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Courage event: The digital surveillance state – Quo vadis, Democracy?

What happens to the idea of democracy in an age of mass surveillance, data espionage and collaboration between the BND and NSA? How was the NSA scandal received in the United States and Germany and what can – and must – we learn from this?

Courage is proud to co-host a discussion between some of America’s most celebrated intelligence whistleblowers and some of the German politicians charged with investigating the extent of US and German surveillance cooperation. Thomas Drake, Daniel Ellsberg, Jesselyn Radack and Coleen Rowley will be attending the event at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt on Sunday 7 June, along with members of the Bundestag surveillance investigation Konstantin von Notz, Martina Renner and former Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Peter Schaar. The event will be moderated by Courage Acting Director Sarah Harrison and introduced by Expose Facts’ Norman Solomon.

The event has been organised in association with ExposeFacts.org, DIE ZEIT, ZEIT Online and Transmediale and tickets will be available on the day on a first come, first served basis. The event begins at 3pm.

Missed the event? You can listen to the audio recording online here:

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Chelsea Manning Courage News Uncategorized

Chelsea Manning is Courage’s newest beneficiary

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Call to Action Whistleblowing

Save William McNeilly, Trident whistleblower

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Courage News News

Courage supports #StopTradeSecrets

The European Parliament is currently considering a law that has the potential to inhibit European whistleblowers and the publications they work with. The proposed European Trade Secrets directive aims to prevent industrial espionage by enforcing protections for “trade secrets” across the Union.

Unfortunately, this proposed law has major ramifications for whistleblowers: companies would be able to restrict access to information they consider to be their trade secrets, exposing those who ‘misappropriate’ that information to civil or criminal penalties. It risks putting all potential truthtellers in the position of those whistleblowers in the banking industry who, like Rudolf Elmer, have been prosecuted relentlessly under national secrecy laws – as well as risking the newspapers that publish them too.

A Europe-wide campaign to #stoptradesecrets is being launched today with an open letter signed by journalists, activists and trade unionists from across the continent. Courage’s Director Sarah Harrison and WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange, who is a trustee of Courage, are among the first signatories of this letter, which has been published in Le Monde in France, Taz in Germany, El Pais in Spain and Ta Nea in Greece today.

tanea

Courage Director Sarah Harrison has also given an interview to Taz, explaining why the Directive is so problematic.

You can read the English and French versions of the open letter. The campaign website, which is also launched today, is here: http://stoptradesecrets.eu/

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News

Obama reportedly criminalises “support” for “cyber-enabled activities”

US President Barack Obama has issued an executive order authorising the Treasury Secretary to enact sanctions against those whom it deems to have “have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for” cyber-related crimes.

Reuters reports that even US lawmakers consider the order “surprisingly broad”, and investigative journalists are concerned about its wide-ranging scope.

The order criminalizes anyone who is “responsible for or complicit in, or [who has] engaged in, the receipt or use for commercial or competitive advantage or private financial gain, or by a commercial entity, outside the United States of trade secrets misappropriated through cyber-enabled means.”

Former DOJ lawyer Mark Rasch told Reuters, “Even denial-of-service attacks that knock websites offline with meaningless traffic, which can be orchestrated over the Internet for a few hundred dollars, could officially qualify for sanctions.” The PayPal 14 were imprisoned and fined heavily for denial-of-service attacks on PayPal in response to its freezing of WikiLeaks’ bank account, and President Obama has called Edward Snowden a “hacker”, so reporters and supporters wonder if this new order will affect donations to organizations like WikiLeaks and the Courage Foundation.

Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler said that this order “could be used to target journalism abroad. Does WikiLeaks’ publication of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations qualify? Does Guardian’s publication of contractors’ involvement in NSA hacking?”

Wheeler’s post notes many elements of the order that appear “ripe for abuse.” Questioning just how broadly the ‘material support’ interpretation goes, she said, “Does that include encryption providers? Does it include other privacy protections?”

In response to the possibility that donations to Edward Snowden’s defence fund could be criminalised, Reddit users criticized the order and sparked a surge in bitcoin donations to Edward Snowden’s defence fund. Courage has received over 200 transactions already this month, including a single donation of 8.49 bitcoin (over 2000 dollars).

Reddit AMA

Members of the Courage team, including trustee Julian Assange, acting director Sarah Harrison, and advisory board members Renata Avila, who is an internet rights lawyer, and Andy Muller-Maguhn, on the board of the Wau Holland Foundation, which collects donations for Snowden and Hammond on Courage’s behalf, will be participating in a Reddit AMA on Monday, 7pm EST / 11pm GMT. They’ll discuss Courage, ready to answer anything, including questions on the increase in BTC since the Executive Order.

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News Whistleblowing

It’s who you are that matters

We’ve written a lot about how the current US administration has treated unauthorised disclosures of classified information. Whether those disclosures be matters of huge public significance or relatively trivial, the reaction has been to seek to prosecute those responsible under the 1917 Espionage Act.

