Author: Nathan
The UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, has released a new report in which says “sources of information and whistle-blowers” “deserve the strongest protection in law and in practice” and outlines a framework for their protection. Earlier this year, Kaye issued a report on encryption and surveillance, which he called “the first attempt to create a legal framework for digital security.”
In the new report, Kaye writes,
“A common thread ties together the right of access to information, the protection of sources of information and the protection of whistle-blowers: the public’s right to know. Basic protections [in these areas] are critical to an effective right to freedom of expression, accountability and democratic governance.”
Kaye outlines what’s needed for dissemination of information to the public: “a person with knowledge who is willing and able to shed light on what is hidden; a communicator or a communication platform to disseminate that information; and a legal system and political culture that effectively protect both.”
The International Press Institute, which gathered experts from around the world to consult with Kaye, lists the rapporteur’s ‘Key Recommendations for States on Improving Protection for Sources and Whistle-Blowers’
- Ensure national legal frameworks provide for the right of access to information in accordance with international standards. Any exceptions to disclosure should be narrowly defined and clearly provided by law.
- Adopt or revise and implement national laws protecting the confidentiality of sources. Confidentiality must apply beyond professional journalists – protection should be based on function, not a formal title.
- Adopt or revise and implement national legal frameworks protecting whistle-blowers. Protection should be provided to any person who discloses information that he or she reasonably believes, at the time of disclosure, to be true and to constitute a threat or harm to a specified public interest.
- Internal institutional and external oversight mechanisms should provide effective and protective channels for whistle-blowers to motivate remedial action
- Protections against retaliation should apply in all public institutions, including those connected to national security.
- Establish personal liability for those who retaliate against sources and whistle-blowers.
- Actively promote respect for the right of access to information.
The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on 22 October.
The Intercept has published an eight-part series on the United States’ use of drones to carry out assassinations based on documents provided by an intelligence community whistleblower. Jeremy Scahill writes that the organisation obtained a “cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the US military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013.” The piece includes many revelations and details about the US’s so-called “targeted killing” programme, including the fact that, “During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.”
Speculation regarding a post-Snowden leaker has endured for more than a year, with Laura Poitras’ 2014 film CITIZENFOUR confirming that a source was providing documents regarding the Obama Administration’s drone program, but it’s unclear if this source is the same.
The Intercept’s source is a whistleblower who should be lauded for his efforts to make the public aware of the government’s secret abuse of power. As Scahill relates:
The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.
This whistleblower should be protected and celebrated as a conscientious contributor to the public record.
In response to the Intercept’s series, the ACLU’s National Security Project director Hina Shamsi said, “These eye-opening disclosures make a mockery of U.S. government claims that its lethal force operations are based on reliable intelligence and limited to lawful targets.”
Amnesty International demands that Congress launch an “urgent inquiry into Obama’s drone use.”
See the Intercept’s full series here.
1pm EST, 24 September 2015, NYC
Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, and Greenwald’s partner David Miranda have together drafted a ‘Snowden Treaty,’ “a proposed treaty that would curtail mass surveillance and protect the rights of whistleblowers.”
At SnowdenTreaty.org, the drafters explain that the worldwide mass surveillance that Snowden exposed have made clear the need for international protections:
This breach of millions of people’s privacy is in direct contravention of international human right law. In particular, the right to privacy is enshrined it Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 17 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.
Protecting the right to privacy is vital not just in itself but because it is essential requirement for exercise of freedom of opinion and expression, the most fundamental pillars of democracy.
They further lay out three demands:
- We demand for privacy on the internet.
- We demand that the government grant us the right to privacy in our homes.
- We demand that the government protect our personal privacy online.
The treaty will be announced at a press conference on 24 September 2015, at ThoughtWorks Office, 99 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor, at 1pm EST. Supporters are tweeting about the proposal with #SnowdenTreaty and #PrivacyMatters. Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, and John Cusack have already signed on in support.
Courage will tweet the day’s events and continue to report on the treaty’s developments.
Update
Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda have discussed the Treaty in an appearance on Democracy Now. Video follows below and a full transcript is also available.
Germany’s major centre-left political party SPD has chosen to honour the Courage Foundation’s Acting Director Sarah Harrison with the International Willy Brandt Prize for ‘special political courage’, Der Speigel reports.
The SPD says Harrison “exemplifies the pursuit of transparency and its use against escalating surveillance. Sarah Harrison has with her commitment to WikiLeaks and especially in the company of Edward Snowden showed great political courage.”
The prize is named for former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, who won the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for reconciling West Germany with Eastern Europe.
Harrison is WikiLeaks’ investigations editor and helped build the Courage Foundation, which was created after Harrison’s best-known effort: protecting NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as he fled Hong Kong for Moscow in 2013.
Harrison has spent the last several years speaking and writing in support of endangered whistleblowers and against government persecution.
Read Der Spiegel’s full article here.
Courage Advisory Board member and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, along with fellow whistleblowers Diane Roark, Ed Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe and William Binney have filed a civil rights suit against former NSA directors Keith Alexander and Michael Hayden and the NSA, the DOJ and the FBI.
The group is suing over violations of
their constitutional and civil rights, invasion of privacy, and retaliation for their roles as whistleblowers, including illegal searches and seizures, physical invasion of their residences and places of business, illegal detention as temporary false imprisonment, confiscation of property, cancellation of security clearances leading to the loss of their jobs and employment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, harassment and intimidation.
