4A • January 27, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
A Hawaii trip
with mom
D
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Documents from WikiLeaks played a key role in the 2016 election.
Cannon Beach,
meet WikiLeaks
T
his column could get me arrested.
Something only a little more extreme happened
to journalist Barrett Brown, released in November
after serving three years in federal prison for sharing
a link to hacked emails from the intelligence group
known as Stratfor. He was released from prison in late Novem-
ber 2016.
In a video on Brown’s website, Trevor Timm of the Free-
dom of the Press Foundation says Brown “took information
that may have been stolen or leaked and used it to do investiga-
tive journalist in the public interest.”
While originally facing up to 100 years in prison for sharing
other Stratfor hacked links in a chat room with other journalists,
11 of 12 charges were
dropped and Brown
ended up pleading
CANNON SHOTS
guilty to transmitting
R.J.
MARX
threats, aiding hackers
and obstructing au-
thorities from carrying
out a search warrant
resulting in his three-year incarceration. Many of the charges
were a result of the leak of credit card numbers — six months
after the hack was revealed, giving, Brown’s defense argued,
credit companies plenty of time to protect the accounts.
“This was a failure on our part,” Stratfor CEO George
Friedman told investigators eight days after the hack and
months before the leaks were shared by Brown.
Unwisely, Brown, who said he was withdrawing from
heroin at the time, threatened an FBI agent prior to his arrest
in 2012. Along with jail time, Brown was ordered to pay more
than $829,000 in fi nes.
On a journalist’s salary, he’ll still be paying that back when
Donald Trump Jr. is in the White House.
Data dumps
I can assure you I am not withdrawing from heroin, printing
any leaked credit card numbers or issuing any challenges. But
as any self-respecting muckraking local journalist would do,
I poked around on WikiLeaks and typed in the search term
“Cannon Beach.”
Who knew what juicy items I might stumble on?
Two particular items caught my attention.
This document was obtained by WikiLeaks from the United
States Congressional Research Service.
According to the WikiLeaks site, the record service is a
congressional “think tank” with a staff of around 700. Reports
are commissioned by members of Congress on topics relevant
to current political events.
Despite taxpayer costs of more than $100 million a year, its
electronic archives are, as a matter of policy, not made avail-
able to the public.
The link to Cannon Beach?
Pretty tenuous, a mere footnote, referring to a 2005 opinion
by Judge Sandra O’Connor on the subject of property takings
— usually involving disputes between property owners and
municipalities.
A 1994 Supreme Court decision held that Cannon Beach’s
denial of an oceanfront property owners’ permit application to
construct a seawall in the dry sand area of their property “does
not constitute an uncompensated taking under the Fifth Amend-
ment to the U.S. Constitution.” It affi rmed the state’s goals of
limiting development on “conditionally stable dry sand and the
implementing city ordinances and department regulations do
not constitute taking of the owners’ property.”
This is not the stuff of Cold War espionage — it can also be
found at supremecourt.gov.
The second WikiLeaks reference to Cannon Beach comes
in a hacked email from Stratfor, a global intelligence agency
based in Austin, Texas.
In February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Global
Intelligence Files, more than fi ve million hacked emails from
the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Strat-
for.
The emails date between July 2004 and late December 2011.
These were the leaks that got Brown, then a contributor to The
Guardian and Vanity Fair, in trouble.
According to WikiLeaks, the leaked Stratfor emails reveal
“the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence
publisher, but provides confi dential intelligence services to
large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lock-
heed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government
agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.”
The WikiLeaks site says “the emails show Stratfor’s web
of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques
and psychological methods.”
Among the material several thousand emails exchanged by
staff members between 2004 and 2011, including a short wire
service report about the crash of a U.S. F-15 fi ghter jet into
the ocean 35 miles off Cannon Beach. The single-seat aircraft,
based at the Portland Air Base, was from the 142nd Fighter
Publisher
David F. Pero
Editor
R.J. Marx
Sales/Advertising
Manager
Betty Smith
Production Manager
John D. Bruijn
Classifi ed Sales
Jamie Ramsdell
Advertising Sales
Holly Larkins
Brandy Stewart
Contributing writers
Lyra Fontaine
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Nancy McCarthy
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Journalist Barrett Brown was jailed for distributing links
to a global intelligence company.
Brown was ordered to
pay more than $829,000
in fines. On a journalist’s
salary, he’ll still be
paying that back when
Donald Trump Jr. is
in the White House.
Wing of the Oregon National Guard, went down while on a
training mission.
The incident was nationally reported by United Press
International (cited in the leaked document) and results of the
investigation — that the pilot became disoriented during fl ight
— published by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Washington
Post and others.
Protections needed
Releasing hacked emails from WikiLeaks became a charac-
teristic of the 2016 presidential campaign, leading to the demise
of Hillary Clinton and her top aides, notably campaign vice
chairwoman Huma Abedin (wife of the notorious nude Tweeter
Anthony Weiner) and John Podesta, former chairman of the
Clinton campaign.
To me, the email revelations were about as exciting as some-
body else’s Chinese food order. But they upset a lot of people
on both sides and arguably led to a Trump win, along with a
nudge-nudge wink-wink from the nation’s FBI chief James
Comey.
