All right, everybody, welcome back to the show.
If I'm lucky, I have Bridgetta John Dottier, John Dottier, oh, I'm sorry, ma'am.
Hi.
Hi, welcome to the show.
My Icelandic is horrible this time of year.
Can you help me?
Yeah, it's John Dottier.
It was quite close, actually.
All right.
Well, you're very generous.
Thank you.
And thank you for joining us here.
Now, so everyone, I urge you to go and look at this very interesting article by Rafi something over at the New Yorker magazine called No Secrets, Julian Assange's Mission for Total Transparency.
And it's a really great piece.
Apparently, this reporter hung out with the WikiLeaks crew as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the,平 as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, as the, I'm aware of is the tax havens, and how they are being abused, and how they create total secrecy.
So, we wanted to take the same principle and the same concept of the tax havens, and pull together all the best possible laws from around the world to ensure transparency and freedom of information and expression.
So, we're basically modernizing all the legislation in relation to strengthening these sort of pillars of democracy.
And what I have found during this quest, in a fairly complex journey, is that these basic rights are eroding at an alarming rate in our world, and in particularly in the so-called Western world.
So, what I have discovered through this journey is that Iceland is not the only country that needs it, but there is a growing debate, and particularly in Europe, about that they need to change their laws as well, to face the fact that we are living in a world where information doesn't have any borders anymore, and at the same time lawyers don't have any borders anymore.
So, we have to try to be one step ahead of them.
And so, what exactly is this law anticipating?
Is it something like, you know, protecting the sanctity of privately owned computer servers, that kind of thing?
Yes, it is both dealing with, or it is dealing with the IP host problem, and it is dealing with, of course, what is extremely important for Iceland, and what it seems to the rest of the world, to ensure that journalists don't have to reveal their sources.
So, both the journalist can't, or it would be illegal for him to reveal the source, or he cannot be forced to do it by judge.
And we're also basing our whistleblower legislation on the Swedish one, which is apparently the strongest in the world.
Plus, encouraging people to do whistleblowing, because it is very important that people are encouraged to do it, instead of what seems to be the case with the Bradley Manning case.
It seems to be that your country wants to make him an example of how people should not do whistleblowing, and in his case, if he is indeed the person that leaked the Iraqi video, and the collateral murder, then he was obviously showing a hideous war crime that the rest of the nations that are participating in this war need to see.
And is this new legislation already a done deal, or it's still going through the process?
Well, since I am, or I tasked the government to change 13 laws in four different ministries, it is still in a process.
It will probably take a year, a year and a half for all the laws to be implemented.
But the good news is that when I got this into the Parliament, nobody really believed that this could happen.
However, once it went into voting, it was unanimously voted for, and in Iceland the system is such that the ministers are also parliamentarians, so they all voted for it as well, including the Prime Minister, which is sort of equivalent to the President.
So, it's not all going to happen in a day, because it is being written in different ministries, but the person that, the ministry that is handling it, or sort of has an over, is the taskmaster for this, and will make sure the other ministries are also doing their part of this.
They are very well aware of, and acquainted with, all the suggestions that we have of legislative change.
But I really encourage people, if they want to find out more, to go to our website.
It is immi.is, and there is an English section with the whole process, the timeline, and all the laws that we want to change.
That's immi.is?
Yes.immi.is.
Okay, now, so there, you may very well be aware of the fact that there's a new series in the Washington Post about the length and breadth and depth of the national security state in America.
And in part one, they said that there's, well, let's round up to a million people, public and private, that are now at the top secret access level.
And so, let's say, hypothetically, that, I don't know, 100,000 of them stole, no, liberated important documents from their masters in these bureaucracies, and leaked them to, for example, Wikileaks.org.
Could they then flee to Iceland and be protected from extradition by the Icelandic government for their heroic act, which may, in fact, be technically criminal here in the United States?
No, they can't flee to Iceland, but they can, if it is stored at Icelandic service, or Swedish, for that matter, they will have to, like, their case would be then taken through that legal system, not the US legal system.
And the law would be in their favor, not the laws that they are trying to pass in the US about whistleblowing.
So, I think the law is very much, or the different aspects of the laws, is very much considered to be sort of a safe haven for investigative journalism.
