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US
officials: New leaker compromised national security documents after
Snowden
The United States government has concluded that a new leaker has been supplying members of the media with classified documents, CNN reported on Tuesday.
RT,
6
August, 2014
Earlier
that day, The Intercept published a new
article
based off of disclosures provided to them by an unnamed source
pertaining to the US government’s use of watchlists to monitor
known and suspected terrorists.
Previously,
The Intercept has worked closely with top-secret National Security
Agency documents admittedly provided to journalists by Edward
Snowden, a former contractor for the NSA. Tuesday’s leak, however,
is of a document dated August 2013 — weeks after Snowden chose to
identify himself as the source of the NSA leak and had already
arrived in Moscow where he later received asylum and remains today.
“An
August 2013 slide from the National Counterterrorism Center called
‘TIDE By The Numbers’ lays out the scope of the Obama
administration’s watchlisting system, and those it is targeting,”
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux wrote for The Intercept.
“The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence
community, also reveal that the Obama administration has presided
over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system.”
Reuters
/ Vincent Kessler
Tuesday’s
Intercept article came one day after the agency reported on
previously unpublished NSA documents, but also barely two weeks after
Scahill and Devereaux wrote of another NCC document provided to them
by “a source within the
intelligence community.”
In
the 14 months since Snowden’s documents first began to surface
online, the US intelligence community has time and time again
condemned the leaking of classified information, charging the
ex-contractor with espionage and reportedly going to great lengths to
prevent another major breach on par with the NSA disclosures, or the
release of documents a few years earlier by WikiLeaks source Chelsea
Manning. In less than three weeks’ time, however, The Intercept has
managed to obtain government documents without authorization from
most presumably another source.
Sources
asides, the latest documents prepared by the NCC and leaked to The
Intercept cast a rare light on the US government’s use of
ever-expanding federal watchlists by making public the information
about the Uncle Sam-sanctioned rosters of suspected terrorists that
have previously not been disclosed to wide audiences.
On
their part, Scahill and Devereaux wrote that the leak provides “the
most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date.
According
to the journalists’ report, more than 40 percent of the 680,000
individuals listed in the US Terrorist Screening Database shared with
local police agencies, contractors and governments around the globe —
or around 280,000 people — have “no
recognized terrorist group affiliation.”
Additionally,
the documents reveal that the number of people barred from flying in
the US — entrees on the infamous “no-fly list” — has
increased by 10-times since President Barack Obama entered the White
House in 2009 to a total of around 47,000.
“You
might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in
it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that
it works,”
former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York
University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told The Intercept. “These
agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more
resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the
American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will
allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the
national security umbrella.”
Tuesday’s
Intercept story contains a trove of previously unreported details
concerning the administering of federal watchlists and its massive
expansion under the Obama administration. As of 2013, the website
reported, the main terrorism database operated by the US contains
more than 860,000 biometric files on 144,000 people, who are but a
sliver of the 680,000 individuals on the lists.
“When
US officials refer to ‘the watchlist,’ they typically mean the
TSDB [Terrorist Screening Database], an unclassified pool of
information shared across the intelligence community and the
military, as well as local law enforcement, foreign governments and
private contractors,”
The Intercept reported. Furthermore, watchlisting guidelines
published by The Intercept last month revealed that officials don’t
need ‘concrete facts’ or ‘irrefutable evidence’ to place
someone on the list, but rather “only
a vague and elastic standard of ‘reasonable suspicion.’”
Assange
stakeout has cost nearly $12 million
RT,
6
August, 2014
As
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marks his 777th day in the
Ecuadorian embassy in London, the Metropolitan Police has spent over
$11.8 million on guarding the embassy.
Assange
has been detained without charge for 1,337 days – and 777 of those
days have been spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, according
to the latest WikiLeaks statement.
Meanwhile,
the price tag for guarding Assange hit over seven million British
pounds (US$11.8 million) early on Wednesday, according to
govwaste.co.uk counter.
Officers
have been staking out the embassy around the clock since June 2012,
with the cost to the London taxpayers surpassing $15,000 per day.
At
any time of the day or night, there are three officers stationed
outside the embassy, ready to arrest Assange if he tries to leave.
The
bill is likely to keep climbing; Ecuadorian authorities have said
Assange is welcome to stay in the embassy for as long as required.
The
UK has refused to provide Assange safe passage to Ecuador ever since
the Australian sought refuge inside the embassy.
Police
stand guard in front of supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange wo are standing with banners outside the Ecuadorian Embassy
in London on June 19, 2014 (AFP Photo / Andrew Cowie)
Many
have criticized the cost of the UK’s obsession with guarding
Assange, including London Mayor Boris Johnson. “It’s
absolutely ridiculous, that money should be spent on frontline
policing. It’s completely wasted,”
the mayor said.
Deputy
chair of the Police & Crime Committee at the London Assembly
Baroness Jenny Jones said: “It’s
absolute madness...either somebody else has to pay – that is, the
Swedish authorities – or we just have to back off and stop guarding
the embassy. It is ludicrous.”
The
42-year-old WikiLeaks founder is wanted for questioning in Sweden for
allegedly sexually assaulting two women in Stockholm in 2010.
Assange
denies the charges but will not travel to Sweden to be questioned
because he says the charges are politically motivated for his work
with WikiLeaks and he will be extradited to the US. WikiLeaks enraged
Washington by publishing thousands of leaked diplomatic cables in
2010.
A
Swedish court upheld
an arrest warrant for Assange in July, following a legal challenge
from his lawyers in June. The challenge was spurred by a change to
the right to information in criminal procedures, which is in line
with an EU directive.
Swedish
Judge Lena Egelin was quick to dismiss the legal challenge to
Assange’s arrest warrant, but noted that the decision could still
be appealed.
Assange’s
defense team had argued that the European arrest warrant should be
lifted on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to act in a
timely manner by not interviewing their client at the embassy. They
also said that detaining a suspect for the duration of the
investigation was an excessive use of force that was not in the
public interest.
Some
of the latest WikiLeaks releases have been cables about Israel and
Gaza, including leaks on the bombing of UN schools in Gaza, cables on
'Israel's NSA,' and over 8,300 documents on Gilad Shalit – an
Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006.
Meanwhile,
Assange is releasing a new
book
titled 'When Google Met WikiLeaks,' which will be published in
September by OR Books. In the book, the WikiLeaks founder describes
his vision of the future of the internet and recounts a meeting with
Google chairman Eric Schmidt in 2011.
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