"Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences. Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check".
Damn right. The treatment of Assange has dealt a terrible blow to the possibility of exposing criminal doings in the military, corporations, political parties, whatever. It sets the example that whistleblowers will not be protected.
So how did we end up here? Maybe many reasons but primarily I think maybe the Assange case is indicative of what might happen if you enter into the business of exposing corruption, and not restrict your exposures to one direction only. It will by necessity alienate any powerful interests that might protect you.
As it stands, only principled people side with Assange, people who insist that core democratic principles should trump the shortsighted interests of the state. Such people are few and far between nowadays, but are normally thought to be populating the courts, at least at higher levels, which is the last straw we can cling to.
But with a partisan press that has turned their backs on Assange there is hardly any pressure on the courts to do the right thing.
People trying to take the "high road" stating they won't stand with Assange, thinking that whistleblowers need to be some sort of Gandhi, completely miss the point that if you were a Gandhi, you would be far removed from a position that had something to whistle on. It is about net positive, and at the end of the day a little guy/org took on the behemoths of the world, and mankind collectively went back to posting their thongs online.
I am reminded of HL Mencken's quote - The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
>;Damn right. The treatment of Assange has dealt a terrible blow to the possibility of exposing criminal doings in the military, corporations, political parties, whatever. It sets the example that whistleblowers will not be protected.
This is the part that worries me the most - how the hell did we end up in a situation where exposing war crimes by a western nation is likely to have the whistleblower tortured and left to rot in solitary confinement for the rest of their life?
And how the hell did we get to a place where few people seem to even care about the war crimes, and where the powers that be have been able to spin this so most people think the whistleblower did wrong?
The whole situation says a lot about the current state of the US and the rest of the 5-eyes. Honestly, it's fucking terrifying.
I take issue with the notion that "only principled people side with Assange". Based on my following of his saga, I still have a lot of questions about how deeply Assange was truly involved. I feel he removed some of his legal protection by being so actively involved in hunting for government secrets. He wasn't just a neutral clearing house in my opinion, but an active agitator sticking his thumb in the eye of nation states.
The question of whether he is a journalist is irrelevant to me. What I do see is that he was a highly partisan actor involved in the affairs of nation states. His behavior around the 2016 election further moved him in the direction of willing accomplice to election interference. His selective publication of data also makes me highly suspicious of his behavior. It all had a very clear slant and focus around the election. He even supposedly solicited information from Russian intelligence agents at one point.
Maybe somewhere in all of Assange's partisan hackery, I can see an argument that he didn't actually do anything wrong. And, since he is very polarizing, you would have to stick to strong principles to still support him and what his legal plight represents. However, I don't think you could engineer a less sympathetic character to carry the banner of freedom of speech/press, which is honestly his biggest problem. No one cares about another partisan hack going by the wayside of a potentially corrupt prosecution. "You get what you deserve". I don't believe that, because I think the actual case against him has merit.
In reality, the accusation, which I believe is credible, is that he was an active conspirator in an effort to steal state secrets, and not just a mild mannered clearing house that published what it got through highly clean and legal means. He broke his own operational "security" code of staying above the fray by being such an active participant in the acquisition of state secrets. The manning case in particular is an area where I believe he crossed the line and was actively assisting and encouraging Manning. He has a hard time telling the truth and based on the facts is morally and ethically bankrupt.
People like Glenn Greenwald managed to handle things like Snowden much more cleanly and without the obvious bias and legal/ethical concerns of an Assange figure.
> I feel he removed some of his legal protection by being so actively involved in hunting for government secrets.
> I don't believe that, because I think the actual case against him has merit.
> He broke his own operational "security" code of staying above the fray by being such an active participant in the acquisition of state secrets. The manning case in particular is an area where I believe he crossed the line and was actively assisting and encouraging Manning.
Enough with the hand waving. This is a technical forum where you're writing for people who are familiar with things like NTLM and hashing. Let's talk facts. Assange is being charged due to the following instant message conversation.
> Manning: any good at lm hash cracking?
> Assange: yes
> Assange: <continuing conversation, goes off on a short tangent about wikileaks funding>
> Assange: we have rainbow tables for lm.
> Manning: 80c11049faebf441d524fb3c4cd5351c
> Manning: I think it's lm + lmnt
> Manning: anyway...
> Manning: need sleep :yawn:
> Manning: not even sure if that's the hash... I had to hexdump a SAM file, since I don't have the system file...
> Assange: what makes you think it's lm?
> Assange: its from a SAM?
> Manning: yeah
> Assange: passed it onto our lm guy
> Manning: thx
Then, 2 days later after a long discussion about wikileaks and intelligence agencies and other leaks.
Is this a CFAA violation? No hashes were cracked. No additional access was had. He maybe put in a half-hearted attempt to crack a hash. To me, this is not being "actively involved" in "hunting for government secrets."
edit: I think it speaks volumes that this is the best thing they can find to stick him with.
