This is troubling since the courts have also argued lawsuits over illegal wiretapping and other misconduct cannot move forward as they would... expose classified information:
Without the ability for the press to publicize illegal actions so that voters can remove officials who allow it, the US government can engage in unconstitutional conduct with almost zero oversight by making the illegal conduct classified.
I would argue that this is the intended outcome. I do not believe we have enough control over our government.
Edit: I guess I should add that a lot of people in the US believe it is good for the US government to have absolute power in the world, because they think it’s okay for “their side” to have absolute power over others. Often I think they associate “our side” to be the side of the “good guys” and thus find our grip on global hegemony acceptable. Except there are no “good guys” who always behave in a fair and even way, that is a childish fantasy used to keep us on board with the serious injustice perpetrated by governments the world over. The US government is responsible for oppression and murder the world over in addition to the good things we might do. We cannot blanket trust any government to behave appropriately in secrecy unless we want to simply abdicate our responsibility for the harm that governments then cause.
> I do not believe we have enough control over our government.
And that's probably something that needs to be argued in front of the Supreme Court. It is vital in a democracy that a government can be held accountable. The government should not have a carte blanche to break the law in secret. There has to be some way to address this, and at the moment there clearly isn't.
Manning, Assange and Snowden provided a public service to the American public by showing them what their government was doing.
They don't see it as their country going down, they see it as "making it great again". As the other poster said here, what a very large fraction of the US really wants is a religious ethnostate, and they're very good at voting for that, so that's where we're headed.
If you mean the fact that the US doesn't have proportional voting and a president can be elected on a minority of the popular vote, then I'm afraid those seem to be exactly what's causing the problem here. It magnifies the impact of the group that wants this theocratic ethnostate, and enabled the election of Donald, who would not have been elected otherwise.
>That is why the US was created as a Constitutional Republic. To prevent the catastrophe of a pure democracy
Why do people like you bring up this canard? Can you point to any pure democracies, anywhere, ever, aside from Ancient Greece? The US isn't special; every decent country (and many not-so-great ones too) now is a democratic republic of some kind, usually constitutional (UK is a notable exception here).
Because as you age you see how change is implemented. You watch the drift.
Example. In my youth police were called peace officers. Their main mission was to enforce the peace at the expense of bending the law.
Today law enforcement disrupts the peace to enforce the law. Society is not better off because of it.
Watching presidents change what they called the nation from Republic to Democracy has also been something that happened. A republic is a nation of laws where everyone has the same rules. A democracy is simply a majority vote and currently the constitution and the laws are being marginalized.
That is why folks bring up this "canard"
FYI calling something constitutionally guaranteed, a canard is exactly to what I refer
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
> A republic is a nation of laws where everyone has the same rules.
Not necessarily. A republic is simply a country without a monarch. China is a republic. Iran is a republic. Russia is a republic. Democracies that are not republics include places like Denmark, Netherland, Sweden and Spain.
The canard you're bringing up stems from a weird misunderstanding of what republics and democracies really are. Democracies have laws, the same rules for everyone, they have constitutions that (try to) guarantee equal rights. Democracies often have better "rule of law" than many republics, but ultimately, they believe that the authority stems from the people and that the government serves the people rather than the other way around.
Fortunately many republics are also democracies. France, Germany, and, as many people would really, really like to believe, the United States of America. The fact that so many Americans don't really care about democracy, undermine its legitimacy with misleading arguments, and support an electoral system that denies minority representation while letting the loser of the popular vote win the presidency, is really sad.
You do realize the ability of the representative to override the majority vote in a republic was by design as the founders (read Madison's Federalist No. 10) did not trust the general public to make good choices (democracy).
You can conflate the ideas all you want. Does not change the fact the US is a republic. Your example proved it.
if this was such a partisan issue, why did most of the backlash against wikileaks come long before the change of administration, and why didn't the previous administration hillary, etc, speak out loudly for assange, and terminate the programs, rather than continuing them or extending them?
this is not a partisan issue, it is a public awareness / power-elitism issue
Actually, I was just responding to the comment "Swathes of the US public seem to be cheering as their own country is going down" and its response about a religious ethnostate, I wasn't talking about the leakers specifically.
