Wikileaks

Mucho se ha discutido en medios de comunicación, debates académicos y grupos activistas sobre la extravagancia de la tipificación de los delitos atribuidos a Chelsea Manning. Por ejemplo, por el hecho de que resultó convicto de “espionaje”, aunque sobreseído de un
cargo de “ayudar al enemigo” (es decir, una variante del delito de “traición”). Uno podría preguntarse “¿cuál enemigo?”, “¿cómo ayudó al enemigo exactamente?”, “¿a favor de quién espió, si no estaba al servicio de ningún país o empresa extranjeros y solo liberó cierta
información para que todo el mundo la supiese por igual?”, “¿por qué se castiga así a alguien que solo fue una fuente periodística que aportó datos de claro interés público, es decir, un “whistleblower”?”, “¿puede un soldado de un país cometer el delito de espionaje sin incurrir al mismo tiempo en el de traición? Para contribuir a echar luz sobre estas aparentes paradojas, en este trabajo se analiza la construcción del concepto de “enemigo” en la ley de Inteligencia de los Estados Unidos, en su código de justicia militar y en la acusación, la defensa y otros involucrados en el juicio a Manning. Complementariamente, también se examina el concepto
de “espía”.

El sábado 12 de junio de 1971, la hija del ex presidente estadounidense Richard Nixon, Patricia, celebraba nupcias con su prometido Edward Finch Cox. Todo apuntaba a que el siguiente día, 13 de junio, la prensa dedicaría un amplio espacio en sus primeras planas a los recién casados. Y así lo hicieron grandes medios de Estados Unidos como el Washington Post o el Chicago Tribune.

Pero el diario The New York Times rompió con el guión. La boda Nixon-Finch quedó opacada por la publicación de la primera parte de una serie de documentos “top secret” del gobierno estadounidense, y que serían conocidos como los “Papeles del Pentágono”. La publicación corresponde a un estudio titulado oficialmente Relaciones de Estados Unidos-Vietnam, 1945.1967: Un Estudio Preparado por el Departamento de Defensa, que contiene un análisis sobre la participación política y militar de aquel país en el conflicto de Indochina. El estudio fue comisionado en 1967 por el entonces Secretario de Defensa, Robert McNamara, y supervisado por por el director de Planificación de Control de la Política de Seguridad Internacional en el Pentágono, Leslie Gelb. La investigación duró un año.

El contenido fue filtrados en primer lugar al diario estadounidense The New York Times y posteriormente al Washington Post, por el ex analista del Departamento de Estado, Daniel Ellsberg. En ellos se reveló que el gobierno de Estados Unidos aumentó su actuación militar en la Guerra de Vietnam a costa de engañar al Congreso y a la opinión pública. La publicación de los “Papeles del Pentágono” marcaron en su época una victoria Judicial a favor de la Libertad de Expresión en Estados Unidos y en contra de los intereses del gobierno, así como un avance para los informantes que buscan equilibrar los abusos de poder en los que pueden caer los Estados bajo el cobijo de la secrecía.

A 45 años de la publicación de los “Papeles del Pentágono”, el escenario ha cambiado. Las tecnologías han permitido la emergencia de plataformas como Wikileaks para filtrar anónimamente documentos clasificados que revelen una actuación ilegal de algún gobierno, o que atente contra la democracia y la soberanía de los países. Esto significa una simplificación en la logística desde que Ellsberg y su colega Anthony Russo fotocopiaron más de 7,000 páginas del informe que fue entregado en secreto al periodista Neil Sheehan. Los canales digitales encriptados también han permitido que medios de comunicación y plataformas como Wikileaks puedan recibir directamente información de los whistleblowers.

Peter Ludlow, profesor de Filosofía en la Universidad del Noroeste de Estados Unidos, observa ya una emergencia de la “Generación W”, una generación de informantes que actúan en la era Wikileaks. Figuras como Julian Assange, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning y Edward Snowden se han convertido representantes de esta generación, quienes han denunciado políticas y decisiones secretas del gobierno estadounidense que contravienen con los principios democráticos, de respeto a la soberanía y autodeterminación de los Estados, así como los derechos humanos. Estas figuras son la evidencia de que la herencia de Daniel Ellsberg y los “Papeles del Pentágono” aún sigue viva.

Pero Estados Unidos y sus países aliados han orquestado una continua persecución y acoso en contra de los mensajeros (medios de comunicación, plataformas de divulgación de información y periodistas) mientras que los informantes son objeto de persecución judicial bajo una Ley de Espionaje que data de la Primera Guerra Mundial. En este escenario, los whistleblowers se han convertido en actores no estatales que han generado tensión al interior de los Estados y en sus relaciones internacionales ya que las filtraciones de estos tres actores han tenido alcance tanto local como global; y por la persecución estatal de la que son objeto. Los whistleblowers son acusados de espías y por divulgar información que compromete la seguridad nacional cobijada en la secrecía.

