Citizen Media Law Center
Press Release
August 30, 2010
By Kimberley Isbell

As anyone who has been following the debate regarding the “future of journalism” knows, there have been a lot of ink (and bytes) spilled arguing over the role news aggregators are playing in the “decline” of traditional journalistic models. Rupert Murdoch has labeled the practice of news aggregation by entities like Google News “theft,” and a professor from the Wharton Business School recently called on lawmakers to amend the copyright laws to prevent aggregators from posting any portion of news stories for a full 24 hours after their initial publication.

Even the FTC has gotten in on the act, listing “Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators” as the first policy proposal in the Staff Discussion Draft recently released in connection with its workshop series on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” (To which Google had a thoughtful reply.)

But for all of the heated rhetoric blaming news aggregators for the decline of journalism, the fall of civilization and male pattern baldness, many are still left asking the question: are news aggregators violating current law?

Today, CMLP releases a white paper entitled “The Rise of the News Aggregator: Legal Implications and Best Practices” that attempts to answer that question by examining the hot news misappropriation and copyright infringement claims that are often asserted against aggregators, and to provide news aggregators with some “best practices” for making use of third-party content.

A hearty thanks goes out to the people that helped make this paper possible: Justin Silverman, for invaluable research assistance; David Ardia and Sam Bayard, for reading and critiquing numerous drafts; and the speakers from the “Saving Journalism from Itself? Hot News, Copyright Fair Use and News Aggregation” panel at our spring conference, for helping to frame and crystalize many of the issues.

You can download the white paper here.

Copyright 2010 Citizen Media Law Center     FAC Content Use Policy

The New York Times
August 31, 2010
By Jeremy W. Peters

Jeff Greene, a Florida real estate developer who lost one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched primary elections, is preparing to sue The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald for libel, claiming that articles they published cost him his bid for the United States Senate.

Mr. Greene lost the Democratic primary last week to Kendrick B. Meek, who will face Gov. Charlie Crist, an independent, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, in November.

A libel suit is a rare step for a political figure. While many candidates complain about unfair news coverage, few go as far as making their complaints a legal case. But Mr. Greene, who has deep pockets and apparently the wherewithal to pursue the case all the way to trial, has proved he is no ordinary politician.

Dogged by rumors about wild parties aboard his 145-foot yacht and about fraudulent real estate deals, Mr. Greene will seek at least $500 million in damages in part, he said, to teach the news media a lesson. “I want to send a message to every newspaper in the country: Do your homework,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “I deserve to have the record corrected, and they deserve to be punished.”

He has hired L. Lin Wood, a prominent libel lawyer who has won settlements for other public figures who claimed they were defamed by the news media, including Richard A. Jewell, the security guard cleared as a suspect in the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta. Mr. Wood said he expected to file a formal complaint in state court in Miami-Dade County on Wednesday.

At issue are two news articles written by St. Petersburg Times reporters that were printed in both The Times and The Herald, and a Times editorial urging a federal investigation into Mr. Greene’s business activities.

Neil Brown, the editor of The Times, defended the paper’s articles. “The Times’ coverage of Mr. Greene and his business transactions has been thorough and fair, and the reporting is well-documented in public records,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of The Herald, declined to comment.

In one article, The Times reported that Mr. Greene was party to a real estate deal that left 300 California families homeless and a partner of his in jail. The other left the impression that the boxer Mike Tyson, who was the best man at Mr. Greene’s wedding, used drugs while on Mr. Greene’s yacht. The paper later ran a front-page correction clarifying that Mr. Tyson said he had not used drugs on the yacht.

Even with an admission of error, a libel case can be hard to prove. Sandra S. Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, said, “Jeff Greene is going to have to prove that the articles were published with actual malice.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company       FAC Content Use Policy

First Amendment Center
August 30, 2010
By David L. Hudson Jr.

If you travel to Guam, don’t take pictures of the police on public streets. Don’t assume that there is a First Amendment right to photography. That appears to be one lesson from a recent federal district court decision that found no clearly established right to take pictures of police on public highways.

