Category: News
The latest news from Courage Foundation
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Reality Winner Emergency Appeal
‘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.
We’ve written before about the EU Trade Secrets Directive and the danger wholesale protection of commercial information poses for whistlebloweing and commercial information. The recent trial of Antoine Deltour in Luxembourg amply demonstrates the threat commercial secrecy laws pose to the disclosure of information that couldn’t be more clearly in the public interest.
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RIP Michael Ratner, 1943-2016
Courage is deeply saddened to note the passing of Michael Ratner, a tireless campaigner for civil liberties, champion of the powerless and friend to truthtellers everywhere. Michael, a professor, lawyer, and activist, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, fought for Guantanamo detainees’ rights, Palestinians’ rights, and the rights of so many others who could not fight for them on their own. He was also a close and immeasurably valued friend to many at Courage and our allies.
Michael legally defended Julian Assange against extradition and WikiLeaks as a publisher, not just despite but because doing so was difficult and controversial — he saw that WikiLeaks was doing vital work that few others if any would do, and therefore needed the best defense it could get. He has spoken out often for Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, recognizing their contributions to the public good and the need to combat the aggressive persecution they endured.
RT’s Thom Hartmann spoke with Michael about his life’s work (up until 2010) in two parts:
In recent years, in addition to appearances on Democracy Now! Michael frequently appeared on The Real News Network to provide his perspective on current events, in series called Reality Asserts Itself and The Ratner Report.
We will long remember and be grateful for Michael’s work and what he meant to us professionally and personally.
Here is the CCR’s statement on Michael’s passing in full:
From Attica to Assange, Michael Ratner has defended, investigated, and spoken up for victims of human rights abuses all over the world. For 45 years, Michael brought cases with the Center for Constitutional Rights in U.S. courts related to war, torture, and other atrocities, sometimes committed by the U.S., sometimes by other regimes or corporations, in places ranging from El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala, to Yugoslavia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Israel. Seeking to hold Bush administration officials accountable for torture, he turned to filing cases under the principle of Universal Jurisdiction in international courts—in Germany, Spain, Canada, Switzerland, and France. Michael dedicated his life to the most important fights for justice of the last half century.
When Michael decided to take on U.S. policies of indefinite detention at Guantanamo in January 2002, it was not a popular position. With Michael, the Center for Constitutional Rights was the first human rights organization to stand up for the rights of Guantanamo detainees, and Michael was a founding member of the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association, a group that grew to over 500 attorneys from all over the country working pro bono to provide representation to the men at Guantanamo that has been called the largest mass defense effort in U.S. history. Michael acted as counsel in the landmark case Rasul v. Bush, and after two and a half years of litigation, CCR and co-counsel won the first Guantanamo case in the United States Supreme Court.
As an attorney, writer, speaker, educator, activist, and as the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights for so many years, Michael Ratner’s passion was not just for the law but for the struggle for justice and peace. Michael’s work on Central America, Haiti, surveillance, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, whistleblowers, war powers, and Palestine will not soon be matched.
Michael’s leadership and generous spirit have shown the way for new generations of social justice lawyers. He helped found the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, bringing CCR’s style of lawyering, which he helped shape, to Europe, where the legal culture was less familiar with public interest lawyering and filing suits to press for social change. He worked with CCR and the Bertha Justice Institute on programs to educate junior lawyers, working in partnership with front-line organizations around the world and fostering artistic partnerships that bring the issues he championed his entire life to a wider audience. Michael’s legacy is the sea of people he has touched—his family, his clients, his allies, his colleagues, and all of the young lawyers he has inspired. Today we mourn. Tomorrow we carry on his work.
Also see a tribute to Michael from his CCR colleague Vince Warren.
Antoine Deltour’s trial will take place in Luxembourg from April 26th to May 4th
The Panama Papers recent publication has confirmed the major role played by offshore finance in diverting our democracies’ tax incomes. These revelations follow the LuxLeaks ones from November 2014, which would not have come out without Antoine Deltour’s crucial role. These revelations have led to a worldwide awareness raising on these issues. They have spurred the European institutions to follow up recently with measures towards more transparency and tax justice. Antoine Deltour’s support committee hopes his trial will also provide an opportunity to move towards an increased protection of whistleblowers, recognising their status as citizens acting for the general interest.
Courage Acting Director Sarah Harrison said,
Whilst publications like the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks releases get international news coverage, we must remember and support the brave people who take risks to make this information public. Without information, we have no chance at holding the powerful accountable. Antoine Detour should be protected and celebrated for bringing such important evidence of wrongdoing to light.
As soon as the trial starts, support committee members will actively remind the various signs of support received by Antoine: through the commitment of the 100 000 signatories of the petition, through the support of more than 280 French and international leading figures, through the more than 50 international civil society organizations which have expressed their gratefulness for Antoine’s altruistic action. Antoine has declared that he is “split between looking forwards to finally having the trial start and some apprehension over its conclusions.” He feels “boosted by the various signs of public support, as well as by the concrete consequences of the revelations.” According to Antoine, “the recent advancements towards fighting tax abuses confirm the general interest of [his] action.”
Over the whole period of the trial, the support committee will be present in Luxembourg to civilly remind those following it that the charges against Antoine are politically unfair and ethically unacceptable. Antoine worked from 2008 to 2010 as a junior financial auditor in the Luxembourg subsidiary of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), before quitting. He acknowledged having copied, during his notice period, hundreds of tax rulings between the Luxembourg tax authorities and multinational companies in view of reducing their taxes, sometimes towards less than 1% of their profit.
The LuxLeaks affair’s chronology is available on the support committee’s website.
Press contact:
Comité de soutien à Antoine Deltour
BP 1006
88050 EPINAL Cedex 9FRANCE
Email : contact@support-antoine.org
Twitter : @support_antoine
Facebook : Support Antoine