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Michael Grunwald, Senior National Correspondent for TIME Magazine, spent much of last night trying to find the mythical delete from internet button that many before him have sought out so desperately. At 7:25 P.M. on Saturday, Grunwald offered his opinion on how the United States should solve the problem of Julian Assange and his antagonizing position toward the U.S. Here's the tweet:Looking beyond the fact that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks and Australian citizen, has never been convicted (or charged) with a crime under United States law, Grunwald's use of the phrase "take out" more appropriately describes a Mafia-style hit...

WikiLeaks has released a trove of encrypted “insurance” data on Twitter and Facebook. The data can’t be read without an encryption key, but the movement’s supporters say that could be published later in case anything happens to leading WikiLeaks figures. The whistleblowing organization published links for a massive 400 gigabytes worth of encrypted data it described as “insurance documents” on its Twitter and Facebook accounts. It is possible to download the files but advanced encoding prevents them from being opened.

Psych: Army Wikileaker had gender ID issuesBy Michael Fink The soldier who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents, may have done so because of a gender-identity crisis. That's what a psychologist said at private Bradley Manning's sentencing hearing. Manning apologized, saying he was dealing with a lot of issues when he leaked the material to Wikileaks. He faces 90 years for what's called the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history.

WikiLeaks founder: Obama surveillance changes vindicate Edward Snowden By Keith Laing - 08/10/13 10:40 AM ET The founder of the WikiLeaks website said on Saturday that President Obama’s announcement of changes to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program this week vindicated Edward Snowden’s release of information about the program. “Today the President of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program,” WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange said in a statement. “But rather than thank Edward Snowden, the president laughably attempted to criticize him while claiming that there was a...

U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning’s maximum prison sentence of 136 years was reduced to a maximum sentence of 90 years behind bars. Judge Denise Lind, an Army colonel, announced Manning’s reduced sentence during a closed session at Ft. Meade, Md., on Tuesday. Lind agreed in part to a motion proposed by the defense to merge various charges against Manning. “She merged two Espionage specifications for transmission of the Iraq and Afghan SigActs, the theft and transmission of the Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), Kerry, Hagel and Russians Will Meet

Following his conviction this week on at least five counts of espionage and several lesser charges, including fraud and theft, U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning will now do hard time in prison. In certain circumstances, spies deserve capital punishment. Several decades in jail strikes me being as Manning's criminal due, however. Treason rates the death sentence, but Manning didn't commit treason. In fact, he beat that rap. Manning admitted he gave Julian Assange's Wikileaks organization at least 700,000 pages of classified U.S. documents, as well as numerous classified videos. The massive document release included classified State Department cables and military...

The U.S. Army soldier charged with providing troves of government documents to the whistleblowing website Wikileaks was found not guilty Tuesday of aiding the enemy, the top charge in his 22-count indictment, which could have carried a life sentence. [snip] Manning was convicted of 5 espionage counts

U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is a whistleblower who wanted to inform the American public about the troubling things he saw in the war zone, and the soldier is willing to pay the price for giving secrets to WikiLeaks, his defense attorney said Friday. During closing arguments, attorney David Coombs disputed what prosecutors said a day earlier, that Manning was a traitor whose only mission as an intelligence analyst was to give classified information to the anti-secrecy website and bask in the attention. “He’s not seeking attention. He saying he’s willing to accept the price” for what he has done,...

For nearly a decade, a band of cybercriminals rampaged through the servers of a global business who's who: Among the victims were 7-Eleven, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, JetBlue and JC Penney. Prosecutors say the hackers stole "conservatively" 160 million credit card numbers, and the dollar value of the crimes they helped facilitate is enormous — just four of the victims are out $300 million. The suffering caused to identity theft victims was "immeasurable," say prosecutors. On Thursday, five of the gang's members were indicted. One is in custody in the U.S., a second is awaiting extradition in the Netherlands, and three...

Soon after President Obama appointed him director of national intelligence in 2009, Dennis C. Blair called for a tally of the number of government officials or employees who had been prosecuted for leaking national security secrets. He was dismayed by what he found. In the previous four years, the record showed, 153 cases had been referred to the Justice Department. Not one had led to an indictment. That scorecard “was pretty shocking to all of us,” Mr. Blair said. So in a series of phone calls and meetings, he and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. fashioned a more aggressive...