In October 2009, two Guam police officers ordered James L. Adkins out of his car after they noticed he was taking cell-phone pictures of an accident on a public street in Tamuning, Guam, a U.S. territory. The officers stopped Adkins’ car and told him he could not take pictures.

Adkins allegedly responded that “there is nothing wrong with taking pictures.” The officers then ordered him to turn over the phone. After he refused, they handcuffed him and took him to the Hagatna police station where he was booked, fingerprinted and photographed. They took his cell phone and never returned it.

Releasing Adkins after four hours, police gave him a notice to appear in court on two charges: “obstructing governmental function” and “failure to comply.” The first law says a person commits a misdemeanor if he or she “intentionally obstructs, impairs or perverts the administration of law or other governmental function by force.” The second law says, “It shall be unlawful for the operator of any motor vehicle to refuse to comply with any lawful order … of a peace officer who shall be in uniform and shall exhibit his badge or other sign of authority.”

Adkins filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging 11 different causes of action against the two officers and other defendants. One of those claims was that the officers infringed on his First Amendment rights by prohibiting him from taking pictures on public property.

The officers countered that the free-speech claim should be dismissed because the officers were entitled to qualified immunity — a doctrine that says government officials are immune from lawsuits stemming from their official duties unless they violate clearly established constitutional or statutory law.

Adkins argued in his legal papers that defendants violated his clearly established First Amendment right to take “photographs in his car on a public road.” U.S. District Judge Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood of the District of Guam ruled that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the First Amendment claim in her Aug. 24 opinion in Adkins v. Guam Police Department.

Tydingco-Gatewood cited a federal district court case from California, Chavez v. City of Oakland (N.D. Cal. June 2, 2009), in which it was determined that a newspaper photographer did not have a First Amendment right to take pictures on a public highway.

The judge acknowledged that “a few courts have held that a citizen has a First Amendment right to take such photographs, subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions.” But she noted that those cases were not in the 9th Circuit, which includes Guam.

“The limited case law hardly evokes a sense of consensus on the issue, let alone establish a First Amendment right to take photographs of an accident scene,” Tydingco-Gatewood wrote.

Copyright 2010 First Amendment Center     FAC Content Use Policy

The New York Times
August 27, 2010
By Scott Shane

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted a State Department analyst suspected of disclosing top-secret information about North Korea to Fox News, the third time the Obama administration has filed criminal charges accusing people of leaks to the news media.

The indictment, dated Aug. 19 and unsealed on Friday, named Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, 43, of McLean, Va., a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the State Department. Mr. Kim, who has worked as a high-level foreign affairs analyst for a decade for various federal agencies, is accused of disclosing the information in June 2009 and of lying to the F.B.I. in September 2009.

Mr. Kim, an American citizen, pleaded not guilty on Friday in Federal District Court before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly and was released on $100,000 bond.

A person familiar with the investigation said it involved a Fox News report on North Korea’s likely reaction to a United Nations Security Council resolution, which was then pending, that condemned its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Fox News said at the time that it was “withholding some details about the sources and methods by which American intelligence agencies learned of the North’s plans.”

The charges are part of a crackdown on disclosures of classified information to the news media under President Obama. A former contract linguist for the F.B.I. was sentenced in May to 20 months in prison for disclosing secret documents to a blogger, and a veteran National Security Agency official is awaiting trial on charges of sharing classified information with a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

In addition, the Justice Department is seeking to question a reporter for The New York Times, James Risen, about his sources for a book about the C.I.A. that describes a program devised to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

News media and civil liberties advocates have criticized the prosecutions, noting that Mr. Obama came into office pledging to insist on openness about government operations.

Administration officials have said there is no contradiction between the transparency policy and aggressively punishing those who leak secrets.

David S. Kris, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement that “the willful disclosure of classified information to those not entitled to it is a serious crime.”