Actually the charges are 49 pages long and go all the way back to conversations from his youth when he was a minor.
Your post is a red herring as it is obvious the prosecution is using more than this one conversation make its case.
And he is being charged with much more than conspiracy to intrude into govt computer systems so again your post is way too narrow.
For me personally, HN has failed to show how this case is uniquely more perverse than the run of the mill "he stole a pencil when he was a youth" vs "he talked about reading generals' emails at 17" (for Assange) - it's the norm in the US legal system.
Is this the first case that awakened HN to how unjust our legal system is? I can't help but feel that is where most of the outrage comes from. Not the specifics of this case, which look terrible for Assange (not saying it's his fault they look terrible but they do).
Protestors are being charged with a possible sentence of 6 mo to 99 years right now. That kind of discretion and ambiguity is disgusting but it is a feature. They can get Assange for anything just like an "hacker" could be jailed for bypassing an API.
I'm sorry but the legal system and our laws are unjust. But don't channel everything through Assange and make it seem like this is anything new.
They have him in their crosshairs, you and I are lucky it's not our turn. Why is it Assange's? Maybe to chill future dissent and fact based journalism, maybe this executive branch has something specific to fear.
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Wikileaks canary dumps' dencryption keys were never published. In 2016-2017 something happened. Idk why Assange never published them, but it's possible wikileaks was comprised by the US govt early on in the Trump admin or late Obama admin. Maybe someone has more knowledge on this part.
> They have him in their crosshairs, you and I are lucky it's not our turn. Why is it Assange's? Maybe to chill future dissent and fact based journalism, maybe this executive branch has something specific to fear.
Its obvious why they go after every single leaker, to prevent anyone else from following their example. 'You want to be a hero? You will end up like Snowden, or Assange or tortured in prison outside of US soil.
To me the question is, is that conspiracy? Even if he made only a half hearted attempt, wasn't it still an attempt in case he got lucky with the password hash?
Granted, IANAL, but 18 USC 1030(b) does have language for conspiracy [1]. It's worth noting that conspiracy can exist whether or not there was any actual trespass.
This is similar to conspiracy to commit murder, e.g. The murder does not need to have happened in order to be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. And that appears to be the way the law is written here.
So this is the crux of the reason they've imprisoned and tortured him for nearly a decade is it?
Makes it all the more frustrating when people try to defend what the United States Government has done to hide their crimes for which they have yet to be held accountable.
Assange was not tortured or imprisoned for a decade. He voluntarily entered and remained in the embassy to avoid legal criminal proceedings, and that gambit failed.
To avoid criminal charges beginning with sexual assault and rape allegations, I think, not from the US. Which may have been a tactic to extradite him before other charges but as others have said here, he is a terrible personality to have in this situation as he's polarizing and contentious at the best of time.
When groups like the ACLU have pushed issues via lawsuits its often with a very specific, media attention perfect client like Rosa Parks who cannot be vilified or attacked for a past criminal record or documented issues with society and law enforcement. Not because those people don't deserve representation but because their cases were too easy to strike down and prevent progress on the underlying issue. We see this today with so many validating the killing of George Floyd because of a past criminal record or recent behavior without eve considering if those actions deserved a death sentence or night in jail. It's sad but it's true.
To avoid criminal charges beginning with sexual assault and rape allegations, I think, not from the US. Which may have been a tactic to extradite him before other charges
The Swedish rape case would have made it more difficult for the US to extradite Assange, as that case would have had priority in the UK (since it was first in time, and more importantly, actually proceeding when Assange went into isolation), and Sweden is less likely to extradite to the US than the UK.
When groups like the ACLU have pushed issues via lawsuits its often with a very specific, media attention perfect client like Rosa Parks who cannot be vilified or attacked for a past criminal record or documented issues with society and law enforcement.
I see that you are unfamiliar with the actual history of the ACLU, which has also defended neo-nazis/white supremacists, Larry Flynt, self-described terrorists, and other degenerates in precedent-setting cases.
>), and Sweden is less likely to extradite to the US than the UK.
This ignores the 30 times Assange offered to be extradited to Sweden if Sweden provided some assurance that they wouldn't extradite to the US. It also doesn't account for the incredibly strange ways the case was handled, like Assange checking with prosecutors for permission to leave the country, and then those prosecutors issuing an arrest warrant the day he left.
> Sweden is less likely to extradite to the US than the UK
And regardless of whether or not you believe that, if he had been extradited from the UK to Sweden, the UK would have to consent to the onward extradition to the US. He would've had the ability to fight it in two legal systems, both of whom would have to agree the extradition were legal, rather than just one.
It’s a little more complicated than that... He didn’t just visit URLs, but downloaded that data, saved it, and posted it up somewhere else. Regardless of the “hacking” charge, posting people’s data is taking it too far. If he had just used it as a POC, that’d be different.
