Whatever happened to the USA FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA) passed in 1982.
Just more BS?

www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/foia1982222/

TV series of Australia will make: JULIAN ASSANGE THE STORY.


www.tvtonight.com.au/2012/09/underground...e-story-trailer.html

Former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon gives a press conference on September 5, 2012 in Madrid. The renowned rights lawyer will lead the legal team representing WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, who is currently at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, seeking political asylum in the Latin American country, after losing his legal battle to avoid extradition to face questions over rape and sexual assault claims in Sweden. Ecuador said on September 5 it would resume talks with Britain this week over the fate of Assange. Last month Ecuador granted asylum to Assange, but Britain has vowed to arrest him if he leaves the embassy.

The WikiLeaks founder ran afoul of his bail terms when he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy to seek asylum.

LONDON - Hollywood supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, including directors Ken Loach and Michael Moore, have lost £200,000 ($317,130) in bail money they had put up for him, the Guardian reported.
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The decision came after Assange fled into the Ecuadorian embassy here this summer to avoid extradition to Sweden where he would face sexual assault charges and request political asylum. Observers had predicted that this would cause the bail money to be lost as Assange failed to adhere to his bail terms.

Socialite Jemima Khan and publisher Felix Dennis are also among the known celebrity supporters of Assange who had put up bail money.

Moore, Oliver Stone, Danny Glover and Bill Maher were among the prominent Hollywood folks who earlier this summer signed a petition that urged Ecuador to accept the WikiLeaks founder's asylum request.

At a court hearing in London, a judge also adjourned a further hearing until October to decide if nine other backers will also lose their money, the Guardian said. That group put up an additional £140,000 ($222,000) in bail money.

Assange asked Ecuador for asylum, arguing that the Swedish extradition request would lead to further extradition to the U.S. where he could face the death penalty. Ecuador granted him asylum, but British police said he would get arrested if he leaves the embassy.

The judge argued that bail providers would have to persuade Assange to surrender to police to get their money back.

"At the moment, I'm not persuaded that any reasonable surety would not be using every effort, publicly and privately, to persuade Mr. Assange to surrender himself to U.K. authorities," the Guardian quoted him as saying.

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Twitter: @georgszalai

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Thanks chandravaki,

This "poor saps ripped off for the bail money by Assange" story has been bounced around the rags that pass for press for the last week even though none of it is either news or a suprsoed to anybody involved.

For example, The Independent has followed the Judas steps of The Guardian.

The article has the title in the broadsheet style of "Assange’s pals want bail money back".

Oddly unchacteristic.?
www.iol.co.za/news/world/assange-s-pals-...money-back-1.1376216

Not at all: the hacks writing the tosh are PAUL CHESTON and JONATHAN BROWN

Paul normally writes for thr Evening Standard and Daily Mail

mikey mikey wrote:
Ah!, no wonder mikey, they are all for the "character assaination of Julian Assange".
Thanks for clearing things up.
I suppose they want to be in good terms with US government.
I s that what free-speech, and frree-presss is all about today?
What a shame!

rt.com/news/assange-ecuador-wikileaks-asylum-675/

chandrakavi wrote:
The title of the article hardly reflects the content of the interview.

Looks like even RT are coming under the pressure...

As for Nikolas Kozloff
www.nikolaskozloff.com/

He has already done a Guardian/Huffpost (for whom he writes) knife in the back to Assange
www.nikolaskozloff.com/blog.htm?tag=WikiLeaks

So much for the World "Free Press", if the Assange affair is to teach us all something.
Democratic? Give me a break!

chandrakavi wrote:
me does believe any paperwork marking that as a bill and law has been misplaced in the trashcan for recycling...
that and it might be a threat to national security and therefore invalid given the state of...whats the word i am looking for...danger the US is in

StarsChildren wrote:
Yeah, would be interesting to know the truth about that, must be highly hidden as TOP SECRET.