FORT MEADE, Md. – A military judge refused Thursday to dismiss the most serious charge against Bradley Manning, the Army private who gave reams of classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The charge of aiding the enemy that Manning faces is punishable by up to life in prison without parole. Col. Denise Lind, the judge in Manning's court-martial, denied defense requests to drop that charge and a computer fraud charge, ruling that the government had presented some evidence to support each element of the charges.

Snowden Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize After ‘Disrepute Incurred’ for Picking Obama By Andrew Johnson July 15, 2013 11:49 AM A Swedish professor has nominated NSA leaker Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize for his revelations of the surveillance program, but also to redeem the award’s prestige after it was awarded to President Obama in 2009. In his letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Umea University’s Stefan Svallfors argues that Snowden, who would be the award’s youngest winner at 30, exemplified that “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.” Svallfors lauded Snowden’s “heroic effort at great personal...

Lawyers for the Army private who leaked a trove of classified government documents urged a judge Monday to dismiss a charge he aided the enemy, saying prosecutors failed to prove Pfc. Bradley Manning intended for the information to fall into enemy hands. The charge is the most serious and carries the most severe punishment—life in prison—in the case against Manning, who has acknowledged sending hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The trial of the 25-year-old Oklahoma native is drawing to a close on a military base outside Baltimore and a judge hearing the government’s case is...

An Aeroflot plane en route from Moscow to Havana has deviated from its course, FlightAware live flight tracking indicates. The news has sparked online speculation that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may be aboard the aircraft. However upon arrival in the Cuban capital, crew members told reporters that Snowden was not on board the flight. Aeroflot flight 150 to Havana took off from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport at 14:10 pm local time (10:10 GMT) on Thursday and landed around 22:30 GMT. Whistleblower Edward Snowden has been holed up in the airport for the past two weeks. The flight route usually passes over...

From a U.S. DoD command to its employees, who have clearances to look at classified material: All Hands, WARNING: CLASSIFIED INFO ON PUBLIC WEB SITE - DO NOT OPEN!! There is a posting on "The Washington Post" home page titled "The NSA slide you have never seen" and another on the Drudge Report titled "Upstream: US Taps Undersea Cables." DO NOT click on either of these links, 'cut and paste' the website address into another browser, or view by any other means, as this will cause a classified spillage or an incident, based on from where you accessed the information....

Fugitive Edward Snowden, wanted on charges of espionage against his own country, is caught in a trap of his own making. He finds himself stranded at an airport in Moscow where he's been promised political asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin who says he will never turn Snowden over to the United States to stand trial on criminal charges of exposing national security secrets to our enemies. "Russia has never given up anyone to anybody and does not plan to," Putin said this week. But the former Soviet KGB agent's offer of a safe haven comes with one condition. "If...

Since Snowden has said he sought out his job to gain access to NSA activities, it is likely that this network aided him from the beginning. Whatever the arguments about alleged NSA abuses of U.S. citizen privacy rights or whether Snowden had any justification for revealing information he’d pledged a solemn oath to keep secret, his hop-scotch escape route and the motley crew of actors helping him stay out of reach of American justice already provide a graphic illustration of the loose-knit but powerful international network that is allied in hatred for the United States. That network includes nation states,...

In March 2013, when Edward Snowden sought a job with Booz Allen Hamilton at a National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, he signed the requisite classified-information agreements and would have been made well aware of the law regarding communications intelligence. Section 798 of the United States Code makes it a federal crime if a person "knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States" any classified information concerning communication intelligence. [snip] Before taking the job in Hawaii, Mr....

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong government announced on Sunday afternoon that it had allowed the departure from its territory of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged disclosing classified documents about United States government surveillance of Internet and telephone communications around the world. snip The Aeroflot agent said that Mr. Snowden is traveling with one other person, with the surname Harrison, but the agent declined to release the other traveler’s first name, saying that she did not have the authorization to do so. The closest adviser to Julian Assange, who orchestrated the release of...