Assange

WikiLeaks encountered another round of criticism in Washington political circles today as the two senators who head the Senate Intelligence Committee called for the espionage prosecution of editor Julian Assange.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kit Bond (R-Miss.) said that Assange--and, in wording that was likely designed to intimidate programmers and other volunteers aiding WikiLeaks--any of "his possible accomplices" should be charged with federal crimes.

"We believe that Mr. Assange's conduct is espionage and that his actions fall under the elements of this section of law," the senators told Attorney General Eric Holder in a … Read more

Congressional Republicans are starting to condemn the Obama administration for not doing enough to curb WikiLeaks.

In a calculated affront to official Washington, WikiLeaks is dribbling out hundreds of thousands of confidential State Department cables at a leisurely pace, effectively ensuring that new embarrassing disclosures will appear every day.

There's no "sense of urgency" from Attorney General Eric Holder to stop this, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said today. Holder told reporters yesterday that an investigation that's been in progress since the summer is still "ongoing,&… Read more

It's set to become the new waiting game in Washington, D.C.: how long will it be before the U.S. government puts the legal smackdown on WikiLeaks?

That there is an investigation into how WikiLeaks obtained classified documents is, of course, no secret. In July, the Pentagon publicly confirmed a criminal probe into the matter.

A month later, that probe had expanded to include the FBI. "The Army's Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI are conducting an investigation into the leak of the documents," the Pentagon said on August 18.

Attorney General Eric Holder didn'… Read more

The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says WikiLeaks should be officially designated as a terrorist organization.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the panel's presumptive next head, asked the Obama administration today to "determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization," putting the group in the same company as al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas on the Tokyo subway.

"WikiLeaks appears to meet the legal criteria" of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, King wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed … Read more

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered clandestine surveillance of United Nations leadership, including obtaining "security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys, and types of VPN versions used" and biometric information, according to a secret directive made public today by WikiLeaks.org.

The July 2009 directive issued under Clinton's name, which also asks for details about "information systems, networks, and technologies used by top officials and their support staffs," sheds rare light on the shadowy world of government espionage.

That classified dispatch is part of a massive document dump, about 250,000 diplomatic cables, that began appearing … Read more

The Swedish government said today it would issue an international arrest warrant for WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange on rape charges.

A Stockholm district court ruled that Assange will be "detained in his absence" on charges of rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion. The decision came at a hearing where Sweden's director of prosecution, Marianne Ny presented evidence related to the allegations.

"I requested his arrest so we could carry out an interrogation with Assange," Ny told the Agence France-Presse news agency. "That is the reason."

The rape allegations--which Assange strenuously denies and says … Read more

When WikiLeaks launched with little fanfare in early 2007, its founders touted it as a unique collaboration that would rely on the same anyone-can-edit software and sense of community that made Wikipedia such a success.

Instead of having a small group of experts examine documents, WikiLeaks promised, the forthcoming Web site would allow "the entire global community" to "interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public." News coverage at the time quoted spokesman Julian Assange emphasizing the lack of hierarchy, saying WikiLeaks is "an international collaboration, primarily of mathematicians."

That was then. In … Read more

Forget China or Al Qaeda. In a twist that would have been inconceivable even a few months ago, the WikiLeaks.org Web site is being proposed as the first public target for a U.S. government cyberattack.

After the shadowy, document-leaking organization distributed nearly 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war on Friday, Washington officialdom responded with a torrent of denunciations alleging violations of national security and endangering U.S. military operations.

In a rare point of congruence, The Washington Post and The Washington Times both criticized the release, with the smaller paper arguing that WikiLeaks' offshore Web site … Read more

A Republican senator has proposed rewriting the Espionage Act to target WikiLeaks.

Sen. John Ensign of Nevada yesterday announced a bill that would make it illegal to identify informants working with the U.S. military, which WikiLeaks did earlier this year when releasing files from the war in Afghanistan.

In last week's Iraq war files release, WikiLeaks removed names, but the U.S. Defense Department said yesterday that information in the leaked documents could still identify dozens of people.

"My legislation will extend the legal protections for government informants, such as the Iraqis named in this latest document … Read more