WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

I'm not here to lead you around by the nose.

(Reuters) - WASHINGTON — Bank of America was quoted as saying late on Friday that it was joining other financial institutions in declining to process payments to WikiLeaks, which has angered U.S. authorities with the mass release of U.S. diplomatic cables.

"Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the bank said in a statement, quoted by McClatchy Newspapers.

...

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the Bank of America statement added.

WikiLeaks later issued a message on Twitter urging its supporters to leave the bank.

"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," it said on the social networking medium.

"Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advice is to place your funds somewhere safer," WikiLeaks said in a subsequent tweet.Source

WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's crusade for greater official transparency could backfire by provoking a U.S. government crackdown on leaks that might entangle even journalists, legal experts warn.

...

Long-standing tensions
There has long been a tug of war between public officials' desire to protect official secrets and the news media's determination to expose the inner workings of government.

The media scored a major victory in 1971 when the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the First Amendment's constitutional guarantee of press freedom, ruled the Nixon administration could not stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a highly classified study of the Vietnam War. More

There are supposed to be tensions between the media and the government. That's why we have a guaranteed free press! The problem has become exasperated by journalism turning into media as entertainment and on to political influence peddling towards both the government and the people. If it takes a paranoid, "somewhat autistic" Australian to shake the pants up in the supposed American Free Press boardrooms, and pushes them to fight on behalf of the First Amendment then so be it.

överrumpling is not a verz good word to use.
Better is the verb överrumpla = catch unaware
Överraskningssex = surprise sex should not be used in connection with rape.
It should be used more in a nice connection. "WOW he prefered me to his beloved soccergame this afternoon"
The the word rape in Swedish is våldtäckt. Våld =power, force Täcka = cover or supply one´s needs of

"The reputation of the United States has been damaged by the WikiLeaks-controlled release of secret documents. That is true… But the United States' reputation is being damaged much more right now as they attempt -- with all of their means -- to muzzle WikiLeaks and its head, Julian Assange. By doing so, the US is betraying one of its founding myths: Freedom of information. And they are doing so now, because for the first time since the end of the Cold War, they are threatened with losing worldwide control of information."

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the first who have used the power of the Internet against the United States. That is why they are being mercilessly pursued. That is why the government is betraying one of the principles of democracy."

. . . because for the first time since the end of the Cold War, they are threatened with losing worldwide control of information.

One question, before I run, to those of you who might be able to shed a bit of light on this.
I have come across brief & not very detailed references about the NYTimes being pressured by the US government regarding its publication of the leaks.
Is this correct?
If so, if you can supply any more detail I'd be very interested to learn more.

.....the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. They shed light on the motivations — and, in some cases, duplicity — of allies on the receiving end of American courtship and foreign aid. .... As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.

......it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.

Privacy and Newsgathering: An Overview
By David L. Hudson Jr.
First Amendment Center

Perhaps the greatest clash involving freedom speech has been the continuing collision between freedom of the press and the right to privacy. Many First Amendment advocates view this clash as the greatest threat to First Amendment freedoms. The press has been targeted for its intrusive newsgathering techniques and for publishing information about people’s private lives.

The concept of privacy has roots in several constitutional provisions. The First Amendment protects privacy by ensuring protection from compelled disclosure. The Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by government officials, protects privacy in the home. The Ninth Amendment, which ensures that the people have more rights than those listed in the Constitution, has been interpreted to protect privacy. The courts have also interpreted the word “liberty” in the 14th Amendment’s due-process clause to encompass protection for personal privacy.
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This privacy tort concerns many First Amendment advocates because, unlike a defamation or false-light invasion of privacy claim, a defendant theoretically can commit this tort by publishing truthful information. Because of this, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that “it is here that claims of privacy most directly confront the constitutional freedoms of speech and press” (in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 1975). The Supreme Court reiterated this principle in the 1979 decision Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co.: “State action to punish the publication of truthful information can seldom satisfy constitutional standards.”

The Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652D defines this tort:
“One who gives publicity to a matter concerning the private life of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the matter publicized is of a kind that:
(a) would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and
(b) is not of legitimate concern to the public.”

The make-or-break issue in these cases is whether the disclosed information is really private. The courts have rejected numerous private-facts tort cases because the disclosed information was contained in a public record.

In Cox v. Cohn, the high court ruled that the press could not be punished for truthfully reporting the fact that plaintiff’s daughter was a rape victim when the press obtained the information from a public record. The high court wrote that “the First and Fourteenth Amendments command nothing less than that the States may not impose sanctions on the publication of truthful information contained in official court records open to public inspection.”

The theory is that once a document is placed in a public record, it is no longer private. In other words, the published or broadcast information must be truly private for a private-facts lawsuit to succeed. In the 2000 decision Green v. CBS Broadcasting Corp., a federal district court in Texas rejected a public disclosure of private facts claim stemming from a broadcast that revealed the name, identity and other facts about a lottery winner’s wife and daughter, including allegations that the daughter had been sexually abused. The court rejected the privacy claim partly because the sexual-abuse allegations were part of the divorce proceeding between the lottery winner and his wife. “Plaintiffs’ argument is untenable because it assumes a critical, but missing element of their cause of action, namely, that the published information is private,” the court wrote.

A private-facts plaintiff must also show that the “private” information disclosed is not of “legitimate concern” to the public. Many courts have applied a “newsworthy” privilege, especially when dealing with media defendants. The question becomes whether the released “private” information was newsworthy.

Courts apply the “newsworthy” notion differently. The Restatement (Second) of Torts says that “the line is to be drawn when the publicity ceases to be the giving of information to which the public is entitled, and becomes a morbid and sensational prying into private lives for its own sake” (§ 652D, comment h).

Courts will apply several factors in determining newsworthiness. For example, one court considered the following three factors: 1) the social value of the facts published; (2) the depth of the article’s intrusion into ostensibly private affairs; and (3) the extent to which the party voluntarily acceded to a position of public notoriety.
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In the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bartnicki v. Vopper, which involved the news media’s disclosure of intercepted cell-phone conversations, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his concurring opinion: “The Constitution permits legislatures to respond flexibly to the challenges new technology may pose to the individual’s interest in basic personal privacy.”

However, this rush to protect personal privacy can infringe on the ability of the press to report on matters of important public interest. Ken Paulson, former executive director of the First Amendment Center and now editor of USA TODAY, may have said it best: “The challenge is to hold invasive technology at bay without handcuffing the news media. Concerns about personal privacy and a free press are on a collision course, and our nation's priorities hang in the balance.”