A lo largo de este trabajo se analizará la herencia de Daniel Ellsberg y la publicación de los “Papeles del Pentágono”, y su influencia sobre el actuar de los principales representantes de la “Generación W” de informantes. A partir de este análisis se buscará dar explicación a una realidad: lo que alguna vez la sociedad estadounidense vio como una victoria para la libertad de expresión hace 45 años se tradujo en el desprestigio y la criminalización de actores que suponen un equilibrio entre la protección de la seguridad nacional y los abusos del poder.

Este ensayo analiza y reflexiona desde una perspectiva sociológica el fenómeno de Wikileaks, a partir de las implicancias que la información por éste filtrada podría tener sobre la institución del Estado moderno racional. La relación entre el medio de comunicación y el Estado nacional se problematiza a partir de una selección de material documental haciendo del fenómeno social (interpretación periodística) un fenómeno sociológico (interpretación hermenéutica). Se formulan dos tesis, a saber; a) que Wikileaks representa una amenaza para la estabilidad del Estado racional moderno en el sentido que Weber le presta a éste y b) que Julian Assange, su cara más visible, se aproxima a un tipo de líder carismático más que tradicional o legal.

This paper analizes the phenomena of Wikileaks from a sociological focus taking into account the impact of its publications on the rational modern national state. A varied range of pieces of information is considered to develop the problematization of the relation among Wikileaks' actions and the weberian institution of modern national state. This means to turn the nature of this relation from the social phenomena (journalistic interpretation) into the sociological one (hermeneutic approach). Two theses lead the reflection, namely: a) Wikileaks is a threat to the weberian rational modern state and b) Julian Assange, its spokesperson, is closer to be a kind of charismatic leader than a traditional or legal one.

The terrorist outrages in the United States (US) on September 11th 2001 created unprecedented challenges for intelligence and security communities and policy makers. Anxiety over further attack led to a profusion of intelligence being raised to Presidential and senior executive level. Condoleezza Rice, who in 2001 was National Security Advisor to Present Bush, said “we basically went from no information to floods. It just started flooding with everything. So now you were getting unassessed intelligence. You know, just about anything anyone said might be a threat.” (Bumiller, 2007, p. 168). A prevailing mood of trepidation, risk aversion and fear of omission may somewhat explain the readiness of intelligence agencies to have ‘over shared’ (Betts, 2007, p. 178-182). Analytical quality seems to have been sacrificed for speed of dissemination and breadth of coverage. In such circumstances, the potential for disagreement, confusion, paralysis, demoralisation, misunderstanding of risk and other pathologies appears very real.
In assessing intelligence agency performance and utility more generally, a critical question arises as to their own susceptibility to information overload. With exponential growth in open sources, fluid domestic and international risks and technological advance, agencies might understandably struggle with multiple concurrent high volume / high tempo requirements. To explore this proposition, the leak of diplomatic cables and datasets from the Afghan and Iraq wars (Madar, 2013, pp. 55-80) by Private Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning and hereafter referred to in the feminine) are taken together as a case study. Further, Lovink and Riemens (2010) propose “Twelve Theses” on the nature of WikiLeaks. This paper adds a further hypothesis, namely that WikiLeaks itself exhibits characteristics of an intelligence agency, and is susceptible to information overload.

Reseña publicada en el número 13 de la revista "Comunicación" del departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad de la Universidad de Sevilla (pp. 97-100). ISSN 1989-600X

Jorge Lozano (ed.): "Secretos en red. Intervenciones semióticas en el tiempo presente". Madrid: Ediciones Sequitur, 2014. 198 páginas.

"Secretos en red" es un libro surgido del trabajo conjunto por parte de los miembros del Grupo de Estudios de Semiótica de la Cultura (GESC) Jorge Lozano, Marcello Serra, Rayco González o Luis Pablo Francescutti, con aportaciones de Umberto Eco, Paolo Fabbri, Maurizio Bettini, Jacques Fontanille, Denis Bertrand y Alberto Abruzzese.

La llamada a la transversalidad del subtítulo ("intervenciones semióticas en el tiempo presente") hace alusión a la diversidad de metodologías y enfoques presentes en un volumen que tiene como base un único fenómeno de actualidad: Wikileaks, los documentos, los secretos, las demandas de transparencia y las críticas a la opacidad. No existe sin embargo sospecha posible en torno a que la amplitud de miras pueda pecar de dispersión, puesto que las aportaciones de la semiótica de la imagen (Calabrese, pág. 65; Marin, pág. 21; Careri, pág. 24; sobre la mediación del dispositivo de la obra de arte que al mismo tiempo filtra y permite el acceso por medio de la sustancia de su expresión) no hacen sino complementar el ameno análisis del concepto de “transparencia” a través de la lengua latina y de los textos literarios llevado a cabo por Bettini (Séneca, Cicerón, Plauto, Quintiliano… pág. 119-125) o las consideraciones en torno al discurso histórico, las “historias del presente” (pág. 66) y el problema del archivo planteadas por Lozano siguiendo a autores y textos de referencia como "La arqueología del saber" de Foucault (1969). Así planteado, un archivo como el de Wikileaks no es sino “ante todo la ley de lo que puede ser dicho, el sistema que gobierna la aparición de los enunciados como acontecimientos singulares”, esto es, un problema netamente enunciativo, semiótico, comparable al Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg, “archivo de archivos” (pág. 20), o incluso a la concepción de la Enciclopedia de Umberto Eco como biblioteca de todas las bibliotecas, tema por cierto del su discurso de investidura.

