Pressure mounts on US justice department to drop Wikileaks investigation
Human rights organisations claim investigation could put all journalists at risk of prosecution
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has come under pressure from a slew of human rights groups to drop its four-year investigation into Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.
The DoJ began its investigation into the website in November 2010 after more than 200 confidential American diplomatic cables were posted on Wikileaks, which is famed for providing sources with a means of leaking information anonymously.
Shortly afterwards, cloud giant Amazon stopped hosting the site on its web servers, while PayPal seized processing payments used to support the site's operations.
A prosecution of WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange for publishing classified material could criminalise the news-gathering process and put all editors and journalists at risk.
Four years on, 52 press freedom and human rights organisations have called on the US Attorney General Eric Holder to close the investigation into Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.
The latter has spent the past two years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and faces the risk of extradition to Sweden should he leave, where he is wanted over allegations of sexual misconduct.
The letter calls on the DoJ to stop the "harassment" and "persecution" of Wikileaks, given that Holder is reportedly to have vowed in a recent media briefing that "as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail."
The group claim this statement is at odds with the DoJ's decision to pursue the criminal investigation into Wikileaks and its editor-in-chief Assange.
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
"Well-respected legal scholars across the political spectrum have stated that a prosecution of WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange for publishing classified material or interacting with sources could criminalise the news-gathering process and put all editors and journalists at risk of prosecution," the letter states.
It then closes by claiming that taking action against Wikileaks would "undermine the commitment of the US Government to freedom of speech."
Time will tell if the group's missive has any impact on the DoJ's ongoing investigation into Wikileaks and Assange.
Meanwhile, in a news conference yesterday to mark the second anniversary of the start of his stay in the embassy, Assange claimed to have a stash of documents primed for release on Wikileaks pertaining to 50 countries and their "international negotiations."
He also said his legal team will contest the Swedish extradition case against him next week, in the light of new, undisclosed evidence, coming to light.
-
What the fragmentation of UC means for the channelIndustry Insights If communications are becoming fragmented, what does that mean for MSPs and VARs?
-
How SMBs can DIY their IT implementation and supportFeature For some small and medium-sized businesses, the third-party expertise and support might be out of reach. What’s the alternative?
-
Amazon says Russian-backed threat groups were responsible for five-year-long attacks on edge devices – and it shows a ‘clear evolution in tactics’News Russian-backed hacker groups are exploiting misconfigured edge devices – now preferring that tactic over hunting down traditional vulnerabilities to gain access to company networks.
-
Amazon CSO Stephen Schmidt says the company has rejected more than 1,800 fake North Korean job applicants in 18 months – but one managed to slip through the netNews Analysis from Amazon highlights the growing scale of North Korean-backed "fake IT worker" campaigns
-
Scania admits leak of data after extortion attemptNews Hacker stole 34,000 files from a third-party managed website, trucking company says
-
Hackers are turning Amazon S3 bucket encryption against customers in new ransomware campaign – and they’ve already claimed two victimsNews Attackers are using AWS’ server-side encryption to conduct ransomware attacks
-
Amazon confirms employee data compromised amid 2023 MOVEit breach claims – but the hacker behind the leak says a host of other big tech names are also implicatedNews Millions of records stolen during the 2023 MOVEit data breach have been leaked
-
Amazon's Ring agrees to $5.8m settlement over alleged use of its cameras to spy on female customersThe firm will also pay $25m for allegations Alexa stored child voice recordings indefinitely
-
Capita tells pension provider to 'assume' nearly 500,000 customers' data stolenCapita told the pension provider to “work on the assumption” that data had been stolen
-
Amazon gave police departments Ring footage without permissionNews The tech giant has done this 11 times this year