Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he said Russia was not involved in a leak of Democratic Party emails, a court has heard. The WikiLeaks founder's barrister brought the subject up at Westminster Magistrates' Court ahead of an extradition hearing next week. Court hears Trump offered Wikileaks founder pardon Australian MPs lobby Britain to release Wikileaks founder Julian Assan [...]

Facebook has invoked its free speech right as a publisher, insisting its ability to smear users as extremists is protected, but its legal immunity thus far has rested on a law which protects platforms, not publishers. Which is it? Facebook has declared it has the right, as a publisher, to exercise its own free speech and bar conservative political performance artist Laura Loomer from its platform. [...]

The US government's indictment of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange on 17 additional charges under the Espionage Act has shocked and horrified journalists who are calling it an unprecedented attack on press freedom. [...]

The lengthy sentence incurred by Julian Assange for skipping bail has caused “shock and outrage,” WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson has said, adding that the real fight for him and journalism as a whole lies ahead. [...]

On 11 April, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after being deprived of asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship by Quito. Speaking to Sputnik, Adam Garrie, director of Eurasia Future, explained how the Trump administration could benefit from questioning Assange and who is interested in muting the journalist. [...]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asked governments and regulators to tighten the screws on digital companies such as his own, and slap them with sanctions if they refuse to abide by rules on privacy, political or harmful content. [...]

Russia is not seeking to erect a Chinese-style “great firewall” with new legislation on the ‘sovereign internet’ or otherwise regulate the web, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev has said. [...]

NBC News has given endless war and ‘destructive’ intelligence agencies a free pass, all while fixating on around-the-clock Trump hysteria, a veteran national security reporter wrote in a biting farewell message to his colleagues. [...]

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's lawyer and a former NYC mayor, insisted that the media is allowed to publish hacked classified information for the purpose of informing the public. He drew parallels with the case of Hillary Clinton, who WikiLeaks claim received questions for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primary debate with Bernie Sanders. [...]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange did nothing wrong by publishing Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, just like the US mainstream media wasn’t punished for publishing the Pentagon Papers, ex-NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani said. [...]

Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke its spam rules, they say it’s censorship. [...]

Payment processing service PayPal has banned Alex Jones’s InfoWars, saying that the site “promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance” and thus violated their use policy. InfoWars itself broke the news on Friday, saying that PayPal sent them an email the day before informing Jones of the decision. [...]

Today in the US, just arguing with someone can get you banned from social media platforms. We have crossed into a parallel reality, the very Matrix dungeon, where tech companies police not only our thoughts but our behavior. A strange thing happened on the way to this week’s Senate hearing on social media. [...]

In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship, argues Caitlin Johnstone in this commentary. Last year, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mi [...]

Twitter will not suspend controversial radio host and blogger Alex Jones of InfoWars. The social network's CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted that his posts did not violate any rules. Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify have either banned or punished the conspiracy theorist. Sputnik talked about Twitter's decision not to suspend Alex Jones of InfoWars with Mark Gregory, an associate professor in network e [...]

QUITO (Sputnik) - The defense for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who resides at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, is concerned about the Ecuadorian authorities' silence regarding his future, Assange's lawyer Carlos Poveda told Sputnik. "We sent two letters to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry 10 days ago and five days ago respectively and expressed concern about the issue of refusal to grant [...]

As months turn into nearly two years and no solid evidence emerges to nail Russia for nabbing Election 2016, some big Russia-gate cheerleaders are starting to cover their tracks, as Daniel Lazare explains. The best evidence that Russia-gate is sinking beneath the waves is the way those pushing the pseudo-scandal are now busily covering their tracks. [...]

One must marvel at the first few paragraphs of Amnesty International’s recent press release: “The international community’s catastrophic failure to take concrete action to protect the people of Syria has allowed parties to the conflict, most notably the Syrian government, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with complete impunity, often with assistance of outside powers, partic [...]

Happy cultures are all alike. But this is not a happy culture. Sullen and sour, America seems like a country whose nerves are shot. And, after 16 straight years of war, why wouldn’t the political neurons be frayed? Each day the fear factor is being ratcheted up. New threats are being targeted. New wars being planned. A paralytic dread hangs over the Republic. [...]