Docs Show NSA Targeted Wikileaks, Assange Vows Legal Fight

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/02/18



'Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart,' reports The Intercept on Tuesday, 'reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.'

Docs Show NSA Targeted Wikileaks, Assange Vows Legal Fight
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 by Common Dreams

Following new revelations about the manner in which U.S. and U.K. spy agencies targeted the media outlet Wikileaks, the organization on Tuesday has announced its intention to legal action against the NSA and GCHQ in order to challenge what it calls an overt assault on journalism.

As The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher report, documents made available by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show "for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution."

The internal government documents, including slides of presentations given at an annual top secret surveillance conference between the two countries and internal agency correspondence, expose how the government targeted not only Wikileaks and its spirited leader Julian Assange, but also those people all over the world—including U.S. and British citizens—who may have accessed or viewed the public website.

As The Intercept reports: "In 2008, not long after WikiLeaks was formed, the U.S. Army prepared a report that identified the organization as an enemy, and plotted how it could be destroyed. The new documents provide a window into how the U.S. and British governments appear to have shared the view that WikiLeaks represented a serious threat, and reveal the controversial measures they were willing to take to combat it."