"This book is an interrogation of humanity's new potentials and threats brought by technology when the question of social change is becoming more crucial than ever.

The selected essays in this anthology confront questions from a wide-ranging perspective that evoke the postmodern idea of the cyborg to illuminate recent phenomena from global warming, Wikileaks, to the Occupy movements. Multiple disciplines from music to psychoanalysis to journalism to anthropology collaborate to examine the way we shape the world from behind our ubiquitous screens to taking to the streets in mass protests.

What does the increasing omnipotence of networked machines ultimately mean? What do social networks do to our sense of self, others and society? Does P2P technology foster new ethics and spiritualities? What potentials does posthumanity have to bring about social change?

Featuring essays from Robert Barry, Siri Driessen & Roos van Haaften, Bonni Rambatan, Dustin Cohen, Jacob Johanssen, Michel Bauwens, Aliki Tzatha, Zakary Paget, Stefen Baack, Alessandro Zagato, Peter Nikolaus Funke, Glenn Muschert, and Jung-Hua Liu."

#Wikileaks just dumped all of their files online. Everything from Hillary Clinton's emails, McCain's being guilty, Vegas shooting done by an FBI sniper, Steve Jobs HIV letter, PedoPodesta, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Bilderberg, CIA agents arrested for rape, WHO pandemic. Happy Digging! Here you go, please read and pass it on..... These are Clinton’s emails: https://file.wikileaks.org/file/clinton-emails/

Index file!  https://file.wikileaks.org/file/?fbclid=IwAR2U_Evqah_Qy2wxNY12FMqFC5dAFUcZL5Kl4FIfQuMFMp8ssbM46oHXWMI

Send to everyone you can as fast as you can!

In the last few years we have had a number of infamous national security leaks and prosecutions. Many have argued that these people have done a great service for our nation by revealing the wrongdoings of the defense agencies. However, the law is quite clearthose national security employees who leak classified information are subject to lengthy prison sentences or in some cases, even execution as a traitor. In response to the draconian national security laws, this article proposes a new policy which fosters the free flow of information. First, the article outlines the recent history of national security leaks and the government response to the perpetrators. Next, the article outlines the information policy of the defense industry including the document classification system, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), whistleblower laws and the Espionage Act. Finally, the article outlines a new policy that will advance government transparency by promoting whistleblowing that serves the p...

Mintpress, May 29, 2019

https://www.mintpressnews.com/lee-camp18-ways-julian-assange-wikileaks-changed-the-world/258790/

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks revealed the American military’s war crimes, the American government’s corruption and the American corporate media’s pathetic servile flattery to the power elite.

Overview: The aim of this course is to provide a general introduction to a range of theories that seek to explain why we communicate as we do. The first part of the course establishes a general overview of communication theory, from both theoretical and historical points of view. We will examine the relationship between communication, ideology, power, and social consciousness; the development of alphabetic writing; and theories of orality and literacy. We will also review the concept of the self in the context of communication studies. The second part of the course will focus on specific fields within the area of communication, including: the study of popular culture; media analysis; film studies; advertising; and the political economy of communication. We will also examine the rise of technology studies in communication, and consider the way in which the electronic media (in particular computers and the Internet), have refashioned both human consciousness and culture. In this context, we will discuss issues of privacy and democracy in the emerging digital culture; and conclude the course with a brief discussion of global communication.

The term "cable," as used in the context of diplomacy, is ambiguous. It denotes both a message and its technological messenger. Telegraph wires were used around the middle of the nineteenth century to connect the capitals of Europe. The network soon expanded, and by 1870, with the laying of submarine cables, fast-traveling telegraphic messages could be sent between Britain, Continental Europe, North America, the Middle East, and India. Through these cables, diplomatic posts communicated with their ministries back home. But the term "cable" also came to denote the message that was sent by telegraph. In this chapter I use this ambiguity as an entry point for an exploration of what the new materialist turn can bring to Diplomatic Studies. I will demonstrate how at three particular points in history the cable, as both diplomatic message and technological messenger, made a difference to how things played out. To make sense of this, one needs to be perceptive of the myriad ways in which meaning and materiality intertwine in the making of what we call diplomacy. What is called for is, in other words, a material-semiotic analysis of diplomacy...