But Abbe D. Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Kim, denounced the charges as an attempt to criminalize “the type of government-media exchanges that happen hundreds of times a day in Washington.” He said the charges would “destroy the career” of Mr. Kim, whom he called “a loyal civil servant and brilliant foreign policy analyst.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company   FAC Content Use Policy

The New York Times
August 25, 2010
By William Yong and Robert F. Worth

TEHRAN — In a further clampdown on Iran’s cowed political opposition, the authorities have issued a ban on any news relating to the leaders of the protest movement that arose after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year, opposition Web sites reported.

A leaked copy of a letter that has appeared on opposition Web sites orders the editors of all domestic newspapers and news agencies to refrain from publishing the names, photographs and statements of two defeated presidential candidates, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, as well as former President Mohammad Khatami, because of the “probable negative influence” this would have on the public mind. Officials from the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance did not respond to requests for comment on the letter’s authenticity.

If genuine, the letter would be the first public confirmation of such a ban, though the opposition has been largely absent from the Iranian news media for months. The government has shut down at least 10 newspapers and magazines since the presidential election in June 2009, including major reformist dailies and magazines that have been critical of the government. The publications have been accused of infractions like “printing news contrary to reality,” “disturbing public opinion” and “casting doubt on the elections.”

The presidential election led to the worst unrest in Iran since the 1979 revolution, but the protest movement has been silent for months, thanks in part to arrests, mass trials and intimidation. With their reformist foes quiet, conservative factions have been increasingly fighting among themselves; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week urged supporters and critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad to avoid public feuding. The document about the media ban, which is stamped “urgent” and “top secret,” opens with a reminder that the “fundamental responsibility” of the media should be to “create an atmosphere of calm in society” and that the decision to formally prohibit mention of the opposition leaders was prompted by the concerns of “security officials.”

“They have already made it clear indirectly that news about these figures is banned,” said Iraj Jamshidi, a veteran journalist and the editor of the recently banned newspaper Asia. “Under the current climate, no one dares to interview Mr. Moussavi or Mr. Karroubi. They want them to be forgotten.”

In addition to repressing the protest movement, the Iranian authorities have taken some conciliatory measures aimed at calming public anger. This week, a high-profile prosecutor who is thought to have been the architect of the mass trials that followed last summer’s protests was identified by victims’ families as one of three judges who had been suspended from duty.

The prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, has been known for many years as an instrument of hard-line conservatives in the persecution of journalists and political dissenters. He and two subordinates were suspended this week in connection with the arrests of dozens of students who were sent to the notorious Kahrizak detention center last summer, according to lawyers for victims’ families. Three young men held at Kahrizak were tortured and killed, including the son of a prominent conservative.

In 2003, Mr. Mortazavi was accused by members of Parliament of covering up the death of a Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, while she was in an Iranian jail. He was removed from his position as Tehran prosecutor in August 2009 after a parliamentary investigation into the Kahrizak affair, only to be reappointed as the head of a government antismuggling organization. “Mortazavi misused his powers,” said Mohammad Saleh-Nikbakht, who represents the father of Amir Javadifar, one of the young men who died in Kahrizak after being severely beaten.

The suspension of the judges paves the way for their prosecution in civil courts, where they are likely to face charges from victims and their families. Despite the move by Iran’s judiciary, some believe that the likelihood of a substantial prosecution is slim. “If we look at history there is little cause to be hopeful,” a veteran human rights lawyer, Mohammad-Hossein Aghassi, said in an interview. “They may be doing this in order to dispel accusations that Iran’s judiciary lacks independence.”

Trials of 12 prison wardens and police officers involved in the running of Kahrizak prison were held behind closed doors earlier this year. Two men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in July and nine others were given prison terms, ordered to pay “blood money” or temporarily suspended from duty after being convicted of lesser crimes.

William Yong reported from Tehran, and Robert F. Worth from Washington.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company     FAC Content Use Policy

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Commentary
August 25, 2010
By Eva Galperin

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to assist defendants in the Righthaven copyright troll lawsuits.

Righthaven, founded in March of 2010, files hundreds of copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of newspaper publishers against bloggers who make use of news content without permission.

