WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

WikiLeaks, Canadian media and democracy: Media with a face
(Joshua Noble, The Toronto Star, June 2, 2011)

WikiLeaks has proven a rich source of news, however tenuous its journalistic status. WikiLeaks certainly thinks of itself as doing the work of journalism, as evidenced in Julian Assange’s comment: “It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there’s always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.”

WikiLeaks’ inherent structure, principally anonymity, is in fact antithetical to journalism and leaves the organization an odd blend of information leaker, newsmaker, editorializer, self-styled journalist and general unclassified news medium. WikiLeaks has vaulted onto the international stage to a mix of adulation and anger. The international, non-profit organization is in possession of some “1.5 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.”

Since the founding of WikiLeaks in 2006, the organization has released sensitive documents of a political, legal, martial or economic nature. The releases have made shock waves in international diplomacy, the world economy and every level of politics. Thus, WikiLeaks has garnered both public awe and public ire. In turn, Canadian journalists and the Canadian blogosphere have buzzed with questions. “Is anonymous leaking and faceless journalism ethical?” “Does this style of reporting endanger or protect?” “Is WikiLeaks democratic or anarchistic?”

If one can step back from the rhetoric that surrounds WikiLeaks, there is an opportunity for reflection on the importance of responsible journalism — what I will call in this essay “journalism with a face.” Particularly, it is valuable for a democratic society to hold journalists professionally accountable for publications, to ask their media to publish in a meaningful context, and to insist that a healthy public dialogue is created through journalistic work. In short, WikiLeaks demonstrates that in the Canadian context (or in any democratic nation), a media that is accountable to the public is invaluable. The upside of WikiLeaks: The public’s right to know.

The “company profile” and informal mandate of WikiLeaks are defined as: “WikiLeaks is a distributed organization which publishes and analyzes information through an uncensorable approach — focusing on documents, photos and video which have political or social significance.”

WikiLeaks has been awarded both the 2008 Economist New Media Award and the 2009 Amnesty International New Media Award. The stories that WikiLeaks has broken include: politically motivated killings and disappearances in Kenya; a myriad of embarrassing stories, facts, and loose talk about politicians and diplomats; a controversial video of the allegedly unprovoked killing of innocents by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, and details of the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay. These stories have exposed government lies, human rights abuses and private sentiments and opinions. In this way, WikiLeaks has disclosed vital information to the otherwise unwitting public. The downside of WikiLeaks: Anonymity and inappropriate information disclosure.

WikiLeaks has also come under fire from governments such as Australia, France, Iran, and the United States for a host of reasons. Some nations, organizations and individual citizens have called into question the validity of the information released. Others have accused WikiLeaks of editorializing “unbiased” leaks. One particularly contentious video, dubbed “http://www.collateralmurder.com/Collateral MurderEND,” has been heavily criticized as an edit of the original “uncensored” video. Additionally, some have criticized WikiLeaks for endangering careers, relationships and lives by its cavalier decisions to release private documents.

Some have argued that WikiLeaks will actually mean that people will be less likely to engage in resistance exercises that may be compromised by an anonymous leak. Still others have made the point that WikiLeaks may choose to release only whatever leaks support the agendas of insiders or may even blatantly falsify documents and “leak” them. The stumbling block: WikiLeaks as simultaneous social good and social evil.

So we find ourselves at an impasse. There are impressive reasons for and against WikiLeaks — and, more broadly speaking, anonymous, faceless journalism. Neither the merits nor the dangers can be dismissed or trumped by the other in any de facto manner. We love WikiLeaks, we hate WikiLeaks. Or, more importantly, we have reason to love WikiLeaks, we have reason to hate WikiLeaks. And so we find ourselves either caught with an ambivalent attitude toward WikiLeaks or mired in polemic side-taking and name-calling. Though I do not dream that I am able to resolve all the ethical questions of WikiLeaks, I do believe that these ethical problems offer an opportunity for reflection on the importance of responsible media. In the Canadian context — our context — the media plays a vital informational role that is in danger of being distorted by the effects of anonymous journalism. For democracy to continue to thrive in Canada, an accountable, honest media must flourish. Without passing judgment on the complex ethical and moral questions of WikiLeaks, I hold that there is no doubt that in daily journalism practice, democracy needs a media with a face.

