Today, Tuesday 12th July, Courage, the international organisation that protects whistleblowers and activists, launches a major funding drive for core costs. We manage the legal and public defence of truthtellers in the most politicised cases, from Edward Snowden to Chelsea Manning, from Barrett Brown to Lauri love – and we fight for whistleblower protections and the public’s right to know generally. Two years on from our launch, we have a fundraising target of £100,000 to secure. If we are unable to meet our needs for core funding within the next month we will be forced to step back our work.
Author: Nathan
Today, Chelsea Manning’s attorneys Chase Strangio, Vincent Ward and Nancy Hollander released the following statement jointly:
After not connecting with Chelsea for over a week, we were relieved to speak with her this morning. Though she would have preferred to keep her private medical information private, and instead focus on her recovery, the government’s gross breach of confidentiality in disclosing her personal health information to the media has created the very real concern that they may continue their unauthorized release of information about her publicly without warning. Due to these circumstances, Chelsea Manning requested that we communicate with the media and her friends and supporters on her behalf.
“Last week, Chelsea made a decision to end her life. Her attempt to take her own life was unsuccessful. She knows that people have questions about how she is doing and she wants everyone to know that she remains under close observation by the prison and expects to remain on this status for the next several weeks. For us, hearing Chelsea’s voice after learning that she had attempted to take her life last week was incredibly emotional. She is someone who has fought so hard for so many issues we care about and we are honored to fight for her freedom and medical care.
Luxleaks whistleblower Antoine Deltour, former Pricewatershouse Cooper employee who in 2014 came forward as a source of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ LuxLeaks release, was found guilty of theft and violating Luxembourg secrecy laws. The release, based on confidential tax rulings, shed light on multinational tax avoidance and prompted a wave of response throughout Europe. In 2015, Detour himself spoke at a public hearing held by the European Parliament.
Last week, Detour was given a 12-month suspended sentence and €1,500 fine.
As the Guardian reports,
Another former PwC employee, Raphael Halet, was convicted on similar charges on Wednesday relating to the theft of a smaller cache of tax deal papers which was also eventually leaked to journalists. He was given a a nine-month suspended sentence and was fined €1,000.
Edouard Perrin, a French journalist accused of helping Halet, was acquitted.
Though he avoids jail time, Deltour criticised the sentence for its broader impact:
sentencing the citizens at the origin of LuxLeaks revelations is equivalent to sentencing the regulatory advancements which have been triggered by these revelations and which have been widely acclaimed across Europe. This is also a warning towards future whistleblowers, which is detrimental to citizen’s information and the good functioning of the democracy.
Deltour’s support committee released a statement as well:
The support committee is outraged by the sentence against the whistleblowers Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet. This inexplicable and unacceptable sentence ignores the public interest of their action, and overcomes the European law. It is an affront to the many supports received from around the world.
Deltour and Halet’s convictions send the message that protecting secrecy is more important than informing the public about major corporations’ tax avoidance and the rulings that enable them. Courage roundly condemns the convictions and sentences — the whistleblowers deserve praise instead of punishment. Indeed, Deltour has been awarded a European Citizens’ Prize, and more than 200,000 have signed a petition in support of Deltour.
As the support committee notes, “Antoine Deltour doesn’t accept this sentence and he has decided to appeal against it.”
‘Surveillance Without Borders – the Snowden Archives, Data Visualizations and a Call to Action’
Courage’s Naomi Colvin and Tactical Tech’s Maria Xynou teamed up for a talk at Berlin’s hacker space C-base and a call for action to find new ways of telling stories with the Snowden documents.
Colvin explained Courage’s two projects for increasing public access to a critically important set of documents, which have been released to the public in a scattered and ad hoc way. The revelations page on our Edward Snowden support site groups the major news stories generated by the NSA documents chronologically, linking stories to the most complete versions of the documents they are based on. Our Snowden Document Search, produced in collaboration with Transparency Toolkit, allows the full text of all the documents published to date to be searched or browsed by categories.
