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Friday, January 14, 2011

New York Congressman asks Treasury to blacklist Wikileaks' Assange

from Datamation:
A prominent House lawmaker is ratcheting up pressure on the Obama administration to take action against Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

In a letter delivered this week, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to add Assange to the department's Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons List, or SDN List, a move that would prohibit U.S. businesses and individuals from doing business with the whistleblower site or anyone associated with it.

The SDN List is a registry maintained by Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control that seeks to impose sanctions against individuals and companies associated with targeted foreign countries, or independent entities that have been identified as criminal operations, such as terrorists or drug traffickers.

King and other lawmakers have warned that Wikileaks' publication of a cache of secret State Department documents, many relating to confidential conversations between diplomats and local informants, puts the lives of U.S. operatives and their sources in danger.
Read the rest here.

Read about Geithner's response here.

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