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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to go free after having spent five years in a British prison, according to court documents. Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say. A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the Northern Mariana Islands District said that Assange would appear in court at...

COVID-19: It’s all we talk about, on the cable news, and in our 6-foot socially-distanced prison walks around our silent neighborhoods. And in nearly every conversation comes the intellectual shrug, “who could have seen this coming?” A single phrase that neatly absolves governments and experts alike of any responsibility of predicting the pandemic and, if not being able to stop it, at least cushioning its blow........ But is it unfair to engage in so much 20-20 hindsight? After all, who could see COVID coming? Well, we did. We — as in nodes within the U.S. Government tasked with tracking critical...

Chelsea Manning has been arrested along with more than a dozen others for storming the women's restroom on Capitol Hill in protest of Republicans' congressional transgender bathroom ban. Activists led by the Gender Liberation Movement held gathered outside of Speaker Mike Johnson's office in the Cannon House Office Building on Thursday. The group held banners that read 'Flush Bathroom Bigotry and Congress Stop P**sing on Our Rights' and chanting 'Speaker Johnson, Nancy Mace, our genders are not a debate!' Among the protesters were Manning, a 36-year-old former Army intelligence analyst, who was taken into custody and charged with crowding, obstructing...

Recently, independent journalist and author Michael Shellenberger published an article on his subscription news site, Public, alleging that a new, unnamed government whistleblower had come forward. The whistleblower asserts that a highly classified program exists dedicated to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), including the potential recovery and reverse-engineering of UAP technologies. This isn’t the first time a former or current government official has made similar claims. In 2023, The Debrief was the first media outlet to report that David Grusch, a former Air Force officer and intelligence specialist with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), had...

The former head of US intelligence slammed the celebrations surrounding the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange this week and called the Australian 'no hero.' Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today show, James Clapper, who served as head of the intelligence community under former President Barack Obama, called Assange's actions wrong and illegal. Clapper went on to say that US assets in Afghanistan were likely killed due to Wikileaks revealing their identities in government documents.

NEW YORK, July 13 (Reuters) - A former CIA software engineer was convicted on Wednesday of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks from the spy agency, in one of the biggest such thefts in CIA history.

NEW YORK (AP) - A former CIA software engineer charged with leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks says it’s cruel and unusual punishment that he’s awaiting trial in solitary confinement, housed in a vermin-infested cell of a jail unit where inmates are treated like “caged animals.” Joshua Schulte, 32, has asked a Manhattan federal judge to force the federal Bureau of Prisons to improve conditions at the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he has been held for over two years under highly restrictive conditions usually reserved for terrorism defendants. In court papers Tuesday, Schulte maintained he is held in conditions “below that...

The Justice Department has decided not to charge Julian Assange for his role in exposing some of the CIA’s most secret spying tools, according to a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the case. It’s a move that has surprised national security experts and some former officials, given prosecutors’ recent decision to aggressively go after the WikiLeaks founder on more controversial Espionage Act charges that some legal experts said would not hold up in court. The decision also means that Assange will not face punishment for publishing one of the CIA’s most potent arsenals of digital code used...

Joshua Schulte, a former CIA employee charged in connection with leaking classified hacking tools to WikiLeaks, will be shackled and subjected to strip searches if he wishes to view classified material related to the government’s case against him, a court ordered Thursday. The conditions appear in a protective order requested by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, where the former CIA computer engineer is being held awaiting trial for espionage. The government has prepared a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, in which Mr. Schulte and his attorney can visit to review classified information concerning his case, prosecutors wrote in a filing...

Evidence is now circulating among lawmakers in Washington that makes the case that Obama administration intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper hacked FISA court judge Reggie Walton in addition to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. Big League Politics’ expose on the alleged Roberts hack has rocked the corridors of power. Now, we have more information coming to light about the FISA court — which infamously held no hearings regarding the fraudulent FISA warrant applications to surveil Carter Page and by extension other members of President Trump’s team. And there’s more: James Comey’s henchmen at the FBI are proven to...

Joshua Schulte, a former CIA computer engineer suspected of leaking classified hacking tools to WikiLeaks, said he is being subjected to “torture” while awaiting trial for espionage. Mr. Schulte, 30, said he is being inexplicably held in solitary confinement and denied access to his medication, writing materials, legal documents and lawyer, according to a letter addressed to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty filed in Manhattan federal court Monday. “My fellow slaves constantly scream, pound and claw at their cages attempting to get attention for basic needs to be fulfilled. I count myself lucky to be able to eat,” he wrote...