Journalists of the Canadian media are held accountable for what they have published. When journalists do not work behind the mask of anonymity, they must be willing to put their career, principles and reputation on the line with every story they publish. Thus, members of the Canadian media (as individuals or organizations) must be professionally responsible — must “own up” — to what they have written.

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Journalism with a face leaves room for rebuttal, collaboration and dialogue — the very heart of democracy. Faceless, noncontextualized journalism cannot be rebutted or engaged in any meaningful dialogue. It comes from nowhere and has no face for healthy dialogue. From WikiLeaks we have at times seen mass frustration not simply because of the content leaked, but because there is no legitimate, fair venue for retort. In this way, the faceless gain the advantage by being unseen in their accusations, whereas those who have been implicated via leaks are sometimes unfairly vaulted into the public eye without an opportunity for a contextualized conversation with an opponent. The Canadian media is essential to democracy because it takes the form of democracy — it promotes dialogue and gives a venue for disagreement. Dialogue requires that two or more equals come to the table with honesty about their convictions. Dialogue requires that people look one another in the face and debate, argue, agree and negotiate. Dialogue requires that people offer to one another, as a show of good faith and respect that is the backdrop for any productive conversation, their own faces. Dialogue cannot be done with the faceless, and a society without dialogue — even heated dialogue — is forever in danger of power concentrations and power vacuums that are antithetical to democracy.

Literary giant Mark Twain once said, “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.” Twain’s words take on poignant, frightening new meaning in a context that includes anonymous journalism done from all corners of the globe. Anonymity is understandable, perhaps even courageous, in contexts of totalitarian regimes, hidden corruption and flagrant human rights abuses. However, anonymity is indefensible, sometimes abhorrent, in various other contexts. As a daily model for journalism in a democratic society it is unreliable and unsafe. Because of the problems in the structure of anonymous journalism, the Canadian public — and Canadian democracy in general — are dependent on an accountable media. We may not always agree with what is printed in our newspapers, but the fact that we can know the identity of the writers — and disagree with the writers — means that, as far as our media is concerned, democracy is still at work.

I could take that apart sentence by sentence, but I'll summarize it by saying that conventional does not equate to good. In any sense.

Alaska set to release Sarah Palin's emails
(By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press, June 10, 2011)

JUNEAU, Alaska – The nation is about to get a new look at Sarah Palin's tenure as Alaska governor.

The state on Friday is scheduled to release more than 24,000 pages of Palin's emails from her first two years as governor, providing a fresh glimpse into how she led the state as she rose to become a player on the national political stage.

The emails were first requested during the 2008 White House race by citizens and news organizations, including The Associated Press, as they vetted a vice presidential nominee whose political experience included less than one term as governor of Alaska and a term as mayor of the small town of Wasilla. The nearly three-year delay has been attributed largely to the sheer volume of the release and the flood of requests.

Alaska is releasing the thousands of emails in paper form only and asking news organizations to pick up several boxes worth of documents in Alaska's capital city, accessible by only air or water. Reporters from several news organizations have already begun arriving in Juneau and are making various plans to disseminate the emails to the public.

Palin told Fox News Sunday that she was unfazed by the release of emails, saying there are no more rocks that could be turned over about her life or time as governor. But she also said "a lot of those emails obviously weren't meant for public consumption" and that she expected people might seek to take some of the messages "out of context."

There may not be any surprises to Palin in the emails, however. Once the state reviewed the records, it gave Palin's attorneys an opportunity to see if they had any privacy concerns with what was being released. No emails were withheld or redacted as a result of that, said Linda Perez, the administrative director for Gov. Sean Parnell who has been coordinating the release.

The voluminous nature of the release, the isolation of Juneau and the limited bandwidth in the city of 30,000 people has forced media outlets to come up with creative ways to transmit the information. The Washington Post is looking for "100 organized and diligent readers" to work with reporters to "analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails." The New York Times is employing a similar system.

Mother Jones, ProPublica and msnbc.com are working with Crivella West Inc., to create a searchable database of the emails. The Associated Press also plans to scan the paper copies to make searchable files available to its members and clients. The state said it was not practical to provide electronic versions of the emails.

It's not clear yet whether the 24,199 pages being released will contain any major revelations. They will cover the period from the time she took office in December 2006 to her ascension to vice presidential nominee in September 2008. Requests have been made for emails from her final 10 months in office. The state hasn't begun the process of reviewing those yet. Palin resigned partway through her term, in July 2009.