Here is what the FAQ say about the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)

www.dos.ny.gov/coog/freedomfaq.html

What is the purpose of this ..?

Government Wins Right to Pretend That Cables Released by WikiLeaks Are Still Secret

By Nathan Freed Wessler, Fellow, ACLU National Security Project at 12:28pm
07/23/2012

This morning a federal judge ruled that the government is free to continue pretending that the contents of State Department diplomatic cables already disclosed by WikiLeaks are secret. The case concerns an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request seeking 23 embassy cables that had been previously released by WikiLeaks, posted online, and widely discussed in the press. The government had responded by releasing redacted versions of 11 cables and withholding the other 12 in full.

The cables we requested reveal the diplomatic harms of widely criticized U.S. government policies, including torture, detention and rendition of detainees, detention at Guantanamo, and the use of drones to carry out targeted killings. The State Department claims that the withheld cables are classified, and thus so secret that they cannot be released—despite the fact that they are already accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection and a passing interest in current events.

In order to avoid releasing its own copies of the cables, the government was required to prove to the court that doing so would cause harm to national security. It offered explanations of why releasing secret State Department cables might harm relations with foreign governments or disclose sensitive information, but failed to explain what harm would come from releasing cables that are already available to the public in full, and that the government has admitted have been leaked. The court accepted the government’s lackluster arguments, and did not even discuss the requirement that when information is already in the public domain, the government must explain what additional harms would occur from re-release of that information by the government itself.

The court also rejected the ACLU’s argument that the government has officially acknowledged that the cables released by WikiLeaks are authentic government documents. This matters because under FOIA, if the government has officially acknowledged something in public, it cannot refuse to release the same information in court. The court took the incredible position that, because the ACLU’s FOIA request “made no mention of the WikiLeaks disclosure” and instead requested each of the 23 cables by date and title, the government’s admission that it possesses all 23 of the cables is not an admission that the cables released by WikiLeaks are authentic. The court was only able to reach this conclusion because it refused to compare the versions of the cables held by WikiLeaks and those held by the government side by side. Doing so easily confirms that the cables are identical, and thus that the cables identified by the government are the same ones already disclosed to the public.

Several months ago, the ACLU created a feature allowing the public to compare the redacted cables released by the government to the full text disclosed by WikiLeaks. By hovering your mouse over the government’s redactions, you can see what the State Department is still attempting to conceal. But beware: under the logic of the court’s ruling today, every time you uncover the government’s “secret” text, you are somehow causing harm to national security. This argument just doesn’t hold up, as detailed in this New York Times article from last December. Whatever damage to the reputation of the United States may have occurred when the cables were first disclosed, no more harm can come from releasing identical text of the cables again now. In fact, it is the court’s ruling that causes harm, by frustrating the Freedom of Information Act’s promise of transparency and making a mockery of the concept of legitimate secrecy.

Does it mean that anyone who's accessed this info is liable to prosecution for viewing official secrets, and therefore, being a terrorist?

Thanks Gilly. That is FUBAR like 2+2=5 fucked up like Peter Griffin fucked



only not as funny

Gilly wrote:
What was that about a separate judicial branch? lol

Gilly wrote:
Maybe they should ask Julian Assange how "secret" his Wikileaks intend to be.
He's thinking of going to post them outside the Embassy of Ecuador for everyone to read maybe.
All countries in the world ahve read Wikileaks. So everyone is a "terrorist", wha a joke.

Gilly wrote:
Maybe they should ask Julian Assange how "secret" his Wikileaks intend to be.
He's thinking of going to post them outside the Embassy of Ecuador for everyone to read maybe.
All countries in the world have read Wikileaks. So everyone is a "terrorist", what a joke.

This interview is from 28 July 2012
Larry King interviews Julian Assange

chandrakavi wrote:
The video below says: Uploaded by WarAgainstAllWars on Jul 28, 2010