The Agendas Behind The Bin Laden News Event
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
DO I TRUST THE WALL STREET JOURNAL?
Adrian Chen — The Wall Street Journal is trying to make a play for whistleblowers with its very own Wikileaks clone, SafeHouse. But SafeHouse is the opposite of safe, thanks to basic security flaws and fine print that lets the Journal rat on leakers.
SafeHouse, which launched today to much fanfare, promises to let leakers "securely share information with the Wall Street Journal," by uploading documents directly to its servers, just like Wikileaks! But unlike Wikileaks, SafeHouse includes a doozy of a caveat in itsTerms of Use:
"Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement… we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others."
So, go ahead and upload your explosive documents to SafeHouse. But if they publish a scoop based on your material and someone gets mad, they can sell you out to anyone for any reason, including the insanely broad one of safeguarding "the interests of others." (And Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper, sure has a lot of interests!)
Although you might get outed by hackers before you're sold out to the cops. Despite theWSJ's assurances that the SafeHouse submission system is secure, it is "rife with amateur security flaws." Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum has been tweeting out a stream ofholes he's spotted in SafeHouse's security. He calls the Journal's claim that people submitting documents can remain anonymous if they choose a "blatant lie".
Appelbaum knows a thing about security: He's one of the chief developers of the anonymizing software TOR, which SafeHouse ironically recommends leakers use to help hide their identity. (Granted, Appelbaum has a horse in the race, since he's been a prominent Wikileaks volunteer.)
Bottom line, writes Appelbaum: "[The Wall Street Journal is] negligent and this is the wrong project to beta-test on an open internet."
Wikileaks has attracted its high-profile leaks because of its unequivocal promise to protect the anonymity of all leakers and its super-secure submission system. SafeHouse portrays itself as a similarly, um, safe space for leakers. In fact it offers threadbare protections and could sell you out on a dime. SafeHouse's only real similarity to Wikileaks is that both benefit megalomaniacal Australians.
YahooNews: Wall Street Journal launches a WikiLeaks rival called "SafeHouse" to uncover fraud and abuse in business and politics:
Wall Street Journal launches WikiLeaks rival - Yahoo! News - yahoo.com
Wall Street Journal launches WikiLeaks rival - Yahoo! News - yahoo.com
NEW YORK -- The Wall Street Journal wasn’t on the receiving end of major WikiLeaks document dumps on Iraq, Afghanistan, the State Dept. and Guantanamo Bay. But the Journal may have found a way to cut out the middleman and convince leakers to go straight to the paper's editors.
On Thursday, the Journal launched SafeHouse, a new stand-alone site that allows users to anonymously submit tips and upload large files to the paper through secure channels.
Kevin Delaney, the managing editor of WSJ.com, acknowledged in an interview with The Huffington Post that the anti-secrecy organization was an influence. “We all agree that WikiLeaks has had a huge impact on the journalism landscape over the last year of so,” he said.
Delaney pointed out that journalists have received documents from sources over email or fax for years. But recently he said, “there’s been a discussion among editors that it made sense to create a system to receive information from sources digitally.” He said the Journal then decided build SafeHouse, which was produced in-house over the last few months.
“It was given some priority within the organization, and people from different teams mobilized to get it done quickly,” Delaney said. “Tech and Legal spent a lot of time on it.”
Now that SafeHouse is up and running, the Journal is trying to convince would-be leakers to give them the goods. Here's the pitch:
Documents and databases: They're key to modern journalism. But they're almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That's why we need your help.
If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.
SafeHouse users can provide their names, number and email. Or, they can upload the documents anonymously through the encrypted system. Anonymous sourcing will present some challenges when authenticating the materials, Delany said. But while Journal editors discussed that issue, Delany said "the potential benefits of receiving documents anonymously outweighed the greater difficulty in reporting the documents out." A small circle of Journal editors, including one member of the front page editorial staff, will review the materials as they arrive.
The Journal’s system may appeal to would-be leakers who want to remain anonymous while also making sure their materials wind up in the hands of a responsible news organization. But would theJournal protect its SafeHouse sources as the paper would protect those providing information the old-fashioned way.
According to SafeHouse's "Terms of Use," leakers who wish to remain anonymous and protected by Journal-parent Dow Jones in the event of legal issues down the line need to first enter into a confidentiality agreement with the paper before sending any materials.
