPN is bound to be provided by a company who’s not located at one of the “14 Eyes” countries, where intelligence networks are allowed to collect and share information with one another; firstly and foremost, in the USA. So VPN companies located in the territory of the former Soviet Union countries have an advantage. Their courts do not easily hand out orders to retrieve information collected by local companies, be it regarding their citizens or foreign nationals. Here you’ll find a list of 5 VPN services that stand out regarding privacy and all are located outside the “14 Eyes” countries.wBy the way, even if governments are out on the hunt for Traffic that is sheltered by a VPN, you can still use stealth VPNs like TorGuard, to confront the challenge, whether it is active government censorship or just spying you’re dealing with. Tor and VPN’s give you the perfect protection when someone is trying to retrieve your browsing history in order to profile you.
  8. Repair DNS leaks: Using a VPN does not protect you completely, because that DNS Traffic may hint at your identity. DNSLeakTest.com will allow you to detect such leakage. If the test shows that DNS is of your VPN, you can relax, but if it shows that the DNS is of your ISP, you are not anonymized. In this case you, check out what you can do here.
  9. Virtual Machines: This nifty little trick is actually a second (virtual) computer, which operates as an app in your operating system. You can download files or open links in a similar way to the isolated computer I recommended earlier, so that your computer is less exposed to malware or spyware of any kind. Virtualization software, like VirtualBox should be opened using a secure operating system. File downloading is done with the virtual machine Internet connection shut down; after using the file, you’ll need to delete it – and depending on your adversary, perhaps delete it along with the machine.

    HideMyAss proxy server. I’ll hide yours, if you’ll hide mine

  10. Proxy server: As in the case of virtual machines, here too the activity moves to another “area” and allows you to keep safe from spying and other attacks. Actually, the proxy servers substitute your IP address with theirs, which can mislead people into thinking you’re in a different country, for instance. HideMyAss.com/proxy, Psiphon (open source) and JonDonym all provide a similar service. Some experts say that these should be used with a VPN and/or Tor for higher levels of security. But then, some experts I’ve talked to claim that if you bother using Tor, you’re as secured as one can be anyway.
  11. Three more types of extensions that can increase your level of security: To verify that the Internet protocol where you operate is https secure, you can install an extension called HTTPS Everywhere , made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF), one of the organizations that funds the Tor Project. This extension is recommended by many cyber experts; it will ensure that websites you visit use the secure protocol, which is definitely not an insurance policy against anything, but better than the unencrypted protocol.The second type of extension controls the data that javaScript is revealing to websites (in order to improve your browsing experience). Two popular options here are ScriptSafe  and NoScript.Another extension is the Ghostery browser. This extension will reveal who is following you among 2,000 companies, and will allow you to block unwanted ones. It’s sweet, but you probably won’t be blocking the NSA this way. Privacy badger, a project by the EFF, also works similarly.


