FBI Paid Informant Inside WikiLeaks

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "On an August workday in 2011, a cherubic 18-year-old Icelandic man named Sigurdur 'Siggi' Thordarson walked through the stately doors of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavik, his jacket pocket concealing his calling card: a crumpled photocopy of an Australian passport. The passport photo showed a man with a unruly shock of platinum blonde hair and the name Julian Paul Assange. Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks."

Comments

Cheap

[NemosomeN]

$5,000? Seems like quite a bit of work and risk for just $5,000.

Re:Cheap

[TechyImmigrant]

$5000 might be reasonable for a bit of work copying some data to some disks, but it is not nearly enough to cover being known as an evil traitor everyone in the world. His reputation is now destroyed and is essentially unemployable in any company or organization that cares about its own image.
 

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[sentientbeing]

Off to the NSA with him then

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[Motard]

And we're supposed to be afraid of the NSA.

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[flimflammer]

"Betray entire nations?" Really?

I guess if you define a nation as its government and not its people.

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[ShanghaiBill]

Isn't wikileaks supposed to be about opening all secrets?

No, they are not. They believe in transparent government. But they also believe in personal privacy.

What secrets is wikileaks hiding that he traitorously revealed?

The identity of people exposing corruption. Some of these people have risked their lives to do so.

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[zedrdave]

> I think you significantly overstate the support for Assange and his activities. Living in a bubble with do that to you
> [...]
> Poll: Americans say WikiLeaks harmed public interest; most want Assange arrested

I think you significantly overstate the extent to which the rest of the world is part of the United States of America.

Assange is far from universally loved outside of the US, but I would say his side enjoys considerably greater support than the side of US' spying on everybody else's communications at their fancy. Something that they make absolutely no secret of, since it is indeed in no way against US laws.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The second reason was adventure? So basically this guy was just like Bradley Manning who was self-avowedly in it for the thrill and the power trip.

The usual motives are MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion and Ego: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_spying

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[jcr]

how did I, as an american, benefit from assange's actions against my country?

You don't think it benefits our country for the people to know when our government commits crimes?

-jcr

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[ganjadude]

I would say he woke up a bunch of people. like him or hate him, he got a lot of people talking about what the government is doing right now. Id say thats more than what anyone else has done lately.

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[SuricouRaven]

Let us count some of the things the leaked diplomatic cables revealed:
- That the US and UK had both been intercepting communications involving Kofi Annan, in violation of international treaty. Bit of old-fashioned code-war style bugging going on at the UN offices.
- An instruction to US diplomats to attempt to obtain encryption keys belonging to Ban Ki-moon. Not even a CIA covert-op thing: Diplomats were engaged in spying on a supposed ally. Further orders instructed everything from keys to frequent-flyer identification numbers be collected from a large number of forign diplomatic personel. It sounds like the plot to a cheap spy novel - but it's real. Even US diplomats cannot be trusted.
- A communication from the US embassy in Strasbourg describing EU human rights laws as 'an irritant.'
- Proof that US diplomatic offices are instructed to promote sales for US defence contractors overseas.
- That DynCorp employees had been accused of running a child prostitution ring, and the US had assisted in a cover-up operation to avoid embarassing one of their significent contractors.
- When Pfizer was sued in Nigeria over claims that improper test protocols lead to the deaths of children, they hired a private investigator to find material that could be used to blackmail the country's attorney general.
- The US issued instructions to diplomats to lobby against EU regulations requiring the labeling of genetically modified food and to apply pressure for broadening the scope of patents on GMOs in order to allow Montanto to export their products to Europe.
- Libya threatened to nationalise the operations of Petro-Canada in their country if they did not recieve a public apology for a diplomatic gaffe made by the Canadian forign minister.
- Numerous messages, largely relating to Canada, containing instructions to US embassies that they are to push for stricter copyright law in their host countries.

