Here, the author Pitasanna Shanmugathas a graduate from Vermont Law looks at the reprisals faced by prominent whistleblowers in the wake of Julian Assange’s release, and the threat whistleblower prosecutions raise to media freedom and the principles of transparency and accountability in government… The release of Julian Assange after years of legal battles highlights the [...]
Search Results for: Edward Snowden
Marjorie Cohn is a professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. She has authored publications arguing against the legality of the 2003 US military intervention in Iraq as well as the US-led NATO interventions into Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia. Professor Cohn is also a national board member of Assange [...]
White House advisory board report calls for reforms to intelligence gathering procedures
The US President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) released a report Monday in support of the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) while also recommending restrictions to prevent abuse. Section 702 is a controversial provision of FISA that allows for “the targeting of persons reasonably believed to be located outside the [...]
Where Are They Now? A Dispatch from JURIST's First China Correspondent, 25 Years Later
This is a dispatch from your former JURIST China correspondent, twenty-five years later. The early dispatches I sent to Hibbitts from Wuhan University roughly at the turn of the millennium when the Web was young are now so antiquated that finding one required an archival deep dive. Indeed, it was a very different time – [...]
Federal appeals court upholds dismissal of Wikimedia lawsuit against NSA
The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Wednesday the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Wikimedia Foundation against the National Security Agency (NSA) for intercepting and searching international internet communications. The NSA uses Upstream, a surveillance program authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. NSA’s use of the program was illegally leaked [...]
UN experts call for moratorium on sale of surveillance technology
A panel of human rights experts have called on the UN member states to place a moratorium on the sale of surveillance technology until there is a regulatory framework that protects human rights. In a statement released Thursday, the group of experts said they were “deeply concerned that highly sophisticated intrusive tools are being used [...]
Digital rights groups say Apple's new child protection policy weakens user privacy
Apple announced Thursday a new policy for child-safety measures on its devices, leading several digital rights organisations such as the European Digital Rights network (EDRi) and Electronic Frontier Foundation to raise concerns over the privacy and security of the company’s large global customer base. The new policy scans messages sent or received by a minor’s [...]
US obtains final judgment against Edward Snowden over book proceeds
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that the US had received a final injunction against Edward Snowden in a case over proceeds from his book. The case was first filed in 2019, and the DOJ was seeking to receive all proceeds from the publication of the book Permanent Record. The DOJ alleged that [...]
US Ninth Circuit rules mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was unlawful
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that the US government’s mass surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden seven years ago was unlawful. The ruling was handed down as part of the court’s decision in a case involving four members of the Somali diaspora who were convicted for sending or conspiring to [...]
The Annihilation of International Law and the Right to Freedom of Speech: Julian Assange
Julian Assange is an Australian hacker, famous for revealing US secrets relating to war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A whole cache of classified information was published by Assange’s organization WikiLeaks, which revealed the details of the ruthless murders of innocent civilians and the capture of hundreds of innocent civilians in the US’s Guantanamo [...]