In association with the International Commission of Jurists

National Security Law

03 Dec

The Library of Congress is preventing its employees or visitors using its wireless network from accessing WikiLeaks.  It released the following explanation: The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification...

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03 Dec

As one of WikiLeaks' defenders, I feel obligated to respond to Roger's post.  I have two major disagreements with it.  First, I think it significantly overstates the harm caused by WikiLeaks, although it would be equally erroneous to claim that WikiLeaks has caused no harm whatsoever.  Second -- and perhaps more important -- it completely ignores the the benefits of...

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03 Dec

One of the underlying issues in the Wikileaks controversy is whether Julian Assange is truly that harmful. His defenders, and even some of his critics, maintain that Assange is not that dangerous. I disagree. Diplomacy. Diplomacy will be immeasurably more difficult if what government officials say in secret to one another can never be trusted to remain secret. ...

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02 Dec

So Business Week reports, noting that Nigeria intends to file a request for a Red Notice with Interpol: Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said. Indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court...

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02 Dec

The following is a guest-post by Steve Vladeck, Professor of Law at American University.  Our thanks to him for contributing it. The Espionage Act, the Documents/Information Distinction, and the Press I’ve been following (with great interest) the exchange between Roger, Kevin, and those who have commented on their posts concerning Julian Assange, the Espionage Act, and the broader question of...

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01 Dec

I had a colleague ask an interesting question, "If Julian Assange is indicted and detained in London, would the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty authorize extradition to the United States?" There's not an easy answer. The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty requires "double-criminality"--the offense must be punishable in both States. Not surprisingly, the United Kingdom imposes criminal penalties for disclosing state...

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30 Nov

That's the excellent question asked by Ian, one of the commenters on Roger's recent post.  The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Le Monde, and El Pais -- all are just as guilty of violating the Espionage Act as WikiLeaks.  There is no "we redacted some of the documents" defense in the Act, and prosecuting a news organization after...

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29 Nov

Harold Koh has warned Wikileaks of the dire consequences to the United States resulting from the publication of over 250,000 classified documents. But I doubt that Julian Assange and Wikileaks cares much about the damage done to our nation from this breach. What they presumably do care about is criminal prosecution. As Marc Thiessen at the Washington...

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22 Nov

So thinks James P. Rubin in an Op-Ed in today's NY Times.  His argument comes in two parts.  First, a minority of the Senate plays an obstructionist role, which means that the United States simply doesn't join important treaties:  For much of the world, treaty ratification is a simple matter. In parliamentary systems like those in Britain and France, ratification is virtually automatic,...

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18 Nov

I don't have time to respond to the Ghailani verdict, which Julian notes below.  I would simply direct readers to Ben Wittes' superb post at Lawfare, in which he criticizes those who view the verdict as a vindication of the military commissions.  Here's a snippet: Second, it really is not clear that prosecutors would have fared better in a military...

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11 Nov

This is a wild tale of self-execution (which, I'm fairly sure, is the first time anyone has used the adjective "wild" to describe the self-execution concept).  For years, the Bush Administration sought to get the U.S. Congress to amend the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) to ease licensing restrictions on arms exports to two of the United States' closest allies -- the...

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