“Please note that until we mutually decide to enter into a confidential relationship, any information you send to us (including contact information) can be used for any purpose,” reads SafeHouse’s “Terms of Use.” In addition, it notes that “if we enter into a confidential relationship, Dow Jones will take all available measures to protect your identity while remaining in compliance with all applicable laws.”
Without "a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement," the paper "reserve[s] the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process."
SafeHouse leakers also have to agree not to use the service "for any unlawful purpose." That raises the question of whether, say, a government whistle-blower who may technically break the law to provide classified documents would be covered.
"There is nothing more sacred than our sources; we are committed to protecting them to the fullest extent possible under the law," a Journal spokeswoman said in response to questions about the Terms of Use. "Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the Terms of Use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances. But as always, our number one priority is protecting our sources."
WikiLeaks, on the other hand, is unlikely to comply with law enforcement under any circumstances. WikiLeaks has never named its source for the documents on Afghanistan, Iraq, the State Dept. and GITMO, but the leaker is believed to be Pvt. Bradley Manning.
Over the past year, WikiLeaks has provided hundreds of thousands of secret military assessments and diplomatic cables in advance to select news organizations around the world, while also publishing many of the documents online. WikiLeaks’ partnerships with media outlets initially looked like a win-win for all involved. WikiLeaks provided the raw materials to news organizations in advance as long as they agreed to an embargo. When WikiLeaks was ready to publish, several influential news outlets could simultaneously publish their independently reported articles providing essential context to the cache of documents (often in military or diplomatic-speak). By working with traditional media, WikiLeaks was able amplify the impact of its materials and reach a much larger audience.
But there was a downside. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange clashed with top editors at some of the news organizations that were part of the initial group. The New York Times worked with WikiLeaks on the publication of both the Afghanistan and Iraq documents, but Assange objected to the paper’s coverage of documents -- and himself -- and didn’t provide the paper with a later cache of State Dept. cables.
The Guardian, which has since broken ties with Assange, leaked the State Dept. cables to The Times in November. More recently, The Times secured WikiLeaks’ cache of files on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from another source, and then provided them to NPR and The Guardian. Those news organizations then raced to publish against others that had been provided the documents directly from WikiLeaks.
The Journal turned down working with WikiLeaks in November. A spokesperson said at the time the paper wouldn't "agree to the set of pre-conditions related to the disclosure of the Wikileaks documents without even being given a broad understanding of what these documents contained."
Given those disputes over WikiLeaks' documents, it’s not surprising that news organizations might want to try and get leakers to go directly to them.
Times executive editor Bill Keller told me in January the paper was considering options for a WikiLeaks-like submission system. Keller described the goal as “creating a kind of EZ Pass lane for leakers."
Keller said the paper was “looking at something along [the] lines” of Al Jazeera’s Transparency Unit, which the network describes as “anonymous electronic drop box.” Al Jazeera relied on WikiLeaks-style service for obtaining 1,700 classified files relating to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchdourian wrote after the release of “The Palestine Papers” that Al Jazeera may have "taken the first step in a journalism arms race to begin acquiring mass document leaks."
"It would be surprising if other large news organizations are not already at work on their own encrypted WikiLeaks-style portals," Khatchadourian wrote. "The New York Times and Guardian, for instance, have every incentive to follow in Al Jazeera's footsteps and give people a way to submit sensitive material directly to them rather than through an intermediary, such as WikiLeaks."
Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told Yahoo News in March the paper is considering building a platform in-house or perhaps working with Open Leaks, a competing service launched by ex-WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
The Times is still considering its next step.
“We've made some headway, but nothing I'm ready to talk about yet," Keller said in a Thursday email.
(This post was updated with a statement from a Journal spokeswoman on SafeHouse's Terms of Use)
Liberationtech: #WikiLeaks vs Pentagon Papers? Ellsberg connects dots from offline#whistleblowing to net world
WikiLeaks to the Pentagon Papers? Ellsberg connects the dots - berkeley.edu
washingtonpost: Bradley Manning is at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. But who is he?
Who is WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning? - The Washington Post -washingtonpost.com
Russia May Counter U.S.-Romanian Missile Shield Deal - Lawmaker
Topic: U.S. missile shield in Europe
Romania and the United States should expect counter measures from Russia in response to a missile shield agreement, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday.
Bucharest announced on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the United States to deploy a U.S. missile interceptor system at a disused Soviet airbase on its territory.
"Military specialists in the United States, NATO and Romania should be absolutely aware that any measure entails counter-measures," said Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the foreign policy committee of State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.