Im Jahr 2006 ging eine Website online, die nur Monate später die Welt bewegen und schließlich in zwei Lager spalten sollte:WikiLeaks. Die Whistleblower-Plattform macht es sich zur Aufgabe, durch „leaks“, also „Löcher“ im System erhaltene brisante Informationen und Quellenmaterial, das in seiner Zugänglichkeit beschränkt ist, für die Öffentlichkeit verfügbar zu machen, um damit „Regierungen, Unternehmen und Institutionen“ (WikiLeaks 2010) zu einem moralischeren Verhalten zu zwingen. Besagte Informationen werden WikiLeaks von anonymen Informanten zugespielt. Durch die jüngsten Veröffentlichungen rund 250.000 geheimer diplomatischer Depeschen des amerikanischen Außenministeriums und seiner Botschaften im November2010 ist die Website und mit ihr der Betreiber der Organisation, Julian Assange, zum wiederholten Male ins Kreuzfeuer geraten.

Entre el año 2006 y 2012, Bolivia, Ecuador y Venezuela vivieron uno de los momentos más interesantes de la historia diplomática de América Latina, cuando comenzaron a reconstruir su propia Diplomacia Pública ante el ataque comunicacional de la Diplomacia Pública de Estados Unidos de América, y lograron tambalear su imagen mundial.

Çalışmada uluslararası ilişkilerde toplumların görüş, talep ve tepkilerinin gündemin belirlenmesi ve bununla bağlantılı olarak siyasetin işleyiş sürecinde önem kazanmasıyla, akademide gittikçe daha fazla ele alınmaya başlanan kamu diplomasisinin bir stratejik iletişim yönetimi aracı olarak geleneksel kitle iletişim araçlarıyla olan ilişkisi literatür tarama yöntemiyle incelenmiş; yine aynı araştırma yöntemiyle yeni medyadaki kontrol dışı yapıların kamu diplomasisi ve medyayla olan ilişkisi de Wikileaks örneği üzerinden anlatılmaya çalışılmıştır.

Araştırma kısmında ise resmî ve özerk yerli medya kuruluşlarıyla birlikte yabancı medya kuruluşlarının Türkçe servislerinden gazetecilere yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme yöntemiyle, yüz yüze veya internet üzerinden sorular yöneltilmiş; temsil ettikleri ülke ve kurumlar adına gazetecilik faaliyetleriyle kamu diplomasisine nasıl bir katkıda bulundukları ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Kamu diplomasisi, stratejik iletişim yönetimi, geleneksel medya, kitle iletişim araçları, yeni medya, dijital aktivizm, Wikileaks

In this working bibliography I bring together a large set of (mostly academic) references on a specific category of political actor that I am calling ‘freedom technologists’, namely those tech-minded individuals, groups and organisations who have a keen interest in the democratic and emancipatory potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In other words, freedom technologists combine technological and political notions and skills to pursue greater Internet and democratic freedoms, which they regard as being inextricably entwined (Postill 2014). Far from being techno-utopians or deluded ‘slacktivists’ (Morozov, 2013, Skoric, 2012), in my experience most freedom technologists are in fact techno-pragmatists, that is, people who take a very practical view of the limits and possibilities of new technologies for political change. This working bibliography is part of current research towards my forthcoming book Freedom Technologists: Digital Activism and Political Change in the 21st Century (working title). Further suggestions are always welcome via email or via the comments section.

Este trabalho apresenta o advento do WikiLeaks e enfatiza o seu papel na luta pela transparência de informação na Internet. Atualmente, o WikiLeaks é usado tanto como um destino de compartilhamento de documentos como uma fonte de informação para estabelecer
uma ação estratégica contra a guerra do sigilo. Na Era da Informação, discute-se a confidencialidade dos recursos de tecnologia digital contra questões de interesses diplomáticos por parte dos governos. A contribuição do WikiLeaks no episódio Cablegate, abriu debates em torno da utilização de ferramentas alternativas de tecnologia digital e do jornalismo tradicional com táticas de ativismo na internet, causando mudanças na técnica e ética jornalística. Desde então, o WikiLeaks se tornou um ator crucial no atual cenário do jornalismo investigativo.
Palavras-chave: WikiLeaks. Cablegate. Ciberativismo. Internet. Transparência.

