Recap: Assange gets bail and more support as 'Cablegate' presses forward

by Steve Ragan - Dec 15 2010, 12:40

The readers’ choice for Time’s person of the year, Julian Assange, has been told he will need to remain in police custody for another two days despite being granted bail yesterday. There have been several developments in the WikiLeaks/Assange saga since he was arrested last week, including tremendous growth, censorship, and more.

Bail is granted, but with a catch:

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was told by Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle he'd be granted bail, but on the condition that he provide surety of £200,000 GBP, abide with a curfew (10am-2pm and 10pm-2am), and appear daily at a police station. However, the good news came with some harsh law.

After spending a week behind bars, Assange was told he would need to stay a few days longer. The 48-hour wait is connected to a legal matter allowing Swedish prosecutors to appeal the decision. If they win that appeal, Assange will remain in custody until January 11. The issue of bail is a troubling one, mainly because it must be collected before Assange can be released.

Standing outside the court yesterday, Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, revealed that half the bail money has been collected. However, £200,000 GBP is still hard to come by on such short notice.

Speaking to reporters, Stephens commented: “It is impossible to say how long it will take before Julian Assange is out. The problem is £200,000 cannot be put in by cheque as that takes seven days to clear. So I have to go around to find cash and have it delivered to court, and until the court has it an innocent man stays in jail.”

Additional support, in the form of $20,000 USD, came from filmmaker Michael Moore, and an unknown amount was pledged by Sir John Sulston. In a diary post to Daily Kos, Moore said that, in addition to the bail, he would offer other assistance if needed.

“I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars,” said Moore.

“We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off,” he added.

“The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again.”

Considering the stance Visa and MasterCard have taken with regard to WikiLeaks, the status of the full bail amount was unknown as of Wednesday morning in the City of Westminster.

As an aside, yesterday’s hearing marked the first time Twitter was allowed inside the court.

Other random acts of encouragement and support:

There have also been a steady stream of rallies and public support for Assange from every direction. While some politicians are calling for his head on a pike, Representative Ron Paul applauded WikiLeaks and Assange for exposing the United States’ “delusional foreign policy”.

PEN International, a global writers' organization with special consultative status at UNESCO and the United Nations, said the WikiLeaks issue, “marks a significant turning point in the evolution of the media and the sometimes conflicting principles of freedom of expression and privacy and security concerns.”

“PEN International believes it is important to acknowledge that while the leaking of government documents is a crime under U.S laws, the publication of documents by Wikileaks is not a crime. Wikileaks is doing what the media has historically done, the only difference being that the documents have not been edited.”

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism faculty added its voice with a letter to Eric Holder and President Barack Obama. In the letter, the faculty said it was concerned by reports that the Department of Justice is considering criminal charges against Julian Assange and others associated with Wikileaks.

“...while we hold varying opinions of Wikileaks’ methods and decisions, we all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables Wikileaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment,” outlined the letter.

“Any prosecution of Wikileaks’ staff for receiving, possessing or publishing classified materials will set a dangerous precedent for reporters in any publication or medium, potentially chilling investigative journalism and other First Amendment-protected activity.”

“Prosecution in the Wikileaks case would greatly damage American standing in free-press debates worldwide and would dishearten those journalists looking to this nation for inspiration,” it added.

Washington Times reporter Eli Lake agree, saying on Twitter that he opposed the application of the Espionage Act to Assange, “because the same kind of prosecution would make me a criminal too.”

However, the winner of the award for 'most unexpected media support' goes to FOX’s Glenn Beck. In a recent show, Beck said that, while he didn't support Assange personally, he was torn on the story.

“I want you to understand, I don't support this guy. I don't support what he's doing, but I'm really torn on this story. He is exposing the fact that our governments all around the world have been lying to us. It's been a job we've been trying to do but been pilloried over and over for doing it,” said Beck.

“But I don't want a guy to go to jail or to be silenced for something he didn't do. Again, I don't support him. But I want you to the look into the crime that he committed to warrant an international manhunt. This whole thing is not sitting right. Julian Assange may not be the man of the year. He may not be the man of the decade or the century. He may actually turn out to be the man of the millennium. Good or bad, because he may be the man that has pushed us off the edge and headed towards profound global change.”

Censorship, lawsuits, and protests... Oh my!

TrendMicro:

TrendMicro has blocked 'mirror.wikileaks.info', preventing customers from opening the official 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 too:

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 it had not responded at time of publication. 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.

Even our own politicians:

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 commmitted “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.

Lawsuits:

According to the Reykjavik Grapevine, the Icelandic Parliamentary General Committee met on Sunday to discuss the ban placed on WikiLeaks by Visa and MasterCard. The committee meeting centered on what legal grounds the two credit firms had for the ban, requesting proof that their actions were more than a decision taken because of foreign sources.

In respective statements given to The Tech Herald, Visa and MasterCard had this to say:

“Visa Europe has taken action to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules.”

“MasterCard is currently in the process of working to suspend the acceptance of MasterCard cards on WikiLeaks until the situation is resolved.”

Meanwhile, DataCell, the company that processed Visa and MasterCard transactions for WikiLeaks, said it will be taking legal action against both companies. In a statement, DataCell revealed a strong general opinion regarding Visa.

“We can not believe Wikileaks would even create scratch at the brand name of Visa. The suspension of payments towards Wikileaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers,” it said.

“Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to Wikileaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much, much more to block payments towards Wikileaks than to have them occur.”

DataCell’s CEO had previously said it was ridiculous to think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal, saying: “If Wikileaks is criminal, then CNN, and BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jaseira and many others would have to be considered criminals too as they publish the same [information].”

Swiss bank PostFinance is under investigation for violating secrecy rules by divulging that it had closed Julian Assange’s account.

“We are investigating if, in relation to the Postfinance press statement, there has been punishable action,” Hermann Wenger, examining magistrate of the Bern-Mittelland region, told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper.

Growth and protests:

As you can see, growth for WikiLeaks has continued. The Cablegate documents are now mirrored on more than 2,000 websites. For those wanting to make their voice heard, a massive list of related protests can be viewed here.

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