4. Securing your email

How should you protect your e-mail? The problem with maintaining the confidentiality of emails is even tougher: Google and Microsoft will most likely just give out your emails to government agencies if and when required to do so. What should you do?
  1. Safe extensions: The simplest option, assuming you use common Web mail services such as Yahoo and Google, is to install the browser plugin Mailvelope, and make sure that the person on the receiving end does too. This extension simply encrypts (and decrypts) the e-mail. A similar but limited extension to Gmail called SecureGmail will perform a similar job. Emails that go through this extension are encrypted, and can’t be decrypted by Google. Another possibility is “Encrypted Communication”, which is a simple to use Firefox extension. For that you will need a password that the recipient has access to – but remember to never transmit the password by email.
  2. Secure email providers: Hushmail is an example of an email service that provides better security than the more common networks you use, but it may be forced to hand over emails to the US government under a court order, and it does log IP addresses. Another email service with similar features and security levels is Kolab Now, which prides itself amongst other things with storing data exclusively in Switzerland.
  3. Disposable Email Addresses (DEA’s): This is an email created ad hoc for a specific purpose, which is completely anonymous and is deleted immediately after use. This solution, commonly used when signing up for various services in order to avoid spam, is also a great solution for maintaining anonymity. However I wouldn’t advise journalists to communicate with their sources over it, because security is not its strongest trait. There are dozens of such temporary emails, but the British Guardian, for example, recommended Guerrilla Mail and Mailinator.Using Guerrilla Mail in the Tor Browser ensures that not even they can connect your IP with your email address. Likewise, if you use email encryption software, such as GnuPG, on Tor, you’re all set and secure. So, let’s talk a bit about email encryption.
  4. Encrypting your mail:  Wired got this recommendation from Micah Lee, a privacy-focused technologist who worked with the EFF and First Look Media (here is an interview Lee held with Edward Snowden): Encrypting messages with webmail can be tough. It often requires the user to copy and paste messages into text windows and then use PGP to scramble and unscramble them (PGP – Pretty Good Privacy – is an encryption program that provides cryptographicprivacy and authentication for data communication). That is why Lee suggests a different email setup, using a privacy-focused email host like Riseup.net, the Mozilla email app Thunderbird, the encryption plugin Enigmail, and another plugin called TorBirdy that routes its messages through Tor.As Reid pointed out in his interview with Kamphuis on journalism.co.uk, Greenwald almost lost the NSA story because he initially ignored Snowden’s instructions on email encryption. In other words, if you want a story that will go down in history it makes sense to be secure. Kamphuis agrees that PGP can be trusted. As he and Reid explain, with PGP encryption, you have a public key, like your public phone number, and a private key. The public key can go on Twitter biographies, business cards, websites and wherever else your work is publicized, but the private key must be stored securely, as with any other sensitive information. Then, when a source wants to send information, they will use your public key to encrypt their email, that only your private key can unlock.Kamphuis recommended the GNU Privacy Guard, an open-source version of PGP, that is simple to set up and has an active support community. For encrypting files, data and hard drives, he suggested consulting his free eBook, “Information security for journalists”, published with Silkie Carlo and released through the CIJ, which fully explains the process.If you do choose to encrypt the message itself regardless of your mail provider’s identity, using zip with a password is a good idea, and 7ZIP is a recommended tool for accomplishing that.
  5. Back to basics: Yes, I know that this is back to email security 101 – but please try to avoid phishing. Watch the “from” field in your email for little misspellings; someone else can pose as somebody you know.And one last word on email encryption: One of the real problems to bear in mind is that even after encrypting them, not everything is encrypted. The email addresses of the sender and recipient, the subject line and the time and date when the email was sent, are all out on the open. Attachments and the message itself are the only data that is encrypted.


 5. Final words

These are perhaps the most radical pieces of advice I ran through, when preparing this eBook.
As Micah Lee put it when interviewed on privacy on WIRED: “If your computer gets hacked, the game is over. Creating a virtual sandbox around your online communications is a good way to keep the rest of your system protected. Tor is awesome and can make you anonymous. But if your endpoint gets compromised, your anonymity is compromised too. If you really need to be anonymous, you also need to be really secure”.
And Journalist Tony Loci puts it in even harsher words in an article published in an eBook about the future of cross border investigative journalism for the Nieman foundation at Harvard: “Some journalists, computer scientists and privacy advocates are so alarmed that they recommend reporters go old school… and rely on in-person interviews and snail mail”.
I hope I have helped people in the trade, and others, gather some information that will clarify what needs and can be done to ensure your and your source’s security in these hectic times.