What do the Cannon Beach WikiLeaks reveal?
That a federal agency and international think tank really
may not know much more than the rest of us: analysis of a 1994
Supreme Court decision and the rehashing of old news. Intelli-
gence agencies, it appears, get the news from … the newspaper.
With huge data dumps available to anyone with an internet
connection, secrecy is only as good as your encrypted software.
Even Stratfor’s intelligence information is available to the
public with a subscription — $39 a month or $349 a year. A
year of the Cannon Beach Gazette is a lot less and apparently
has much of the same information.
According to FreeBarrettBrown.com, Brown is now work-
ing at D Magazine in Dallas, living in a half-way house while
out on parole.
Brown’s defenders seek to turn him into a cause célèbre, but
he is far from the only journalist at risk for doing their job.
An arrest warrant was issued for NPR’s Amy Goodman
when she covered the Dakota Pipeline story — charges later
thrown out by a North Dakota judge. The Committee to Protect
Journalists lists 259 jailed reporters worldwide; 81 of those are
in Turkey, a U.S. ally.
On January 10, we observed the anniversary of “Common
Sense,” Thomas Paine’s classic plea for independence and a
model of journalistic dissent.
Shockingly, the United States is listed as No. 47 out of 180
countries in the world in terms of press freedoms, described by
the international journalists’ group Reporters Without Borders
as especially weak in terms of federal protections for whis-
tle-blowers and lacking a federal shield law to protect sources.
Maybe I’m watching a little too much “Homeland,” but I’m
wondering if a little more public information just might make
us a lot safer.
CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
The Cannon Beach Gazette is published every other
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be reprinted or copied without consent of the owners.
id I tell you about my mom? How she is my in-
spiration in birding, reading, writing and well just
about everything that makes my life deep and
meaningful! Did you hear about the time we traveled to
Hawaii together?
Oh wait, that’s what’s happening right now! We are
on day three of as seven-day visit on Maui! Hawaii is the
only state in the Union that my mom has not been to until
three days ago. That completes her bucket list.
And for me, you may be already thinking, “Oh, the
birds! Susan must be in paradise!” (excuse the pun) Well,
you couldn’t be
more accurate! I
am loving it. The
birds here are ex- BIRD NOTES
otic, loud, color- SUSAN PETERSON
ful and plentiful!
We are stay-
ing in upcountry
Makaweo. By the end of the fi rst day, I had nine birds on
my list and nine of them were life listers(birds i had never
seen before) and that was mostly from sitting on the lanai
and walking around the neighborhood.
Quoting the gracious friend we are staying “When I
imagine a birder, you fi t the bill” I have yelled out bird
sightings and names in the middle of conversations. And
I am wearing out my sandals when I do my happy dance,
usually done when I see a new bird. Not sure that’s what
other birders do, but I like that my “image” is a positive
one.
My list is up to 20 now and includes a very special
sighting of a pair of Nenes — Hawaiian goose — with
a chick.
I may come back to the Oregon coast, but reporting
from Hawaii seems like a possibility too!
Please join the First Sunday Cannon Beach Bird Walk.
The next one will be on Sunday, Feb. 5, so if you’re in
town, join us at 9 o’clock at the Lagoon Trail on 2nd
Street. Bring binoculars and wear appropriate clothing.
Everyone is welcome!
Mark you calendars for the fi fth annual North Oregon
Coast Birdathon April 8. More details soon at coastwild-
life.com
• • •
Susan has spent her life enjoying the great outdoors
from the lakes and woods of Northern Minnesota, Mount
Adams in Washington and now the Oregon beach envi-
rons. After spending many pleasurable hours driving her
avid birder parents around, she has taken up birding as
a passion. Susan resides on Neawanna Creek in Seaside
where her backyard is a birder’s paradise.
OBITUARIES
Evelyn Mae Brown
March 13, 1922 — Jan. 1, 2017
Born March 13, 1922, to John P. and Tillie (Olson)
Paulson in Duluth, Minnesota, Evelyn Mae Brown, 94,
passed away Jan. 1, 2017, in Lacey, Washington.
In 1944, Evelyn married Jack B. Brown in Kirkland,
Washington. The two lived for each other, and they en-
joyed a wonderful 70 years together. They honeymooned
in Seaside, Oregon, lived in Seattle while Jack was a ca-
reer Seattle fi refi ghter and she a secretary for the Renton
School District, and spent their last 40 years together in
Cannon Beach, Oregon. Evelyn moved to Lacey in mid-
2015 to be closer to her daughter and family.
Evelyn is survived by her son, Michael John Brown;
daughter, Jacquelyn (Brown) Shammel; four grandchil-
dren; and three great-grandchildren. She was predeceased
by her husband; brothers, Al Brown and Leonard Brown;
and sisters, Helen Linder and Alma Dean.
No services are planned. Please share memories at
www.FuneralAlternatives.org
LETTERS
Professionals appreciated
We want to thank all law enforcement agencies and
the Seaside Fire Department for the professional and car-
ing way they handled the situation on Whispering Pines.
We appreciate you all for a job well done.
Again, thank you.
Larry and Sharon Johnson
Seaside
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