As is well known, the Obama administration has initiated twice as many Espionage Act prosecutions than all previous US administrations combined. Denied the ability to put forward a public interest defence, Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment and CIA whistleblower John Kirakou is still the only person to have been prosecuted in relation to America’s state sanctioned torture programme. And, as last week’s Pentagon Inspector General’s Office report on the treatment of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake shows, there’s no accountability for the wrongs inflicted on defendants during in Espionage Act investigation.

The emergence of former CIA director and general David Petraeus’ plea deal this week places this suffering into sharp relief. Petraeus shared eight “black books” with his biographer and mistress, containing information that included covert officers’ identities, classified notes and details about US intelligence. By his own admission, the top secret information in those Black Books was more sensitive than anything Chelsea Manning ever disclosed.

Nevertheless, under the terms of his plea bargain, Petraeus will plead guilty to a misdemeanour and serve no more than two year’s probation and a $40,000 fine. He was never indicted under the Espionage act and will not face repurcussions for lying to FBI agents.

As John Kirakou and Marcy Wheeler point out in a recent interview, there’s a glaring inequity here, with sufficient prominence acting as a safeguard against prosecution, even in matters which the US government appears to regard as priorities. More than that, it demonstrates, quite clearly, that Espionage Act prosecutions are explicitly political. As Jesselyn Radack notes in a piece which brings out this dynamic very clearly:

Now that the government has put forth a new model of how to deal appropriately with unauthorized disclosures, I suspect that Snowden would entertain returning to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Petraeus received.

Too bad that kind of leniency is reserved for generals sharing information with their mistress-biographers — not normal Americans trying to expose government wrongdoing.

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Courage News Events Uncategorized

The digital surveillance state – Quo vadis, Democracy?

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Edward Snowden News

Lon Snowden on speaking truth to power

This weekend, an op-ed written by Edward Snowden’s father Lon appeared in the pages of Philadelphia magazine. Lon Snowden, a former chief warrant officer with the US Coast Guard, used the article to draw parallels between his son’s actions and those of the Media Eight, who brought COINTELPRO to the attention of the US public by breaking into an FBI field office in Pennsylvania in 1971.

Continue reading “Lon Snowden on speaking truth to power”
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Journalism Legislation News Whistleblowing

German government plans source prosecution as Greens push new whistleblower protection law

Reports about an impending prosecution shows that Germany is pulling in opposite directions on whistleblower protection. On Friday, Der Spiegel suggested that the federal government is planning to prosecute an unknown whistleblower for revealing  official secrets that were reported in that publication and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The news of this investigation comes as Germany’s official inquiry into surveillance, launched in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations, becomes increasingly mired in protracted arguments over the disclosure of information that implicates Germany’s spy agencies as much as it does the NSA. Despite attempts to restrict the documentation and witnesses available to the inquiry, it has so far revealed loopholes Germany’s signals intelligence agency, the BND, uses to circumvent the prohibition on German nationals and new details about controversial joint operations with the NSA.

wpid-1396534488_Untersuchungsausschuss-NSA-Aufklarung-startet-mit-Panne

The German government has reacted poorly to these disclosures, to the point of warning of possible prosecution should further information reach the media.

Improving Germany’s whistleblower laws

Given that Germany is one of the countries that has shown the strongest support for Edward Snowden – a recent survey shows that the NSA whistleblower has better public recognition there than the US – the country’s own whistleblower protections are surprisingly poor. A 2011 judgment from the European Court of Human Rights has yet to be reflected in domestic law and, as a result, Germany’s truthtellers have to wait for employment tribunals to rule in their favour, by which point employer retaliation is already a fait accompli.

Last month, Germany’s Green representatives, led by Hans-Christian Stroebele, proposed new legislation to improve the situation. On his website, Stoebele explains that the bill is intended to “significantly improve whistleblowers’ protection from employer retaliation or dismissal and to improve legal certainty.”

This isn’t the first time the German Greens have tried to introduce a law like this, but this latest attempt is notable because it has the potential to do more than bring Germany into the mainstream of legal protections for whistleblowers. Provisions in the bill promise to erase the artificial divide that leads to national security whistleblowers facing severe retribution without the protections other public employees enjoy. Stroebele has been clear that the Bill specifically covers cases where a secret service employee “discloses confidential information to uncover a serious grievance, such as massive violations of fundamental rights.”

Protecting alleged sources before charge

Alleged sources who are under investigation and unable to come forward publicly find themselves in a particularly invidious position and in real need of support. Courage runs the only fund designed to guard alleged truthtellers who are obliged to remain anonymous.

