Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Support

Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.

Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

“All the reassurances Americans heard that the broad authorities of the FISA Amendments Act could only be used to ‘target’ foreigners seem a bit more hollow,” Sanchez says, “when you realize that the ‘foreign target’ can be an entire Web site or online forum used by thousands if not millions of Americans.”

Interesting revelation from the Snowden docs. Suggesting that anyone who visited wikileaks during their information dumps was probably caught up in website tracking.

They also highlight how it was nearly impossible to prosecute Assange without having to put criminal responsibility onto the New York Times and other outlets…

Bringing criminal charges against WikiLeaks or Assange for publishing classified documents would be highly controversial – especially since the group partnered with newspapers like The Guardian and The New York Times to make the war logs public. “The biggest challenge to the press today is the threatened prosecution of WikiLeaks, and it’s absolutely frightening,” James Goodale, who served as chief counsel of the Times during its battle to publish The Pentagon Papers, told the Columbia Journalism Review last March. “If you go after the WikiLeaks criminally, you go after the Times. That’s the criminalization of the whole process.”

To me, it seems the threat wikileaks was, that previous notions that Snowden and Assange being "plants" seems less and less likely.

No matter how many books on intelligence you read though, (by former agents), it's nearly impossible to figure out who is working for who and who is loyal to what, etc.

But it does shed some light on the behind the scenes goings on back then. Curious if the downfall of Pirate Bay was related, as they don't actually mention it specifically, but seem to imply as much.

The Pirate Bay (commonly abbreviated TPB) is a website that provides torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in Sweden in 2003.
In 2009, the website’s founders were put on trial in Sweden, charged with facilitating illegal downloading of copyrighted material. They were found guilty by the court and sentenced to a year in prison with a fine of 30 million SEK (€2.7M or US$3.5M as of 2009). In some countries, ISPs have been ordered to block access to the website. Since then, proxies have been made all around the world providing access to The Pirate Bay.[2]

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reply to post by boncho

I can imagine what happen here on ATS... But can't imagine how hundreds of infiltrate agencies' operatives are resident...

So this is the new threat? Strap on information!?

How do you defend against that ?

(he has also opened a hornets' nest here in Aus. - Indo. Relations.)

Pfft !

I was also (falsly?) led to believe ; Snowden was given temporary asylum - on the grounds that there would be no more leaks. ?

... Been like Gonorrhea ever since !

reply to post by boncho

Interesting perspective, boncho ... Glenn Greenwald is even replying in the comments section of your source.

I guess I really should not have downloaded that 64gig "insurance" file...

My bad

To add on TPB: DOTCOM was raided by NZ po-po last week...

Their bad :p

boncho
Interesting revelation from the Snowden docs. Suggesting that anyone who visited wikileaks during their information dumps was probably caught up in website tracking.

They also highlight how it was nearly impossible to prosecute Assange without having to put criminal responsibility onto the New York Times and other outlets…

From what i remember, the US government was gunning for Assange under the notion that he was an enemy of the state who was running WikiLeaks much like an Intelligence Agency. In saying that, they also tried to nail Manning by stating that (s)he was an 'agent' of WikiLeaks, and gathered the files under the guidance of Assange.

Something tells me that the US government will attempt to charge Assange with any one violation of law, by saying that he acted as an enemy agent in that he allegedly facilitated and coerced the theft of confidential documents. They are not treating him as a journalist, but rather, a threat to national security. As such, it should be clear that if push comes to shove, they will attempt to nail him not as a journalist, but as an agent.

Thanks for the info.

Timely
So this is the new threat? Strap on information!?

How do you defend against that ?

One would be hard pressed to defend against it, and i can't see how any one person could. Especially considering that the governments have pretty much cracked every security program, and controls a lot of the ins and outs of the internet.

(he has also opened a hornets' nest here in Aus. - Indo. Relations.)

Pfft !

Hmm, yeah. While i think that all of the internet related stuff was in the public interest, i hang on the fence regarding the Indonesian stuff. That information is old, and didn't really need to be released in my opinion (it was all pretty common knowledge). All it done was hurt our foreign relationship with one of our most important neighbours. Definitely did more harm than good.

I was also (falsly?) led to believe ; Snowden was given temporary asylum - on the grounds that there would be no more leaks. ?

You heard correct.

With that said, Snowden is not technically releasing any information. He gave all of the information to journalists, and they are the ones who are continuing to publish material.

We will get our country back. If you dont make the front line then you will be forced to it.

reply to post by Timely

I was also (falsly?) led to believe ; Snowden was given temporary asylum - on the grounds that there would be no more leaks. ?

Technically, it's still only the one leak, over 2 million docs, it takes time to get through it all. Most of the headlines over the leak resulted when some news agency, blogger, or privacy advocate found some buried tidbit in all that info.