Xynou has taken the document corpus used in the Snowden Document Search to produce ‘Surveillance without Borders,’ a data visualisation that uses the whole body of the available documents to illustrate the NSA’s global reach and the expansiveness of its operations.
Three years after the appearance of the first revelation based on Edward Snowden’s courageous contribution to the public record, there is a danger of the revelations being regarded as ‘old news’, whereas in fact as a community we have barely scratched the surface of the insights they have to offer us. In a climate where repressive surveillance laws are being proposed and passed by Parliaments, there is a need to generate public awareness and political action around these issues. Research has shown that digital rights activists are not communicating effectively even with those communities who are directly affected by surveillance programmes.
In this difficult climate, finding new ways to illustrate stories within the Snowden documents, and approaching the documents as a whole rather than a group of individual news stories, provides a viable route forward. Surveillance Without Borders represents an example of how this might be accomplished, but we need more voices to join this effort.
The Snowden document archive that forms the basis of our Snowden document search is available on github here.
We encourage those with an interest in visualisations and open data to start exploring these possibilities, and announcements of collaborative events in several cities are likely to follow later in the year. If you would like to be made aware of these plans as they develop, please get in touch with us at courage.contact@couragefound.org
Six years ago today, WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning was arrested in Iraq and shipped to Kuwait, where she endured brutal treatment in a metal cage, while awaiting transfer to a military prison. With preparations now underway for her appeal to the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, the Courage Foundation is naming Chelsea Manning as the organisation’s newest beneficiary.
The Courage Foundation will focus on European fundraising and campaign support for the former Army intelligence analyst, who is serving a 35 year sentence for passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents exposing rampant human rights violations and the true nature of the United States’ wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
EU donations to Chelsea Manning’s defence fund can be made tax-free via the Wau Holland Foundation.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said:
Chelsea Manning is the first American to be sentenced to decades of prison for revealing truthful information to the press. Her conviction — under a law even the ACLU says violates the constitution — is not just an injustice, it’s a threat to journalism.
Please fight for the First Amendment. Fight for Chelsea Manning.
Julian Assange, editor of WikiLeaks and Courage Trustee, said:
Manning has already won the moral battle: every year, new whistleblowers step forward to follow her example. Now it is time for Manning to win her legal battle. The only just outcome in Chelsea Manning’s case is her unconditional release, compensation for the unlawful treatment she has undergone, and a serious commitment to investigating the wrongdoing her alleged disclosures have brought to light.
Sarah Harrison, Acting Director of the Courage Foundation, said:
Chelsea Manning is one of the most important figures of the digital age and a hero to many of us. Her 35 year sentence is a travesty and her incarceration will be a lasting stain on America’s reputation. Now that Chelsea’s appeal process is finally underway, it is critical that her legal team is properly resourced.
Chelsea’s case is very important to us at Courage; we know how much she matters. I am personally honoured to announce Chelsea Manning as a Courage beneficiary and look forward to working with all the other groups and organisations who have been fundraising and campaigning steadfastly for her freedom for the past six years.
Nancy Hollander, Chelsea Manning’s attorney heading up the appeal, said:
We have spent the last three years preparing to appeal one of the most unjust convictions and sentences in military history, in one of the biggest and most complex cases we’ve ever worked on. Now that we have filed the appeal, we must wait for the government’s response. Then we will file our reply and prepare to argue Chelsea’s case before the appellate court. So this next year will be an important time for her case. Since her conviction, support for Chelsea has only grown around the world, as the world recognizes her commitments to justice, equality and a more accountable government. I’m delighted to see the Courage Foundation lend its support in this crucial time.
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said:
I waited forty years for Chelsea Manning. I don’t want to wait another thirty to thank her in freedom. Please fund her appeal to free her!
Courage is managing the European side of Manning’s fundraising and public support efforts, while Courage to Resist and the Chelsea Manning Support Network continue their work in the United States. European donations to Chelsea Manning’s defence fund can be made tax-free via Wau Holland, here. See our new page for Chelsea Manning here.