Prior records requests have shed light on the Palin administration's efforts to advance a natural gas pipeline project and the role played by Palin's husband in state business.

The email release adds another dimension to the vetting of Palin that began in 2008 and comes as she has become a prominent national political figure, attracting large crowds during a recent bus tour across the Northeast. Palin's attorney referred questions about the emails to the treasurer of her political action committee, who did not immediately respond Thursday.

The emails were sent and received by Palin's personal and state email accounts, and the ones being released were deemed to be related to state business.

She and top aides were known to communicate using private email accounts. Perez said Palin gave the state a CD with emails from her Yahoo account, and other employees were asked to review their private accounts for emails related to state business and to send those to their state accounts.

Another 2,275 pages are being withheld for reasons including attorney-client, work product or executive privilege; an additional 140 pages were deemed to be "non-records," or unrelated to state business.

Some emails may have been previously reviewed in other, earlier public records requests, such as in the Troopergate investigation, in which Palin was accused of putting pressure on public safety officials to fire her brother-in-law, an Alaska State Trooper who was going through a bitter divorce from Palin's sister.

Clive Thomas, a long-time Palin observer who's writing a book on Alaska politics, said he's not sure what the emails will contain — or whether their contents will affect people's perceptions of Palin.

"I guess most people, I think, who don't like Sarah Palin are hoping there's something in there that will deliver the final sort of blow to her (politically)," he said. As for Palin's supporters, he said he doesn't think their opinion of her will be changed regardless of what comes out.

Spain nabs 3 suspected of global cyber attacks
(By Associated Press on June 10th, 2011)

Spanish police have arrested three suspected computer hackers who allegedly belonged to a loose-knit international activist group that attacked corporate and government websites around the world, authorities said Friday.

National Police identified the three as leaders of the Spanish section of a group that calls itself “Anonymous.” All three are Spaniards aged 30 to 32, said Manuel Vazquez, chief of the police’s high-tech crime unit.

A computer server in one of their homes was used to take part in cyber attacks on targets including two major Spanish banks, the Italian energy company Enel and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, Vazquez said.

His comments backtracked somewhat from an earlier police statement that said this server was used to actually execute the attacks. The three detainees have been released without bail but face a charge that is new in the Spanish penal code – disrupting a computer system, Vazquez said. He gave no details on what effect these attacks had.

In Spain, acting on their own, the three detainees staged cyber attacks on the website of Spain’s central electoral commission a few days before local and regional elections on May 22, that of the regional police force in the northeast Catalonia region and a major Spanish labor union.

The night before the election, the three men tried to shut down the web pages of Spain’s two main political parties and that of the Spanish parliament but were thwarted by police, Vazquez said.

“Anonymous is a network with a common idea, but it has loads of cells around the world. Using chats they agree to stage denial-of-service attacks on any page of any company or organization anywhere in the world,” Vazquez said, referring to a cyber-bombardment-like technique used to shut down an Internet page.

Vazquez said police were still analyzing computer files and other material but have no record of the three Spaniards having obtained sensitive data.

Vazquez said members of Anonymous use a lot methods for hiding their identity.

The statement said the only other countries to act against “Anonymous” so far are the United States and Britain. It attributed this what it called complex security measures that members use to protect their identity.

The suspects in Spain were arrested in Barcelona, the Valencia region and the southern city of Almeria.

Since October 2010, Spanish police specializing in cyber crime have analyzed more than two million lines of online chat and Internet pages until they finally zeroed in on the three suspects. Their names were not given.

In January, British police arrested five young males on suspicion of involvement in cyber attacks by Anonymous, which has backed WikiLeaks.

“Anonymous” has claimed responsibility for attacking the websites of companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, all of whom severed their links with WikiLeaks after it began publishing its massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic memos.

“Anonymous” accused the companies of trying to stifle WikiLeaks and rallied an army of online supporters to flood their servers with traffic, periodically blocking access to their sites for hours at a time.

And in February, an Internet forum run by “Anonymous” directed participants to attack the websites of the Egyptian Ministry of Information and the ruling National Democratic Party.

In a Twitter post, the group claimed credit for taking down the ministry’s website and said the group was motivated by a desire to support Egyptian pro-democracy protesters.