To that end, Righthaven searches the internet for stories and parts of stories from the newspapers that they represent. Once they find content that has been re-published, Righthaven purchases the copyright to the article and sues the owner of the blog.

Just like the US Copyright Group shakedowns, and the RIAA shakedowns of the recent past, Righthaven relies on the threat of enormous statutory damages associated with the Copyright Act to scare defendants, often individual bloggers operating non-commercial websites, into a quick settlement, reportedly ranging from two to five thousand dollars.

The Righthaven lawsuits are of particular concern because they sometimes target the operators of political websites who re-publish newspaper stories, chilling political speech. Righthaven has also targeted the newspaper’s source for the very articles allegedly infringed.

If you are the target for a Righthaven lawsuit in need of representation, please contact Eva Galperin at eva@eff.org. Please understand that we have a relatively small number of very hard-working attorneys, so we do not have the resources to defend everyone who asks, no matter how deserving. However, if we cannot represent you directly, we will make every effort to put you in touch with attorneys who can.

Copyright 2010 Electronic Frontier Foundation   FAC Content Use Policy

San Bernardino Sun
August 23, 2010
By Mike Cruz

A Superior Court judge ruled that the wife of former Sheriff Gary Penrod was just a private citizen – and not a public figure – when a High Desert newspaper publisher ran articles about her counseling business during trial proceedings Monday in her multimillion- dollar libel lawsuit.

The ruling Monday from Judge Frank Gafkowski appears to favor Nancy Bohl, who filed a lawsuit in June 2000 against Valley Wide Newspapers publisher Raymond Pryke based on a series of articles he ran about Bohl’s business, The Counseling Team, and her relationship with Penrod.

The ruling and others from the judge stating that parts of two articles were “libel per se” and discussing a public concern came during lawyers’ arguments about pretrial motions in San Bernardino Superior Court.

“Just the fact that she is going out with him or married to him does not make her a public figure,” Bohl’s lawyer John Rowell argued in court.

The judge agreed. Even Bohl’s contract with San Bernardino County to provide counseling services to sheriff’s deputies was not enough to tilt the scale, according to the court.

Rowell said his client started her business, The Counseling Team, in 1985. The articles ran between June 1999 and April 2000 in Pryke’s community newspapers, such as the Hesperia Reporter and Adelanto Bulletin.

With headlines like “Sleeping with Penrod Pays Off” and “Sheriff Penrod Spies on Deputies,” the articles accused Bohl of leaking confidential details from counseling sessions to management at the sheriff’s department and using her relationship with Penrod to get a county contract.

Bohl has denied the allegations.

Gafkowski said the allegations about Bohl, her relationships and county contract erupted during a very short period of time and were not raised before publicly.

“She’s drawn into this involuntarily,” the judge said.

Pryke attended the hearing Monday, sitting at the table before the judge and next to his lawyer, Frank Lizarraga. Bohl and Penrod were not present.

Lizarraga argued that Bohl voluntarily put herself in the public vortex when she entered a relationship with Penrod, a public official, in 1999. News of a possible conflict were also covered in other Inland Empire newspapers, he said.

As a result of the relationship between Bohl and Penrod, the county had to change the contracting process for her business. The judge said issues may rise to level of a public concern but do not make her a public figure.

Lizarraga argued that Bohl became at least a limited public figure prior to the publication of the articles because of the vortex.

“No one forced her to have the relationship,” said Pryke’s lawyer. Bohl also thrust herself into the public vortex when she and Penrod purchased property together.

But the judge explained that Bohl did not inject herself purposely into the issues, nor did she seek to influence the situation, as a limited public figure would.

“I don’t have a situation where Ms. Bohl did anything to bring attention to herself,” Gafkowski said.

Jury selection could begin later this week, and testimony may start next week.

A judge ruled in 2005 that the articles impugned the integrity of Bohl and The Counseling Team and ordered Pryke to pay $3 million. An appeal in 2007 overturned the decision.