Despite obvious differences both in societal import and trivial details, weev's case was like a practice run for Assange's. Not only is the government using the same playbook, but the character assassins in traditional and social media are as well.
>I don't think you could engineer a less sympathetic character to carry the banner of freedom of speech/press
Of course you could. Any journalist that participated in the years-long character assassination to make Assange appear "less sympathetic" is a less sympathetic character themselves...
If I'm improperly accused of sexual assault (totally innocent) I'll hear that case out instead of hiding in my man cave at a foreign embassy while still making contact with questionable foreign intelligence figures.
What you fail to realize is that for Assange, it would be a better outcome to go to trial and be judged guilty than innocent. If guilty he ends up in a Swedish prison, if innocent he gets extradited and gets the death penalty in the US. So his refusal to go says the opposite of what you think it does about what he considers of his chances to be judged guilty.
Ok, but what if you get accused of sexual assault, and you know that if you go into custody in that foreign country, you'll probably never go to trial, because you'll immediately be extradited to the US for trumped up espionage charges and face the death penalty? You still going to go hear that case out?
>I'll hear that case out instead of hiding in my man cave at a foreign embassy
You'd only do that if you were stupid enough to not already understand that the accusation was setup, with a little US pressure into an anyways willing subordinate government (Sweden), to get you to a circus trial and then extradition.
> I don't think you could engineer a less sympathetic character to carry the banner of freedom of speech/press
Assange being an unsympathetic figure is largely a result of the fierce media campaign to paint him as one. Most of us have never met him, have only read about him in hostile media. Noam Chomsky and Alice Walker made the point well, I think:
> When setting a gravely dangerous precedent, governments don't typically persecute the most beloved individuals in the world. They target those who can be portrayed as subversive, unpatriotic – or simply weird. Then they actively distort public debate by emphasizing those traits.
> The manning case in particular is an area where I believe he crossed the line and was actively assisting and encouraging Manning.
Have you read the testimony of experts about this? See for example Eric Lewis, a practising US attorney and former law professor:
> [Prosectuor] James Lewis QC: Do you accept that a government insider who leaks classified information may be prosecuted?
> Eric Lewis: Yes.
> James Lewis QC: Do you accept that a journalist may not aid such a person to break the law?
> Eric Lewis: No. It is normal journalistic practice to cultivate an official source and encourage them to leak. Seymour Hersh would have to be prosecuted under such an idea.
> [Prosecutor] Lewis: You have as a journalist merely been the passive recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done anything criminal to obtain government information?
> Hager: You said “passive”. That is not the way we work. Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover their backs sometimes.
In the instance of the Manning probes and cases I can accept that he is filling the role of a journalist, he just isn't a very good one that failed to protect his sources. I can mostly accept up to the 2016 elections that he was relatively clean of any real ethical violations / legal trouble despite what journalists and the govt might say.
Around the 2016 Guccifer and DNC leaks I don't accept he was acting as a mere journalist. He was, at best, and I think this strains intellectual credulity, an unwitting Russian asset. In reality, he was likely a willing Russian asset based on the evidence. It walks and quacks like a duck based on its behavior. If he wasn't an active and willing Russian asset I would be surprised. He played a key role in the DNC hack. Here he may, possibly, be ethically clean, but his behavior and the timing of the leaks was morally bankrupt and actively trying to influence US elections in a particular direction benefitting a particular party. I don't see how anyone can support that sort of behavior. There isn't enough evidence in the public sphere to convict him of crimes, so I think that is a miscarriage of justice and the legal system, but the continued white knighting of Assange in technocratic circles continues to amuse me.
What's gonna be the excuse when the democrats don't win in 2020? Because thinking a mail leak and some $50k in Facebook ad buys get you an election is not only absurdly stupid, it is extremely condescending towards your fellow Americans in the voting booth.
Once again, one manages not to mention what was in the emails. Genuine emails not disinformation. I see the same attitude over and over to blame Russia in order not to address the content of the emails. So much bad faith from Clinton's supporters. I am tired of people making it look like it's comparable with the Cambridge Analytical scandal.
Wow that's a very weird argument. We are not talking about the privacy of you and me but about the party apparatus conspiring to prevent Bernie Sanders from being the democratic candidate. At that point you might as well argue that the taking of the winter palace was a illegitimate because I don't know about but would you like to see your home invaded by a bunch of angry people?
> He was, at best, and I think this strains intellectual credulity, an unwitting Russian asset. In reality, he was likely a willing Russian asset based on the evidence.
Based on what evidence? Assange stated that "our source is not the Russian government or any state party." So I'm curious what evidence you've seen to say it was.
> ...his behavior and the timing of the leaks was morally bankrupt and actively trying to influence US elections in a particular direction benefitting a particular party.
