Liz Cheney displays her overblown sense of entitlement on TV. (Source: Raw Story)
Liz Cheney has called on the White House to shut down WikiLeaks, by force if Iceland doesn’t comply with American demands.
“I would really like to see President Obama to move to ask the government of Iceland to shut that website down,” Cheney said. “I would like to see him move to shut it down ourselves if Iceland won’t do it.”
Wikilkeaks has detailed how badly the occupation of Afghanistan is going by releasing more than 90,000 classified documents, many detailing civilian deaths long denied by the United States. Cheney’s remarks that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange “has blood on his hands” for essentially managing a website is pretty rich considering the carnage that 10 years of bombing raids have done on numerous civilians in the country.
The article also quotes U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates who attempts to suggest that the Wikileaks publication of the documents constitutes a Justice Department matter while failing to recognize that Wikileaks is not an American website.
The barrage of condemnation and threats we’re hearing from Washington D.C., in recent weeks is in fact the sound of another leak, as traditional information gatekeeping culture deflates.
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The ACLU of Maryland is defending Anthony Graber, who potentially faces 16 years in prison if found guilty of violating state wiretap laws because he recorded video of an officer drawing a gun during a traffic stop. The ACLU attorney handling the case says, “To charge Graber with violating the law, you would have to conclude that a police officer on a public road, wearing a badge and a uniform, performing his official duty, pulling someone over, somehow has a right to privacy when it comes to the conversation he has with the motorist.”
In Maryland, police using excessive force in public have more or a right to privacy than you.
– MAINE CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION.
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Being out about being an atheist can put you on the outs with a lot of theocratic-minded authoritarian types. We received reports this weekend that the outspoken and occasionally controversial blogger Fariborz Shamshiri, who blogs at Rotten Gods, has received threats on his life. Fariborz has a long online career in standing up for human rights including work with Amnesty International Blogs and Freedom House. Read the rest of this entry…
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently launched a way for you to protect yourself from spies eyeing your search queries with a new Firefox Extension .
This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted. At the same time, we were also able to encrypt most or all of the browser’s communications with some other sites:
Google Search
Wikipedia
Twitter and Identi.ca
Facebook
EFF and Tor
Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines
and lots more!
Firefox users can install HTTPS Everywhere by following this link.
As always, even if you’re at an HTTPS page, remember that unless Firefox displays a colored address bar and an unbroken lock icon in the bottom-right corner, the page is not completely encrypted and you may still be vulnerable to various forms of eavesdropping or hacking (in many cases, HTTPS Everywhere can’t prevent this because sites incorporate insecure third-party content).
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The Committee to Protect Bloggers has covered the trials and tribulations of John “Wes” Osburn before, when he was denied entry to Canada to cover protests outside the Olympics. In this interview with Submedia.tv, Wes talks about the circumstances of his arrest while filming protests after the Oscar Grant killing verdict, and his time in jail. Caution: Strong language. Read the rest of this entry…
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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS—Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of two Venezuelan users of the social-networking service Twitter, a 41-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman, who were arrested on 8 July for criticising the Venezuelan banking system. They are facing the possibility of 9 to 11 years in prison under a 2001 banking law on charges of “disseminating false rumours” to “destabilise the banking system.”
Read the rest of this entry…
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From Meedan: Three Lebanese men have been placed under arrest by Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza for “slandering” the country’s President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. A search warrant has been issued for a fourth man.
Explaining the decision, Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar said that “media freedom in Lebanon and any civilised country reaches its limits when the content is pure slander and aims at undermining the head of state.”
Change and Reform MP Nabil Nicolas expressed shock at what he said were arrests for the “crime of expressing an opinion,” and called upon the President to “set the university students free immediately.” Arabic text follows: Read the rest of this entry…
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