Barack Obama’s sad record on secrecy

Josh Gerstein sums up Barack Obama's massively disappointing record on secrecy at Politico, including this passage:

“Obama is the sixth administration that’s been in office since I’ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. … It’s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There’s just no question about it,” said Katherine Meyer, a Washington lawyer who’s been filing FOIA cases since 1978. “This administration is raising one barrier after another. … It’s gotten to the point where I’m stunned — I’m really stunned.” David Sobel, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that “despite the positive rhetoric that has come from the White House and the attorney general, that guidance has not been translated into real world results in actual cases. … Basically, the reviews are terrible.”

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The higher principle involved in the U.S. persecution of Wikileaks

Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings recently interviewed Julian Assange, head of Wikileaks, who pointed out a huge problem with the government's legal position:

The U.S. government is trying to redefine what have been long-accepted journalistic methods. If the Pentagon is to have its way, it will be the end of national-security journalism in the United States . . . They're trying to interpret the Espionage Act to say that any two-way communication with a source is a collaboration with a source, and is therefore a conspiracy to commit espionage where classified information is involved. The Pentagon, in fact, issued a public demand to us that we not only destroy everything we had ever published or were ever going to publish in relation to the U.S. government, but that we also stop "soliciting" information from U.S. government employees. The Espionage Act itself does not mention solicitation, but they're trying to create a new legal precedent that includes a journalist simply asking a source to communicate information.
Here's one more quote from the above article:
When you shake something up, you have a chance to rebuild. But we're not interested in shaking something up just for the hell of it. I believe that if we look at what makes a civilization civilized, it is people understanding what is really going on. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, the end result was that people who knew something of what was going on could convey that information to others. And as a result of the Internet, we are now living in a time where it's a lot easier to convey what we know about our corner of the world and share it with others.

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The right of citizens to record public events

Many people have been arrested for recording public arrests, and many others have had their cameras confiscated, and that's here in American where we have the First Amendment. At Gigaom, Matthew Ingram takes a look at this problem and concludes that the freedom of the press applies to everyone, even bloggers:

University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, who has written a research paper about the right of citizens to record public events under the First Amendment, told Reason magazine that rulings by three separate federal appeals courts have upheld that right. And one recent appeals court decision specifically referred to the fact that the ability to take photos, video and audio recordings with mobile devices has effectively made everyone a journalist — in practice, if not in name — and therefore deserving of protection.
Ingram's article cites to another well-written article, this one by Rodney Balko, titled, "The War on Cameras." Balko's article discusses the right to privacy of police. Here's an excerpt:
University of Pennsylvania law professor Seth Kreimer, author of a 2010 paper in the Pennsylvania Law Review about the right to record, says such legal vagueness is a problem. Citing decisions by three federal appeals courts, Kreimer says the First Amendment includes the right to record public events. “The First Amendment doesn’t allow for unbridled discretion” by police, he says, “and it’s particularly concerned with clear rules when free speech rights are at stake. Even if there is a privacy interest here, people have to know when they’re going to be subject to prosecution.”
Here's the article by Seth Kreimer; it's titled: "Pervasive Image Capture and the First Amendment: Memory, Discourse, and the Right to Record."

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Wikileaks exposes “shadow CIA”: Stratfor

See this new report on the most recent revelation by Wikileaks:

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks today started to publish more than five million confidential emails from the global intelligence company Stratfor. . . . Among the allegations to emerge is that Stratfor's claim to be a media organisation providing a subscription intelligence newsletter is a front for 'running paid informants networks' and 'laundering those payments through the Bahamas, through Switzerland, through private credit cards'. Stratfor 'is monitoring Bhopal activists for Dow Chemicals, Peta activities for Coca-Cola', WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed at a press conference in London today. However, what could cause the greatest embarrassment for the U.S. government is his suggestion that information is also being gathered by paying contacts from agencies including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
It appears, then, that a for-profit enterprise engaged secret shady dealing is being exposed by the non-profit Wikileaks, whose mission is to make harmful information public. Many more stories are expected to emerge based on the release of five million emails from the private intelligence firm, Stratfor. Until today, I had never heard about Stratfor. That's about to change, big time, based on the Wikileaks releases. The suggestions that Stratfor has numerous ties to paid U.S. government sources is extremely troubling. We'll see what happens to those profiteers. As I recall, Bradley Manning never made a penny when he released U.S. cables, but he has been imprisoned ever since, and often tortured by the U.S. government.

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How to protect your electronic data at the border

Electronic Frontier Foundation has a detailed article advising you of your (lack of) rights when you enter and leave the United States (this applies to citizens and non-citizens). Here is some basic advice, but check out the article for lots of good advice regarding encryption, use of clouds, backups and other advice, much of it useful even when you are not traveling:

Border agents have a great deal of discretion to perform searches and make determinations of admissibility at the border. Keep in mind that any traveler, regardless of citizenship status or behavior, can be temporarily detained by border agents for more detailed questioning, a physical search of possessions, or a more extensive physical search. Refusal to cooperate with searches, answer questions, or turn over passwords to let agents access or decrypt data may cause lengthy questioning, seizure of devices for further examination, or, in extreme circumstance, prevent admission to the country. For this reason, it may be best to protect your data in ways that don’t require you to have awkward confrontations with border agents at all.

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