> In July 2016 Assange compared the choice between Clinton and Trump to a choice between cholera and gonorrhea, saying, “Personally, I would prefer neither.” When a Twitter user suggested to Assange in 2017 that he start sucking up to Trump in order to secure a pardon, Assange replied, “I’d rather eat my own intestines.”
Not to mention of course that it's now the Trump administration that's pursuing him and trying to send him to a US prison.
Democracy requires informed consent, and an education on the facts. A truly free people are trusted with the facts, and it is the ethical duty of journalists to provide this education, and as such Assange has acted to the highest ethical standards.
I don't claim there is some higher power (e.g. the direction of history, science) from where democracy as a societal telos (i.e. end goal) gains its legitimacy. I just think most people desire democracy as a telos for society, and this collective desire is a basis for ethics.
The version of ethics according to which Assange is unethical is a jurdical view of ethics, where the laws created by the state are taken to be the laws of ethics. But the moment you accept that this juridical ethics is a transcendent source of objective truth, you've taken an extremely one sided partisan political position i.e. that of the elites, who wrote the laws, and created the laws of ethics that reinforce the status quo.
Greenwald went on Tucker's show, to beg Trump to pardon Assange. [0] The theory is that this is the surest way to communicate with Trump. Snowden just appeared on Rogan to argue on Assange's behalf. Those who actually respect Greenwald's and Snowden's judgment, join them in supporting Assange.
I just view Greenwald as a more careful agitator that maintained proper distance. Assange, Greenwald, and Snowden make quite an interesting trio in the discussion of state secrets. I don’t really question Snowden+Greenwald’s legitimacy. I think Snowden is in sharp contrast to Assange who has never demonstrated any real integrity or principles other than attacking Democrats during the 2016 election. Assange and Trump are useful puppets off a hostile state or directly actors of said state. Snowden is a legitimate whistleblower and his intentions are much harder to question.
Assange: "29 year old young man in a foreign jurisdication he had no experience with, the subject of the largest intelligence man hunt the world has ever seen... at that moment, he reached out and asked us for help."
Snowden: "While all of these news organisations around the world, all of these publishers, were trying to get a piece of the story, there was only one publisher that actually said we want to help the source. We want to make sure he's okay. We want to make sure that no matter what happens, he has somebody on his side, and that was Wikileaks."
It does sound like he was fishing for information which is different to what a leak usually is like. However, I don't see any issue with him being partisan. Why should he be any less partisan than any other journalist?
But civilizations where such people prevailed had an enormous impact on the world. It turns out that a society with enough of them ends up in a golden age.
Yeah, but those times might just be exceptions to the natural order of things.
Naturally, it's always easier to get others to understand problems and viewpoints when matters are simple. When things are more complex, it's more difficult to get others to come to a common agreement or understanding. As so, the reason the world might seem more polarized today, (or why principled people always seem to be short in supply), might simply be due to the sheer complexity of the world which acts to divide everyone. And it's likely getting worse as the modern world becomes more complex. Such people who prevailed and brought upon prior golden ages, likely did so against the odds, as otherwise golden ages would be norm.
I can understand why it's important to restrict nation state evidence but when it's obvious that nation has broken international laws and agreements like the Geneva Convention the onus should be on the judge/court to make consideration for that and be able to move it from 'criminal' to whistleblower. Otherwise we're all pretty much doomed to eventually wake up and find ourselves in a completely authoritarian state.
Not excusing what the US does, but it doesn’t help public image when your country murders over 10 million people in concentration camps. You’re not going to convince anyone that what you did was better than what the Allies did.
Edit 2: Ironic, assange supporters shooting the messenger for exposing truth. I get downvoted for making a statement supported by hard evidence provided by a linked source. Because you want something to be true does not make it so. Assange supporters like shooting the messenger now? Ironic.
End edit 2
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> Assange case is indicative of what might happen if you enter into the business of exposing corruption, and not restrict your exposures to one direction only.
This doesn’t square. Assange wasn’t exposing everything he got, nor was he interested in looking for info on all countries.
He was primarily focused on exposing info in one direction, the US, and actually had expressed indifference to exposing info on Russia.
So it is impossible for his treatment to show anything about what happens if you exposure corruption equally without direction, because that is not what he did.
He only shows an anecdote of what happens when you focus exposing corruption in a single foreign country, and go beyond that, to strongly support certain candidates in their elections due to personal grudges.
Your "proof" has always struck me as bizarre. Wikileaks gave a reason that they refused the data, they believed it had already been posted elsewhere. They were wrong, but it's understandable that they'd think that as part of the leak was already public and they lack a Russian speaking staff.
At no point do the people offering the documents seem to reply with "only part of it is public." Without saying that, this doesn't serve as proof of anything except Wikileaks making a mistake.