6. List of Sources for This Book

  • Security for journalists: How to keep your sources and your information safe
  •  Securing data, sources and yourself
  • Surveillance and Security: Are reporters and news organizations doing enough to protect sources?
  • Muckraking Goes Global: The Future of Cross-Border Investigative Journalism
  • The Ultimate Guide for Online Privacy
  • What Is a DNS Cache?
  • How to Anonymize Everything You Do Online
  • 19 ways to stay anonymous and protect your online privacy
  • Edward Snowden explains how to reclaim your privacy
  • Information security for journalists: staying secure online
  • NSA targets the privacy-conscious
  • Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes
  • Your WhatsApp secrets are safe now. But Big Brother is still watching you…
  • Obama Pursuing Leakers Sends Warning to Whistle-Blowers
  • 6 encryption mistakes that lead to data breaches

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Source  https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/online-privacy-journalists/
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Friday, 26 May 2017

Julian Assange still persecuted by the UK failed State


Julian Assange still persecuted by the British State because he did not turn up to their kangaroo court  to answer about a crime  Sweden admits did not happen 

By John Pilger 
Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state’s collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and “rendition.”
Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he might have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure. This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden. “It’s a laughing stock,” said James Catlin, one of Assange’s Australian lawyers. “It is as if they make it up as they go along.”
It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch” foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.
The “mission” was to destroy the “trust” that was WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity.” This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution.” Silencing and criminalizing WikiLeaks was the aim.
Perhaps this was understandable. WikiLeaks has exposed the way the U.S. government dominates much of human affairs, including its epic crimes, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of civilians and the contempt for sovereignty and international law.
These disclosures are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal.”
In 2012, the Obama campaign boasted on its website that Obama had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other U.S. presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had publicly pronounced her guilty.
Few serious observers doubt that should the U.S. get its hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. According to documents released by Edward Snowden, he is on a “Manhunt target list.” Threats of his kidnapping and assassination became almost political and media currency in the U.S. following then Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous claim that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist.” Hillary Clinton proposed her own expedient solution: “Can’t we just drone this guy.”
According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington’s bid to get Assange is “unprecedented in scale and nature.” In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought for almost seven years to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers, whether the editor of the New York Times or the editor of WikiLeaks. The very notion of free speech is described as America’s “ founding virtue,” or as Thomas Jefferson called it, “our currency.”
Faced with this hurdle, the U.S. Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage,” “conspiracy to commit espionage,” “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking), and general “conspiracy." The favored Espionage Act, which was meant to deter pacifists and conscientious objectors during World War I, has provisions for life imprisonment and the death penalty.
Assange’s ability to defend himself has been severely limited by the U.S. declaring his case a state secret. In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security.” This is a kangaroo court.
For Assange, his trial has been trial by media. On Aug. 20, 2010, when the Swedish police opened a rape investigation, they coordinated it, unlawfully, with the Stockholm tabloids. The front pages said Assange had been accused of the “rape of two women.” The word “rape” can have a very different legal meaning in Sweden than in Britain; a pernicious false reality became the news that went round the world. Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in canceling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a highly contentious figure in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.
On August 30, Assange voluntarily went to a police station in Stockholm and answered the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was reopening the case.
At a press conference, Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed. The reporter cited one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.”
On the day Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service, MUST, publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article titled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers [under U.S. command in Afghanistan].”
Both the Swedish prime minister and foreign minister attacked Assange, who had been charged with no crime. Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its U.S. counterparts that U.S.-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.
For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the renewed rape investigation to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs,” based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee in London. Finally, he was allowed to leave. As soon as he left, Marianne Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals.
Assange went to a police station in London, was duly arrested and spent 10 days in solitary confinement in Wandsworth Prison. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court.
He still had not been charged with any offense. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned in London, by video or personally, pointing out that Marianne Ny had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used by the Swedish and other European authorities for that purpose. She refused.
For almost seven years, while Sweden has questioned 44 people in the U.K. in connection with police investigations, Ny refused to question Assange and so advance her case.
Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as “abnormal” and demanded she be replaced.
Assange asked the Swedish authorities for a guarantee that he would not be “rendered” to the U.S. if he was extradited to Sweden. This was refused. In December 2010, the Independent  revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the U.S.
Contrary to its reputation as a bastion of liberal enlightenment, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA renditions, including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the U.N. Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables.
