wikileaks

For the first time today, U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning explained publicly why he handed hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks, telling a crowded military courtroom in Ft. Meade, Md., that he had hoped to "spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy."

Manning said that his decision to leak the files stemmed from increasing concern about the U.S. military's actions in the Middle East, and that his conscience led him to conclude the documents must be made public. After approaching The New York Times and The Washington Post, but finding … Read more

The White House warned today of the threat posed by WikiLeaks, LulzSec, and other "hacktivist" groups that have the ability to target U.S. companies and expropriate confidential data.

A new administration-wide strategy (PDF) disclosed at a high-profile event in Washington that included Attorney General Eric Holder says the theft of trade secrets is on the rise and predicts such theft will undermine U.S. national security unless halted.

It's a "steadily increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests," Holder said at the event, which also featured officials from the State Department … Read more

Credit card companies that blocked WikiLeaks a couple of years ago didn't do anything wrong, the European Union's European Commission said today.

Last year, donation collection gateway DataCell complained to the commission that it was unfair for MasterCard Europe, Visa Europe, and American Express to have blocked donations to WikiLeaks. DataCell provided payment gateway services to WikiLeaks, accepting donations for the controversial organization. It was able to facilitate those transactions by operating its datacenter in Iceland -- away from legal prying eyes.

In its complaint, which it filed in July 2011, DataCell said that the credit card companies … Read more

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier accused of providing WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of classified documents, has offered to plead guilty. Sort of.

During a pre-trial hearing in military court today, Manning's attorney, David Coombs, proposed a partial guilty plea covering a subset of the slew of criminal charges that the U.S. Army has lodged against him.

"Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," Coombs wrote on his blog this evening. "The court will consider whether this is a permissible … Read more

Technology topics can mark a rare bipartisan area of political agreement: Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama say they would make cybersecurity a priority, and both like to talk up government funding of basic research.

If you look a bit more closely, however, differences emerge. They're perhaps most marked over federal regulation, where the two major parties have long-standing disagreements, but also exist on topics like WikiLeaks, copyright legislation, and whether to levy a new tax on broadband providers.

Keep reading for CNET's 2012 Tech Voters' Guide, in which we highlight where the four candidates -- we've … Read more

Anonymous is typically a big fan of Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, but earlier today, several of its members sent out tweets calling for people to stop donating to the site until further notice.

A Twitter tit-for-tat ensued and finally ended in what looks like a success for Anonymous.

What got the online hacker group all riled up was an overlay donation page that was first seen when accessing Wikileaks' Global Intelligence Files, according to The Next Web. These files contain more than five million emails from the international intelligence company Stratfor.

Anonymous publicly labeled the donation page a &… Read more

A military appeals court will be asked tomorrow to decloak the prosecution of Bradley Manning, an Army private accused of handing thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks.

Prosecutors have insisted on intense secrecy in the case. No transcripts of the legal proceedings have been published. No court orders have been disclosed. To date, even the government's written legal arguments remain off-limits to the public.

So far, at least, military courts have been perfectly happy to accede to those requests in Manning's court martial. A trial judge, Denise Lind, rejected requests for access to the records, as did the … Read more

The Swedish police seem to be going straight to the source in their battle against copyright infringement. According to Forbes, the country's authorities raided the Stolckholm-based Web host PRQ, which is known for hosting some of the most popular outlaw sites on the Internet, including the Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, the North America Man-Boy Love Association, Pedophile.se, and the Chechen rebel site Kavkaz Central.

It's unclear why police raided PRQ, but its owner Mikael Viborg told the Swedish news outlet Nyheter24 that he believes the investigation had to do with intellectual property violations, according to TorrentFreak. Viborg also … Read more

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange lashed out at the U.S. government today, saying it took "arbitrary and excessive action" against the document-leaking Web site and a U.S. soldier suspected of being its source of classified files.

"It is time for the U.S. to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, to cease its persecution of our people, and to cease its persecution of our alleged sources," Assange said during an event convened by Ecuador to coincide with a a United Nations diplomatic summit this week.

Assange, who remains holed up in Ecuador's London embassy in … Read more