Friday 23 May 2014, 05:00 GMT
The National Security Agency has been recording and storing
nearly all the domestic (and international) phone calls from two or more
target countries as of 2013. Both the Washington Post and The Intercept
(based in the US and published by eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar) have
censored the name of one of the victim states, which the latter
publication refers to as country "X".
Both the Washington Post and The Intercept stated that they had
censored the name of the victim country at the request of the US
government. Such censorship strips a nation of its right to
self-determination on a matter which affects its whole population. An
ongoing crime of mass espionage is being committed against the victim
state and its population. By denying an entire population the knowledge
of its own victimisation, this act of censorship denies each individual
in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in
international courts, or elsewhere. Pre-notification to the perpetrating
authorities also permits the erasure of evidence which could be used in
a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other
investigations.
We know from previous reporting that the National Security Agency’s
mass interception system is a key component in the United States’ drone
targeting program. The US drone targeting program has killed thousands
of people and hundreds of women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Yemen and Somalia in violation of international law. The censorship of a
victim state’s identity directly assists the killing of innocent
people.
Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how,
WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is
Afghanistan. This can also be independently verified through forensic
scrutiny of imperfectly applied censorship on related documents released
to date and correlations with other NSA programs (see http://freesnowden.is).
We do not believe it is the place of media to "aid and abet" a state
in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a
population.
Consequently WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is Afghanistan.
The Intercept stated that the US government asserted that the
publication of this name might lead to a ’rise in violence’. Such claims
were also used by the administration of Barack Obama to refuse to
release further photos of torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
While one might seriously question the moral exceptionalism which
would deny another nation and its people the right to react to a mass
rights infringement in a manner of its own choosing, such claims of risk
by the US government have in any event consistently fallen short.
WikiLeaks has years of experience with such false or overstated
claims made by US officials in their attempts to delay or deny
publication.
In 2010, the US State Department falsely claimed that WikiLeaks’
release of diplomatic cables would "place at risk the lives of countless
innocent individuals." The Pentagon also repeatedly made such false
claims.
To this day we are not aware of any evidence provided by any
government agency that any of our eight million publications have
resulted in harm to life.
In 2013 US officials admitted under oath that they had been unable to
find any such evidence. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted
that the US government’s reaction to our publications had been
"significantly overwrought".
The United States government’s claims to the media lack credibility.
Not only has it not bothered to contact WikiLeaks pre-publication in
this matter, it has been aware of the material obtained by Edward
Snowden for almost a year.
Almost every office in Washington DC has
specifically been aware of the material relating to the censored victim
country since at least March 18, 2014, when the Washington Post issued a
front page story on the subject (with the identity of Afghanistan
censored).
It is the US government’s "responsibility" to protect its
assets. It has had an egregious amount of time to do so. Given the above
we believe any ongoing perceived risks to be fanciful or willfully
embraced by the US goverment. But we also reject the implication that it
is the role of the international press to protect US assets from arrest
for the mass infringement of the rights of another nation’s people.
Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
Editor in Chief
Source: https://wikileaks.org
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