– Jorge Sainz in Madrid contributed to this report.

but face a charge that is new in the Spanish penal code – disrupting a computer system,

Palin emails let old media test new media methods
(MIKE BAKER, The Associated Press, June 13, 2011)

The analysis of Sarah Palin's emails over the past few days may end up teaching us more about the future of journalism than about the former Alaska governor's past.

Drawing on methods used by both Wikileaks and social networks, traditional news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post used the Palin email dump as an experiment in new media techniques. They sought collaboration from readers and posted massive volumes of documents online before reporters even had a chance to read most of the papers.

That sort of public coordination -- often called "crowdsourcing" -- has drawn increasing interest from many journalists. David Lauter, chief of Tribune Co.'s Washington bureau, said he and his colleagues have wondered whether it would be a more productive way of analyzing data.

"It's a concept that we'd been looking at," Lauter said. "This seemed like a great opportunity to test to see how it might work."

Tribune dispatched two journalists equipped with portable scanners to Juneau to pick up the thousands of Palin emails and begin digitizing them for online readers. Lauter said the first batch was posted on the Los Angeles Times website about 30 minutes after the documents were released Friday.

The New York Times, using a similar strategy, assigned a team to put all the documents online as soon as possible. It took 14 hours to post all of them.

Technologically, the project seemed to succeed. Several outlets organized the files chronologically and made the documents searchable. The Associated Press made electronic scans available to members around the country.

Neither the crowdsourcing nor the traditional analysis by reporters produced any bombshells, but enlisting the public did help engage readers. The New York Times received more than 2,000 emails, about half of which were substantive responses. Most of the annotations attached to Palin's emails came from readers, not reporters.

Jim Roberts, an assistant managing editor at the paper, said the paper still considers crowdsourcing experimental, but the public responses were clearly useful.

"The readers are augmenting the work of our journalists, not taking their place," Roberts said in an email. "We're not doing anything that we wouldn't otherwise do. The readers are just an extra, and valuable, resource."

Steve Doig, a journalism professor at Arizona State University who specializes in computer-assisted reporting, said the crowdsourcing approach was clever -- and one he hopes to see more of in the future.

"You don't have to be a professional reporter to be able to recognize statements that might be newsworthy," Doig said. "So, having lots and lots of eyeballs looking through it -- whether it's professional reporter or just somebody who's looking for their own interest or amusement -- you can more quickly find something newsworthy."

With an increased focus to share documents online, media outlets have been seeking out new ways to compile and analyze information. A few months ago, the AP internally assessed thousands of emails sent to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and raised questions about his claim that most people who contacted him wanted to eliminate nearly all union rights for state workers.

In 2009, The New York Times publicly posted hundreds of pages from the calendar of Timothy Geithner -- now President Barack Obama's treasury secretary -- from his time at the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

Journalists and observers said the conditions were ripe for using crowdsourcing with the Palin emails because the documents were so voluminous. And they were released to many media outlets at the same time, meaning there was no reason to horde them in hopes of identifying an exclusive.

Reporters had been seeking the Palin emails for nearly three years -- ever since she was selected as John McCain's running mate in 2008. Alaska public records law requires agencies to respond within 10 working days, but it took the state far longer to compile, review and release Palin's correspondence.

Palin's use of private email addresses to conduct state business made the job more complicated and stirred interest in the messages.

As the release date grew closer, Palin continued to be the focus of speculation about a potential 2012 White House bid. And the number of news organizations seeking the emails also grew. That led to a scrum of reporters arriving Friday in Juneau to pick up boxes containing 24,000 documents and hurry them off to be digitized.

The documents offered a glimpse into Palin's methods as governor, showing her engaged in day-to-day duties, concerned about her image and protective of her family. It also captured the speed of her rise to the center of national politics.

(Reuters) - Eight admirers of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are being offered the opportunity to dine privately with their idol early next month at an asking price of 350 pounds per head.

An announcement posted on the auction website E-Bay said the three-hour fund-raising lunch was set for July 2 and Assange would be accompanied by Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian academic quoted by Wikipedia as calling himself a "radical leftist."

Wikileaks Grand Jury to Interview Computer Expert, Friend of Manning Today
(By Michael Riley - Bloomberg News - June 15, 2011)

David House, a computer expert and employee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is to appear before a U.S. grand jury in Virginia investigating the publication of classified government documents by the website WikiLeaks, according to a federal subpoena.

