Wikileaks has posted a mysterious file in their Afghan War Diary leak. The file, called Insurance, is larger than any other part of the leak and is encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption. Cryptome and others have speculated that they posted this hoping it would get well-distributed and that in the event that they are attacked by the military, justice department, or other foes in retaliation for their recent leaks, they could release the passphrase. Presumably, this file contains something important.

Please download and seed the torrent for this file. We need to get this file as widely distributed as possible in the event that using this insurance becomes necessary for Wikileaks. For those who use magnet links (Gnutella and BitTorrent), the magnet link is:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:76a36f1d11c72eb5663eeb4cf31e351321efa3a3&dn=insurance.aes256&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.thepiratebay.org%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%2Fannounce

If you want to download it straight from a torrent site, the Pirate Bay has a torrent at:
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance

As many of you know, Bradley Manning has been charged with releasing the classified video Collateral Murder that brought the war home to millions. He is also suspected in other leaks and needs our urgent assistance. As the hacker community, we have an obligation to defend those who have been accused of fighting for the freedom of information. You may write Bradley at the following address:

Update: This address has been removed as it is no longer valid. For updates, see freebradley.org

Please note that ALL mail is read by guards and that ANY statement made by you, whether solicited or not, can hurt him. Be careful what you write and remember he is ALLEGED to have leaked the video. No staples, weapons, money, glitter pens, or anything else that will get him thrown further into the hole.

If you're sitting on a pile of cash, now is the time to donate.

by Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf) analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries continue to fight in Afghanistan. The Report celebrates the fact that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" -- and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among their citizenry: "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters," proclaims the title of one section.

But the Report also cites the "fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan" and worries that -- particularly if the "bloody summer in Afghanistan" that many predict takes place -- what happened to the Dutch will spread as a result of the "fragility of European support" for the war. As the truly creepy Report title puts it, the CIA's concern is: "Why Counting on Apathy May Not Be Enough":

Read more

It appears that the US Government has stepped up their harassment of people associated with Wikileaks. According to their twitter feed [1], people related to Wikileaks have been detained and followed using obvious surveillance. One detainment lasted 22 hours and resulted in the seizure of a computer. Unlike covert surveillance, obvious surveillance exists mainly for the purpose of harassment. One interesting tweet is "We have been shown secret photos of our production meetings and been asked specific questions during detention related to the airstrike." This harassment is probably in response to the documents that will be released on April 5th documenting a pentagon murder coverup and the legislative proposal that could turn Iceland into a safe-haven for journalists. Please donate to Wikileaks or spread around their documents in solidarity.

1. http://www.twitter.com/wikileaks

Update: Wikileaks has posted an editorial on their site documenting their harassment

Fri Mar 26 08:44:46 UTC 2010

Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from a police raid in Germany over an Australian censorship list, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your interest to...".

Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.

But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.

The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.

I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.

The possible triggers:

* our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
* our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
* our release of a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik reporting on contact between the U.S. and the U.K. over billions of euros in claimed loan guarantees.
* pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".

We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr. What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will see, other events are clear.

U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had contact with Embassay staff, after.

On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen--on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records for the flght concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having any luggage.

Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.

On Monday 22, March, at approximately 8.30pm, a WikiLeaks volunteer, a minor, was detained by Icelandic police on a wholly insignificant matter. Police then took the opportunity to hold the youth over night, without charge--a highly unusual act in Iceland. The next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant "Icelandic Fish & Chips", where a WikiLeaks production meeting took place on Wednesday March 17--the day before individuals operating under the name of the U.S. State Department boarded my flight to Copenhagen.

Our production meeting used a discreet, closed, backroom, because the was a concealed, scandalous, U.S. military video showing civilian kills by U.S. pilots. During the interrogation, a specific reference was made by police to the video---which could not have been understood from that day's exterior surveillance alone. Another specific reference was made to "important", but unnamed Icelandic figures. References were also made to the names of two senior journalists at the production meeting.

Who are the Icelandic security services loyal to in their values? The new government of April 2009, the old pro-Iraq war government of the Independence party, or perhaps to their personal relationships with peers from another country who have them on a permanment intelligence information drip?

Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States, obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell publicity of the CIA's activities.

Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to know who they are doing it for.

Our plans to release the video on April 5 proceed.

We have asked relevant authorities in the Unites States and Iceland to explain. If these countries are to be treated as legitmate states, they need to start obeying the rule of law. Now.

—Julian Assange (editor@wikileaks.org)

Update Jan 25 2010: Wikileaks is reporting that their paypal account has been re-enabled. Even so, PayPal has clearly drawn the line in the sand by attacking Wikileaks."Paypal has freed up our assets again -- thank you all for your support and solidarity. There is power in a union!"

Wikileaks is reporting that their paypal account has been frozen without cause for the second time. That means no money in, no money out, and paypal sitting on a cache of an unknown amount of money belongs to Wikileaks. Because PayPal is not legally considered a bank by US authorities, they can freeze accounts without cause. This only goes to further prove that we need to build infrastructures that we have control over. Letters of support encouraged to support{at}paypal.com. You can also email abuse{at}paypal.com as clearly this is somebody abusing the account freezing process.

This being said please donate to Wikileaks. They do not have enough money to cover their yearly budget of $600,000 and will continue to be offline until they have it. Considering the amount of material they've released and the way they've changed the playing field of journalism, this budget is extremely small. They have been down for almost all of January and need our help!

Theodore Reppe, a well known net activist and crypto-anarchist was charged with posting false information on the internet and causing 38 euros in damages. As many of you may remember, he had his house raided earlier which was likely due to his name being on the wikileaks.de domain name. He also runs a Tor exit node, allowing users (and leakers) to access the internet anonymously. Somebody used his exit node to do something that was illegal in Germany however the courts found that he was not guilty of it as clearly he did not commit the act despite it being tracked to his IP address.

The website of Australia's official censorship board was hacked and taken offline today in protest of proposed mandatory ISP-level censorship of websites. This is shortly after WIKILEAKS released the secret proposed censorship list and a German resident's house was raided for having his name in the wikileaks.de WHOIS data. The hack(tivist)er added this text to the center of the page: "This site contains the information about the boards that have the right to CONTROL YOUR FREEDOMZ. This classification board has the right to not just classify content (the name is an ELABORATE TRICK), but also the right to DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISN'T APPROPRIATE and BAN CONTENT FROM THE PUBLIC. We part of an ELABORATE DECEPTION from CHINA to CONTROL AND SHEEPIFY the NATION, to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. All opposers must HATE CHILDREN and therefore must be KILLED WITH A LARGE MELONS during the PROSECUTION PARTIES IN SEPTEMBER. Come join our ALIEN SPACE PARTY. As of the writing of this article, the hacked website is still showing up as unavailable.