October 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Adam Schiff asks intelligence agencies for information about CIA's targeting of WikiLeaks
by zeynepaydogan 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

https://news.yahoo.com/adam-schiff-asks-intelligence-agencies-for-informati… Adam Schiff asks intelligence agencies for information about CIA's targeting of WikiLeaks The House Intelligence Committee is seeking information about [a Yahoo News report](https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-… that CIA officials plotted to kidnap Julian Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2017 after WikiLeaks published documents describing the spy agency’s hacking tools. “We are seeking information about it now,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee chairman, in an interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. Schiff added that, as the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel in 2017, he was never briefed about the CIA’s plans to target Assange. But he said the committee had reached out “to the agencies” — an apparent reference to the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — after reading about the Yahoo News account describing deep divisions within the Trump administration, including objections from White House lawyers, over the CIA’s plans for unusually aggressive measures to cripple WikiLeaks that had been proposed by then agency Director Mike Pompeo. Asked if he had received any response to the committee’s inquiry, Schiff replied: “I can’t comment on what we’ve heard back yet.” (Spokespeople for the CIA and ODNI declined comment.) The disclosure by Schiff that the committee is pursuing information about the CIA’s measures targeting WikiLeaks comes the day after the [ACLU and more than 20 other](https://news.yahoo.com/civil-liberties-groups-push-biden-administrat… rights and press freedom groups wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to drop the criminal prosecution of Assange in light of what they called “shocking” reporting by Yahoo News “on the government’s conduct in this case.” It also comes on the eve of a critical hearing before a British appellate court in London next week over the U.S. Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court judge’s ruling rejecting its request to extradite Assange to the United States to face trial for publishing classified documents in violation of the World War I-era Espionage Act. The judge concluded that Assange, who is now in a British prison after spending years holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, would be at serious risk of suicide if he were incarcerated in an American prison. But lawyers for Assange intend to raise the issue of what they view as the CIA’s misconduct, arguing that returning him to a country where some top officials once plotted to kidnap him strengthens the judge’s conclusions about the risk of suicide and should be an additional basis for turning down the U.S. extradition request. The Yahoo News story, published on Sept. 26, disclosed that Pompeo, who had publicly labeled WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” pushed for highly aggressive measures to cripple the organization, including a so-called “snatch operation” that would abduct Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy. There were also discussions within the CIA about the feasibility of assassinating Assange, including tasking for options on how to do so, although those talks never materialized into an actual plan. White House lawyers also managed to scuttle the kidnapping plan pushed by Pompeo, but other CIA operations went forward, including monitoring the communications and travel of WikiLeaks associates throughout Europe. That surveillance also covered Assange himself, including audio and visual feeds from inside the Ecuadorean Embassy showing the WikiLeaks founder talking to friends and associates. (Assange’s lawyers have claimed these included confidential conversations that Assange had with his lawyers and doctors.) As Yahoo News reported, Pompeo and other top agency officials were enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication of information about the CIA’s hacking tools, known as Vault 7, deemed at the time to be the largest data breach in the spy agency’s history. “They were seeing blood,” said one former Trump national security official. Pompeo, when recently asked about the Yahoo News report [on the Megyn Kelly podcast](https://news.yahoo.com/pompeo-sources-for-yahoo-news-wiki-leaks-re…, said that “pieces of it are true” and that all the sources who spoke to the news organization should be criminally prosecuted for disclosing classified information. But when pressed about the talk of assassinating Assange, Pompeo denied that the agency had engaged in any planning that would have violated U.S. law.

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Preliminary information
by zeynepaydogan 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

I'll start writing the Feminist Cypherpunk Manifesto tomorrow. Patriarchy,rape etc.They may be tech genius, but sexual crimes and patriarchy are unforgivable.I don't think it's right to be pushed aside just because I'm a woman It’s up to us to destroy this culture of cancer.

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Can we get assange murdered for a few thousand dollars?
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

I'll pledge 2k worth of British pounds to get him shanked in Belmarsh. C-punks can clean house - Amirite! Long live the cypherpunk revolution!

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Journalist as fraud
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

GKJames says: October 27, 2021 at 8:39 am I wonder if his attorneys have broached with him the idea of pleading guilty to a single count and doing his 10 years, maybe even in Australia. Yes, it would tarnish the halo, but the risk is that, if he loses the argument on US prison conditions (a legitimate debate, but not a winning hand in an extradition context), he’ll be looking at a far longer sentence. He may not be an ideal client receptive to real-world legal advice, but someone should provide it anyway. He should be aware by now that the odds of the US government’s ceding the point and the UK government’s freeing him (even if not extradited) are long.

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Journalist charged with rape
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

JULIAN " "More ports than a Norwegian crack whore" ASSANGE " Alice certainly isn't in for a very nice time of it " JULIAN " "If you fuck up, I'll hunt you down and kill you" ASSANGE "… Friends don’t put their friends into a giant intelligence database controlled by a megalomaniac …" JULIAN " We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly " ASSANGE 2007 Julian Assange arrested in London on rape charges https://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2010/1207/WikiLeaks-Juli… GEOFFREY "sexual offence for a man to deliberately deceive a partner whose consent has been conditional upon his use of a condom" ROBERTSON JULIAN " Being guilty of aggravated rape has nothing to do with our party" A. Broinowski. Wikileaks Party NSW candidate for au Senate. 2013.

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Journalist paid by GOP
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

Who bought Julian those expensive metallic suits then? And shouted him helicopter rides? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Mellon

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The journo who thinks we're " Sheeple "
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

2011 JULIAN ' The 95% of the population which comprise the flock.. ' ASSANGE http://cryptome.org/0003/assange-manne.htm … The Journo who takes us all for fools “I’m a big admirer of Ron Paul & Rand Paul for their very principled positions in the US Congress on a number of issues” ASSANGE 201 Feh.

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Re: Adam Schiff asks intelligence agencies for information about CIA's targeting of WikiLeaks
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

JULIAN “… not just a technical system but a total system. WikiLeaks was, and is, an attempt—although still very young—at a total system…” ASSANGE. 2014 "Often it's the case that we have to do a lot of exploration and marketing of the material we publish ourselves to get a big political impact for it." - Julian Assange 2016 Julian Assange recognised that the language of what amounted to the WikiLeaks Manifesto might appear a little “overblown”. He recognised that it had about it too much the flavour of “anarchy”. But in general when it was written he was pleased. John Young was not. In early January 2007 he decided that WikiLeaks was a CIA-backed fraud. “Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign. Same old shit, working for the enemy … Fuck ’em all.”

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Journalist surrounded by fascist friends!
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

Julian's long time fascist supporters include, but are not limited to, Israel Shamir and Vladimir Putin on the Nazi Right and Tariq Ali and John Pilger on the Marxist-Communist Left. Its a real Nazbol-Greaseball thing. The signs were there from late 2010 on. https://reason.com/2011/02/03/julian-assange-and-israel-sham/

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What has journalism done for us lately?
by professor rat 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

Wikileaks promised us ' the unvarnished truth '. Then it delivered up " Collateral Murder ' basted like a Xmas Turkey. Julian Assange · LRB 6 March 2014 Mar 6, 2014 - I wouldn't say this publicly, but Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison..." Jul 20, 2015 - Julian Assange: To be honest, I don't like the word transparency; cold dead glass is transparent..." JULIAN " “People with strong principles don’t survive for long ” ASSANGE quoted in " Risk" released in 2017. JULIAN " Capitalism+atheism+feminism = sterility " ASSANGE. 2017 May 20, 2017 - Julian Assange announced “the proper war is just commencing...”

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