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Courage marks World Press Freedom Day
Wednesday 3 May marks World Press Freedom Day, amid a growing consensus that press freedoms are at risk internationally. Since 1993, the UNESCO-initiatied event has been used to draw attention to threats to free expression. The past year journalists have found themselves at severe risk in many countries, with the situation in Turkey, Syria and Azerbaijan being particularly acute.
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Britain eyes up its own Espionage Act
The United Kingdom already has some of the strictest rules on official secrecy in the world. As Ian Cobain details in his recent book The History Thieves, Britain’s strong secrecy culture has ben used to keep information about colonial policy and foreign policy, and even entire military campaigns from the British public. Large archives held by UK government departments in contravention of public records laws, containing some information that is centuries-old, have come to light in the past few years.
After nearly seven years in unjust and abusive confinement, heroic WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning will be free on 17 May 2017. President Obama has commuted Chelsea’s sentence, releasing her from prison in five months’ time but leaving her conviction intact.
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Justin Liverman
The United States Department of Justice has accused computer science student Justin Liverman of being associated with Crackas with Attitude (CWA), the group that claimed to have accessed emails from the AOL account of CIA Director John Brennan in late 2015 and brought to widespread attention the vulnerability of a variety of US government computer systems to social engineering attacks.
On 8 September 2016 the FBI arrested Justin. At the time, media reports noted that Justin had gained admission to the Pentagon’s first bug bounty programme, using his skills to secure government systems from bad actors.
Of five individuals arrested on suspicion of involvement with CWA, he is one of only two – both US nationals – who are facing charges. Justin was expected to be indicted on 28 December 2016 and arraigned in early January in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virgina for violating the notorious Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He urgently needs your support to pay for his legal representation and expenses.
At a time when standards for the storage of sensitive government information – and high ranking individuals’ compliance with those standards – are the subject of significant and justified public concern, CWA exposed the vulnerability of even the most senior US government officials to non-technical social engineering attacks. In October 2015, selected emails from John Brennan’s AOL account were published by WikiLeaks as the Brennan Emails and include drafts of policy documents, legislative drafts, contact details and, most sensitively, Director Brennan’s background security clearance questionnaire.
Members of CWA claimed to have gained access to a range of US government and law enforcement information by persuading individuals to hand over credentials over the course of late 2015 and early 2016, including the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), which shares resources between law enforcement, intelligence and other US government agencies. Director Brennan admitted that CWA had shown up just how vulnerable government officials were to attacks that fell well below the sophistication of nation state actors, in part through the use of obsolete online services. In turn, the FBI was obliged to remind government and law enforcement employees about the importance of exercising basic information security standards across their personal email and social media accounts.
Since Feburary 2016, five people have been arrested in relation to CWA – three in the UK and two, including Justin Liverman, in the United States. Following his arrest in September 2016, Justin is facing potential CFAA charges in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He is represented by Tor Ekeland, Jay Leiderman and Maria Medvin and urgently needs funds to pay for his legal defence and expenses ahead of his forthcoming court dates.
On 17 October a platform calling for EU-wide whistleblower protection is launched by the first 44 signatories of a joint statement, which include the Courage Foundation. The statement will be open for additional organisations and individuals to sign after the launch. Following the trade secrets directive and the LuxLeaks trial earlier this summer, the lack of protection of whistleblowers at EU level has come into sharp focus.
In June, Luxembourg became the subject of criticism worldwide when whistleblowers Antoine Deltour and Raphael Hallet were convicted for casting light on the industrial scale tax avoidance that was being enabled by the country’s government. At the time, Deltour said that the ruling was “a warning towards future whistleblowers, which is detrimental to citizens’ information and the good functioning of democracy.”
The UN’s Independent Expert on the promotion of a equitable and democratic international order, Alfred de Zayas, also condemned the sentence:
We seem to live in an upside-down world in which whistleblowers are convicted and those who loot society are not… Governments are systematically being deprived of essential tax revenues. As long as there are widespread tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax havens, States will not have the financial capacity to meet their human rights treaty obligations.”
The following press statement was issued on 6 July 2016 with the approval of Chelsea Manning’s legal team.
Chelsea’s attorneys are still trying to speak to her directly. In the meantime, this is a very good time to send Chelsea a letter.
When I got home my 4 y/o said, "Daddy, we have to send Chelsea a card." You can too. pic.twitter.com/h5HoWv6fcV
— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) July 7, 2016
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