The Justice Department on Monday announced charges against a former CIA computer engineer for allegedly leaking top-secret information on U.S. government hacking tools to WikiLeaks. In a 13-count superseding indictment, the agency charged Joshua Adam Schulte with illegally gathering classified national defense information and transmitting it to “an organization.” WikiLeaks published the data in March of last year. “Schulte utterly betrayed this nation and downright violated his victims,” FBI official William Sweeney Jr. said in the release. “As an employee of the CIA, Schulte took an oath to protect this country, but he blatantly endangered it by the transmission of...

The ex-CIA software engineer suspected of leaking a massive, highly secret trove of U.S. hacking tools and source code to WikiLeaks has been charged in federal court with a series of Espionage Act violations. Joshua Schulte, 29, allegedly disclosed thousands of top-secret files outlining the extent of the CIA’s cyberwarfare capabilities in an unprecedented breach that triggered an intensive investigation even before WikiLeaks published the information in March 2017.

Joshua Adam Schulte, who worked for a CIA group that designs computer code to spy on foreign adversaries, is believed to have provided the agency’s top-secret information to WikiLeaks, federal prosecutors acknowledged in a hearing in January. The anti-secrecy group published the code under the label “Vault 7” in March 2017. It was one of the most significant and potentially damaging leaks in the CIA’s history, exposing secret cyberweapons and spying techniques that might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Yesterday, Apple rushed out an emergency patch to plug a severe security hole that can be exploited to wirelessly and silently commandeer iPhones, iPads and iPods.Now we know why: this remote-code execution vulnerability lies in Broadcom's Wi-Fi stack, which Apple uses in its handhelds. Many other handsets also use Broadcom's naff chipset, and, as a result, we expect – and hope – a lot of other phone and tablet makers push out patches: any gadget using Broadcom's vulnerable tech is at risk to over-the-air hijacking, not just Apple's iThings.Here's a summary of the work by Google Project Zero's Gal Beniamini:...

WikiLeaks continued its ongoing release of documents from the CIA Friday with a collection of files detailing the agency’s ability to obscure its activities and make it difficult for investigators to attribute the origins of attacks and hacking.The latest release from what WikiLeaks calls Vault 7 is titled “ Marble ” and contains documentation of files that are purportedly part of the CIA Core Library of malware code. WikiLeaks describes Marble as part of the CIA’s “anti-forensics approach.” The name “Marble” refers to a specific algorithm that scrambles and unscrambles data.Marble is one of the more technical releases that WikiLeaks...

A new WikiLeaks Vault 7 leak titled “Dark Matter” claims that the Central Intelligence Agency has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. The documents are expected to be released after a 10 a.m. EDT “press briefing” that WikiLeaks promoted on its Twitter. And here is the full press release from WikiLeaks: Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Dark Matter", which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents...

A new WikiLeaks Vault 7 leak titled “Dark Matter” claims, with unreleased documents, that the Central Intelligence Agency has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008. WikiLeaks further claims that the CIA has the capability to permanently bug iPhones, even if their operating systems are deleted or replaced.The documents are expected to be released after a 10 a.m. EDT “press briefing” that WikiLeaks promoted on its Twitter. RELEASE: CIA #Vault7 "Dark Matter" https://t.co/pgnfeODXVB pic.twitter.com/vkI16f3vMD— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 23, 2017 Watch a livestream of the Julian Assange led event here. WATCH: WikiLeaks Vault 7 Livestream on CIA ‘Dark Matter’...

23 March, 2017 Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Dark Matter", which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain 'persistence' on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware. Among others, these documents reveal the "Sonic Screwdriver" project which, as explained by the CIA, is a "mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac...

WikiLeaks has released the latest batch of documents in its Vault 7 series of documents related to the CIA’s espionage programs. The latest release, dubbed ‘Dark Matter,’ reveals the specific techniques used to target Apple products. The leak came just prior to WikiLeaks latest press briefing which is scheduled to take place at 10am ET. The last Vault 7 press conference was cancelled after Julian Assange claimed their streaming services were being attacked. The projects, developed by the CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB), attack Apple’s firmware meaning that any infections are persistent regardless of efforts to remove them, including if...