Australian Rallies

Protests will be held around the world today against the detention of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Demonstrations are planned in the capitals of Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Peru to demand Assange's release, the re-establishment of the WikiLeaks domain name and the restoration of Visa and Mastercard credit services to allow supporters to donate money to the whistleblowing site.

A statement on the Spanish-language website Free WikiLeaks said: "We seek the liberation of Julian Assange in United Kingdom territory." The website called on protesters to gather at 6pm (17.00 GMT) in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville and three other Spanish cities.

It also calls for "the re-establishment of the WikiLeaks (wikileaks.org) internet domain," and the restoration of Visa and MasterCard credit card services to enable the "freedom to move money" because no one has "proved Assange's guilt", nor charged WikiLeaks with any crime.

Ron Paul : Lying is Not Patriotic

WikiLeaks and Assange arrest a testing time for rule of law

What is always entertaining in these causes celebres is the flexibility – hypocrisy if you prefer – on display in all quarters

Tucked away in the latest batch of high-minded WikiLeaks revelations in today's Guardian is a perfect example of the triumph of cock-up over conspiracy, of the lowbrow over the lofty. I refer to the popularity of US sitcoms like Friends and Desperate Housewives in steering impressionable Saudi youth away from jihad and into the arms of David Letterman.

Who says? Well, another of the familiar crop of American diplomats whose cable traffic to Washington was downloaded and given to the media via WikiLeaks. So, they would say that, wouldn't they?

Except that the US had blown $500m – say £300m – in funding the al-Hurra Arabic TV news channel, only to find that popular cable channels like MCB4 and Rotana were actually doing the biz with subtitled sitcoms and movies that embody heroic American virtues like honesty over greed or hypocrisy and respect for the rule of law.

It's going to be a testing time for honesty over hypocrisy and the rule of law now that Julian Assange is detained in custody awaiting extradition proceedings to Sweden with a possible rival bid lodged by the US, where prosecutors are scratching their heads for some way of being able to charge him for the damage they say he's done.

The Guardian's editorial grapples manfully with the issue today and – after some on "the one hand, on the other hand" discussion in the paper's familiar tradition – ends by warning that, whatever excesses WikiLeaks may have committed, the US government must not follow authoritarian regimes like China or Iran in the covert use of cyber-attacks to curb its activities. Freedom of speech is never an unqualified right, but if the US wants to act it should do so openly via the law.

That seems an unanswerable conclusion, one worth restating as allegations surface – unsupported by much evidence so far – that the US state department, Pentagon or even White House must be co-ordinating the "patriotic hacker" attacks on internet companies and sites that have been helping keep the WikiLeaks operation airborne after the likes of Amazon and eBay pulled their own plugs.

The US has never been an easy place to keep too much secret for long – remember how the Reagan administration's illegal sale of weapons to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras was exposed? – which is why the 9/11 conspiracy theorists have been wasting their time.

So whatever has been going on will probably surface in due course. Fortunately, the Obama administration has been pretty level-headed so far, leaving the "hang 'em high" nonsense to the Republican right, plus Joe Lieberman. In any case, whatever Assange did, he didn't do it on US soil, so they will have a problem with any extradition proceedings which look overtly political.

That would be true even in Britain, whose much-criticised extradition treaty with the US is deemed too favourable to American requests on flimsy grounds. Hence the powerful defence made again by today's Daily Mail on behalf of Gary McKinnon, the geeky London computer hacker whom the Pentagon wants jailed for exposing the weaknesses of their security codes. Whatever McKinnon may – may – have done is trivial in comparison to the embarrassment caused by Assange.

It is the Mail that makes another interesting point I have not seen elsewhere, namely that US attempts to extradite Assange may be much harder from Sweden, whose US extradition treaty is more favourable to defendants than would be the case here, especially where there are allegations of political motive.

So Assange's lawyers, who usually sound a bit naïve on radio and TV, might yet conclude their client would be safer in Stockholm than appealing against his detention and the European extradition warrant all the way to the UK supreme court. By the same token US government lawyers might realise that they had better get their rival bid in quickly.

The Swedish dimension adds piquancy to an otherwise relentlessly high-minded, policy-orientated public controversy. It is the Desperate Housewives or the Friends side of the story that pulls in punters who might otherwise not be watching the BBC News Channel or al-Hurra.