And that's just a few select examples. I could spend all day looking these up. People have long suspected that the US was playing diplomatic games, using their political influence to benefit major US corporations, covering up embarassments to the country and so on - but these claims were dismissed as the ramblings of foil-hatted conspiracy theorists. The leaked cables reveal that many of those claims are true.

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[SuricouRaven]

I'm going to tell you a story.

I used to troll a blog. It was a political blog, but the faction doesn't matter, and it was run by a person I shall just call 'AHole.' AHole was a recurring opponent of someone running another blog, I think with a focus on native americal issues, who I shall just call 'Victim.' He ran this blog at, to make up a name as I forget the real one, nativemediablog.blogspot.com. It was certainly a blogspot - this was all some years ago.

AHole was very aggressive in politics - he was one of those people who believed he was a True Patriot, and all those who disagreed were treasonous scum, and it was his civic duty to fight these people wherever possible. Not that this is limited to politics - I've seen people get just as rabid about sports teams, or defending a celebrity they admire. But in this case, it was politics. And, this being the internet, his arguments with Victim tended to follow the usual internet lines - a lot of accusations going both ways, and usually ending with someone being compared to Hitler.

One day, AHole took it to a new level. Seeing nativemediablog.blogspot.com, he created nativemediablog.com - purchased the domain. He this proceded to set up a website, under the handle used by Victim, mimicking his style, on which he wrote many posts promoting the abolishion of age of concent laws and promoting sex with children as psychologically beneficial. When Victim objected, AHole argued that he paid money for that domain and that gave him the right to post whatever he wanted there. As far as AHole was concerned, Victim was a piece of sub-human liberal scum, a threat to the survival of the country, and must be destroyed by any means.

At this point I, along with everyone else who had been arguing on AHole's blog, fled - afraid of being the victim of his next smear campaign. Fortunately, Victim had never used his real name. But imagine he had - what would have stopped AHole from setting up fake social networking profiles or posting comments under that name? Victim would have become unemployable: Every time an employer googled him (And they all do, even if they don't admit it) they would have found him to be a proud and active proponent of pedophilia. The only way to stop it would be to hire a lawyer and spend a sizeable chunk of his live savings on legal fees to identify and sue AHole, a process that could take years. AHole could have taken it even further, perhaps by printing notices on false government stationary and sending them to all of Victim's neighbours to warn them he was a convicted sex offender.

The internet is full of some very vicious people. This is why you should never, ever reveal your real name. In the case of AHole it was politics that set him off, but you never know when you are going to upset an AHole somewhere, somehow. These people exist. So be afraid of them.

Re:Cheap

[saihung]

Yeah, if you're some Iraqi kid that the Americans shot from a helicopter for no particular reason? HA HA SCREW YOU BUDDY. If you're some German used car salesman who got sent to Syria to be tortured for 10 months by the Americans for no particular reason? OH WELL I'M NOT FEELING IT.

Except oh, wait. There were American journalists in that group of people who got shot, too. And oh, wait, when someone discloses the fact that the American government was lying through its teeth, not for "national security" but to hide its own wrongdoing? Then as far as I'm concerned that person has done us all a favor. The government should not be able to hide behind "national security" to protect itself from embarrassment or hide its own law breaking. And it matters when our government carelessly destroys someone's life, because that shit is going to come back to bite us one day. This is why people hate us; we stomp all over everything like an elephant, not even paying attention, and then say loudly, "WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE US?" This is why you callous jackass.

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[BrokenHalo]

You don't think it benefits our country for the people to know when our government commits crimes?

Indeed. The parent (and GP) seem to be under the illusion that Assange is American, whereas in fact, he is Australian. The whole issue arises from the US Government's toxic attitude to other sovereign nations and their citizens. Whatever one might think of his (or Wikileaks') sources, Assange is not a traitor to the US. All he has done is expose some of their dirty dealings to the light of day.

I can understand why the US Government might not care for that, but they could always try behaving less dishonourably.

What's the problem?

[DaveV1.0]

Why shouldn't someone part of WikiLeaks, a secret leaking site, leak WikiLeaks' secrets? Surely you can't be surprised by this.

what he did say for 5k?

