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Tor Developer Detained At US Border, Pressed On Wikileaks
suraj.sun writes with this news from CNET: "A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by US agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Appelbaum, a US citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." Appelbaum told me that he just spoke at length with The New York Times, and quipped that his Defcon talk about Tor was "just fine, until the FBI showed up"; this post will likely be updated with more details.
Update: 08/02 03:59 GMT by T : Here's the NYT's coverage.
Pretty much every country on earth will allow someone to be detained for 3 hours. Days would be unreasonable, hours is not.
Idiot.
They had a reason, possible treason. It wasn't a random detention.
Gone!
1) The united states is at war in Afghanistan
2) Wikileaks leaked secret documents about the war in afghanistan in a reckless manner that possibly endangered lives of our allies
and soldiers on the battlefield.
3) A 3 hour border detention is less than someone would be detained for unpaid parking tickets. They did not arrest him. They could have
easily arrested him as a material witness.
4) Given that he was allowed to go on to his conference and he was not questioned further without his lawyer present...I just dont see the story here
other than its geek-celebrity news.
5) He was allowed to leave the country after his conference, not exactly what police states do.
Mr. Applebaum doesn't act like an innocent victim of human rights abuses. He acts like an uncooperative witness who flees at the first sign of oppurtunity.
It sounds like the FBI agents were genuinely trying to hear his side of the story about his rights being trampled
having been at the conference for other reasons.
As i feel the U.S. Soldier(I'm a US Citizen) that leaked that classified footage should be tried by court marshal(he was a US Soldier in a US Military facility therefore it shouldn't be a civilian court) for treason, and executed by a firing squad should he be found guilty.
I, with my Libertarian viewpoint, also feel that we should close all foreign bases, and put the tax dollars into researching military and space technology(for military and exploratory purposes.) That way we can increase our ability to defend ourselves from foreign attack, in addition to developing better technology.
That said, I still agree with the above poster. Lives are still being endangered, and most people probably don't care about reading those documents: except people that dislike the US Government.