Ps.: Pág. 112-122 (pdf)

Este trabalho é uma análise das relações entre os Estados Unidos e o Brasil durante o governo Lula. Mais especificamente, investigamos como a relação foi vista pelas lentes do imperialismo norte-americano, o que fizemos a partir da análise dos 2.866 telegramas enviados pela Embaixada e Consulados estadunidenses no Brasil para o Departamento de Estado em Washington. Os documentos foram vazados em 2010 por Chelsea Manning e publicados pela WikiLeaks, que organizou as fontes na “Biblioteca Pública da Diplomacia Estadunidense” (PlusD), arquivo histórico digital que nos mune, de forma inédita, com vestígios da ação recente dos Estados Unidos no Brasil (oficialmente, os telegramas liberados pelo National Archives vão até, no máximo, 1980).
O objetivo central desta pesquisa foi, além de analisar como a diplomacia norte-americana viu o Brasil de Lula, investigar como esses/as agentes formularam e operacionalizaram táticas e estratégias para promover os interesses do capitalismo estadunidense no Brasil. Percebemos como a Embaixada agiu tendo como estratégia desestabilizar setores do governo brasileiro que consideravam mais hostis aos interesses norte-americanos, como o Ministério das Relações Exteriores (MRE – Itamaraty), operando com a tática de explorar as fissuras internas entre setores divergentes do governo. Nossa investigação revelou como a Embaixada teceu, em conjunto com organizações empresariais norte-americanas e brasileiras, uma ampla rede de influência sobre agentes do governo brasileiro.
Após uma discussão sobre os aspectos metodológicos da análise de fontes caracterizadas por serem documentos digitais (1.1), do tempo presente (1.2) e diplomáticos (1.3) e uma reflexão teórica sobre o capital-imperialismo (2.1) e sobre a inserção da burguesia brasileira na sua dinâmica (2.2), analisamos como a Embaixada viu as políticas do Brasil durante o governo lula e como agiu em relação a essas políticas nos assuntos das esferas política (3), militar (4) e econômica (5) da relação bilateral. No capítulo sobre as estratégias na esfera política, após discutir como o Departamento de Estado viu o Itamaraty (3.1), analisamos a atuação da Embaixada para a contenção e engajamento do projeto de integração regional e projeção global do Brasil, focando nas questões das negociações da ALCA e da aproximação do Brasil com a Venezuela (cenário regional – 3.2) e das negociações na OMC e da aproximação do Brasil com a China (cenário global – 3.3). O tema do capítulo 4 são as relações militares, especificamente como a Embaixada atuou em relação à Estratégia Nacional de Defesa (END) do Brasil e seus desdobramentos nas questões relativas à Central de Lançamentos de Alcântara (4.1), no monitoramento da Amazônia (4.2), no programa do submarino nuclear (4.3) e no projeto FX-2 para a compra da nova geração de caças do Brasil – leilão que a Boeing disputava e agia com o suporte da Embaixada para ser a escolhida (4.4). E, no capítulo 5, analisamos o suporte da Embaixada e do Consulado no Rio de Janeiro às petrolíferas estadunidenses (em especial à Chevron e Exxon) que tinham interesse em explorar o petróleo do pré-sal – especificamente o lobby para derrubar a lei que dava prioridade à Petrobras na exploração.
Concluímos que, na visão da Embaixada e dos Consulados, a política do governo Lula contribuiu para o aprofundamento dos tensionamentos históricos da relação bilateral, especialmente em relação ao aprofundamento da integração regional e das coalizões sul-sul, ao projeto de desenvolvimento militar tecnologicamente independente dos EUA e à prioridade concedida à Petrobras para a exploração do petróleo do pré-sal. Esse aprofundamento das tensões não foi resultado de políticas anti-imperialistas ou mesmo de uma política externa independente dos governos petistas, e sim consequência das rivalidades decorrentes da inserção do Brasil na dinâmica capital-imperialista. No epílogo, argumentamos que esses atritos levaram os EUA a mobilizar suas táticas de regime change (7.1, 7.2 e 7.3) para derrubar o governo Dilma, treinando e dando suporte aos agentes da Lava Jato por meio do Projeto Pontes da Embaixada (7.4) e aos militantes do MBL através do think tank Atlas Network (7.5), sendo a Lava Jato e o MBL os dois principais movimentos que causaram a queda de Dilma.

Der amerikanische Think Thank STRATFOR wird seit Jahren von den Medien "Die Schatten-CIA" genannt. Sie galten als Quelle des Bösen und als eine Art krimineller Tochter der Central Intelligence Agency. Gleichzeitig galten STRATFORs Analysen als lachhaft, inhaltsschwach und ohne Aussagekraft. In dieser Forschungsarbeit wurden die von WikiLeaks und den Medien gegen STRATFOR vorgebrachten Beweise gesichtet, geprüft und bewertet.