The OP offered no opinion on whether Assange was partisan, but I also don't see how his Twitter messages to Trump Jr. makes him partisan either. He encouraged Trump to talk about Wikileaks and to leak information to them. Nothing suggests his communication was stopping the exposure of any secrets.
> That is why journalism is protected in the US by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society... US officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the Wikileaks founder for journalism – in fact, they denied he was a journalist.
Uhh. This article obsesses slightly about Journalist vs Not but they aren’t a class that gets special protection under the US Constitution. There is no category of privilege or freedom based on that status and they are not registered by any central authority that authorizes the benefits of its protection. The First Amendment protects any jerk with an opinion and a printing press, in the style of Thomas Paine, and any collaborators.
Legally, the question of whether Assange is a journalist is basically immaterial.
>Uhh. This article obsesses slightly about Journalist vs Not but they aren’t a class that gets special protection under the US Constitution. There is no category of privilege or freedom based on that status and they are not registered by any central authority that authorizes the benefits of its protection. The First Amendment protects any jerk with an opinion and a printing press, in the style of Thomas Paine, and any collaborators.
There has ALWAYS been the unwritten rule that media outlets are not charged under the espionage act, as they were doing their civic duty reporting on stuff the government doesn't want reported.
You can say about Assange what you want but it's undeniable he is only the PUBLISHER, and not the one who stole the docs.
The fact that he is charged for publishing is a line that the US Govt is crossing, and that's why it's significant.
> Legally, the question of whether Assange is a journalist is basically immaterial.
Legally, maybe so, but if he's being prosecuted based on activity that many other journalists engage in, that clearly should be seen a huge threat.
Cook and others have argued that there was a reluctance to prosecute on those grounds because the prosecution feared it would generate too much media outrage. Craig Murray in one of his pieces suggested that he thinks that due to the lack of media interest in the case, the prosecution have now been emboldened to pursue him however they like.
The original conflict was when Assange ran wikileaks, the US accused him of running a foreign intelligence agency and could prosecute him differently. Assange argued he was a journalist not an intelligence agency.
The 1st Amendment applies to US citizens and non-citizen US permanent residents. It does not apply to foreign nationals. AFAIK Assange is not and was not a US permanent resident, so the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to him.
That being said, it would be difficult to convince me that the actions of Assange and Wikileaks rise to the level of espionage. None of what I've seen would indicate that he's actually done that.
Indeed. The journalist interviews, researches (using available materials, uses proper requests to obtain available materials), produces an article or story. A journalist who commits, or encourages or facilitates others to commit, crimes in the pursuit of their goals is still a criminal.
> A journalist who commits, or encourages or facilitates others to commit, crimes in the pursuit of their goals is still a criminal.
This is exactly what the prosecution tried to say, but it's not that easy. Did you read the testimony of investigative journalist Nicky Hager:
'[Prosecutor] Lewis: You have as a journalist merely been the passive recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done anything criminal to obtain government information?
'Hager: You said “passive”. That is not the way we work. Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover their backs sometimes.'
Perhaps that's why whistleblowers are given so many special protections. If what they did was perfectly legal, a lot of the extra protections wouldn't be necessary.
If you're in the CIA, for example, you can't blow the whistle legally, at all. You'll always be breaking some law (security clearance, most often).
Journalists have always had a higher status in the west because of their function in a democratic country. Assange proves that there is little in the way to prosecute journalists, even in the west. lives are risked everyday in countries like China to show the world what is going on behind all the propoganda. Yet today, Assange is locked away while the media has chosen to be the silent wingmen of the dictatorship that is the militairy-industrial complex.
We’re in dangerous territory, here. But we have been for a long time. The role of journalism has largely been democratized via the internet. But the rights of journalism have not followed suit. So, we’re in a pretty bad spot, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, as power strictures and incentives are mostly aligned to the current direction.
Mainstream journalism is elitist, is the problem. They seem to see entities like Wikileaks as fake journalism, that circumvents their gatekeeping. Assange isn't a hero to them, so they won't come to his defence.
Let me tell you something about highly educated experts. As a highly educated expert i attended a fairly well respected 4 year University where i was taught how to use tactics like framing to persuade my audience to view a situation how i wanted them to perceive it. I was taught that the same set of facts could be weaved into two totally different stories at my choosing. I was taught that Karl Marx fortold the death of capitalism and freedom in favor of the "fight of the proletariat". In other words a bunch of crap that any self righteousness ignorant prick with a bunch of money could pick up and use to screw over the world and enrich themselves. There's nothing inherently good about being "elite". It just makes better liars and more clever traitors.
Remember when CNN said that trump retweeting a gif of a pro wrestling match with the CNN logo photoshopped into it was a threat to journalists, and then when the US was trying to prosecute a journalist who committed no crimes on US soil, they said nothing?
You can be both a foreign asset and a journalist. If the US government is good, then conspiring with it's enemies to discredit the US would be wrong. But if the US government is bad, well, the US government has no moral right to prosecute, but that doesn't matter from a power perspective.