I'm halfway "parable of the talents" by Octavia E. Butler (I'm trying to read all the novels that won a Nebula Award). I can see it happening if US keep the current trajectory.
Most people are voting based on emotions which are pre-occupied with issues that are at the forefront of American politics. These often are exceptionally philosophical, emotional or religious topics; or in other cases, dramatic misrepresentations, lies or handouts.
Outright corruption, unconstitutionality and waste are the main part of the show, but hidden behind that stage going on in front that most Americans are watching.
Democrats won the popular votes for the president, house and senate (they had 56.9% in the senate, in 2018, FFS!) in 2016 and 2018, but the republicans somehow managed to get complete control of the house senate and presidency, and unconstitutionally packed the courts in 2016-2018.
Now, the democrats have control of just the house, and the executive branch has decided to simply ignore the constitutional limits on its power, since, as Trump has boasted, he could shoot someone in public for no reason, and there’s still no way the senate would impeach him.
Also, it is apparently legal for state legislatures to override their popular vote. If even one swing state decide to do that, democrats won’t have enough votes in the house to prevent Trump from being reappointed (despite having a vast majority there, because of the way those votes are counted).
Florida, or Ohio are likely candidates. In 2000, Florida would have used this power if the courts hadn’t stepped in, and would have voted for W. After recounts, Gore won Florida. In Ohio, in 2004, the vote was decided by a ballot box that republicans illegally transported to Indiana, and then transported back for tallying. Exit polls disagreed with the tally.
We need to eliminate the electoral college, and get rid of per-state representatives. In our lifetimes, demographic trends suggest that the majority of the US will be represented by just 18 senators (with 82 for the minority).
The problem we are talking about has existed far before Trump became president. The secret AT&T closet started during Bush, since then we have had Obama and now Trump. The Patriot Act was passed and renewed with bi-partisan support.
I don't know about cheering, but let's be honest here. Assange let himself be used by the Russians, either knowingly or naively, and he willingly jumped into a hyper partisan US election. Just like some people want to put Hillary Clinton in prison, some are going to want to see Assange punished. Snowden released a lot of information that was very valuable to the citizens of the US, and that's great, but he also went well beyond that and there is a legitimate argument to be made that such behavior should be punished. He's also currently accepting the hospitality of the Russian gov't, which just adds another reason to be skeptical of his neutrality. Manning is kind of the same thing, he went far beyond releasing a controversial video showing misconduct, so some punishment was just. And the commutation by Obama was just.
There are lots of people in the US that believe strongly in the rule of law.
Can you blame Snowden for accepting that "hospitality"?
You only get one life and I don't blame him at all for not wanting to spend the rest of his time on Earth rotting in an American prison. I don't think we can say anything about his true intentions just based on the fact that he chose one of the few (possibly the only?) alternatives presented to him.
Unless we think the information he provided is intended to be misleading, the ball's in our court now (and we are dropping it). Whether or not he chooses to martyr himself to the American "justice" system is irrelevant now.
> Can you blame Snowden for accepting that "hospitality"?
Anyone sitting on comfortable couch can!
I heard a conversation where Assange came out as a "drama queen" for not walking to the car that took him to prison. The event was discussed as if it were part of the Kardashians or something.
> Can you blame Snowden for accepting that "hospitality"?
If he does not want to stand on principle, then no, I cannot blame him for choosing what is likely his only opportunity for any amount of freedom.
Part of being a martyr, is, well, being a martyr. He knew the game when he released classified information, even if the ends may eventually justify the means (for some, not all of the information he divulged). I agree that he is essentially irrelevant at this point, he has said what he had to say, and done as much as he will ever be able to do.
But I cannot blame reasonable people for believing that it is important he stand trial for breaking the law, regardless of how damning the information released. There is an argument to be made that we don't want to make it okay for every individual person to make their own judgement call about what classified information should be kept secret and what should not.