The existing literature on the recent global wave of social protest ranges from theories that regard new media as ‘game-changers’, to those that stress the centrality of global communication networks or of online/offline articulations in the occupied squares, to those that seek explanations not in new media but in the protracted crisis of financial capitalism. This article proposes an alternative theory of the new protest movements centred on the growing convergence of the global movement for digital freedom with local forms of social unrest. Eschewing vague references to undifferentiated ‘digital natives’ or young indignants as the driving force behind the protests, the proposed theory highlights the importance of a global techno-libertarian vanguard led by three types of digital freedom specialist, namely hackers, lawyers and journalists. In some national contexts but not others, these politicised technology ‘nerds’ succeeded in joining forces with a heterogeneous front made up of both tech and non-tech specialists (artists, designers, social activists, intellectuals, teachers, students, etc.), blending their techno-libertarianism with popular demands for freedom and social justice. The proposed term for this novel formula is 3MP (3 techno-libertarian types + an activist miscellany + the general population). The empirical evidence for this theory is drawn from my anthropological research among Spain’s indignados as well as from the secondary comparative literature both from countries where the powerful 3MP convergence took place (e.g. Iceland, Tunisia, the US, Mexico) and from those where it failed to do so (e.g. the Netherlands).

This paper revisits the feud between Fatah and Hamas, after Fatah lost the legislative elections to Hamas on 25 January 2006. Using the unprecedented disclosure of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, Palestinian negotiating documents disclosed by Al-Jazeera, and a leaked UN report to The Guardian newspaper in London, this paper argues that the rout of Fatah from the Gaza Strip in June 2007 was the result of economic and diplomatic pressures on the national unity government that was formed after the Mecca accord in February 2007. These pressures on the national unity government were heightened by misunderstandings between Fatah and Hamas amidst disagreements over a security plan that was exacerbated by rumors of an alleged coup plot that appears to have been deliberately stoked.

The main task of this paper is to analyze the online collective known as Anonymous as a case study using the theoretical framework of traditional social movement studies. I outline this framework in the literature review section of this paper as nine distinct characteristics, each pertaining to a different aspect of social movement research. My purpose in doing so is to argue that Anonymous is part of a larger new social movement, which I call the Freedom of Information movement, as well as to show how its unique characteristics which have resulted from globalization and new digital technologies are making it necessary for sociologists to update and expand upon our existing theories and concepts of social movements. Some of this work has already begun. There have been several, though not many, studies of online networks, cyberactivism, hacktivism, digital repertoires of contention, cyber diffusion, and decentralized organizational forms of online movements. Through a combination of historical and qualitative content analyses of news articles and archival materials associated with Anonymous, I am attempting to build upon and expand this new and growing paradigm concerning online social movements and digital forms of contention.

Much is spoken and written about the liberal nature of global trade and its relation to democracy and freedoms. Trade representatives of the transatlantic free trade agreement (TAFTA | TTIP) have talked about the importance of the negotiations being transparent, accountable, and participative. However, a number of leaked draft texts of other free trade agreements being negotiated by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) indicate that these promises are mostly empty. A leaked European Commission (EC) communiqué further evidences an attempt to establish a “mainstream media narrative” about the TAFTA | TTIP in order to reduce the “anxiety” of EU citizens and consumers. This article carefully analyzes the manners in which the negotiations of the TAFTA | TTIP are proving to be untransparent, lacking in participation, and unaccountable. The purpose of these analyses is not merely to present evidence that this is actually the case at hand, but also to clarify why transparency, accountability, and participation are crucial to the negotiations on transatlantic trade. Lastly, the article suggests that the TAFTA | TTIP negotiations learn from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Marrakesh Treaty, characterized as an "exemplary exercise of transparency, civil society participation, and multilateral cooperation".

If the contents of this book are true, there can be no doubt about the meaning of life. Understanding the meaning of life is the human quest and forms a foundation for psychological well-being. The purpose of religious and philosophical systems is to provide or explore a comprehensive meaning of life including values and beliefs often taken for granted by socialized individuals. A clearer understanding of these values and beliefs, and assisting individuals to engage in this process of clarification, can help to form a foundation for mental health and can be accurately described as Meaning Therapy. The presentation given here is intended to introduce the values and beliefs given by Jesus of Nazareth, and his earliest followers, who is arguably the most influential Meaning Therapist in human history. Simply reading this content in its entirety (and related links), will define your positive identity and positive feelings about yourself and others if you choose. The results include hope for the future, values for healthy living, and support to face challenges and losses common to humanity.

As a result of Wikileaks' cooperation with traditional media, the line between journalism and activism was blurred and investigative journalism was encouraged. Robert Rosenthal, who leads the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR), said about his project: "you can point people to information, guide people to take action… Getting people to come together around problems is something the media can do more and more." (The Economist) Examples of activist groups involved with Wikileaks would be hackers, Internet users and free speech advocates. The groups called Anonymous and Operation Payback tried to defend Wikileaks by attacking its opponents. They carried a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and made the targeted websites (Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Postfinance) temporarily unavailable. Nonetheless, some journalists argue, "DDoS may lead to a crackdown on Internet freedom, as governments seek to establish tighter control over cyberspace" (Slate). Some called the attacks to be vandalism and civil disobedience. After the attacks, Twitter and Facebook suspended the Anonymous accounts. Another example of activism related to Wikileaks would be hundreds of mirror websites that started to appear on the Internet after the original Wikileaks websites was taken down.