The probe involves the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history. House, who said he is at least the third person to appear before the grand jury after being subpoenaed, is scheduled to appear at the Alexandria federal courthouse this morning with his attorney.

House is an acquaintance of Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private who staffed an intelligence center in Iraq. Manning is charged with illegally accessing secret material and passing it to WikiLeaks.

The grand jury is probing possible violations of the 1917 Espionage Act, theft of government property and computer security laws, according to a letter accompanying the subpoena provided to Bloomberg News. According to the Bradley Manning Support Network’s website, which House helped organize, protests are planned in Alexandria and Boston to coincide with House’s appearance.

House said he met Manning in Boston prior to his arrest. House was also one of a small number of people allowed to visit Manning while he was detained in a military brig in Quantico, Virginia. Manning has since been moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange said in April that the grand jury is targeting a group of students and activists in Boston, as well as WikiLeaks and Assange himself.

Appearing via Skype at a journalism conference in Berkeley, California, in April, Assange said federal prosecutors are trying to prove WikiLeaks volunteers in the Boston area conspired with Manning to steal the material.

Assange said his organization received the material, which included U.S. diplomatic cables and secret documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from an unknown source and is protected in the same way as other media organizations which also published the material, including the New York Times.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, didn’t immediately return an e- mail seeking comment.

Assange says WikiLeaks work hampered
(JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press, June 16, 2011)

After six months under virtual house arrest, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange acknowledged Thursday that his detention is hampering the work of the secret-spilling site. His supporters accused Britain of subjecting him to "excessive and dehumanizing" treatment.

The 39-year-old Australian is living at a supporter's rural estate as he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of rape and sexual molestation made by two women.

Assange's bail conditions require him to observe an overnight curfew, wear an electronic tag and report to police daily.

His supporters released a video to The Associated Press condemning the conditions. In it, WikiLeaks associate Sarah Harrison accuses authorities of treating Assange "like a caged animal."

British prosecutors, who initially opposed bail, say the strict conditions are necessary because the claims against Assange are serious and he is a flight risk.

The video also claims police have set up surveillance cameras near the house to record license plates of visiting cars.

Vaughan Smith, who owns the 600-acre (240-hectare) property in eastern England, called it a "pretty intrusive regime" and said three cameras had appeared near the property since Assange came to stay.

Assange, who roamed the globe before his arrest in December, told the AP that he had become "a fixed target" for snoopers.

"It is easy to conduct surveillance against me and anyone I talk to," Assange said. "We take steps against this, but it is costly and time-consuming."

He said his house arrest had been "the single largest impediment to our work, with the possible exception of the illegal blockade being conducted by the major U.S. financial institutions against us."

Some U.S.-based banks and financial services have refused to handle payments to WikiLeaks.

U.S. authorities are investigating whether Assange and WikiLeaks violated American laws by releasing tens of thousands of secret government documents, including daily logs from the Iraq war and classified diplomatic cables from U.S. missions around the world.

Prosecutors have convened a grand jury near Washington to probe the WikiLeaks disclosures.

"A lot of our resources are tied up in dealing with the situation in the United States and the grand jury and this Swedish extradition case and the banking blockade placed on us by Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America and so on," Assange said. "So, while we are still producing publications every day, a lot of those resources have been taken away to deal with these events."

On July 12, the High Court in London will hear Assange's appeal against a judge's order that he be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual molestation against two women. Assange denies the charges, which he claims are politically motivated.

He said that if he lost the appeal, he could go to Britain's Supreme Court or the European Court of Human Rights. He said he was confident he would be cleared.

"I feel that the Swedish authorities will drop the case," Assange said. When asked why, he replied only that "there are many players in the Swedish situation."

Swedish prosecutors did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

it's interesting that you can't see why the US continues to "get away with it."

U.S. Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks
(SCOTT SHANE, The New York Times, June 17, 2011)

Stephen J. Kim, an arms expert who immigrated from South Korea as a child, spent a decade briefing top government officials on the dangers posed by North Korea. Then last August he was charged with violating the Espionage Act — not by aiding some foreign adversary, but by revealing classified information to a Fox News reporter.

Mr. Kim’s case is next in line in the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on leaks, after the crumbling last week of the case against a former National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake. Accused of giving secrets to The Baltimore Sun, Mr. Drake pleaded guilty to a minor charge and will serve no prison time and pay no fine.

