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And I think one of the reasons that’s happened and has repeatedly happened throughout the War on Terror is that the system, the internal system for whistle-blowing, for the watchdog and oversight system is broken. There is no good way for anyone inside the government do go through the chain of command and report about something like this. They all fear retaliation, they fear prosecution.
And so most whistleblowers, the really, the only way they now have is to go to the press or to go to someone, go outside like Snowden did. He chose people in the press to go to. He picked and chose who he wanted. But the problem is people inside the system who try to go through the chain of command get retaliated against, punished…
James Risen (via azspot)
If Snowden had surrendered himself to U.S. authorities, he almost certainly would have faced charges that carry penalties of decades in prison. He might have rationally feared being subject to years of pretrial detention and the kind of degrading treatment Manning faced. And if he had chosen to fight the charges, he would have risked spending decades in prison if he lost.
Has the US become the type of nation from which you have to seek asylum? (via markcoatney)
[As] Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler noted recently in the New Republic, when the judge presiding over Manning’s prosecution asked military lawyers if they would ‘have pressed the same charges if Manning had given the documents not to WikiLeaks but directly to the New York Times?,’ the prosecutor answered simply: ‘Yes, ma’am’. It has long been clear that this WikiLeaks-as-criminals theory could and would be used to criminalize establishment media outlets which reported on that which the US government wanted concealed. Now we know that the DOJ is doing exactly that: applying this theory to criminalize the acts of journalists who report on what the US government does in secret, even though there is no law that makes such reporting illegal and the First Amendment protects such conduct. Essentially accusing James Rosen of being an unindicted co-conspriator in these alleged crimes is a major escalation of the Obama DOJ’s already dangerous attacks on press freedom. … It is virtually impossible at this point to overstate the threat posed by the Obama DOJ to press freedoms.

Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes | Glenn Greenwald

… Back in 2006, Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales triggered a major controversy when he said that the New York Times could be prosecuted for having revealed the Top Secret information that the NSA was eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without warrants. That was at the same time that right-wing demagogues such Bill Bennett were calling for the prosecution of the NYT reporters who reported on the NSA program, as well as the Washington Post’s Dana Priest for having exposed the CIA black site network.

But despite those public threats, the Bush DOJ never went so far as to formally accuse journalists in court filings of committing crimes for reporting on classified information. Now the Obama DOJ has.

… If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted in this way, and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable.

There is simply no defense for this behavior. Obama defenders such as Andrew Sullivan claim that this is all more complicated than media outrage suggests because of a necessary “trade-off” between press freedoms and security. So do Obama defenders believe that George Bush and Richard Nixon - who never prosecuted leakers like this or formally accused journalists of being criminals for reporting classified information - were excessively protective of press freedoms and insufficiently devoted to safeguarding secrecy? To ask that question is to mock it. Obama has gone so far beyond what every recent prior president has done in bolstering secrecy and criminalizing whistleblowing and leaks.

Greenwald is writing in response to this report from The Washington Post.

(via circlingtheroundabout)

(Source: theamericanbear)

humanrightswatch: Guantanamo Bay and Indefinite Detention - Hunger Strike Continues More prisoners have joined a hunger strike at the US-run detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the reported total to 93 out of 166 held at the facility, according to media reports. Lawyers for the detainees claim that the actual number is higher.“The illegal detentions without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay have gone on for more than a decade with no end in sight, so it’s not surprising that detainees feel desperate,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch. “The Obama administration simply has to do more to end this unlawful practice that will forever be a black mark on US history.”  Human Rights Watch has long called for an end to the practice of indefinite detention at Guantanamo, which violates international law. More than half of the detainees currently at the facility were approved for transfer to their home or third countries by an Obama administration interagency task force in 2009. Congress restricted those transfers but the Defense Department still has the ability to transfer the cleared detainees as long as certain safeguards are in place. Human Rights Watch urged the Obama administration to use its authority to begin transferring detainees out of the facility as soon as possible. Photo: © 2009 Reuters
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humanrightswatch:

Guantanamo Bay and Indefinite Detention - Hunger Strike Continues

More prisoners have joined a hunger strike at the US-run detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, bringing the reported total to 93 out of 166 held at the facility, according to media reports. Lawyers for the detainees claim that the actual number is higher.

“The illegal detentions without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay have gone on for more than a decade with no end in sight, so it’s not surprising that detainees feel desperate,” said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor at Human Rights Watch. “The Obama administration simply has to do more to end this unlawful practice that will forever be a black mark on US history.”  

Human Rights Watch has long called for an end to the practice of indefinite detention at Guantanamo, which violates international law. More than half of the detainees currently at the facility were approved for transfer to their home or third countries by an Obama administration interagency task force in 2009. Congress restricted those transfers but the Defense Department still has the ability to transfer the cleared detainees as long as certain safeguards are in place. Human Rights Watch urged the Obama administration to use its authority to begin transferring detainees out of the facility as soon as possible.

Photo: © 2009 Reuters

Sat Apr 06, 2013 at 10:59 AM PDT Exxon orders sheriffs to disperse reporters with threats of arrest

stopkillingourworld:

Reporters covering the oil spill from ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas, are reporting that they’ve been blocked from the site and threatened with arrest.

On Friday morning, Inside Climate News reported that an Exxon spokesperson told reporter Lisa Song that she could be “arrested for criminal trespass” when she went to the command center to try to find representatives from the EPA and the Department of Transportation. On Friday afternoon, I spoke to the news director from the local NPR affiliate who said he, too, had been threatened with arrest while trying to cover the spill.

Michael Hibblen, who reports for the radio station KUAR, went to the spill site on Wednesday with state Attorney General Dustin McDaniel. McDaniel was in the area to inspect the site and hold a news conference, and Hibblen and a small group of reporters were following him to report on the visit. Upon arrival, representatives from the county sheriff’s office, which is running security at the site, directed the reporters to a boundary point 10 feet away that they should not pass. The reporters agreed to comply. But the tone shifted abruptly, Hibblen told Mother Jones on Friday:

    It was less than 90 seconds before suddenly the sheriff’s deputies started yelling that all the media people had to leave, that ExxonMobil had decided they don’t want you here, you have to leave. They even referred to it as “Exxon Media”…Some reporters were like, “Who made this decision? Who can we talk to?” The sheriff’s deputies started saying, “You have to leave. You have 10 seconds to leave or you will be arrested.”

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