> If he does not want to stand on principle, then no,
Well I can kinda understand the principle of not wishing to turn one's self over to be waterboarded or held in draconian isolation in a US prison. I live in Scotland, if I had worked for the UK government, discovered extra-judicial killings and exposed them then sure I'd run somewhere. But it's not home. I lived in another country for a few years, within western Europe within an hour's flight "from home" and just as a "normal mort" I got homesick. Snowden upended his life over his leaks and can't go home. Maybe it's my age, I'm in my early 50's but that's a pretty big thing.
> Part of being a martyr, is, well, being a martyr.
What, as in being double tapped in the back of the head?
We shouldn't need to be "martyrs" these days, we should be given the protection where if your government is committing acts of murder on innocent citizens in other countries (and in the US) then you should be protected. We don't live in the 50's to 80's any more. And also see above, Snowden is an exile, he will likely never be able to go home, that's plenty of martyrdom. And see above.
Parent commenter is ridiculous -- wishing ill will and martyrdome on a well-intentioned individual. There are so many fucking awful people in elite American society living envious lives and it strikes me as incredible someone would suggest such a thing about someone who sacrificed so much to expose what US courts themselves already ruled to be unconstitutional.
> Can you blame Snowden for accepting that "hospitality"?
> [...] I cannot blame him for choosing what is likely his only opportunity for any amount of freedom.
It is my understanding he didn't "accept" Russia's hopitality as such, nor did he actively chose it. I thought the US Department of State cancelled his passport, effectively forcing him to stay put in Russia.
On a side note, there seems to be some confusion with regards to that: some sources state that his travel documents were revoked a day before he boarded the flight to Moscow, whereas Greenwald maintains the opposite (his passport was cancelled while en route to Moscow). The whole Hong Kong episode seems very foggy and confused in places and its likely it will be a good while before the whole truth comes out.
Correct. The US DoS canceled his passport while he was in Russia en route to South America. A reporter even ended up getting stuck on a flight for which Snowden had a reservation in a failed effort to get a scoop.
This is bullshit, nobody should have to go and rot in prison for releasing evidence of illegal and unconstitutional conduct by your own government against your people and standing by what you believe in.
History will show eventually that Snowden did the the right thing. The people will eventually come around because they know deep down that what he stood for was protecting their freedom. Perhaps not in a way that had boots on the ground against some foreign enemy, but against a government that was overreaching and spying on the lives of its own citizens against the peoples' constitutional rights.
It is your responsibility to hold your government accountable for their behaviour and he did that in the only possible way he could have - any other way would have seen his complaints shut down and he would have been silenced, by legal or illegal means. His only recourse was to obtain the information secretly and release the information to the public and let the U.S. population judge for themselves whether or not a government by the people, of the people and for the people was acting in the best interest of those to whom it is constitutionally bound.
You don't need to be a martyr to do what's right, you don't need to be a martyr to do what you believe in. The fact that he fled to preserve his freedom doesn't make what he did any less right, nor does it make him any less principled.
If I had to flee the country to preserve as much of my enjoyment of life as I could, while standing up for what I believe is right, I would do the same thing - and I think you'd probably find that a large proportion of other people would too.
If you were guaranteed to rot in a cell for standing up for what's right, would you still stand for what's right? Or would you fall in line and do what you were told?
Or would you find another way to stand up for what you believed was right?
Is it illegal? Unconstitutional? By whose authority? Yours?
You are making a naive, emotional argument based on your own moral convictions and assuming that everyone else must share it, and that everyone will eventually agree with you that disregarding our system of laws is the correct answer.
> There is an argument to be made that we don't want to make it okay for every individual person to make their own judgement call about what classified information should be kept secret and what should not.
I would argue that we do want this to be okay, at least on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately this means that it's incredibly subjective as to whether an unauthorized release of classified information was justified or not.
We currently live in a world where unethical (and often illegal) activities continue, secretly and silently, likely because people who do have some shred of a conscience are too afraid of the consequences of stepping forward and speaking out. We tighten that status quo only to our detriment and the continued erosion of our civil rights.