El caso de Julian Assange es paradigmático y contemporáneo a nuestros días producto del escándalo político que ocasionó el actuar de Wikileaks.
Tomando como actor a Assange, proponemos un estudio de su caso a la luz del derecho internacional público considerando tres vectores rectores: primero, el asilo diplomático; segundo, la acreditación como miembro de la misión diplomática y el otorgamiento de la nacionalidad ecuatoriana; tercero, el cese de la protección y el consecuente pedido de extradición estadounidense.
Para ello, analizaremos parte de la legislación y jurisprudencia interna de cada Estado para posteriormente realizar un análisis de los instrumentos que nos brinda el derecho internacional público: tratados que regulen las materias, jurisprudencia de distintos tribunales y opinión calificada de autores.

This essay updates (to early 2019) earlier work on the WikiLeaks story in order to consider what more recent developments reveal about the theoretical promise that Assange articulated at the time of the website’s emergence. Assange has characterized secrecy as both a form and symptom of corruption, and ultimately as the foundation of a “conspiracy” of governance that states like the U.S. inflict on their subjects and the world. He advocates a non-political, vigilante form of transparency in which WikiLeaks serves as a neutral entity that will save the public and free the world with information. He predicted that corrupt political orders would fall as the threat of exposure forces the collapse of their conspiratorial communication networks. But WikiLeaks has failed not only to save the world but to save itself from politics—and in the process has itself become a bit player in the larger geo-political drama that it had hoped to disrupt. Assange’s theory of information disclosure, as well as his assumptions about the state and governing institutions, have proven far too descriptively and normatively simple. More prominent, less radical theories of transparency should take note of these failures to the extent that they share many of his assumptions.

The Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden are among the most topical whistleblowing cases where journalists got involved to publish articles based on leaked information. On occasion of these major leaks, strategies of circulation restrictions were activated in order to stop the dissemination of the leaked material. In the Pentagon Papers case, The New York Times first published the material and received a restraining order to stop the publication (Diamond 1993); WikiLeaks was targeted with digital DDoS attacks aimed at putting it offline. In the case of Edward Snowden, The Guardian was instead forced to physically destroy hard drives where leaked documents were allegedly stored (Greenwald 2014a). This paper analyses the evolution of content circulation restriction strategies and their effectiveness in whistleblowing cases by means of the three aforementioned case studies, focusing on the material nature of the leaked documents. The analysis focuses on issues of digital materialization, content circulation and journalism, contributing to the debate on these topics in STS.

Caracteres es una revista académica interdisciplinar y plurilingüe orientada al análisis crí7co de la cultura, el pensamiento y la sociedad de la esfera digital. Esta publicación prestará especial atención a las colaboraciones que aporten nuevas perspec7vas sobre los ámbitos de estudio que cubre, dentro del espacio de las Humanidades Digitales. Puede consultar las normas de publicación en la web.

El anuario aborda la crisis financiera internacional y algunas alternativas en el marco de Naciones Unidas. Se analiza el papel de Wikileaks en una nueva era de la información y los límites y potencidades que presentan los índices de la paz y el desarrollo. Se plantea el papel de los ejércitos en el siglo XXI y se explican los obtáculos que se presentan para lograr una Convención para la prohibición de las armas nucleares.

Dentro de las perspectivas regionales, el anuario aborda el conflicto del Sáhara y las revoluciones en el mundo árabe. También se analiza China y los derechos humanos y el debate sobre soberanía y regionalismo en América Latina.

This thesis investigates the relationships between surveillance, acts of resistance to surveillance and their respective roles in the contemporary social order.  The context for this investigation is the contemporary ‘information society’.  This is characterised by globally networked information and communication technologies, and is represented most plainly by one medium in particular: the Internet.  The Internet has historically been a contested domain; it represents, for some, the cornerstone of civil liberties yet at the same time it is highly regulated and susceptible to control.  The significant social, cultural, economic and political impacts of the Internet include the proliferation of techniques of digital surveillance.  However, while the Internet has facilitated the growth of these practices, it has also created new opportunities for resistance to surveillance.  By attending to the social dynamics and mechanics of resistance, we can generate more nuanced and subtle understandings of the ways in which social control is being performed.
A framework of nodal governance steers this research.  Consequently, this study locates these dynamics within three specific sites: online civil society, the regulatory process and the media.  These cases demonstrate how a range of social actors, across a variety of settings, are implicated in the dynamics of digital surveillance and resistance.  An innovative, multi-strategy approach to the fieldwork, including computational social science methods, captures these emergent dynamics as they are played out.  The analysis of the data is guided by a theoretical preoccupation with control that serves to illustrate its plural and fluid character. Central to this are social and technological networks as forms of organisation and communication that facilitate surveillance and resistance.  The thesis concludes that contemporary social control is an inherently socio-technical process, shaped primarily by dynamics of digital surveillance and resistance.

