WikiLeaks: the latest developments
El País reports on Cuba, Manning visitor blocked at military base, al-Jazeera's Transparency Unit and the latest WikiLeaks news and views
A Forbes.com blog reports a denial from WikiLeaks that it hacked into the Icelandic parliament's computer network, via a rogue laptop in a room adjacent to the office of MP and former WikiLeaks volunteer Birgitta Jonsdottir.
Kristinn Hrafnson, an Icelandic WikiLeaks member, said the spying accusations were "absolutely unacceptable" while Jonsdottir has pointed out that police believe the spying in the parliament, called the Alþingi in Icelandic, started before WikiLeaks were in the country. Hrafnson also described the timing of the allegations as "interesting", coming as they did on the same as a Bloomberg report carried suggestions that WikiLeaks may have procured some of its leaks via file sharing networks.The Forbes blogger, Andy Greenberg, also makes a further point:
Perhaps the strongest evidence that no sophisticated cyberspies penetrated the Althingi? The sheer clumsiness of that alleged intrusion. Modern hackers place stealthy software–not easily spotted physical hardware–on their victims' networks. Given that Julian Assange and his friends once were considered among the most capable hackers in Australia, it's hard to imagine WikiLeaks would resort to Cold War era espionage techniques.
Another El País story on the cables: Mexico permitted the US to question foreign nationals held in illegal immigration centres. A 2008 secret memo from the US's Mexico City embassy said Mexican authorities "were receptive to concerns raised by foreign governments regarding potential infiltration by foreign groups, stepping up security and surveillance when circumstances warrant" but a procedural change the previous year had complicated matters where "special interest aliens" were concerned.
Instead of, as before, being held in one central facility near the airport, immigration officials detained, questioned and released the "special interest aliens" near where they were picked up – "complicating our ability to investigate and track them", the cable said. It did, however, report one piece of good news in the US's cooperation with Cisen, Mexico's civilian intelligence service.On a positive note, CISEN, which is our primary interlocutor on counterterrorism, has allowed USG officers to interview foreign nationals detained at Mexican immigration detention centers dispersed around the country for potential CT information of interest
Amnesty International has put out a statement protesting Manning's treatment in pre-trial detention.
We're concerned that the conditions inflicted on Bradley Manning are unnecessarily severe and amount to inhumane treatment by the US authorities. Manning has not been convicted of any offense, but military authorities appear to be using all available means to punish him while in detention. This undermines the United States' commitment to the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Juan Cole has a blogpost about Bradley Manning (above) and Tunisia:
Manning's treatment as though he were a terrorist contrasts to the lionization of other kinds of dissident. If it is true that Manning turned State Department documents over to Wikileaks, then he played a small role in the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution, which overthrew the brutal and grasping dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali
Rudolf Elmer, the ex-Julius Bar banker who gave to CDs to WikiLeaks, is being held on remand in Switzerland. His defence lawyer said he would appeal the court decision, made on 22 January, within 10 days.
Good morning. Here is a catch-up of the weekend developments:
• An attempt to deliver a petition protesting the conditions of Bradley Manning's captivity was thwarted when supporters of the US army private suspected were stopped by guards at the Quantico military base where Manning is held. David House, a friend of Manning, and Jane Hamsher, founder of the Firedoglake blog, were detained by the guards over a minor traffic violation for two hours, by which time Manning's visiting hours were over.
Hamsher has since written a blog post saying the aim of "the Quantico incident" was to "abuse Bradley Manning and intimidate David House":
Everyone but David has stopped coming to see Bradley, and it takes a lot of courage to do what David is doing. It's a very intimidating situation. So I try to support him by giving him a place to stay and driving him to the base when he comes to town. That's really my only involvement.
There is no doubt in my mind that the primary objective of everything that happened today was to keep Bradley Manning from having the company of his only remaining visitor
Kevin Drum has posted the full set of Hamsher's tweets from her Quantico visit.
• Al-Jazeera's WikiLeaks-inspired Transparency Unit has launched with the publication - in co-ordination with the Guardian - of the Palestinian papers. The Guardian reporting has been supplemented with WikiLeaks cables, which you can see at the top of this page
• The optioning of the film rights for an as yet unpublished Julian Assange biography is, it turns out, just one of three WikiLeaks screen projects in the works.The Oscar-winning director of Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, Alex Gibney, is making a WikiLeaks documentary for Universal pictures. Meanwhile HBO is in talks with the BBC about a co-production based on a New Yorker article about leaked footage from the cockpit of a US Apache helicopter. Previous HBO-BBC co-productions have included Rome and House of Saddam.
Now might be the time to link to Vanity Fair's list of websites besides Facebook and WikiLeaks that should be movies.
• WikiLeaks released cables from the US Interests Section in Havana over the weekend, following a series of El País reports on Cuba. The highest classification release - at the Secret No Foreign Nationals level - answers State Department questions on the role of the Catholic church in a Cuban "transition". It can tell Washington little, concluding:
Any activities the Church may be carrying out to prepare for a post-Castro Cuba are not being shared either from the pulpit or in our private discussions with Church officials
The El País report (Spanish) paints this a "capitulation" of the Catholic church on the island, saying it has "renounced political activism on Cuba".
• Saturday was the second anniversary of Barack Obama's executive order to close Guantanamo within a year. McClatchy had a WikiLeaks-based piece looking at why that didn't happen. Key among the factors, it says the cables suggest, was "Congress' refusal to allow any of the captives to be brought to the United States." That meant other countries were reluctant to take in the detainees.
• Saturday was the second anniversary of Barack Obama's executive order to close Guantanamo within a year. McClatchy had a WikiLeaks-based piece looking at why that didn't happen. Key among the factors, it says the cables suggest, was "Congress' refusal to allow any of the captives to be brought to the United States." That meant other countries were reluctant to take in the detainees.