Ideally, the courts exist to make judgement calls on this case-by-case basis. That does mean going on trial, though, which has consequences even if you are ultimately exonerated.
The courts don't need to interrogate journalists and leakers to investigate the claims in their leaks when their leaks have been published and analyzed by multiple news organizations.
> We currently live in a world where unethical (and often illegal) activities continue, secretly and silently,
Cought, ahem, but also overtly - Venezuela, Iran. Sure, not ideal world citizens, but at least Venezuela still has an independent privately owned press, though funded by some pretty unpleasant rich folks.
Iran - not a big fan but I kinda think I'd rather live there (at a push) than Saudi or most of the other UAE, Oman etc type regimes who are US client states for civilian oppression.
There is such a thing as becoming a martyr but the most likely outcome is becoming another Michael Hastings or Daphne Caruana Galizia. It's all fun and games until you get killed before your story breaks or your proof of corruption gets buried under a pile of disinfo, FUD, and distraction and then you die "randomly" as punishment.
Groups such as the ACLU and EFF have tried many times to sue but have been unable because they can’t prove they have standing to sue because they’re suing based on classified information
What Hollywood does with people! Snowden is a whistleblower, not a martyr. It's not a soap opera, there will be no unrequited love suicide, no Hamlet monolog, no drama.
> it is important he stand trial for breaking the law
What law[s] do you believe he broke? Do you believe he is a US citizen/resident, committed crimes while in a US territory, or otherwise was under US jurisdiction? Please be specific in your legal references. Thank you very much in advance for your detailed legal citations in response.
You sound like you're confusing Snowden with Assange. Snowden was a US citizen with a security clearance who released classified information that he had improperly gotten access to. Assange is an Australian citizen who set up a website and whom Chelsea manning sent classified information which he then published.
There's no question that Snowden committed a crime under US law, and is absolutely subject to US jurisdiction, the question is whether it was justified. With Assange, however, you'd be right: he's never even set foot in the US to my knowledge, and was given the classified information by someone else (who was tried, convicted, and served time for it).
You make it sound like Snowden is trying to flee justice, but he has made clear multiple times that he intends to return to the US if he is allowed to defend himself before a jury in an open court, something that the Espionage Act prevents him from doing. You’re not the only person who “believes strongly in the rule of law.”
And by the way, when exactly did Snowden “go beyond the limits?” As far as I’m aware, he made sure to hand over every copy of the documents he possessed to professional reporters so that every disclosure made was legitimately in the public interest.
> And that it applies to foreign citizens who have – quite sensibly – never set foot on your soil?
There is a lot of precedent here. Break the law in another country, and you may very well find yourself tried in their courts if you ever step into their jurisdiction. It's not like the US is snatching him off the streets in a foreign country under cover of darkness and dragging him to our jurisdiction, we are using very well established legal channels.
Was he? He's not in the US. He fled the UK's jurisdiction to accept the jurisdiction of Ecuador, but of course that carries the risk that Ecuador could change their mind and transfer him to another jurisdiction, which they did. Perhaps the next stop is Sweden, then the US. In any case all of it is being done through accepted legal channels.
If the US wanted him on our soil without regards to consequences, we could certainly have him in a US jail in a matter of hours.
Assange was refused the ability to travel to Ecuador (a country that he became a citizen of) from the UK, which might be a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (Article 44) -- though I'm not a lawyer:
> The receiving State must, even in case of armed conflict, grant facilities in order to enable persons enjoying privileges and immunities, other than nationals of the receiving State, and members of the families of such persons irrespective of their nationality, to leave at the earliest possible moment. It must, in particular, in case of need, place at their disposal the necessary means of transport for themselves and their property.
There is an argument to be made that since he is not embassy personnel he isn't granted any such rights (in fact that's the most likely explanation).
