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Tag: Whistleblowers

Booz Allen Hamilton: NSA’s ‘Digital Blackwater’ A Sign Of Deep Ties Between US Gov’t & Private Spies

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Booz Allen Hamilton, a powerful government contractor at the heart of multiple leaks of classified material from the NSA, also spends big on D.C. lobbying, and its employees have given generously to presidential campaigns this election cycle.

In light of Booz Allen Hamilton’s role in two major leaks of government surveillance secrets, the corporation’s lobbying efforts and its employees’ campaign contributions reflect the deep ties between private corporations and the U.S. government and its national intelligence apparatus.

In August, the FBI quietly arrested Harold Thomas Martin, a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor, for stealing classified documents. News of his arrest finally surfaced last week. Martin may have been responsible for the leak of a suite of malware tools that the NSA uses to secretly access computers.

‘WikiLeaks Did Not Disclose “Gays” To The Saudi Govt’: Whistleblower Site Fires Back Against Media Attacks

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

WikiLeaks has filed a formal complaint accusing The Associated Press of violating journalistic ethics in a recent report that claimed the transparency site was responsible for “outing” private data belonging to Saudi citizens.

The Aug. 23 investigation by AP reporters Raphael Satter and Maggie Michael accused WikiLeaks of releasing the private data of “scores” of residents of the Gulf kingdom as part of the The Saudi Cables. This collection, which the site launched in June 2015, consists of over 122,000 files leaked from Saudi foreign affairs ministry.

In the report, Satter and Michael lodge serious accusations, including that WikiLeaks published private medical data relating to “sick children, rape victims and mental health patients.”

Snowden: Leak Of NSA Hacking Tools Are Russia’s ‘Warning’ To The US Government

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

According to whistleblower Edward Snowden, a recent leak of secret NSA hacking tools reflects an escalation in tensions between Russia and the United States. For others, though, it highlights concerns about what, if any, privacy is afforded to the general public.

The NSA whistleblower lit up Twitter on Tuesday with suggestions of “Russian responsibility” in the recent release of the NSA tools, noting that it could be a response to accusations by the Hillary Clinton campaign that Russian hackers leaked internal Democratic National Convention emails.

The suite of hacking tools, which were leaked by a group calling themselves the Shadow Brokers, consists of complex “malware” programs, malicious software designed to secretly take over targeted networks by exploiting security vulnerabilities in commercially available, widely used internet software.

UPDATE: British Judge Rules Alleged Hacktivist Lauri Love Can Be Extradited To US

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Lauri Love, an alleged British hacktivist, faces extradition to the U.S. over charges of supporting deceased programmer and activist Aaron Swartz.

In an interview with MintPress News, Naomi Colvin, a U.K.-based campaigner for the Courage Foundation, which supports hacktivist and whistleblower political prisoners, says Love could suffer a similar fate to Swartz if he’s extradited.

“There’s a blatant and rather unpleasant irony in that for allegedly protesting against the prosecutorial conduct and coercive plea bargaining that took place in Aaron Swartz’s case, he’s now facing exactly the same kind of treatment himself,” Colvin told us.

WikiLeaks’ Assange Enters Year 5 Of Confinement, War On Whistleblowers To Continue Indefinitely

Posted in Archive, Journalism, and MintPress News

On Sunday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange marked the fourth anniversary of the day he entered the Ecuadorean Embassy in London on asylum.

Many, including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and philosopher and political analyst Noam Chomsky, voiced their support for Assange and their hopes for his eventual freedom. But Assange is just one of many victims of the U.S. war on whistleblowers, an unprecedented crackdown on government transparency that’s unlikely to end any time soon.

Assange entered the embassy on June 19, 2012 under threat of extradition to Sweden for questioning over allegations of improper sexual behavior toward two women. Swedish officials have refused to guarantee that Assange will not be extradited to a third country, and until recently, they’ve also refused invitations to question him at the embassy. Though the case against him has weakened over time, Assange still fears he could face decades in prison, or even the death penalty, if he were extradited from Sweden to the U.S., where a secretive, federal grand jury could indict him for hosting classified, leaked information on WikiLeaks.

Corruption At The UN: Whistleblower Investigated, Child Sexual Abuse Ignored

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

A whistleblower who alerted authorities to the alleged rape of children by U.N. peacekeepers resigned after top U.N. officials investigated him instead of investigating the accusations he called attention to.

When U.N. officials failed to act on a confidential report which accuses French troops of sexually abusing refugee children in the Central African Republic, Anders Kompass, field operations director at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, leaked the report to the French government in 2014.
According to a June 7 report from IRIN, a news site focused on global humanitarian emergencies, “The alleged abuse involved hungry children – as young as eight – in the M’Poko camp for displaced people, coerced into sex in return for food or a little money.”

Now Kompass is calling it quits. He told Obi Anyadike, IRIN’s editor-at-large, that the situation has made it “impossible for me to continue working there.”