[nimbius]

FBI: what did you learn from infiltrating wikileaks?
Sigurdur: Its headed by Julian Assange
FBI: okay...and....
Sigurdur: and he is on a mission to expose a ton of sensitive information about governments...especially american governments.
FBI:OKAY. AND...
Sigurdur: he intends to release any leaks he receives to the public.
FBI: How much have we paid this asshole already?

"Ego trip"

[PopeRatzo]

I want to point something out. I noticed it earlier tonight over at another tech-related site, and then at several other sites.

Whenever there is a story about Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, you can practically set your watch by a host of comments, usually from Anonymous Cowards, talking about Assange and Snowden's "big egos" and their arrogance and their many other personal failings. In many cases, these comments will come one after the other, uninterrupted, with the same message worded slightly differently, but always mentioning their "ego" and what jerks they are and in many cases wishing bodily harm, prison rape or death on one or both of the men.

None of the comments ever mentions the most important part of the story, that we have powerful countries, purportedly "free" countries, that have secret courts ordering secret surveillance by secret agencies (both government and private industry) because they supposedly are suspected of breaking secret laws, and who, if caught, will be held at secret prisons. Nor do they mention that the citizens of this country, though not accused or suspected of any crimes, are having each of their phone conversations registered by a secret program, looking for secret data, held in secret databases, under warrants that if they exist at all, are secret. The kind of fascistic public/private police state operations that would have made the East German secret police green with envy.

No mention in these many comments referencing these "egotistical jerks" about the totalitarian surveillance state they have uncovered. No mention of the crimes and beyond-sleazy behavior they have exposed for us to see, at the expense of their own ruined lives.

It's almost as if someone really, really wants this discussion to be about a couple of jerks instead of the massive transformation of our societies into police states, something that will effect and has effected each of our lives and behavior. The kind of transformation that once complete, is very very hard to roll back. It's almost as if someone doesn't want a discussion about how we all suddenly became suspects of our own governments and how that changes everything.

Fuck Julian Assange and fuck Edward Snowden, but their transgressions and personal defects are nothing compared to the ugly, hungry monster revealed by them.

Re:"Ego trip"

[copponex]

Tell me about the 'secret laws'

You don't fucking get it, do you? How can he tell you about a secret law? The ACLU and other organizations continue to ask the government that very same question, but the government refuses.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of the Nation's Capital, and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic filed a motion today with the secret court that oversees government surveillance in national security cases, requesting that it publish its opinions on the meaning, scope, and constitutionality of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. That section, which authorizes the government to obtain "any tangible thing" relevant to foreign-intelligence or terrorism investigations, was the legal basis for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order revealed last week by The Guardian requiring Verizon to turn over months' worth of phone-call data.

"The ultimate check on governmental overreach is the American public," said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "For years, the government has secretly relied on sweeping interpretations of its surveillance powers, preventing the very debate it has now belatedly invited on the wisdom and legality of those powers."

In addition to the initial rulings by the court on Section 215, the motion filed today also asks whether earlier opinions have been revisited in light of more recent rulings by other courts, such as the Supreme Court's 2012 decision in the GPS tracking case U.S. v. Jones. Another answer sought by the motion is whether the FISA Court has considered the constitutionality of the "gag order" that bars companies from revealing that they have been ordered to turn over information under Section 215. (In 2008, a federal appeals court agreed with the ACLU that an analogous gag order provision relating to "national security letters" was unconstitutional.)

"In a democracy, there should be no room for secret law," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. "The public has a right to know what limits apply to the government's surveillance authority, and what safeguards are in place to protect individual privacy."

Also, don't wonder why the world tells you to go fuck yourself when you ask for Snowden. If you weren't murdering teenagers with completely illegal and immoral drone strike programs after killing a few hundred thousand civilians in multiple wars of aggression, maybe everyone wouldn't burst out in laughter every time you uttered the phrase "rule of law."