Copyright 2010 Los Angeles Newspaper Group   FAC Content Use Policy

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
August 19, 2010
By a MetNews Staff Writer

A Los Angeles Times photographer who took dozens of photographs of a defendant in a downtown courtroom two weeks ago acted properly, in accordance with the court’s permission, the newspaper argued yesterday in a brief to the Court of Appeal.

Attorneys for the newspaper, in a reply to a brief filed Monday by the Public Defender’s Office, reiterated previous arguments that nothing in the conduct of the photographer, Al Seib, warranted Judge Hilleri Merritt’s subsequent order barring publication of the photographs. The Times has characterized the judge’s order as imposing an invalid prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment and the California Constitution.

The attorneys representing Alberd Tersargyan had argued in their brief that Seib violated an earlier order—issued by a different judicial officer in response to a request by a different news organization, related to a different proceeding in the case—that barred photographing the defendant, due to identification issues.

They further argued that the Judicial Council form order signed by Merritt did not authorize photographing Tersargyan because a box on the form indicating whether a request has been granted or denied was not checked, and defense attorneys were not notified that it had been entered.

The newspaper’s attorneys yesterday scoffed at those arguments, asserting that the prior order by Commissioner Alan Rubin was irrelevant to the Aug. 4 hearing before Merritt, that any imperfection in the form was irrelevant because Merritt repeatedly acknowledged in open court that she had granted permission for Seib to take the pictures, and that defense lawyers had notice because they were present and saw the photographer take the pictures.

The newspaper’s lawyers—Kelli L. Sager, Alonzo Wickers IV, and Jeff Glasser of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and in-house counsel Karlene Goller—distinguished Marin Independent Journal v. Municipal Court (1993) 12 Cal.App.4th 1712, cited by the defense. The Court of Appeal in that case upheld the seizure of film from a photographer who did not have permission to photograph the proceedings.

The photographer claimed to have understood permission to be granted because “when she entered the courtroom, she was given a wink and a nod by the courtroom bailiff.”

The case is an “outlier,” the Times lawyers said, because no other case has found allegations of “unlawful” media behavior to warrant prior restraint. Nor are the facts analogous, they asserted, because Seib’s actions were entirely proper.

Merritt’s statements, both at the Aug. 4 hearing and at a hearing the next day on the Times’ motion to vacate the ban on publication, make clear that “there is no ambiguity and no dispute that she intended to grant, and did grant, permission for The Times to photograph the proceeding.”

The attorneys said it was “grasping and pointless” to argue about the contents of the form because it was undisputed not only that the judge said Seib could take the pictures, but that he confirmed this with the baliff and clerk, who checked back with the judge and obtained confirmation that she had approved the photography, “…Mr. Seib’s behavior exhibits a diligence that contrasts sharply with the inaction of Mr. Tersargyan’s lawyer, who said nothing to Respondent about a prior order despite knowing that Mr. Seib was present to photograph the proceedings, and did not object when Mr. Seib took 45 photographs during the first 11 minutes of the hearing,” the attorneys insisted.

Copyright 2010 Metropolitan News Company

Bloomberg News Service
August 10, 2010
By Mike Cohen

The South African government would have authority to classify any official document as being in the “national interest” and jail anyone possessing it without authorization for as long as 25 years under proposed legislation.

The ruling African National Congress has also called for a government-controlled tribunal to probe complaints against journalists, who have clashed with officials by reporting on scandals involving leaders including President Jacob Zuma.

These moves may criminalize investigative reporting, making it harder for the media to expose corruption, and violate post- apartheid guarantees of free speech, according to newspaper editors, civil-rights groups, churches and opposition parties. The World Bank said corruption is one of the biggest constraints on companies operating in South Africa, in its July 29 report on the country’s investment climate.

“We see these measures as a closing down of expressive space,” Ayesha Kajee, 42, executive director of the Johannesburg-based Freedom of Expression Institute, said in an Aug. 5 interview. “We actually think it’s unconstitutional.”

