By Scott Shackford – Reason

A former Air Force intelligence officer has been arrested and charged with espionage for leaking information to the press detailing how the U.S. government uses armed drones for secret assassination missions in foreign countries.

Daniel Everette Hale, 31, of Nashville, was arrested this morning. According to the Justice Department, Hale, during his time in the Air Force as an intelligence analyst, and then later as a private sector employee of a defense contractor, passed along top secret documents to a reporter, some of which were published.

By Nolan Good – Daily Emerald

Former U.S. Air Force drone technician and human rights activist Cian Westmoreland, who made the news in 2015 when he spoke out against the use of military drones in combat, spoke at the University of Oregon this Thursday. The talk was part of a five-city “Whistleblower Tour” through Oregon.

Westmoreland helped to construct a relay system that sent aerial footage to drone operators when he was stationed on a U.S. Air Force base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He has since called it a “sword of Damocles over the Afghan panopticon,” that hurt innocent people. After leaving the Air Force, Westmoreland became a human rights activist and has spoken publicly about the dark side of modern warfare.

By Cindy Cohn – EFF.org

While the indictment of Julian Assange centers on an alleged attempt to break a password—an attempt that was not apparently successful—it is still, at root, an attack on the publication of leaked material and the most recent act in an almost decade-long effort to punish a whistleblower and the publisher of her leaked material. Several parts of the indictment describe very common journalistic behavior, like using cloud storage or knowingly receiving classified information or redacting identifying information about a source. Other parts make common free software tools like Linux and Jabber seem suspect.

Institute for Public Accuracy

Consortium News notes in “Moreno Withdraws Asylum as Assange is Arrested” that Jen Robinson, a lawyer for Assange tweeted: “Just confirmed: Assange has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a U.S. extradition request.”

Edward Snowden tweeted: “Important background for journalists covering the arrest of Julian Assange by Ecuador: the United Nations formally ruled his detention to be arbitrary, a violation of human rights. They have repeatedly issued statements calling for him to walk free — including very recently.”

Demand Progress

Following the introduction of the Save the Internet Act to restore net neutrality protections in the House and Senate, some of the country’s largest netroots groups are launching an effort to support the bicameral legislation

From the Institute for Public Accuracy

The U.S. government is working with the Mexican government to target journalists, lawyers, and activists who were covering or supporting the migrant caravan at the border. See breaking story: “Source: Leaked Documents Show the U.S. Government Tracking Journalists and Immigration Advocates Through a Secret Database” from NBC San Diego, which includes the names, photos, dates of birth, countries of commencement and dispositions of 59 people, mostly U.S. citizens. The document labels the people as “organizer,” “instigator,” and “lawyer,” or “media.”

From Demand Progress

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Nadler, and Chairman Schiff:

On December 15, 2019, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act are scheduled to sunset, including the authority known as “Section 215.” The undersigned progressive and grassroots organizations urge you not to reauthorize the continued mass surveillance of innocent people under that authority.[1] The use of such tools actively undermines the rights of historically targeted communities and the values of the Democratic Party.[2,3]

By Matthew Renda — Courthouse News Service

South Dakota is poised to become the 40th state to pass a shield law for journalists and their sources after a bill passed the state Senate on Wednesday.

The bill, House Bill 1074, gives journalists the right to decline to provide information or the identity of sources to courts, grand juries, legislative bodies or any public bodies with the power to levy contempt charges.

Initiative by not-for-profit Fight for the Future offers employees of Silicon Valley firms a way to organize and leak information

By Sam Levin — The Guardian

Silicon Valley activists have launched a whistleblower campaign to help workers organize against “unethical tech”, including ads on social media platforms targeting the employees of those companies.

By India McKinney – EFF.org

Since even before he took office, President Trump has called for a physical wall along the southern border of the United States. Many different organizations have argued this isn’t a great idea. In response, some Congressional Democrats have suggested turning to surveillance technology to monitor the border instead of a physical barrier.