By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
August 26, 2011
Whether or not you believe that Wikileaks and Julian Assange are functionaries of Washington’s sophisticated intelligence web, what is clearly undeniable is that the existence of the document dumping site is being used by the State to end internet privacy, and place restrictions on free speech, availability of public domain information, and to legally prosecute users of certain websites.
Presently, the United States is conducting its own secret Grand Jury investigation into Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. At the centre of Washington’s effort is the targeting of WikiLeaks’ DNS host, Dynadot, based in California. With this case, the US Government is hoping to rewrite the current rulebook regarding freedom on internet.
The government’s ability to shut down any website’s DNS means that it will be able to effectively lock the users’ gateway into any website deemed to be in violation by invoking the dubious and wholly unconstitutional USA Patriot Acts I & II.
With the majority of the world’s DNS houses residing within the US, a precedent like this could give the US Federal Government carte blanche to seize and liquidate any number of websites that might fall into the state’s new and elastic definition of ‘espionage’, or are deemed to be a ‘threat to national security’.
With the backing of a Federal Court order, Washington soon hopes to gain the right to ‘legally’ sequester confidential user information including subscriber names, user names, screen names, mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, temporary IP addresses and credit card payment and billing details.
Few will doubt that this act of Constitutional aggression on the part of the State could have far reaching consequences for any online publisher.
The legal and academic basis for this case revolves around the state’s attempt to redefine the term espionage in relation to the content uploaded on to Wikileaks site. Washington’s redefinition of this particular word is catered to suit to the every-increasing appetite of the encroaching new police state. According to Websters dictionary, es·pi·o·nage is defined as follows:
1. the act or practice of spying.
2. the use of spies by a government to discover the military and political secrets of other nations.
3. the use of spies by a corporation or the like to acquire the plans, technical knowledge, etc., of a competitor: industrial espionage.
Attempting to prosecute any website who might be displaying so-called ‘leaked’ material online under the umbrella term espionage may seem like a legal and intellectual stretch, but for a US Federal Government that has hung its hat for the last 10 years on Stasi-style laws like the Patriot Acts I & II, stretching the definition of a single word is merely a routine legal exercise.
Above all this, remains the fact that under the cloak of official state secrets, employees of the US government, have, and probably still are, using Wikileaks as a dumping ground for disinformation, fake material, counterintelligence, and as an intelligence back-channel- all to suit any disinformation program or psychological operation that they may be running at any particular time. From a legal standpoint, judges and scholars in the US should pay attention to this important point when deciding on what moral and legal grounds the state is actually standing on.
More to the point, Washington’s attack on Wikileaks and its frontman Julian Assange appears to be no more than a trojan horse errected by the state to compromise user rights to privacy and freedom of speech. Experts have shown already that Wikileaks has been working directly with the US Department of Defense , in one intance at least, in order to avert attention from a massive black market in sensitive information, partially highlighted by the Washington Post’s infamous expose entitled Top Secret America.
Governments using Wikileaks to spread disinformation?
RT Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pqk_j8-WQw
Based on this revelation, one can see now that Washington is not actually after Wikileaks, rather, it is actually targeting any remaining rights to privacy, anonymity and data protection currently enjoyed by free users in the United States and abroad.
Yesterday, Rabble.ca reports:
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