Whether it is smart (as in “smart bombs” or “smart power”), involves stealth (“stealth technology” like the B-2 bomber, or “leading from behind” as in the US-led NATO war on Libya), uses “leverage”, employs “force multipliers,” or engages in “full-spectrum operations,” the political and military establishment of the US has produced a battery of terms having an aura of rationality and science. Added to the physics of dominance produced in rhetoric about “force-multipliers,” there is a geometry of war (“asymmetric warfare” and “three-dimensional warfare”) and even a quasi-biology of war (“hybrid wars”). Power is described by military leaders using concepts of time, energy, mass, and velocity. Just as the US Department of State (DoS) announces “smart, effective American leadership” (DoS, 2010, p. 14), so does the US Army proclaim “the science of control” (US Army, 2008a, p. 6-1). It is fitting then that the new US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, is someone who received a PhD in physics. What lies behind the scientific-sounding certitude is both a deep anxiety about the increasingly precarious global grasp of the US, and a signal that many other nations will face greater peril as the US leans more than ever on social and cultural forces internal to those nations in order to advance its political and corporate interests...

This paper investigates the role of ‘truth’ as an object of contention within organizations, with specific reference to the ‘politics of truth’ in the WikiLeaks case. For an empirical illus- tration of a ‘truth game’ this paper draws on varied accounts of the WikiLeaks whistleblow- ing website. The paper shows how different ‘truth games’ are mobilised by different organi- zational actors engaged in a politics of truth. The paper demonstrates the existence of differ- ent truth games at work in the WikiLeaks case. It shows WikiLeaks’ profound challenge to hegemonic games of truth in terms of a ‘networked parhessia’, which entails a radical trans- formation of the process of truth telling in support of whistleblowers and in pursuit of an ex- plicitly emancipatory, anarchist political agenda. Networked parhessia provides a new infra- structure to enable a ‘parhessia of the governed.’ This paper demonstrates how WikiLeaks is of singular importance as a case study of organizational resistance in the way it moves be- yond micropolitical acts of resistance, such as whistleblowing, towards an engagement with wider political struggles.

The present contribution maps materialist advances in media studies. Based on the assumption that matter and materiality constitute significant aspects of communication processes and practices, I introduce four fields of inquiry – technology, political economy and labour, the body, and ecology – and argue that these perspectives enable more comprehensive understandings of the implications of contemporary, technologically afforded forms of interaction. The article shows how each perspective can balance apologetic and apocalyptic approaches to the impact of, in particular, digital technologies, before it demonstrates the applicability of an integrated framework with reference to the techno-politics of NSA surveillance and the counter-practices of WikiLeaks. Acknowledgement: I would like to express my gratitude to Christian Fuchs and two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and valuable suggestions.

This article explores Twitter and online forum discussions of WikiLeaks' November 2009 leak of 9/11 pager messages, placing them in the context of ongoing debates about the meaning of 9/11, about online privacy, and about the presentation of online information. I argue that the real-time online response to this leak was articulated according to five primary interpretive frames: an affective frame characterised by a purely emotional response to the messages; a privacy frame which focused on the legal and moral implications of violating the privacy of pagers users; a history frame which saw the messages primarily as an online historical archive; a data frame which focused on the messages as a data set to be aggregated and visualised; and a conspiracy frame which saw them as potential evidence of a 9/11 cover-up. This polysemic response to the 9/11pager messages, I suggest, stems partly from the way in which 9/11 has been inscribed into cultural memory. At the same time, the response also foreshadows the more recent interpretive conflicts over WikiLeaks' releases that have led media figures, activists, and scholars to question the effectiveness of the WikiLeaks' project of provoking reform through the release of classified or suppressed data.

The coverage of Wikileaks' huge amounts of leaked data was a challenge for newspapers -they had to figure out how to get stories out of extensive and complex data sets and how to present their findings to readers. The result significantly differs from traditional news reporting; including illustrations, interactive web applications and reading instructions to make the material accessible. This style of news reporting is called datadriven journalism. The international interest in the leaks combined with collaborative work between newspapers from different countries made it a new trend in current journalism. A key lesson from working with this kind of material is that data collection is essential for the effectiveness of the used techniques. If journalists would adapt this insight to their own, internal data collection process, this form of news reporting could be used on a large scale and be much more common. The coverage of Wikileaks' might give a glimpse of how journalism will look like in the future.

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field of Information Ethics is both unattainable and unwarranted. The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a worldview remains constantly in flux due to, what Luciano Floridi terms, ‘philosophical naturalism’. As such, a broadening understanding of the field will only serve to further collapse categorization. The following paper will outline, using a discourse analysis methodology, how the nature of the field of Information Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily defy classification. The assumptions behind the current classifications of the field will be questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception of the field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Floridi, this paper will explicate how any such attempt to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always remain incomplete.