But then again, there is some grey area here -- in the 1984 someone in the Libyan embassy in the UK shot into a crowd killing a police officer[1]. The UK police weren't granted access to investigate whether the individual who did it was embassy personnel (and thus under diplomatic immunity) or not. The UK then cut diplomatic ties with Libya and all the personnel were forced to leave and return to Libya. However, if the UK had the legal right to refuse passage for non-embassy personnel then surely they would've done so and captured all non-embassy personnel for questioning. But they didn't do that.
The Vienna Convention certainly does not mean that any state can demand that any other state not prosecute any person of their choice, which is what you seem to be implying.
You never define what "persons enjoying privileges and immunities" means. I doubt very much that it is "any random citizen of a country who happens to be inside their embassy".
> You never define what "persons enjoying privileges and immunities" means.
I copied the text directly from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations[1]. From my understanding (as a non-lawyer) it broadly means embassy personnel, which would exclude Julian Assange.
However my point is that there is a case in 1984 where a suspected criminal for a crime committed in the UK (who might not have been embassy personnel) was allowed safe passage with embassy personnel. It's possible they didn't want to deal with additional scandals or didn't think of this avenue, but it is quite strange. However, the fact that the UK threatened to storm the embassy and cut of ties with Ecuador does indicate the political situation is much higher than it was in the 1984 incident.
Ecuador tried to instate Assange as a Ecuadorian Ambassador, but the UK refused their request for diplomatic immunity. So it probably isn't a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (though the UN did state that the UK's actions are a violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights[2]).
> Ecuador tried to instate Assange as a Ecuadorian Ambassador, but the UK refused their request for diplomatic immunity
No, they tried to appoint him to a subordinate (not “Ambassador”) diplomatic position to Russia. Which does not give him diplomatic immunity in the UK by right. The UK declined to extend such status as a courtesy as it might otherwise do.
> However my point is that there is a case in 1984 where a suspected criminal for a crime committed in the UK (who might not have been embassy personnel) was allowed safe passage with embassy personnel.
Everyone leaving the embassy had their diplomatic status verified when they were stopped, questioned, and frisked on the way out, but it's quite possible the perpetrators were one of those who left before the cordon was thrown up, and if not they were embassy personnel. The act was clearly.a state act of reprisal, so there would be no reason to have it done by unprotected persons.
Ecuador has full right to unilaterally choose their ambassadors, they don't need the approval of the UK. What is true is that the UK can then declare an ambassador persona non grata... But then they must be allowed to leave.
It was a brilliant ploy to get Assange out, if you believed UK would adhere to the Vienna convention. Unfortunately they didn't, and there's no one around who are willing and able hold them to it.
Ok, so every time an American is arrested abroad, Trump could declare them a diplomat and the country would have to let them off without charges? This is really what the Vienna Convention requires?
Why doesn’t every country just do this routinely, in that case?
There's no violation; the “privileges and immunities” referenced are those of accredited diplomats to the receiving state, which you only get to be by consent of the receiving state. Assange was never an accredited diplomat to the UK (there was an abandoned effort to get him appointed as a diplomat to Russia, but that provides no mandatory protection under the convention with regard to the UK, and the UK declined to extent diplomatic status as an non-mandated courtesy based on that appointment, so it was abandoned.)
> However, if the UK had the legal right to refuse passage for non-embassy personnel then surely they would've done so and captured all non-embassy personnel for questioning.
Every person exiting the embassy was stopped, frisked, questioned, and photographed by the police; none were held further because they were all diplomatic personnel. (This is not addressing the people who exited before the police through a complete cordon around the embassy, or the material—including certainly he weapons and other evidence—sent out in sealed diplomatic bags thereafter and before the final evacuation of the embassy.
> There are lots of people in the US that believe strongly in the rule of law.
>And that it applies to foreign citizens who have – quite sensibly – never set foot on your soil?
Of course it does. That's like saying a foreign terrorist can't be charged for an act of terrorism because they're not a U.S. citizen. Furthermore, because Assange is a foreign national, 1st Amendment protections do not apply in this situation.