There's no legal way to fix a broken legal system, just as an inconsistent logical system can't overcome itself.
>There's no legal way to fix a broken legal system, just as an inconsistent logical system can't overcome itself.
Legal systems are not actually that rigid, see for example the long tradition of SCOTUS overturning case precedent including their own. See also the large number of elected judges in the US, who could be replaced directly by people.
> What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
You mean ends don't justify means? That has proven to be a hardsell to ideologues. Principle moral failing of the modern man is adopting this 'universal moral and ethical waiver' as their guiding light (regardless of affected ideological garb).
Yeah, that's not why. The "why" is because Assange has repeatedly (2010 and 2017) received leaks from within the Russian government, and refused to publish them. On one occasion having gone silent shortly before landing a job hosting a show for Russia Today. And also claimed to have documents about Trump, which he has also never published.
"The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!"
I think perhaps I'm missing something in this whole fiasco. Many of the comments here read as if he's only charged with exercising free speech.
Has someone actually read the charges to see what Assange is accused of? Surely it's something more than "publishing secret documents." Are they accusing him of exercising free speech, or accusing him of actual crimes?
Weren't the claims conveniently for the prosecution changed shortly before the trial this year, and the defense complained that they based their defense on that May 2019 document that you link?
"On June 24, [2020] the defense learned when a press release was published that Assange would soon face a third indictment. It was their belief that the indictment only added narrative details and expanded the timeline from 2010-2011 to 2010-2015.
The U.S. government served the indictment to the defense, but not the court, on July 2. Then, on August 12, a fresh extradition request based on the third indictment was issued. (It was dated July 17.)
Prosecutors notified the defense on August 21 that the third indictment does not include any additional charges, contrary to the defense’s understanding, the new details are not “mere narrative.” They “constitute the conduct upon which this court is entitled, and indeed must now determine [whether] an extradition offense is made out” under the relevant law.
Mark Summers, a lawyer for Assange, referred to two general allegations—Count 1, which involves an alleged conspiracy to release “national defense information,” and Count 2, which is an alleged conspiracy to commit computer intrusions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
By adding new material, prosecutors believe they can extradite Assange, even if they do not convince the court that publishing disclosures from Pfc. Chelsea Manning was a criminal act."
What illegal acts are you referring to? There are a lot of allegations of things like implying he couldn’t decrypt something and encouraging a source to whistleblow about war crimes. It doesn’t seem obvious that these are illegal activities for a foreign journalist to engage in to me, but maybe I’m missing something?
There is a legalistic difference between asking someone to give you information if they already have the information (legal? I think?) and before they have the information (definitely illegal).
If the source doesn't have the information yet then you are asking them to steal government secrets, the crime for which is conspiracy to steal government secrets. That's traditionally what spies do, not journalists, which is why the crime exists.
I read before that another thing he did was tell Manning what software to use to crack passwords to gain access to more info. That definitely seems like crossing the line from just receiving information, to actively helping someone commit a crime.
Pointing someone to a specific program is a crime in the same way as a doctor helping a career criminal regain their strength while they boast about committing new crimes. That is to say, not at all. Our field has a duty of care to help people actualize themselves in the digital realm.
Wouldn't a more accurate analogy be a doctor offering them advice on how to better or successfully commit a crime? There's nothing illegal about a doctor offering medical treatment to someone (obviously it depends on the nature of the medical treatment and licensing and etc.)
There is nothing illegal about security education in the abstract, just as there is nothing illegal about providing medical care.
Physical strength is a necessary component of committing a crime in my analogy, and the doctor is supplying it even though they know the person is likely to use it in furtherance of illegal acts. Still it is the doctor's duty to heal their patient, and the patient's responsibility whether to commit more crimes or not. Even though they're helping their patient, the doctor is not conspiring to rob a convenience store.
I think this conversation would benefit from moving away from analogy and back into the factual realm.
The crime of conspiracy has two requirements. 1) That two people make an agreement to commit a crime and 2) that at least one person takes an "overt act" in furtherance of the crime.
Count 18 of the indictment [0] charges that Assange and Manning "conspir[ed] to commit computer intrusion." The first condition of agreement was easy to show, they clearly agreed they were going to break into a government system. More challenging are the overt acts: they allege that Manning stole the password hash and sent it to Assange, who tried to break it himself, saying "No luck so far."
So both the analogies of providing medical care and advice are irrelevant here - Assange didn't just provide information, he allegedly actually participated in the "overt acts" of criminal conspiracy by trying to crack the password. In your analogy, the doctor joined the criminal on the heist.
The analogy is purposeful. Medicine is an older field that has had time to develop societally-necessary protections. Whereas computing is young so there is an overriding call to burn the witch, exemplified by monstrosities like the CFAA.