And let's say that I am a blogger in China, or in Tibet, or Sri Lanka, and I want to take a big chance by revealing what is going on.
Now, I cannot, or this law will not ensure that these people risking their lives to bring out the truth will not be arrested or tortured.
But we can assure that the story with this law, that the story that they're willing to risk their life to publish, is not going to be taken down, which is equally important, I think.
But this is not an overall, this is not sort of a magic bullet.
There is still a lot of things that we, both globally and in our individual countries, need to address, and need to make ourselves aware of, when it comes to all the secrecy that is, if anything, always increasing.
But another thing which is very disturbing, and that is all these so-called gag orders on journalists, and all these, the way the lawyers, and it seems to be international lawyer corporations that focus on going into suing the media corporations about stories that may be tracked back 10 years.
So they're always pulling out stories about corporations and their criminal activities out of the historical record.
So we are starting to have a very wrong image of modern day history, if their activities are constantly being taken out, and completely erased off the internet.
Right, absolutely.
Well, it is so important, I think, for, I hope people already recognize and that they agree, the importance of things like Wikileaks and, and the kinds of protections that you're providing for people who work with institutions like Wikileaks.
Because, as you said, we live in a world of more and more centralization of power, and expansion of power and expansion of secrecy.
And there's more and more secret information that's got to be able to get out somewhere at the same time that the press is more and more cowed, and doing their job less and less.
So I mean, this is, there's, it's the supply and demand, we demand Wikileaks.
And I think also one thing that is occurring, and that is a very interesting development, when it comes to the media in general, that citizen journalism is always growing stronger.
And because of that, the traditional media is really losing ground.
And if they don't start to act differently in the internet world, in particular, because all the media is moving on to the internet.
And there is this transitional period, which is so dangerous.
So we sort of have to both strengthen those that are in the traditional media that wants to bring up news by creating strong platforms for them, protective platforms for their stories to live on.
So this is sort of a technical thing is very well said on the on all the principles there.
But I was wondering if you could help us understand, for example, why it takes so long for, or why it is taking so long for the Gharani massacre video to be released.
It's been rumored, and I guess confirmed for months now, that Wikileaks is in possession of the Gharani video.
And people are wondering, well, go ahead and release it then or, or if it is true, for example, that Wikileaks obtained State Department cables from Bradley Manning, as is alleged, we want to see them.
What is it that takes so long in the process?
Because it says here in this New Yorker article that you really have an inside view of how this works.
I was wondering if you could help us understand that.
Okay, so basically, I am not a spokesperson for all the other projects that Wikileaks is doing.
I did co produce the collateral murder in the sense that I put tremendous amount of work in it.
However, maybe they are having, you know, because we get so much volume of stuff, and some of it is actually encrypted, and so forth.
So maybe they want to also verify if this is indeed what they think it is.
Just like we did with the collateral murder video, we, when I was working on that, we made sure to send journalists off to Baghdad to try to find the children that were discovered in the van, and other witnesses to make sure that the credibility of this video could not be put into question.
So maybe it has something to do with that.
And I think one of the things that I find to be so disturbing about the Bradley Manning case is that it has been no attention in the bigger media about this incredible case, because he has been charged for leaking the video and for leaking 50 cables, and might be facing up to 50 years in prison.
And no journalist and nobody has access to him to see how he is.
I mean, he's only 22.
Right, they're still holding him in Kuwait.
Yes, I really encourage everybody that wants to follow his story to go to the bradleymanning.org website.
There is a team of people from various organizations and countries that want to support him in any which way possible.
And if you want to write him or just try to follow up what's going on, then I really encourage your listeners to support this brave man.
Very well said again.
Thank you very much.
I'll see if I can say this well.
Bridgetta John dot here.
No, I didn't.
John did here.
Bridgetta John did here.
Is that better?
No.
It's okay.
I'm used to my name being put.
It really doesn't matter.
Well, it's embarrassing for me.
But anyway, so good luck with your thank you very much for your website and your show.
It is very important.
Well, thank you very much.
And please tell us again where people can look up.
Oh, you already did say it's I M M I dot i s, right?
Yes.
And there's a lot of also good material to Google News and write the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.
So Icelandic Modern Media Initiative.
Okay, great.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