He said the counter measures would be used with the sole purpose of protecting Russia and would not be aimed at any particular state.
Moscow issued an urgent request on Tuesday for legal guarantees from the United States that its missile shield will not target Russia's strategic nuclear forces.
"My personal point of view is that the ideal scenario would be for the United States to issue legal guarantees, but the Americans are unlikely to do that," Kosachev said.
The head of the State Duma's defense committee, Viktor Zavarzin, said the U.S.-Romanian deal would have "a negative impact on inter-European relations and undermine the existing balance of forces and interests."
"And this, in turn, will provoke an unnecessary escalation of tensions," he added.
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Right-Wing Media Figures Reject Obama's Call For Unity Following President Obama's statement calling for lawmakers to set aside their differences and "harness" the "same sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11" to "confront the many challenges that we still face," right-wing media figures rejected the call, with Fox News' Laura Ingraham suggesting it was a "political" ploy and a "trap." In 2003, however, Ingraham repeatedly attacked progressives for supposedly "eroding our national unity." |
Indicting Gadhafi for war crimes: Will it help or hurt? – Global ...
By amarcnn
By Vivienne Walt, TIME Moammar Gadhafi and his family could be hit with war- crimes indictments within the coming weeks for his brutal crackdown against unarmed protesters in eastern Libya last February, turning him and his top officials ...
Global Public Square - http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/
By amarcnn
By Vivienne Walt, TIME Moammar Gadhafi and his family could be hit with war- crimes indictments within the coming weeks for his brutal crackdown against unarmed protesters in eastern Libya last February, turning him and his top officials ...
Global Public Square - http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13292464
One of the last Nazi war crimes trials is set to begin in Budapest. The 97-year-old Hungarian Sandor Kepiro topped the Wiesenthal most-wanted list for his suspected role in a 1942 massacre in present-day Serbia. The trial of one of the world's most ...See all stories on this topic »
One of the last Nazi war crimes trials is set to begin in Budapest. The 97-year-old Hungarian Sandor Kepiro topped the Wiesenthal most-wanted list for his suspected role in a 1942 massacre in present-day Serbia. The trial of one of the world's most ...See all stories on this topic »
International Criminal Court To Charge Three With War Crimes In Libya
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=626631
Moreno-Ocampo said that 45 people have been interviewed so far, most of them witnesses to war crimes. He emphasized that the investigation was criminal in nature, not political. "We interviewed crime-based witnesses -- people who were [there] at the ...See all stories on this topic »
Moreno-Ocampo said that 45 people have been interviewed so far, most of them witnesses to war crimes. He emphasized that the investigation was criminal in nature, not political. "We interviewed crime-based witnesses -- people who were [there] at the ...See all stories on this topic »
Submitted by Brian on May 5, 2011 - 7:54am
(They just won’t stop: Obama’s not Right; Obama’s not WHITE)
Pamela Geller’s rabid anti-Muslim activism helped her win friends in the conservative movement and theRepublican Party, and she even had her own panel at CPAC earlier this year. But Geller has now been focusing her efforts on a different issue: Birtherism.
Geller accused President Obama of doctoring his birth certificate and took to the Birther website WorldNetDaily to claim that Obama is ineligible to be president because his parents had a sham marriage.
Virginia School of Law professor G. Edward White plainly points out that the term “natural born citizen” is “understood to mean a person born in the United States or born abroad to parents who are both American citizen” (emphasis mine) and had nothing to do with the children of purported “sham marriages.”
But for Geller, who now professes to be an expert on Obama’s parents’ romantic life, even if Obama was born in the United States he can’t be considered a “natural born citizen” because the Founders wouldn’t have wanted “an illegitimate child of a foreign bigamist” to be President:
The release of Barack Hussein Obama I's immigration file is stunning in what it reveals and the questions it poses. BHO I's visa expired Aug. 8, 1961 (Barack Junior was born Aug. 4, 1961) – is that why he married Obama's mother?
It is interesting to note that BHO I claims in the documents to have divorced first wife, Kezia, "verbally." According to the Shariah, a man can divorce his wife by repeating it three times. Further, when BHO I returned to Kenya, he apparently lived with his first Kenyan wife and his American third wife, suggesting that the "divorce" he ostensibly secured to marry Dunham was a transitory ruse.
That would make the president illegitimate. In 1787, illegitimate children had different rights. There is no way the founders of this great nation intended for an illegitimate child of a foreign bigamist to attain the highest, most powerful position in the new land.
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