I was specifically responding to the idea that telling someone about a program was furthering a crime. You're arguing a different point. And to me it's completely uninteresting to argue over what USG can technically charge him with, because we already know that USG is adept at crafting and twisting law to justify its own actions.
> Hong Kong police have issued arrest warrants for six overseas-based democracy activists
> US national Chu, who is the managing director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington DC-based advocacy group promoting freedom and autonomy for Hong Kong, appears to be the first known non-Hong Kong citizen to be targeted under the new security law.
> In recent weeks, several countries have suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong, including the United Kingdom and Australia. On Friday, Germany joined that list
That would depend on the nature of the extradition agreements between the two countries. It seems ill-advised for Mr. Assange to head to the UK which has a famously "special relationship" with the US.
Well its not really a fair comparison. Assange is a journalist that worked together with leading newspaper to publish warcrimes.
The one hacking charge is 5years total sentence of 125yrs that us is seeking.
HK case is completely different where China tried to pass far reaching law based on a murder case, that was the reason people did protested (on top of other power grab by CHinese government).
I haven't read the charges. I'm not even sure if they are public. They were also changed a few times.
Based on what I read (might be biased) he's charged for helping Chelsea Manning getting the documents (hacking) and publishing the documents before they were fully redacted to remove names and things that could help identify people - to protect the safety of people involved (common practice). This is debatable because he worked hard to redact name (together with the big newspapers), but other people published the raw documents before him and in the end Wiki Leaks release raw documents as well.
All this is pieced together based on Craig Murray's blog [1], which is often flagged here on HN.
> Are they accusing him of exercising free speech, or accusing him of actual crimes?
This is how it works everywhere that has theoretically free speech, but not practical free speech. The principle itself is rarely attacked, rather the surrounding activities are criminalized.
> Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
> Article 36 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.
Does that sound like the practical situation in mainland China? How do you imagine a PRC court verdict about protesting reads?
Because people do not care for privacy and freedom of press/freedom of speech, Assange will be prosecuted, sentenced and our liberties from that day hence forth curtailed.
Freedom of speech and privacy will be viewed as an act of sedition
There is a difference between producing reporting on the basis of a whistleblower of conscience, and conspiring to exfiltrate a top secret data dump in the hope of finding some embarrassing details to publish.
> My dictionary defines “espionage” as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information”. A spy is defined as someone who “secretly obtains information on an enemy or competitor”.
Im glad this blog acquitted Assange of spying based on technicalities in his dictionary's definition of espionage. I think Assange did a great thing for the world, but it also sounds like he actively facilitated spying
Lots of people are above the law, half the US Federal government at the moment is arguing they are. Also any entire government spying apparatus has always been above the law by definition. Being in the military and fighting a war can be defined as being above the law (from the other side's point of view). Law defined in one locality can easily be illegal in another, so you can both be legal and illegal at the same time. Plus illegality is often about wether the declarer can prosecute under a law; if no one has standing or has the power to prosecute, then the law is rather hollow.
Umm, I believe the US government is in the process of demonstrating that they are indeed above the law.
Unless the judge and court in this instance reverse course completely, throw out most of the last two weeks as political maneuvering, and restart a fair and publicly accessible hearing, that is exactly what's happening.
> Gauntlet thrown down
The corporate media in the US and UK is no more diverse and pluralistic than the major corporate-funded political parties they identify with. This kind of media mirrors the same flaws as the Republican and Democratic parties in the US: they cheerlead consumption-based, globalised capitalism; they favour a policy of unsustainable, infinite growth on a finite planet; and they invariably support colonial, profit-driven, resource-grabbing wars, nowadays often dressed up as humanitarian intervention. The corporate media and the corporate political parties serve the interests of the same power establishment because they are equally embedded in that establishment.
And this is exactly the problem right there: corporate media isn’t really doing journalism!
The left wing media disavowed Assange and labeled him a Russian asset when Wikileaks published the DNC and Podesta emails. They painted themselves into a corner on this, so their best option is to ignore it at this point.
Also, while I despise the fact that the Trump administration is doing this, let’s not forget that the Obama and Bush administration oversaw a mass surveillance program and the Obama administration threatened Snowden’s life and painted him as a Russian asset. We have been building towards authoritarianism for 1-2 decades now.
Trump's administration? The same Trump that's floated a pardon? Most of the people in "Trump's administration" weren't appointed by Trump. He's the only POTUS to not be allow recess appointments and there around 130 positions he's been trying fill for 3.5 years - a record for any POTUS.