Reading Esther Addley's account of the sexual allegations made by two Swedish women against Assange – and the Mail's lengthier investigation yesterday – will lead to doubts about the idea that the CIA is manipulating their complaints.

What is always entertaining in these causes celebres is the flexibility – hypocrisy if you prefer – on display in all quarters. Some progressives who might normally be expected to express alarm over rape allegations are happy to dismiss these as politically motivated.

Assange himself emerges as distinctly untransparent by the standards he sets others. Newspapers like the Times, which initially condemned the leaks, rushed on Monday to print the one about key US global infrastructure targets, which papers like the Guardian had long since decided could not be justified in the public interest.

It was ever thus and hypocrisy is a charge easily levelled against most of us. The more secretive and autocratic a regime (it's Libya's turn this morning) the uglier its two-faced diplomatic manoeuvrings, as reported to US diplomats.

By this test, the US has emerged fairly well from the Wiki deluge, its public positions less divergent than most from what it turns out to have been saying in private. As with the banking crisis the damage done is to its reliability and credibility as a secure repository of valuable information (or dollar holdings).

That Britain was fearful of what Libya's Muammar Gaddafi might do to UK interests – notably oil and gas – if Abdelbaset-al-Megrahi, the convicted Lockerbie bomber, was not released seemed pretty obvious at the time, though the waters were muddied by the Whitehall-Holyrood dimension and outraged US public opinion to which Washington had to pander.

The row should serve as a useful reminder – though it won't – that Britain sometimes asserts its national interest despite certain US displeasure and that sometimes governments have to cut deals with awful people to keep their own citizens safe and warm. They rarely enjoy it.

Both in the law courts and the wider public arena this controversy will run on, less for what significant information the leaks have revealed but for the processes involved and the role/functioning/regulating of the global internet in our fragile, wired world.

The Wiki row shows – yet again – how vulnerable modern society is to disruption through information networks, both from those who seek to promote dissemination at all costs and those who seek to deny it.

Are officials who shared their thoughts with US diplomats in repressive societies now being hunted down? Unlike the fate of Julian Assange, that is one thing we are unlikely ever to learn. Will the glorious freedoms the internet both provides and enhances be better entrenched or weakened as a result?

That we will discover. What we know already is that the internet is like the proverbially priceless Ming vase being carried across a slippery floor.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/dec/08/wikileaks-assange-arrest-michael-white?INTCMP=SRCH

Ron Paul Calls Wikileaks Heroes

Charging Julian Assange could be unconstitutional

The due process clause rules out prosecuting WikiLeaks' founder – a non-US citizen – for extraterritorial offences

There's been lots of talk about US authorities prosecuting Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, but it has posed a big question: Assange did all his leaking while remaining outside of the United States, so is it constitutional to extend America's criminal laws to activities beyond its shores?

It's well established that the due process clause places limits on such sweeping assertions of power. For example, when foreign monopolies manipulate prices overseas, it's not enough to show that they have hurt American consumers. Courts insist on evidence that they had fair notice that American anti-trust laws would govern their activity.

Up to now, these constitutional requirements have been developed most elaborately in anti-trust and other areas, which involve civil damages, not criminal punishment. But due process is even more important in criminal procedure, where the Constitution has always held America to more demanding standards.

This basic point has been missed because cases like WikiLeaks are relative novelties. During the first two centuries of the American republic, the justice department only prosecuted extraterritorially for crimes involving recognition that American law was in play – offences that involved direct dealing with the American government or crimes like piracy that were universally condemned by all nations. It was only in the 1980s, and especially since 11 September 2001, that the United States has increasingly used the criminal law as a weapon abroad.

As a consequence, courts are only beginning to grapple with the fair notice problem. In 2003, for instance, the second circuit considered whether due process allowed the United States to prosecute Ramzi Yousef, a non-citizen, for hijacking a Phillippines airliner en route to Japan. The court allowed the proceeding to go forward: given that Yousef's hijacking was a test run for a similar attack he planned for the United States, he should have "reasonably anticipate[d] being haled into court in this country".

