Cablegate: Assange’s bail viewed as a victory for WikiLeaks (Update 2)

by Steve Ragan - Dec 16 2010, 17:14

There were cheers outside the court as word spread the Julian Assange would be leaving prison today. The required surety came just in the nick of time. In addition to Assange, there is more news to report related to censorship and conspiracy charges out of the U.S.

Bail Granted:

13:16 EST:

Assange walked out of the court, remarking that it was great to smell the fresh air of London. In the “face of great difficulty and aversion” he thanked the people around the world that had faith in him.

The Guardian has a recording of his full statement. Listen to it here.

12:48 EST:

Several onsite media are reporting that Assange has been released.

12:09 EST:

At about 9:30 a.m. EST, with £200,000 in surety sitting in a bank somewhere, Julian Assange was granted conditional bail. There was some concern about those who put up the required funding, as it was suggested that they were supporting a cause and not Assange himself.

The undertone is that if Assange was to break bail conditions, it would cause no real loss to those who have offered financial support. Described as a nomad, Swedish representatives suggested that with his connections Assange had the means and ability to leave or hide in the UK.

Mixed reactions to these thoughts followed, in and out of the court, but they were largely pushed aside as the conditions of bail were hashed out.

The judge remarked on the comments by Gemma Lindfield, who appeared for the Swedish authorities, that Assange’s action of appointing his legal team as a point of contact with the MET, in the event a warrant was issued, was “not the conduct of a person who is seeking to evade justice.

As word that the decision of bail was upheld started to spread, Assange’s mother told reporters outside the court that she couldn’t wait to see him and hold him close.

In related news, The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed reports by The Guardian that they were the ones who made the call to appeal Assange’s bail earlier this week, not the Swedish government. In a statement to the news agency, they said it was standard practice in all extradition cases that the domestic prosecuting authority makes all of the decisions.

“It would not be practical for prosecutors in a foreign jurisdiction, who are neither present in court when decisions are made, nor familiar with the domestic laws concerning bail, to make such decisions.”

Assange’s lawyer, in response to the CPS comments commented with, “The question we have to ask is if they weren't talking to the Swedes, who were they talking to?”

Speaking to The Guardian, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson called the bail approval a victory and said, "I'm delighted by this decision. It will be excellent to have Julian back with us again."

Censorship of WikiLeaks and Cablegate:

Yesterday, we reported that Verizon and TrendMicro were making moves to block access to IRC networks and the WikiLeaks.info domain. Some readers correctly emailed to note that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) was denying access to information as well.

Air Force:

The USAF has blocked access to websites such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and many more in an attempt to limit access to classified information by those who do not have clearance.

The irony is that officials have told media that such actions could be useless, given that USAF personnel could simply view the information at home.

“News media Web sites will be blocked if they post classified documents from the WikiLeaks Web site,” a USAF spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Brenda Campbell said in a statement to the press. “This is similar to how we'd block any other Web site that posted classified information.”

The Army, Navy and Marines have no such blocks in place. Last week it was reported that the USAF Network Operations commander ordered that all soldiers cease the use of removable media on all systems, servers, and other systems with access to SIPRNET.

Spamhaus:

Spamhaus is the newest organization to issue a security warning against WikiLeaks.info.

On Tuesday, Spamhaus mirrored the observations of TrendMicro, and said that WikiLeaks.info (not WikiLeaks itself) was risky because of the primary IP space used.

“This new web site is hosted in a very dangerous "neighborhood", Webalta's 92.241.160.0/19 IP address space, a "blackhat" network which Spamhaus believes caters primarily to, or is under the control of, Russian cybercriminals.”

In response, WikiLeaks said that they find it very disturbing that Spamhaus labels a site as dangerous without even checking if there is any Malware on it.

“We do not know who else is hosted with Heihachi Ltd and it is none of our business. They provide reliable hosting to us. That's it. While we are in favour of "Blacklists", be it for mail servers or web sites, they have to be compiled with care…Wikileaks has been pulled from big hosters like Amazon. That's why we are using a "bulletproof" hoster that does not just kick a site when it gets a letter from government or a big company.”

WikiLeaks.info is not an official WikiLeaks domain, however, before it expired it was an official mirror. The new owners use it to allow access to other mirrors in the event that the main domain goes dark. It has been used more than once as a live backup when needed.

Currently, the domain presents a link to the mirror list, as well as some of the more established mirrors themselves.

TrendMicro:

TrendMicro has blocked 'mirror.wikileaks.info', preventing customers from the site. According to the company, its reason for the block is connected to the host, Heihachi Ltd.

“Heihachi Ltd. is known as a bulletproof, black-hat hosting provider in Russia which is a safe haven for criminals and fraudsters. It hosts a long list of criminally-related domains,” it explained.

“We at Trend Micro are committed to protecting our customers against threats on the Internet. Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network automatically assigns a very low reputation score to domain name wikileaks.info. Not because of political controversy, but because of actual facts about the bad neighborhood where this domain name is hosted.”

Verizon:

Verizon is blocking access to IP space used by AnonOps. Of the known IP addresses used by AnonOps, Verizon DSL and FiOS customers are denied access to five of them. A sixth was released, but the reason for the block removal is unknown.

The Tech Herald has asked Verizon to comment on the matter, but they have still not responded. Specifically, we’re interested to know if the blocks are security related. If not, then why block five IP addresses instead of all six?

While the subgroup of Anonymous (AnonOps) has used DDoS as a means of protest, other forms of protest (the legal kind, such as Operation Leakspin), also gather on the AnonOps IRC servers currently blocked.

Political Backlash:

First it was Joe Lieberman, who suggested that the New York Times be investigated for reporting on Cablegate. In an interview with FOX News, Lieberman said the New York Times had committed “at least an act of, at best, bad citizenship, but whether they have committed a crime is a matter of discussion for the Justice Department.”

This week it's Representative-Elect Allen West. After initially tossing Assange to the wolves, Representative-Elect West made the following remark:

“I think that we also should be censoring the American news agencies which enabled him to do this and also supported him and applauding him for the efforts. So that’s kind of aiding and abetting of a serious crime.”

ThinkProgress has the story and radio interview here.

Conspiracy:

The New York Time reported that the U.S. is attempting to build a conspiracy case against Assange, for his role in cablegate. According to the report, the Department of Justice is attempting to discover if Assange encouraged or helped PFC Manning collect the diplomatic cables.

The full report is here. In addition, the New York Times cited Wired in their story, which Wired followed-up adding details and a correction.

 

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