Everyone in this comment thread is correct. Yes we have been building toward authoritarianism since the Cold War. Yes Communism is evil and should be stopped. No we should not become our enemy in order to defeat our enemy. Enough with the squabbles, you guys are on the same side nobody wants authoritarianism or facism or communism, so why are we letting it happen??? Instead were wasting time stroking our egos over who has the moral high ground. Stand up for what you care about in your cities, target your local public officials, form organized communities, speak up before before the right to do so is pulled out from under you! The media is not going to protect your rights, you have to do it for yourselves! As long as they're getting paid nobody gives a rat's ass about the impending consequences of our current predicament. We can sit around talking crap about each other or we can try to improve the shitstorm we find ourselves in before its too late!
The "communist boogeyman" is objective, observable fact.
Communism led to the death of over 100M people. Communists operated at a high level in the US government. Communists are burning American cities right now, in 2020.
Every single attempt at implementing communism has led to violence and oppression at a massive scale.
You may not like it. You may desperately want to deflect. You may employ whataboutism, a term literally coined to describe the behavior of communist mouthpieces, to cast blame elsewhere. But that's just how it is.
If "reactionaries" are the only people offering substantive resistance to communism, then we need a hell of a lot more of them.
A. It's only speculated that Trump has some sort of special relation with Putin; it's by no means certain, and if so, this might not be part of their relation.
B. A relation between Trump and Putin doesn't have to mean much for the rest of the administration.
C. Assange is just a pawn.
D. Why would Trump draw even more attention to himself?
When Iran coordinated attacks on American soldiers, Trump almost started World War III. When Russia coordinated and put bounties on American soldiers' heads, Trump tried getting Putin invited to the G7 summit.
Saying that Trump has a special relationship with Putin isn't even close to speculation. It's an easily observable understatement of the decade.
> Assange and Wikileaks dumped the entire set of files, without redactions, while the Guardian, Der Spiegel, NYTimes were spending time and resources trying to redact them
Sorry, this is plainly false. This article and the testimony of people involved with Wikileaks (see Craig Murray's reporting for that) show that Assange was actually incredibly careful and diligent in redacting. It was the newspapers that were eager and impatient to publish.
It was a Guardian journalist's recklessness that let everyone see the unredacted cables, not Assange's.
>In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality can lead to social ostracism, a prison sentence or even death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.
>The AP independently found three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables — including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates that reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner’s infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C.
I was replying to "Assange and Wikileaks dumped the entire set of files". "The entire set of files" referring to the Cablegate documents, not the ones you're referring to here.
> Assange went around and blamed it on the Guardian.
A Guardian journalist published the password to the unredacted trove in his book. Without that action, there would have been no "unredacted release". Nobody went around anything.
Agreed- I get very confused on this site. Sometimes it seems like most people are able to have rational discussions without much bias, based in facts.. other times there are still topics where I might as well be talking to someone on reddit.
It's very ironic that people justify imprisoning Assange for doing something for which only journalists are protected but when it comes to acts nobody is protected from (like the ones exposed by Assange) it's all crickets.
And I'm not talking about some random person commenting on the internet, I'm talking about all the judges, prosecutors, politicians, etc. who feel this way or support this way.
> It's very ironic that people justify imprisoning Assange for doing something for which only journalists are protected but when it comes to acts nobody is protected from (like the ones exposed by Assange) it's all crickets.
what do you mean by this? I'm not aware of any special protections for journalists. I'm not a journalist myself, but if I understand correctly, it would not be illegal for me to publish classified material if I received it second hand, since I don't myself have clearance or an obligation to protect the material. if I offered any kind of assistance to get more material, I would be headed into dangerous water. is this not correct?
Around the world journalists do enjoy some protections that a regular person would not have. Those are unfortunately being eroded by new laws focusing more on punishing anyone bringing crimes to the public's attention, rather than punishing those responsible for the crimes being exposed in the first place.
Similarly, a whistleblower would normally have more protections than someone simply stealing company secrets. Another area where the focus is on stamping out any kind of leaks instead of addressing the target of those leaks.
thank you for the links, I never knew about that. although it seems that (in the US) the journalist is only protected from being compelled to reveal their source(s), not from prosecution for any crime they committed themselves.
as an aside, I'm not sure it's appropriate for a reporter to have any statutory privileges over an ordinary citizen, especially under something so fundamental as the first amendment. if it's appropriate for a journalist, it should be granted to the rest of us as well.
Damn right. The treatment of Assange has dealt a terrible blow to the possibility of exposing criminal doings in the military, corporations, political parties, whatever. It sets the example that whistleblowers will not be protected.
So how did we end up here? Maybe many reasons but primarily I think maybe the Assange case is indicative of what might happen if you enter into the business of exposing corruption, and not restrict your exposures to one direction only. It will by necessity alienate any powerful interests that might protect you.
As it stands, only principled people side with Assange, people who insist that core democratic principles should trump the shortsighted interests of the state. Such people are few and far between nowadays, but are normally thought to be populating the courts, at least at higher levels, which is the last straw we can cling to.
But with a partisan press that has turned their backs on Assange there is hardly any pressure on the courts to do the right thing.