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Was Julian Assange Involved With Wiretapping Iceland's Parliament?
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that the chat logs between Bradley Manning and Julian Assange that were used as evidence in Manning's trial have made it onto the web, at least briefly. One of those logs contained something very interesting on page 4, which was picked up on by the News of Iceland, which reports, '"Jesus Christ. I think that we have recordings of all phone calls to and from the Icelandic parliament during the past four months". This text can be found in documents that the US military published on its website and is said to be part of the conversations between Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. According to the documents, Assange claims to have phone call recordings from Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, but this is the first time that the existence of such data is mentioned publicly. ... According to Icelandic laws, it is required to inform the person you are speaking with if the phone call is being recorded. Given that the parliament is not violating laws it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices or wiretaps in the parliament.' — What makes it even more interesting is that Wired also reports in this recent story: Someone's Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet."
Eh, why do you think Assange et al need to install anything? They just got the logs from the evil-doers... I wonder who that might be?
Betteridge's law of headlines.
(fp?)
Why would Assange wiretap the Icelandic parliament and how could he? I doubt he has that powerful connections up there.
The obviously more likely explanation is that some spy agency (like NSA or counterparts) did it, and it has been leaked to Wikileaks. Notice how he looks surprised upon finding it out, so that Manning feels like pointing out that he wasn't the one who leaked it "*had nothing to do with that one*". So neither knew how the records were obtained in the first place.
Now one wonders: who would be able and willing of doing such a thing and who would have an interest in pinning it to Assange?
it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices....
Hold on. They conclude that from Assange suddenly stating "Jesus Christ. I think that we have recordings of all phone calls to and from the Icelandic parliament during the past four months" ???????? How can anyone honestly conclude that? Assange seems to express surprise when he realizes what he has, surprise that he would not have if he had been wiretapping and recording. Assange was routinely getting leaked information. My conclusion would be that someone leaked this information to him, not that he had been wiretapping Iceland. And who do we know that has been spying on their friends and enemies alike, along with their own citizens? I'll give you a clue, it is someone with a 3 letter name that a whistle blower might want to expose.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Look, I am pretty much convinced that Assange is a douche hors categorie. However, that observation changes precisely nothing regarding the info released via WL, such as the epic douchebaggery on the part of, say, the US diplomatic corps and military. It's not like they cancel out or something.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
The claim has been for a long time, that Manning is not a whistle blower, because he did not only leak the incriminating information, but an unfiltered dump. I.e. he did not read through the data himself.
Then Assange receives it, and while talking to Manning - and presumably looking at the data they are talking about - notices complete wiretapping data.
Why isn't the most obvious explanation that the data Manning sent to Assange happened to contain wiretapping data, and the source of that data (the US government, not necessarily the military, Manning was surprised to find out how much data he had access to) had been doing the wiretapping?
Would anybody be surprised today, if it turned out that e.g. the NSA has been wiretapping foreign governments?
Haven't you heard? He can tap any line in the world just by whistling into a payphone!
Ever since the Snowden's leak started some months ago to appear I've been awaiting for NSA's counter-strike.
I believe this is it.
I have the feeling that this "news" is a set-up. It's designed to accomplish 3 missions at the same time:
This may be the start of NSA's worldwide diversion campaign, to shift the focus away from NSA to Assange.
By "leaking out" Assange's "wiretapping news" online, for just a couple of hours, followed by a sudden removal of all evidences, NSA is betting that the dog and pony show would piqued the interests of many.
The fact that the Wired magazine has that piece of "news" covered so prominently means that NSA's tactic is working very, very well.
Not only Assange has become a really "evil dude", people will no longer believe all subsequent disclosures from whistle blowers, no matter who they are.
And that plays into NSA's hand --- for people won't believe any more news from the Snowden files, no matter how damaging they are.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Assange had gun cam footage from US helicopters in Iraq. Clearly he's been sneaking into military bases and installing cameras in the helicopters. They never showed that in the movie!
"The so called "collateral murder" video was nonsense."
Out of interest, what was nonsense about it? I saw the unedited version first, not even being aware that there was an edited version and it was objectively the case that the Apache pilots broke various norms of war.
They claimed they needed to fire because the targets had RPGs that could be used against them but their gun cam clearly showed that not only were they out of RPG range, but they were even further out of objective RPG range.
The van they shot with the kid in they completely and utterly failed to determine if it was even actually a threat and fired anyway.
These are not the actions of competent military personnel. The norm in such situations is do not fire until fired upon, but this took it to another level and fired before they could even be sure there was a real actual threat.
This isn't just my opinion, this is objective fact. The rules of engagement are well publicised and there's simply no argument against the fact that the Apache gunner broke them. There's absolutely no avoiding that.
It's directly equivalent to a cop just sitting alongside the road and then shooting a guy passing with a hunting rifle visible in his car before even talking to them, and then shooting another passer by that stops to try and help just in case they were both a threat. We don't allow our police to do that at home, and we shouldn't be allowing military forces to do it in a post-war occupation role. It's counter productive and the whole reason America got fucked in Iraq - because the Iraqis quickly realised they didn't want to be occupied by forces that shot them for shits and giggles - "just in case" and turned on American forces as a result.
A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."
The reporter that attributed those words to Assange is David Leigh. A well known liar, the type of person that breaks contract then lies about it, David Leigh also has been called out out by an independent third party journalist for fabricating those words:
"However, an independent witness – John Goetz, a journalist with Der Spiegel – states that the events related above are simply not true:"
"“I was at dinner at the Moro restaurant in London, along with Marcel Rosenbach from Der Spiegel, David Leigh and Declan Walsh of the Guardian, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Patrick Forbes asked me specifically if Julian Assange had made the remark “They’re informants, they deserve to die” at the dinner, as has been alleged by David Leigh, and I told him that Julian did not say that at the dinner.”"
David Leigh' s systematic pattern of dishonesty.
But you know all this already, don't you Cold Fjord. By calling out your FUD with some facts and counter examples you will feebly defend as you have done in your last post by accusing any detractors from your message of being "fans" or part of some cult. Anything other than, you know, actually addressing the facts or providing solid counter evidence.
So now you have been informed that David Leighs account is highly questionably including credible independent third party witnesses, and that David Leigh has a long history of dishonesty on other non Assange related areas - yet I can guarantee you will be back here with the same ferver like agenda, the same libel Assange quote on the next Wikileaks story. No matter how many times we demonstrate some of your more crazy ideas to be false, you persist on repeating over and again the same falehoods - damn the facts and eternally ignore any counter evidence presented. One can see this clearly time and again across many topics only by browsing your post history and the subsequent replies. Rinse, repeat. This is the classical modus operandi of a troll, a shill and a astroturfer. Facts do not matter.