The government has no intention of trying to muzzle the press, spokesman Themba Maseko told reporters Aug. 5 in Pretoria. Zuma and several senior officials intend to meet with media owners and senior editors to address their concerns, Maseko said. A parliamentary committee examining the bill debated it briefly in Cape Town today, before adjourning until Aug. 13.

Banned Newspapers

The Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, and other opponents of the legislation say it harks back to the apartheid era, when the government banned several newspapers and detained a number of journalists without trial. The Democratic Alliance plans to challenge the law in court on constitutional grounds if the ANC-dominated parliament passes the measure, party leader Helen Zille told reporters Aug. 5 in Cape Town.

“You cannot have a situation where public officers would have the discretion to be able to classify whatever they deem to be in the national interest,” Fola Adeleke, research manager for the Cape Town-based Open Democracy Advice Center, said at a July 21 public hearing.

“We are confident the bill will withstand constitutional muster,” Enver Daniels, the chief state law adviser, told legislators July 27. Some of the objections to it are “quite emotional and hysterical,” he said.

Ease Tensions

The government withdrew a similar measure two years ago, after editors and civil-rights groups objected. Even if a compromise is reached before a case goes to court, it isn’t likely to ease tensions between the ANC and news organizations. The relationship has deteriorated steadily since the mid-1990s, as the media reported on scandals involving senior officials including Zuma, 68, and former police chief Jackie Selebi, 60.

The National Prosecuting Authority charged Zuma, the ANC’s former head of intelligence, with corruption, racketeering, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion in 2007. The charges were dropped on April 6, 2009, just weeks before he was appointed president. Selebi was sentenced to a 15-year jail term last week for accepting bribes.

“Attitudes started hardening” after Zuma took over, when the media reported that ministers he appointed spent millions of rand on motor vehicles, said Mondli Makhanya, 40, editor-in- chief of Avusa Ltd. newspapers. “It was accepted that it was a new era, a government that cared about the people, and those reports really showed them up.”

Corruption Index

South Africa ranked 55th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index.

South Africa’s newspaper industry is dominated by four companies: Naspers Ltd. in Cape Town, Independent News and Media Plc, based in Dublin, and Johannesburg-based Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers Ltd. and Avusa. They will face competition next month when the New Age begins publication.

The daily is run by the Gupta Group, which also controls Sahara Computers Ltd. The Times of India Group has a stake in the publication, which will be edited by Vuyo Mvoko, a former political editor of state-owned South African Broadcasting Corp. Former Cabinet minister Essop Pahad is an adviser.

Since the legislation was introduced in Parliament March 9, Naspers shares have gained 4.3 percent, Avusa advanced 6.3 percent and Caxton has fallen 8.2 percent.

A July 29 ANC discussion document lists complaints against the press, including that whites, who make up 10 percent of the population, exert disproportionate control through ownership of all major media companies. Some newspapers have shown “an astonishing degree of dishonesty” and adopted an “anti-ANC stance,” the document says. The party will decide at a conference next month whether to make it official ANC policy.

Media Complaints

An Office of the Press Ombudsman currently investigates media complaints. The ANC accuses it of bias toward the newspapers that fund it and appoint the staff, and has called for the new tribunal, which would be accountable to parliament.

On Aug. 4, police arrested Sunday Times reporter Mzilikazi wa Afrika, who has written stories about government corruption. An Aug. 8 article on the newspaper’s website said he was charged with fraud, forgery and distributing a fake document. It quoted him saying the document was faxed to him and he never published a story about it. He was released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court Nov. 8.

Musa Zondi, a spokesman for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations, said in an Aug. 4 interview that wa Afrika’s arrest had nothing to do with his work as a journalist and declined further comment.

Copyright 2010 BLOOMBERG L.P.

The Daily Beast
August 10, 2010
By Philip Shenon

The Obama administration is pressing Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allied Western governments to consider opening criminal investigations of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and to severely limit his nomadic travels across international borders, American officials say.

