Assange Watch

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 13 Jan 2014, 23:21

RenewableCandy wrote:Yes I'd always wondered why they couldn't question him where he already was, rather than insist he travel to Sweden...

Just one of the many aspects of this saga that does not appear to make any sense unless you interpret events exactly how Assange himself has interpreted them. The very fact that they insisted he travel to Sweden is what convinced him that it was actually all a ploy to deliver him to the US. Then when he said he'd travel if the Swedes would give an assurance they would not extradite him, and they refused to give that assurance, it became obvious that this was indeed the plan. The whole thing is worthy only of ridicule, but sadly many people still believe he's some sort of rapist trying to evade justice.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 07 Feb 2014, 16:46

The members of the Swedish parliament say investigators should accept that Assange will not be leaving the embassy voluntarily.

Source

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 07 Feb 2014, 19:28

At least the Swedes were honest. If it'd been our lot they'd have given him the assurance and then gone back on it

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 27 Feb 2014, 18:01

Assange watching costs UK taxpayers millions

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 05 Mar 2014, 17:39

Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher report on GCHQ's and the NSA's monitoring of you & I.

GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.

From a fascinating article

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 14 Mar 2014, 15:08

"The US and Australia Propose an End to Free Speech on the Internet"

If US and Australian negotiators have their way, ISPs will be responsible for copyright infringement, when material that violates copyright privileges appears on a site they host or a communication they transmit. This is like making the postal service responsible for plagiarized material included in a letter delivered by a mail carrier. If we were to do that, of course, the postal service officials would have to read and restrict every piece of mail carried.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 18 Mar 2014, 12:12

This is interesting:

Google says that they have begun encrypting users’ searches on a global scale as part of a broader effort to frustrate surveillance by governments and hackers.

The move will be particularly effective in countries where censorship is enforced on a national level. In China for examples citizens will be able to search for sensitive search terms such as “Tiananmen Square” without the authorities being automatically alerted.

as is this:

Intelligence agency ASIO is using the Snowden leaks to bolster its case for laws forcing Australian telecommunications companies to store certain types of customers' internet and telephone data for a period of what some law enforcement agencies would like to be two years.

[...]

This has hastened the need for changes that would force providers to keep all customers' "metadata" for a prescribed period, it says.

Metadata stored about a phone call could include the parties to the call, location, duration and time of the call, but not what was said. Metadata stored about an internet activity could include your assigned IP address and the IP addresses of web servers you visit, or uniform resource locators (URLs) you visit and the time at which they were visited, while email metadata might include addresses, times, and the subject.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 19 Mar 2014, 13:12

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/m ... collection

NAS has been recording every single phone call coming from one, unspecified foreign nation to anywhere, for the last few years.

My bet is Pakistan. However, the concept is clear. If they want to record your phone calls, they will.

I knew for a decade or more that there was mass surveillance of human voice transmissions. I just did not know the scale.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 09 Apr 2014, 16:54

America takes another step towards corporate fascism.

Voting 5-4 along ideological lines, the court today said the caps violated the speech rights of Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama Republican official seeking to give candidates, parties and political committees more than the $123,200 maximum. It was the court’s biggest campaign-finance decision since its 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed unlimited corporate spending.

Source

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 30 Jul 2014, 10:51

Australian govt blindfolds citizens with ‘unprecedented’ media gag order - WikiLeaks

http://rt.com/news/176580-wikileaks-aus ... media-gag/

This kind of gloves-off censorship will be heading towards our shores shortly, no doubt.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 14 Sep 2014, 21:55

The USA-friendly Swedish government lost the election. Not clear that anyone really 'won' it but it looks like a left/green alliance will take control in a weak sort of way. Possibly good news for Assange?

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Nov 2014, 11:41

biffvernon wrote:The USA-friendly Swedish government lost the election. Not clear that anyone really 'won' it but it looks like a left/green alliance will take control in a weak sort of way. Possibly good news for Assange?

Let's hope. The whole debacle is an embarrassing farce for DC.

Here's Pilger's lucid assessment

Ny [Swedish prosecutor] has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington.

It gets even more ridiculous:

why won't she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won't she hand them over to Assange's Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn't she question him?

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 20 Nov 2014, 14:33

biffvernon wrote:The USA-friendly Swedish government lost the election. Not clear that anyone really 'won' it but it looks like a left/green alliance will take control in a weak sort of way. Possibly good news for Assange?

Nope

While the Swedish court ruled against Assange's appeal that Sweden revoke his arrest warrant, it has noted prosecutors lack new evidence to progress with the case.

Sheer spendthrift buffoonery.

Will Assange be able to sue Sweden and Britain? I hope so.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 20 Nov 2014, 19:55

Yes, it seemed a peculiarly perverse decision.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 03 Jan 2015, 17:22

http://rt.com/op-edge/206903-assange-uk ... wikileaks/

There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s Marianne Ny’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”

Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?

This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorise.