Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced today that whistleblower and activist Chelsea Manning, Techdirt editor and open internet advocate Mike Masnick, and IFEX executive director and global freedom of expression defender Annie Game are the distinguished winners of the 2017 Pioneer Awards, which recognize leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. This year’s honorees—a whistleblower, an editor, and an international freedom of expression activist—all have worked tirelessly to protect the public’s right to know. The award ceremony will be held the evening of September 14 at Delancey Street’s Town Hall Room in San Francisco....

The prolonged hacking into the White House Office of Personnel Management, which put the personal information of at least some 21.5 million past and current federal employees in jeopardy, is only the beginning of the security threat to the Obama Administration and its successors, a number of top-level experts in cybersecurity have told Fox News. The attack has been frequently sourced as coming from China. The experts warned that the entire U.S. national security clearance system could be compromised, that future senior government leaders and advisors could be targeted even before taking office, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of government officials...

The federal judge presiding over the case of accused National Security Agency leaker Reality Winner has come down on prosecutors’ side in a dispute over rules of evidence, which defense attorneys have said could jeopardize her right to a fair trial. In a ruling Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps said defense attorneys cannot talk about classified information in open court, even if it has already been published in the news media. Epps granted prosecutors’ motion for a protective order designed to keep an alleged leaker from leaking further, and to force those defending her to tread lightly, lest they...

On Monday Judge Napolitano dropped this bomb on the Imran Awan investigation. Judge Nap says Awan was selling US secrets to foreign agents. Judge Napolitano: He was arrested for some financial crime. That’s the tip of the iceberg. The real crime against him was that he had contact, he had access to emails of every member of Congress and he sold what he found in there. What did he sell and to whom did he sell it. That’s what the FBI wants to know. This may be a very, very serious national security investigation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a television interview that the U.S. must cut the size of its diplomatic force in his country by more than half, from about 1,210 to 455. Putin said Sunday that the cut will make the size of the U.S. diplomatic mission in his country equal to that of Russia's diplomatic corps in the U.S. "The personnel of the U.S. diplomatic missions in Russia will be cut by 755 people and will now equal the number of the Russian diplomatic personnel in the United States, 455 people on each side," Putin said in an interview...

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) talked about the ever-worsening scandal surrounding Imran Awan and his ex-employer Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Breitbart New’s Whatever it Takes with Curt Schilling Wednesday. The Pakistan-born longtime congressional Democratic IT consultant was arrested by federal authorities as he tried to flee the country Tuesday, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead of himself to Pakistan. Rep. King, a staunch conservative and ally of populist nationalism, stressed that the facts are anything but clear at this stage. The surface narrative itself was suspisious enough for King even before getting into the extensive criminal allegations against Awan...

Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and the CIA, on Friday called Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election the "most successful covert influence operation in history." "Frankly, [the Russian meddling] is the most successful covert operation in history," Hayden told a national security panel in response to a question from moderator Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff. Hayden said the original cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee was not that surprising -- and even from an intelligence perspective, impressive. "I just have to admit as a former director of NSA, [Russia's hack and theft of email]...

Beijing networks in U.S. maneuver up to 25,000 spies By Bill Gertz - The Washington Free Beacon - Tuesday, July 11, 2017 Beijing’s spy networks in the United States include up to 25,000 Chinese intelligence officers and more than 15,000 recruited agents who have stepped up offensive spying activities since 2012, according to a Chinese dissident with close ties to Beijing’s military and intelligence establishment. Guo Wengui, a billionaire businessman who broke with the regime several months ago, said in an interview that he has close ties to the Ministry of State Security, the civilian intelligence service, and the military...

A CHINESE billionaire claimed that Beijing has planted up to 25,000 spies across the US who are “ready to destroy” the country. The shocking statement by Guo Wengui, who is in a self-imposed exile in New York City, follows rising tensions between the US and China over the situation in North Korea. The shocking statement by Guo Wengui, who is in a self-imposed exile in New York City, follows rising tensions between the US and China over the situation in North Korea. The tycoon said: “Before 2012, cumulatively China had around 10,000 to 20,000 agents working in the United States....

The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media, has taken steps to provide independent support for the legal defense of Reality Winner, the NSA contract employee who was recently arrested in the first instance of the Trump administration using the 100-year-old Espionage Act to prosecute an alleged journalistic source. Winner, who has pleaded not guilty, is accused of having anonymously mailed a document to The Intercept relating to a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The NSA report, which was the basis of a story published by The Intercept on June 5, describes efforts by Russian military...

Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday. The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006. These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as email addresses at the White House as well as the US finance and foreign ministries. Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions including the US Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human...

A former State Department employee was arrested Thursday and charged with espionage for allegedly transmitting Top Secret and Secret documents to a Chinese government agent, according to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA.Kevin Mallory, 60, of Leesburg is a self-employed consultant who speaks fluent Chinese. Court filings show that Mallory was an Army veteran who worked as a special agent for U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service from 1987 to 1990. Since then, Mallory has worked for various government agencies and defense contractors, maintaining a Top Secret security clearance. The Washington Post reports that Mallory...

A criminal suspect in an investigation into a major security breach on the House of Representatives computer network has abruptly left the country and gone to Pakistan, where her family has significant assets and VIP-level protection, a relative and others told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group. Hina Alvi, her husband Imran Awan, and his brothers Abid and Jamal were highly paid shared IT administrators working for multiple House Democrats until their access to congressional IT systems was terminated Feb. 2 as a result of the investigation. Capitol Police confirmed the investigation is ongoing, but no arrests have been...

A new book reveals he intercepted secret messages from Russia to pass onto GCHQHe was the coach that led the British and Irish Lions to their only test series victory against the All Blacks – and he was also a spy. Under Carwyn James ’ coaching the Lions secured a historic 3-1 victory in 1971, leaving him with the legacy of being perhaps the greatest coach the game has ever known. But in his new book, Into the Wind: The Life of Carwyn James, writer Alun Gibbard reveals a multilingual literature-lover who spied on the Russians during the Cold War....

The value of the information she made available is great—but real-world news events may have gotten ahead of her. Some people have a fixed, principled stance on intelligence leaks—transparency in government is always for the good, for example, or releasing classified intelligence is never appropriate. But for most of us, the difference between a courageous whistle-blower—who risks their career and freedom to expose some dark secret the government doesn’t want us to know—and a leaker—who undermines national security, may put people at risk and gives comfort to our adversaries—is a subjective one. Most people celebrate the release of information they...

RICHMOND COUNTY, Ga. - An Augusta woman charged with leaking classified information was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count, but prosecutors said they are likely to add more. A federal magistrate judge held a detention hearing for Reality Winner Thursday afternoon. The 25-year-old worked as a contractor for the government and is accused of giving classified information from the National Security Agency to an online news outlet. She entered a not-guilty plea. The judge denied bond. Prosecutors argued that the only thing Winner could do if she were released on bail is be recruited by the nation’s...

“I’m terrified, I’m terrified that she’s not going to be treated fairly,” the mother of accused leaker Reality Sara Winner told CBS News after her daughter’s arrest under the Espionage Act for stealing Top Secret documents and passing them along to a media outlet. Billie-Jean Davis says her daughter is afraid that law enforcement will “make her disappear,” but then at the same time claims that the US government wants to make an example of Winner. “That’s not fair,” she tells CBS:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) The mother and stepfather of 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner, the NSA contractor accused of leaking government secrets, are...

An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot. Who Benefits? Start with the question of who benefits — cui bono— same as detectives do when assessing a crime. — Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out connecting something Russian to something 2016 election. Intelligence community (IC) looks like they are onto something, a day or so before ousted FBI Director James...

Three of the four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the NSA whistleblower to return to the U.S. with no charges. That’s the normal course for a news organization, which owes its sources duties of protection, and which — by virtue of accepting the source’s materials and then publishing them — implicitly declares the source’s information to be in the public interest. But not the Washington Post. In the face of...

The presidency of Donald Trump seems to have newly energized the man from whose mind it seems to have sprung, fully formed, as a nice broad target to take on in his august years, with Michael Moore already producing the films Michael Moore In TrumpLand and the upcoming Fahrenheit 11/9, directing the Trump-filled “Unf--- The World” clip for hip-hop supergroup Prophets Of Rage, and announcing the Broadway play The Terms Of My Surrender. But just in case documentaries, rap videos, and one-man shows aren’t enough to dissuade Trump’s supporters, Moore has another plan: He’s launched TrumpiLeaks, a website that encourages...