Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.
Information revealed by a Truthout Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was included in testimony presented to a federal judge in New York City who ruled this week to permanently block the United States military from enforcing part of a law allowing it to indefinitely detain anyone – including US citizens – accused of aiding terrorist organizations.
US District Judge Katherine Forrest permanently blocked the military from enforcing the controversial section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows for such indefinite detention of people accused of working with terrorists. Forrest issued a preliminary injunction against the section in May.
Within 24 hours of the ruling, President Obama’s Justice Department appealed the decision to the disappointment civil liberties groups.
Soon after the NDAA sailed through Congress and was signed by President Obama on New Year’s Day, award-winning journalist and Truthout contributor Chris Hedges filed a lawsuit arguing that his work as a war correspondent, which included interviewing terrorists, put him at risk of wrongful and indefinite detention.
The paragraph in the NDAA at issue would allow the military to hold anyone accused of having “substantially supported” al-Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” until “the end of hostilities.”
Six other co-plaintiffs joined Hedges in the lawsuit, including author and Truthout contributor Noam Chomsky and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Co-plaintiff Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and co-founder of the protest movement US Days of Rage, cited a Truthout FOIA request in her testimony.
O’Brien said that a federal agent confidentially notified her about a document suggesting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) planned to infiltrate US Days of Rage by linking it to the hacktivist collective Anonymous.
Included in her testimony is a memo unearthed by Truthout which states: “National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center Bulletin. Details on ‘Anonymous,’ upcoming U.S. operations 17 September 2011 Occupy Wall Street, ‘U.S. Day of Rage.'”
O’Brien also testified that she learned from several sources, including leaked documents on WikiLeaks, that a private security firm and former US State Department officials had allegedly been asked to tie US Days of Rage to terrorist web sites.
The FOIA request, filed by Jason Leopold and first published with a series of stories by Truthout in March 2012, also revealed that DHS had kept tabs on the Anonymous hackers.
We lost 15 percent of our traffic overnight.
We now have three full months of data since Google changed its search to feature AI results. The numbers are worse than we anticipated. Overall readership that comes to Truthout through Google is down 54 percent against last year. The number of new readers who discover Truthout via Google searches is down 49 percent, and returning users from Google are down 51 percent.
We lost 15 percent of our readership overnight. This was a readership we painstakingly built over decades, and it vanished because Google chose corporate greed over a healthy democracy.
We anticipate a loss of roughly $500,000 in online revenue as a result of this massive traffic plunge in the next year alone.
The only way we can keep publishing is with strong reader support. We are asking you to start a monthly donation to Truthout today — anything you can do, whether $5 or $25, makes a difference.