wikileaks

Move over Jay Leno. Watch out David Letterman. The next person getting his own talk show is none other than WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Touting the new series on its Web site yesterday, WikiLeaks proclaimed that the show would feature in-depth conversations between Assange and "key political players, thinkers, and revolutionaries from around the world" all focusing on the theme of "the world tomorrow."

Calling Assange "a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression," the WikiLeaks press release dubbed him uniquely qualified to conduct global discussions on how to … Read more

Bradley Manning's attorney has suggested that the hundreds of megabytes of U.S. government data his client allegedly handed to WikiLeaks didn't really harm national security after all.

A new document filed in Manning's criminal case provides an early glimpse at the defense's legal strategy in advance of a preliminary hearing on December 16.

The filing, which defense attorney David Coombs made public today, requests a copy of a White House "report detailing the rather benign nature of the leaks and the lack of any real damage to national security" caused by WikiLeaks. It … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department will be allowed access to WikiLeaks-related Twitter accounts, including information about what Internet and e-mail addresses are associated with them, a federal district judge ruled today.

The 60-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady in Virginia represents a second victory for the Department of Justice, which sought the court order as part of a grand jury probe that appears to be investigating whether WikiLeaks principals including editor Julian Assange violated American criminal laws.

"The Twitter order did not violate the Constitution," O'Grady concluded. In addition, he said, there was … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice has expanded its investigation of WikiLeaks-related accounts to encompass Google and Internet provider Sonic.net.

Both companies received secret court orders directing them to turn over information from the e-mail account of Jacob Appelbaum, a hacker and human rights activist who has been affiliated with WikiLeaks, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

CNET has learned that the secret court order is what's called a 2703(d) order. It's not as privacy-protective as a traditional search warrant, and some courts have ruled that such orders are unconstitutional when used to read a suspect'… Read more

A newly unearthed memo posted on Wikleaks details Apple's burgeoning efforts to combat counterfeit goods in China and elsewhere, something the document says the electronics giant began in earnest just three years ago.

The unclassified memo, picked up by CNN's Mark Millian this morning, originates from the U.S. embassy in Beijing and is dated September 2008.

In it, the embassy provides an update on Apple's plans to deal with the growing number of counterfeit versions of its products in the region, including hiring former Pfizer employees Don Shruhan and John Theriault to manage the company's … Read more

Subscribers have just a couple days before Netflix forces them into higher priced plans, iTunes Match gets released to developers, and Windows 8's Explorer window gets the ribbon from Office.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

The Library of Congress says it was not responsible for categorizing a WikiLeaks-related book as "extremist" and that it has decided to removed that label.

A spokesman for the library told CNET today that it adopted that classification in its catalog automatically after another major library system--apparently the National Library of Australia--had applied it to a recent book about the document-leaking Web site. Librarians call this practice "copy cataloging."

"Copy-cataloging was the method used for the book in question," Library of Congress spokesman John Sayers said. "With the huge quantity of material it … Read more

Editor's note: Please see update note at the end of this post, which includes a statement from Visa saying it has not reinstated DataCell.

WikiLeaks' financial blockade appears to have been lifted, at least temporarily.

Visa and MasterCard, which cut off payments to the secret-sharing site in December after it published hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. government documents, may have reversed course. CNET was the first to report that MasterCard pulled the plug.

Iceland-based DataCell, which handles WikiLeaks payments, said today that it is now able to process Visa and MasterCard payments again. "Today we have … Read more

New chat logs provide a detailed look at what may have motivated hacker-turned-Army enlistee Bradley Manning to allegedly turn over hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to WikiLeaks.

The logs, released by New York magazine, show that Manning was becoming frustrated with the military's daily regimens and came to treasure his weekends off, especially the time he could spend with then-boyfriend Tyler Watkins. He maintained a sense of humor, though, and believed the Army was a "diverse place" where even a self-described "gay, libertarian, atheist, computer nerd" like himself could find a home.

The online … Read more