The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather than those who leak them.

The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods.

But Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the fizzling of the Drake prosecution “ought to be a signal to the government to rethink its approach to these cases.” He said the government had many options for punishing leaks: stripping an official’s security clearance, firing him or pursuing a misdemeanor charge. Instead, it “has been leaping to the most extreme response, felony charges,” he said.

In particular, critics of the leak prosecutions question the appropriateness of using the Espionage Act, a World War I-era statute first applied to leaks in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. They say it is misleading and unfair to lump the likes of Mr. Drake and Mr. Kim with traitors like Aldrich Ames or Robert P. Hanssen, who sold secrets to the Soviet Union.

Few have taken a tougher public line against leaks than Gabriel Schoenfeld, whose 2010 book “Necessary Secrets” argues that the news media are far too cavalier about publishing classified information. But he, too, called the espionage label unfortunate.

“You’re accusing someone who’s doing something irresponsible and wrong,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, of the Hudson Institute in Washington. “But he might be a well-intentioned civil servant and he’s not trying to betray his country.”

Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said the best option would be a new statute tailored to fit leaks to the media, perhaps allowing defendants to argue that information disclosed should never have been classified in the first place. But he said no such law could pass in the current climate.

The problems of perception that plagued the government’s pursuit of Mr. Drake, who claimed to be a whistle-blower exposing a costly National Security Agency boondoggle, may crop up again with Mr. Kim. His personal story as a brainy, up-by-the-bootstraps immigrant is compelling, even if the government is able to prove that he was far too candid in talking to a reporter about intelligence in 2009 and then lied to F.B.I. agents about the episode.

Arriving with his family from Seoul and settling in the Bronx at the age of 8, Mr. Kim excelled academically, earning degrees from Georgetown and Harvard and a doctorate from Yale. He worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Defense Department and the State Department, focusing on North Korea’s weapons programs and briefing then-Vice President Dick Cheney, among others.

“I had the highest regard for him,” said Paula A. DeSutter, Mr. Kim’s boss when she was an assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration. “He had native Korean language and he’d been doing this work forever.”

Mr. Kim rarely spoke with reporters and sometimes expressed alarm about leaks, colleagues say. But in March 2009, a State Department press officer asked Mr. Kim to speak about North Korea to a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, and the two began to talk and exchange e-mails. Mr. Kim sent some e-mails under an online pseudonym, “Leo Grace.”

On June 11, 2009, Mr. Rosen reported that “the Central Intelligence Agency has learned, through sources inside North Korea,” that Pyongyang was likely to respond to a United Nations resolution condemning its nuclear and missile tests with more tests and other measures. The news was no surprise, but C.I.A. officials were furious that a top-secret analysis had been leaked almost instantly, according to a former government official. (A Fox News spokesman said Mr. Rosen declined to comment.)

When F.B.I. agents questioned Mr. Kim, he claimed he had spoken to Mr. Rosen only once. He admitted to more contacts only after agents confronted him with evidence, according to court filings. His trial is probably months away; if convicted, Mr. Kim, 43, could be sentenced to 15 years in prison.

If there were any doubts inside the administration about proceeding with the leak crackdown, they appear to have evaporated with the rise to prominence last year of WikiLeaks, which invites disclosures by the terabyte. The group’s efforts have only hardened officials’ conviction that leaks must be deterred with the threat of prison.

Lisa O. Monaco, a Justice Department official awaiting Senate confirmation as head of the department’s national security division, testified last month that “it would be my priority to continue the aggressive pursuit of these investigations” because leaks do “tremendous damage.” She noted that “twice as many” cases had been pursued in 18 months than in all previous administrations. No committee member questioned the effort.

For Mr. Kim’s sister, Yuri Lustenberger-Kim, a corporate lawyer, the charges against her brother are bitter recompense for his long service to American national security, and the espionage label is especially painful.

“My brother has spent all of his professional life trying to be a help to his country,” she said. “The idea that the prosecutors would think he would do, or did do, anything to hurt the United States is the farthest thing from reality they could charge.”

No matter what happens, she said, the charges already have been devastating for Mr. Kim, who has an 11-year-old son, and the rest of his proud immigrant family.

“This has sent my parents into deep sadness and anxiety, put more strains on Stephen’s marriage than a couple can bear, and ruined all he has worked for over his life,” she said.