Tag: Wikileaks

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WikiLeaks Punks Trump Followers – No #OctoberSurprise

A Tuesday morning WikiLeaks event in Berlin did not produce the “#OctoberSurprise” to derail Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign that many Trump followers were hoping for, but Julian Assange said he would release more documents before Election Day.

From The Daily Beast:

A Tuesday morning press conference by WikiLeaks, which Clinton antagonists and conspiracy theorists had hoped would spell the beginning of the end of her presidential campaign, turned out to be a celebration-cum-infomercial for the website, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today and is promoting a new book.

Either WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, never really had the goods on Clinton, or Donald Trump and his supporters just got wickedly trolled.

For months, WikiLeaks has been hinting that it would release damaging documents about Clinton in the home stretch of the presidential campaign. The group had posted embarrassing emails stolen by hackers from the Democratic National Committee in July, leaving the world wondering, what else does Assange have in his hard drive?

Egged on by the apparently unfounded claims of Trump adviser Roger Stone that WikiLeaks had a campaign-ending document dump in store, anticipation reached a fever pitch. According to Google, the top trending question about Trump’s opponent on Monday was “What could WikiLeaks have on Clinton?”

Turns out, probably not much. There was no spectacular release of private emails. No bombshells about the Clinton Foundation or brain tumors. Instead, Assange and some of his WikiLeaks colleagues used the press conference to make a pitch for donations and to note the remarkable quantity of the site’s work—10 million documents published, containing more than 10 billion words, which the group claims is “more secret documents than the rest of the world’s media combined.”

Just a few reactions from Twitter:

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DNC Email Hacker Connected To Russian Government

The Daily Beast has the details:

The hacker who claims to have stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and provided them to WikiLeaks is actually an agent of the Russian government and part of an orchestrated attempt to influence U.S. media coverage surrounding the presidential election, a security research group concluded on Tuesday.

The researchers, at Arlington, Va.-based ThreatConnect, traced the self-described Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 back to an Internet server in Russia and to a digital address that has been linked in the past to Russian online scams. Far from being a singly, sophisticated hacker, Guccifer 2.0 is more likely a collection of people from the propaganda arm of the Russian government meant to deflect attention away from Moscow as the force behind the DNC hacks and leaks of emails, the researchers found.

ThreatConnect is the first known group of experts to link the self-proclaimed hacker to a Russian operation, amidst an ongoing FBI investigation and a presidential campaign rocked by the release of DNC emails that have embarrassed senior party leaders and inflamed intraparty tensions turning the Democratic National Convention. The emails revealed that party insiders plotted ways to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid.

WikiLeaks hasn’t responded to Guccifer 2.0’s claims of responsibility for the email leak.

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Chelsea Manning requests presidential pardon

Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, asked President Obama to pardon him for handing over thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks.

Manning’s lawyer David. E. Coombs filed the formal request for presidential pardon on Tuesday, nearly two weeks after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Coombs asked Obama to either reduce her sentence to time Manning has already served since her arrest in 2010, or for a full presidential pardon. In either case, Manning would be free to go.

In the request’s cover letter, Coombs wrote that all Manning did was share documents with “a journalist,” stressing that Manning’s actions didn’t harm the United States and that her punishment is disproportionate:

The length of Private Manning’s sentence is one that we would expect for someone who disclosed information in order to harm the United States or who disclosed information for monetary gain. Private Manning did neither.

Instead, he disclosed information that he believed could spark a meaningful public debate on the costs of war, and specifically on how we value human life.

(source)

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FAQ as Bradley Manning trial to begin

Bradley Manning Wikileaks trial to begin

After three years in solitary confinement, the trial of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning about to hit full-swing. Queerty has compiled a comprehensive “primer” to catch you up in case you haven’t been following the story for the past three years.

Who Is Bradley Manning?

Bradley Manning is an intelligence analyst who has achieved the rank of Private First Class in the United States Army.

Why Is He on Trial?

PFC Manning was arrested for allegedly passing classified material to the website WikiLeaks while stationed in Baghdad, Iraq, including videos of separate airstrikes in both Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of restricted army reports. The
“Collateral Murder” video, as the one set in Iraq is called, depicts a U.S. Attack Helicopter killing 12 civilians and those who attempted to help the wounded.

What Is the Most Serious Charge?

PFC Manning is facing multiple counts, the most serious of which is Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Article 104, “Aiding the Enemy,” which is potentially punishable by death.

What Does the Prosecution Think?

Prosecutors are portraying Manning not as a heroic whistleblower, but as a deeply unhappy soldier who craved the fame and notoriety that leaking the classified documents would get him.

What Does the Defense Think?

Manning’s defense team insists that he wasn’t a gloryhound, but a troubled and sensitive soldier that was struggling with his gender identity and was deeply disturbed by the daily realities of life on the ground in Iraq.

Why Are People Protesting For PFC Manning?

After the arrest, Manning was placed in solitary confinement under “Prevention of Injury” status. He was not allowed to speak to other detainees, could only leave his cell for 20 minutes a day, and had to remove his clothing to sleep among other very restrictive rules. There is some speculation that the “Prevention of Injury” status is due to Manning’s perceived instability due to his gender identity issues, and Manning’s treatment was a cause of international concern, even being addressed by President Obama during a White House press conference. There are also people who see the uncovering of multiple war crimes in the videos and documents he released as being in the grand tradition of whistleblowing, and that he should be seen as a hero and not a criminal.

Read the full comprehensive guide to the Manning trial at Queerty.