Who We Support

Courage has scored some decisive victories, created the most comprehensive database of Snowden’s documents and made substantial contributions to public debates around whistleblower protection, online freedoms and citizens’ access to information.

Courage has been there for our beneficiaries when they needed it most. We helped the Azerbaijani journalist and human rights worker Emin Huseynov escape to asylum and safety in Switzerland amid a crackdown in Baku. We saved Lauri Love from a virtual death sentence in the United States, winning an important battle for UK encryption rights along the way. We’ve made sure that Edward Snowden’s revelations have a permanent impact by making every document published easily accessible, searchable by category, country, and keyword. We’ve funded commissaries and legal costs for our beneficiaries who are enduring abusive retaliation in prison. We’re defending WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as he faces extradition to the United States, where he’d face aggressive prosecution for his journalistic activity. And finally, we’re supporting U.S. Air Force drone whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was sentenced to 45 months in prison under the Espionage Act for informing the American public about the horrors of the drone program.

Courage is dedicated to supporting individual beneficiaries but also the principles they support. We’ve testified at trials, submitted public comments, and have appeared in media interviews about how our beneficiaries’ cases apply to their countries at large and the wider fight for the public’s right to know.

Current beneficiaries:

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
Daniel Hale

A project of the Courage Foundation, the Assange Defense Committee is a national coalition fighting to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Comprising human rights defenders, press freedom advocates, civil liberties lawyers, and supporters across the United States, Assange Defense organizes public rallies, provides essential resources, and raises awareness about the unprecedented prosecution against Julian Assange and the threat it poses to the freedom of the press around the world.

In supporting journalists’ right to publish, the Assange Defense Committee is upholding the public’s right to know what its government is doing in its name.

The Committee calls for Julian Assange’s immediate release, charges to be dropped, safe passage to the secure location of his choosing, and compensation for the psychological torture and arbitrary detention he has endured.

Daniel Hale is a former Air Force and NSA intelligence analyst who is serving nearly a four-year prison sentence for passing classified U.S. military documents to reporters at The Intercept. In 2015, The Intercept published The Drone Papers, giving the public an unvarnished window into the incredibly secretive U.S. remote assassination program, including how it selects targets to kill and how the government “masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets.”