But, on the surface at least, Assange could not be charged under a similar rationale. He does not seem to be planning to enter the United States anytime soon. His actions undoubtedly damaged the interests of the United States, but this is true of countless foreigners who release information about America in foreign countries. Surely, it would be unconstitutional for American criminal law to threaten prosecution against every foreigner in the world who denounces the United States?

The Espionage Act of 1917 is the most frequently cited authority for a criminal prosecution. In its 90-year history, it has only once been used against a foreign citizen for an extraterritorial violation. That was in 1985. The case involved Alfred Zehe, who had transmitted classified information about US anti-submarine warfare to the East German government. In defending himself in court, Zehe did not raise any constitutional objections, and so the district judge did not consider them in convicting him. Since Zehe didn't appeal, no higher court has ever ruled on the crucial due process questions.

But that doesn't mean that the justice department should proceed as if the due process clause didn't exist. Unless it can uncover clear and convincing evidence that Assange could reasonably foresee liability under American law, it should not give way to the passions of the moment and launch a criminal prosecution.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/10/julian-assange-wikileaks?INTCMP=SRCH

Julian Assange cast as common enemy as US left and right unite

Growing clamour sees Republicans and Democrats demanding action against WikiLeaks founder

The outcry against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is intensifying in the US, drawing a rare degree of consensus from politicians and pundits who have collectively cast him in the role of a common enemy.

In the past few days the calls for action against Assange have grown steadily louder and more shrill, with leading Republicans labelling him a terrorist, and top liberal Democratic politicians, albeit in more moderate language, also calling for his prosecution.

The highly unusual bipartisan hounding of Assange has led some free speech campaigning groups to warn of a "chilling effect," in which the threats of legal action are already having an impact on the open spirit of the internet.

The most extreme attacks have come from prominent Republicans including Sarah Palin, who has likened Assange to an al-Qaida operative; Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who called him a "hi-tech terrorist"; and Newt Gingrich, who called him an information terrorist and said he should be arrested as an "enemy combatant" .

Assange was also attacked by leading Democrats such as Dianne Feinstein, who said he should be charged under the US espionage act, and John Kerry, who has called for the law to be changed to allow a prosecution of the WikiLeaks website.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and author of Necessary Secrets, said the cross-party baying put the Obama administration in a difficult place. "There is a huge amount of pressure on them to do something about WikiLeaks."

This week Joe Lieberman, the independent senator who has long been an opponent of WikiLeaks, widened the net when he accused the New York Times of an "act of bad citizenship" by publishing versions of the US embassy cables and called on the justice department to hold a "very intensive inquiry" into whether the paper had committed a crime.

Schoenfeld and other experts on the US first amendment think it highly unlikely that a prosecution will be brought against the New York Times – no news outlet has ever been charged under the espionage act and the supreme court ruled out such an action against the same newspaper over the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The Times is keeping its head down for the moment, saying only that "We believe that our decision to publish was responsible journalism, legal, and important to a democratic society". It has also published a long explanation of why it went ahead with the embassy leaks.

So far key Obama administration figures have adopted a more temperate tone than much of the swirling debate around them. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has called the embassy cables "moderate" in their seriousness and said arguments that they had damaged national security were "fairly significantly overwrought".

The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has played a double game, threatening to take "aggressive steps" against disseminators of the cables while emphasising the positive worth of an open internet.

Eric Holder, the US attorney general, who will have the final decision on whether to prosecute, has said he will do everything he can to hold WikiLeaks accountable, but has not specified what that would mean.

"Whether or not new laws are passed to further curb freedom of speech, there is already a chilling effect," said Steve Rendall of the media watchdog Fair.

There is already evidence that some people who were willing to donate to WikiLeaks in support of the site's freedom of information work have now stopped doing so for fear of being arrested as terrorist funders .

Bloggers pointed out that if Feinstein's desire to wield the espionage act against WikiLeaks were followed through, it would have a powerful deadening effect on mainstream media outlets' efforts to report on national security matters.

However, some at the coal face of internet publishing say that they are unfazed by the current furore. John Young, whose website cryptome.org has published about 60,000 classified and non-classified documents over the past 14 years, believes the storm will pass.

"This is just typical arm-waving and yelling. If anything, this will just further wind people up to oppose authority and send in more documents."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/08/julian-assange-cast-enemy-us?INTCMP=SRCH

We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves.- Thomas Jefferson