The whistleblowers helped develop internet-surveillance program THINTHREAD, which worked “efficiently, effectively, and at very low cost”, but which was abandoned by the NSA in favor of TRAILBLAZER, a far more expensive program that was scrapped as well. These plaintiffs reported the waste of government funds and were raided and persecuted in retaliation.
Back in March it was reported that Thomas Drake’s formal complaint of government relatiation was rejected, with the government condoning the way it responded to Drake vocalizing his concerns.
TechDirt opines on what might come of the suit, “The government likely won’t be able to dismiss the suit quickly, but the plaintiffs are going to run into a ton of immunity claims that will be buttressed by invocations of national security concerns.”
See the suit here:
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Whistleblower Chelsea Manning, serving 35 years in prison for releasing hundreds of thousands of US Army and diplomatic cables, exposing scores of human rights abuses, has a hearing today, 18 August, in which she faces indefinite solitary confinement as punishment for appallingly trivial charges. Manning, who already endured torturous pretrial conditions for which military judge Denise Lind took 112 days off of her sentence, is being penalised for possessing magazines like Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan, the Senate Torture Report and “expired” toothpaste, as well as brushing food crumbs onto the floor and “being disrespectful” to a prison official. The website FreeChelsea.com documents the charges and hosts a petition supporting Manning with more than 100,000 signers.
As Courage Advisory Board member Norman Solomon writes for Al Jazeera,
Washington is determined to make an example of her, to warn and intimidate other would-be whistleblowers. From the president on down, the chain of command is functioning to wreck the life of Chelsea Manning. We should not let that happen.
Chelsea will not be allowed to have a lawyer with her during the hearing, which is closed to the press and public, and yet she was barred from visiting the prison’s legal library, crippling her ability to properly defend herself. Courage strongly condemns this attack on a heroic whistleblower who’s already been punished far too much.
Update
Chelsea Manning tweets, “I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today’s board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation–no gym, library or outdoors.”
And then, “Now these convictions will follow me thru to any parole/clemency hearing forever. Was expecting to be in min custody in Feb, now years added”
The German government informed Netzpolitik.org that it was investigating the digital rights media outlet, specifically two reporters and an “unknown source” for treason after it reported on leaked documents detailing the government’s mass surveillance. Netzpolitik decried the “attack on press freedom” and vowed, “We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the investigations and we will continue our critical and independent journalism – complete with original documents.”
Public support of Netzpolitik and condemnation of the investigation grew quickly, and journalists around the world have cosigned a statement of protest:
The investigation against Netzpolitik.org for treason and their unknown sources is an attack against the free press. Charges of treason against journalists performing their essential work is a violation of the fifth article of the German constitution. We demand an end to the investigation into Netzpolitik.org and their unknown sources.
Courage’s Julian Assange, Sarah Harrison and Diani Barreto cosigned the statement.
Amid public pressure, as the BBC reports, “Germany’s justice minister has sacked the country’s top prosecutor, who had accused the government of interfering with a treason investigation.”
The Courage Foundation, which previously announced it opened an emergency fund for British activist Lauri Love, is now defending Love as an official beneficiary. FreeLauri.com has been relaunched, where you can read about Lauri’s case in full.
Love was first arrested in 2013 and his computers and other digital media were seized. He was released on bail, but had to take legal action to get 25 of 31 of his items back (the rest have not been returned). Now Love has been re-arrested in Britain by officials executing a warrant to extradite him to the United States, on allegations of hacking into multiple major US governmental agencies.
In addition to the persecution he’s already endured, Lauri fears he won’t receive a fair trial or treatment in the United States. The Obama Administration has cracked down harder than any administration before on digital activists, with unprecedented use of the Espionage Act, threats of extremely long prison sentences and solitary confinement.
Lauri thanks the Courage Foundation for its support in a statement:
The support and solidarity provided by the Courage Foundation since its inception to whistleblowers and activists facing political persecution for their efforts to bring transparency to state and corporate governance in the face of an unparalleled crackdown on perceived or actual dissidence is momentous and rivalled only by the stature and breadth of knowledge and experience of its advisory board. When vindictive, disproportionate and excessively-punitive reactions from government are likely consequence of taking action, the support of organisations such as Courage can make all the difference in giving individuals the faith the carry through their convictions and the wherewithal to endure the struggles that may result.
I am humbled and immensely thankful for their assistance and compassion. Solidarity is beautiful.
Love, Lauri
With a hearing to fight his extradition scheduled for 1 September, Courage has commenced a fund drive to finance Love’s legal defence team.
Courage is taking on Lauri Love as an emergency case: we are raising funds for the twice-arrested British activist and alleged hacker who was released on conditional bail after being charged with hacking into several governmental agencies’ websites, including the US Army, NASA and the Federal Reserve. Love has a hearing scheduled for 1 September to determine if he will be extradited to the United States.
Read about Love’s case, why he’s been rearrested now and what you can do to support him. Please donate to Love’s defence fund and help publicise his case — we must collectively oppose his extradition and end his persecution. Emergency fund is here.
Meanwhile, we are closing our emergency fund for UK Trident whistleblower William McNeilly, who was dishonourably discharged from the Royal Navy but isn’t facing further criminal action. We are donating the collected funds to McNeilly to help with his resettlement. We will continue to update on his condition as we learn more.