“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers that faced Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”
The war on Assange now intensified. Marianne Ny refused to allow his Swedish lawyers, and the Swedish courts, access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police had extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the rape allegations.
Ny said she was not legally required to reveal this critical evidence until a formal charge was laid and she had questioned him. So why wouldn’t she question him?
When she announced last week that she was dropping the Assange case, she made no mention of the evidence that would destroy it. One of the SMS messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him.” She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test.” She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges.” In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her.”
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” The women were manipulated by police, whatever their lawyers may say now. Certainly, they too are the victims of this sinister saga.
Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”
Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the U.S., or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety.
Supported by most of Latin America, the government of tiny Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S.; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington.
The Labor government of then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard had even threatened to take away his Australian passport, until it was pointed out to her that this would be unlawful.
The renowned human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who represents Assange in London, wrote to Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”
It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.
In 2011, in Sydney, I spent several hours with a conservative Member of Australia’s Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull, now the Prime Minister of Australia. He had a reputation then as a free speech advocate. We discussed the threats to Assange and their wider implications for freedom of speech and justice, and why Australia was obliged to stand by him. I gave him Gareth Peirce’s letter about the threat to Assange’s rights and life. He said the situation was clearly appalling and promised to take it up with the Gillard government. Only his silence followed.
For almost seven years, this epic miscarriage of justice has been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. Deeply personal attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the U.S. threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, and to the principle of free speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious. I would call it anti-journalism.
Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kickstarted on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.
The previous editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years.” Yet no attempt was made to protect the Guardian’s provider and source. Instead, the “scoop” became part of a marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.
With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous.” They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.”
Journalism students might study this period to understand the most ubiquitous source of “fake news” — as from within a media self-ordained with a false respectability and as an extension of the authority and power it courts and protects. The presumption of innocence was not a consideration in Kirsty Wark’s memorable live-on-air interrogation in 2010. “Why don’t you just apologize to the women?” she demanded of Assange, followed by: “Do we have your word of honor that you won’t abscond?”
On the BBC’s Today program, John Humphrys bellowed: “Are you a sexual predator?” Assange replied that the suggestion was ridiculous, to which Humphrys demanded to know how many women he had slept with.
“Would even Fox News have descended to that level?” wondered the American historian William Blum. “I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He then would have known precisely how to reply to such a question: ‘You mean including your mother?’”
Last week on BBC World News, on the day Sweden announced it was dropping the case, I was interviewed by Greta Guru-Murthy, who seemed to have little knowledge of the Assange case. She persisted in referring to the “charges” against him. She accused him of putting Trump in the White House and she drew my attention to the “fact” that “leaders around the world” had condemned him. Among these leaders she included Trump’s CIA director. I asked her, “Are you a journalist?”
The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed the Extradition Act in 2014. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me. “These changes in the law mean that the U.K. now recognizes as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.” In other words, he would have won his case in the British courts and would not have been forced to take refuge.
Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 was immensely brave. Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognize the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision.
Ecuador’s embassy in London was placed under police siege and its government abused. When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down. One night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.
Since then, Assange has been confined to a small room without sunlight. He has been ill from time to time and refused safe passage to the diagnostic facilities of hospital. Yet his resilience and dark humor remain quite remarkable under the circumstances. When asked how he put up with the confinement, he replied, “Sure beats a supermax.”
It is not over, but it is unraveling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations, last year ruled that Assange had been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden. This is international law at its apex.
Both Britain and Sweden participated in the 16-month U.N. investigation and submitted evidence and defended their positions before the tribunal. In previous cases ruled upon by the Working Group—Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma, imprisoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian in Iran—both Britain and Sweden gave full support to the tribunal. The difference now is that Assange’s persecution endures in the heart of London.
The Metropolitan Police say they still intend to arrest Assange for bail infringement should he leave the embassy. What then? A few months in prison while the U.S. delivers its extradition request to the British courts? If the British government allows this to happen it will, in the eyes of the world, be shamed comprehensively and historically as an accessory to the crime of a war waged by rampant power against justice and freedom, and all of us.
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