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Edward Snowden News

Press release: Top musicians, actors and Nobel laureates show support for Edward Snowden, publishers and whistleblowers

  • Russell Brand, M.I.A., Tom Morello and More Involved in Effort
  • Vivienne Westwood, Viggo Mortensen, Others Promote Courage Foundation’s Whistleblower Defense Efforts

An international coalition of more than fifty actors, musicians and intellectuals have announced their support for Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, whistleblowers and publishers. Some are also encouraging donations to the Courage Foundation —which runs the official legal defense fund for Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers, as well as fights for whistleblower protections worldwide – with tweets and social media posts.

“The courage that Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers and truthtellers have shown and continue to show is truly extraordinary and necessary in helping the public have access to their historical record through media,” said Sarah Harrison, WikiLeaks Investigations Editor and Director of the Courage Foundation. WikiLeaks and Harrison ensured Edward Snowden’s safe exit from Hong Kong and secured his asylum. “We cannot thank these cultural icons enough for showing their support.”

The announcement coincides with the expanded theatrical release of Laura Poitras’ critically acclaimed documentary CitizenFour — providing a first-hand account of Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA’s mass surveillance program.

“As Albert Camus once put it, governments, by definition, do not have consciences; they have policies and nothing more. Therefore, it is up to all of us as free-thinking citizens to demand truly transparent democracy and high, unbiased moral standards from those who govern us,” said Viggo Mortensen. “I hope everyone can chip in to support Snowden and those patriotic whistleblowers that come after him.”

Signed by Susan Sarandon, Russell Brand, Peter Sarsgaard, M.I.A., Thurston Moore, David Berman, Vivienne Westwood, Alfonso Cuaròn and several other artists and intellectuals, the statement praises the work of whistleblowers such as Snowden, highlighting the need to support these individuals as they face social and legal persecution for their revelations to the public.

The statement reads:

We stand in support of those fearless whistleblowers and publishers who risk their lives and careers to stand up for truth and justice. Thanks to the courage of sources like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond, and Edward Snowden, the public can finally see for themselves the war crimes, corruption, mass surveillance, and abuses of power of the U.S. government and other governments around the world. WikiLeaks is essential for its fearless dedication in defending these sources and publishing their truths. These bold and courageous acts spark accountability, can transform governments, and ultimately make the world a better place.

In addition to urging the public to stand in solidarity with Snowden and other whistleblowers, many of the artists are calling on fans to watch CitizenFour, and are raising awareness of the Courage Foundation’s whistleblower defense efforts, which fundraises for the legal and public defense of whistleblowers and campaigns for the protection of truthtellers and the public’s right to know generally.

Said Grammy Award-winning guitarist, Tom Morello:

Those courageous enough to expose the crimes of government and unmask corruption embody the spirit of democracy and justice. Rather than being celebrated as the truth-tellers and champions of accountability that they are, they are persecuted and find themselves the target of a draconian legal system that punishes them for the act of exposing crimes.

Said Vivienne Westwood:

I didn’t ask Edward Snowden to stick his neck out for me. But now that he did I ask myself where would we be without him? The more that the public watches CitizenFour, which documents Edward Snowden’s bravery in revealing the NSA’s massive web of surveillance of the American people, opposition to the government’s assault on civil liberties will grow. I hope that audiences will turn their outrage into action and donate to the Courage Foundation’s Legal Defense Fund to provide legal representation to Snowden and other whistleblowers to counter the government’s unprecedented attack against these brave men and women.

FULL LIST OF SIGNATORIES:

Udi Aloni
Pamela Anderson
Anthony Arnove
Etienne Balibar
Alexander Bard
John Perry Barlow
Radovan Baros
David Berman
Russell Brand
Victoria Brittain
Susan Buck-Morss
Eduardo L. Cadava
Calle 13
Alex Callinicos
Robbie Charter
Noam Chomsky
Scott Cleverdon
Ben Cohen
Sadie Coles
Alfonso Cuaròn
John Deathridge
Costas Douzinas
Roddy Doyle
Bella Freud
Leopold Froehlich
Terry Gilliam
Charlie Glass
Boris Groys
Michael Hardt
P J Harvey
Wang Hui
Fredric Jameson
Brewster Kahle
Hanif Kureishi
Engin Kurtay
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Nadir Lahiji
Kathy Lette
Ken Loach
Maria Dolores Galán López
Sarah Lucas
Mairead Maguire
Tobias Menzies
M.I.A.
W. J. T. Mitchell
Moby
Thurston Moore
Tom Morello
Viggo Mortensen
Jean-Luc Nancy
Bob Nastanovich
Antonio Negri
Brett Netson
Rebecca O’Brien
Joshua Oppenheimer
John Pilger
Alexander Roesler
Avital Ronell
Pier Aldo Rovatti
Susan Sarandon
Peter Sarsgaard
Assumpta Serna
Vaughan Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Oliver Stone
Cenk Uygur
Yanis Varoufakis
Peter Weibel
Vivienne Westwood
Tracy Worcester
Slavoj Zizek

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For more information, or for interview with the Courage Foundation, please contact Yasmina Dardari at yasmina@fitzgibbonmedia.com