Officials tell The Daily Beast that the U.S. effort reflects a growing belief that WikiLeaks and organizations like it threaten grave damage to American national security, as well as a growing suspicion in Washington that Assange has damaged his own standing with foreign governments and organizations that might otherwise be sympathetic to his anti-censorship cause.

American officials confirmed last month that the Justice Department was weighing a range of criminal charges against Assange and others as a result of the massive leaking of classified U.S. military reports from the war in Afghanistan, including potential violations of the Espionage Act by Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst in Iraq accused of providing the documents to WikiLeaks.

Now, the officials say, they want other foreign governments to consider the same sorts of criminal charges.
“It’s not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking,” said an American diplomatic official who is involved in responding to the aftermath of the release of more than 70,000 Afghanistan war logs—and WikiLeaks’ threat to reveal 15,000 more of the classified reports.

“It’s U.K. troops, it’s German troops, it’s Australian troops—all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,” he said. Their governments, he said, should follow the lead of the Justice Department and “review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.”

Last month, a prominent pro-military group in Australia suggested that Assange may have violated Australian law through the release of the Afghan war logs, given the threat the leak may have posed to the lives of Australian troops serving in the NATO-led force.

The Obama administration was heartened by the call this week by Amnesty International and four other human-rights groups for WikiLeaks to be far more careful in editing classified material from the war in Afghanistan to be sure that its public release does not endanger innocent Afghans who may be identified in the documents.

“It’s amazing how Assange has overplayed his hand,” a Defense Department official marveled. “Now, he’s alienating the sort of people who you’d normally think would be his biggest supporters.”

The initial document dump by WikiLeaks last month is reported to have disclosed the names of hundreds of Afghan civilians who have cooperated with NATO forces; the Taliban has threatened to hunt down the civilians named in the documents, a threat that human-rights organizations say WikiLeaks should take seriously.

“It’s amazing how Assange has overplayed his hand,” a Defense Department official marveled. “Now, he’s alienating the sort of people who you’d normally think would be his biggest supporters.”

The joint letter by the five groups, first revealed by The Wall Street Journal, was met by a tart response from Assange, who communicates with the outside world largely through the social-networking Internet tool Twitter.

He appeared to suggest that news organizations and human-rights groups, notably Amnesty International, should help him underwrite his cost of the editing and release of more of the Afghan war documents—but that they were instead refusing to provide assistance.

“Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review,” he tweeted on Monday, referring to the effort by WikiLeaks to convince the Defense Department to join in reviewing the additional 15,000 documents to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be placed in danger by its release. “Media won’t take responsibility. Amnesty won’t. What to do?”

In a separate posting on Twitter, Assange estimated the cost of the “harm minimization review”—a reference, apparently, to the effort to edit the 15,000 documents to remove informants’ names—at $700,000. It was not clear how he arrived at that figure.

The Australian-born Assange travels constantly and is said to have no real home, living instead in the homes of friends and supporters around the world.

He was reported as recently as last week to be in the U.K., although he has spent significant time this year in Australia, Iceland, and the U.S. He has said he is postponing future travel to the U.S. because of fear that he faces legal sanctions here.

Through diplomatic and military channels, the Obama administration is hoping to convince Britain, Germany, and Australia, among other allied governments that Assange should not be welcome on their shores, either, given the danger that his group poses to their troops stationed in Afghanistan, American officials say.

They say severe limitations on Assange’s travels might serve as a useful warning to his followers that their own freedom is now at risk. A prominent American volunteer for WikiLeaks reported last month that he was subjected to hours of questioning and had his laptop and cellphones seized by American border agents on returning to the U.S. from Europe late last month.

An American military official tells The Daily Beast that Washington may also want to closely review its relations with Iceland in the wake of the release of the Afghan war logs.

Assange and his followers have been successful in pressing the government of Iceland, in the wake of the collapse of the country’s banking system, to reinvent itself as a haven for free speech, creating a potential home for WikiLeaks and other organizations that may violate the laws of the U.S. and other nations through the release of classified documents.

Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.

Copyright 2010 RTST, INC.