There's a [dead] reply that seems to refute this, and I'm not sure why it's dead. The First Amendment states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nowhere in there does it mention "citizens". Only "people". And you don't need to be a US citizen to be a person. The first result[0] of a quick Google search suggests that federal courts do indeed believe that the Constitution protects to non-citizens.
Can't say why it was downvoted to oblivion. But I personally don't know what the right answer is. We already rely on SCOTUS to tell us what the First Amendment really means and how it applies, since as written it just says "Congress shall make no law..." which is kinda specific. So it seems like we're past the point where we can interpret any other part of that clause literally.
Now, all disclaimers given, I figure the Constitution ought to apply to anyone within it's jurisdiction, which to my mind means that if you are subject to our jursdiction for criminal purposes, you're subject to our constitution for it's protections as well.
>I figure the Constitution ought to apply to anyone within it's jurisdiction, which to my mind means that if you are subject to our jursdiction for criminal purposes, you're subject to our constitution for it's protections as well.
I fully agree, hopefully the SCOTUS will confirm this in a ruling at some point.
Additionally the Declaration of Independence included this statement:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
I think the consent to be governed should be established whether implied or expressed in a way more specific that just being a person somewhere on earth.
The declaration of independence does specify how consent is expressed. Quoting the relevant section:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
In other words it is by refusing to revolt that people consent to be governed. Revolution doesn't require all that many people, but it requires them to be willing to risk it all. See, for example, the Romanian revolution in 1989. [1] It's one of the most ironic revolutions. Their communist dictator, in an effort to prove his popularity, decided to force tens of thousands of people to appear in a public square to listen to his speech so it could be used as propaganda and broadcast to show his 'popularity.' 'You'll never believe what happened next.' 3 days later following a 2 hour trial their dictator was sentenced to death and executed immediately.
The logic is circular (people consent by not not consenting), but I think reasonable. The reason is that there are many people who, given the choice, would reject consent anytime they failed to achieve victory in a democratic process. That would lead to complete chaos. And revolution is not a particularly high standard. Imagine if 0.1% of the US population (that's around 330k people) chose to move on DC with the goal of aggressively rebooting the government. They'd be near impossible to stop. And even if stopped, it would certainly trigger a rethink of our entire system which would be at least a partial victory. So if you can't get even 1/1000 people willing to risk it all, it's tough to claim that our evils are not sufferable, or are not reparable within the systems available to us.
>In other words it is by refusing to revolt that people consent to be governed.
My understanding based on the statement "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government" is that this right to revolt is the nuclear option for people who have the ability to alter it and the ends which the government can be destructive towards are the initial rights previously outlined in the document. So if the US government doesn't work to secure these right for an Australian citizen and doesn't express their right to alter or abolish or revolt against the US government then it should not interpret their consent to be governed by US law for actions taken by them outside the US.
Your phrasing there is not the clearest, but if I am understanding you correctly, would that not then be the 'fault' of the Australian government? A country can write whatever laws they want, but it's ultimately up to the country hosting those individuals to determine whether those laws mean anything. For a contemporary example the several Mueller indictments of Russian nationals are completely meaningless. They will never face a day in court because the Russian government does not tend to yield to US influence. There's 0 reason that e.g. the Australian government could not behave similarly, if they so wished. It comes with political and other risks, but so is the same with all decisions people make.
The Constitution applies to the government; it says what the government must, may, and mustn't. do. The government mustn't interfere with anyone's free speech.
There's a major nuance with our constitution that is extremely important to understand what it does, and does not, do. The nuance is that the constitution does not grant people freedom of speech, or even directly protect that right. You already inherently have freedom of speech by merit of existing. A government cannot grant you that right anymore than they can grant you the right to think. But what governments can do is to remove rights. The constitution restricts the power of our government to do that.
So the migration case you mention was a good example of this nuance. Congress can ban entry from whatever country they want. We could ban Canadians tomorrow if congress so chose. As for executive orders, the current precedent set is that the president is allowed to ban travel from any group so long as allowing it would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States." So the nuance there is, is Trump banning travel from these nations because they are Muslim majority, or is he banning travel from these nations because travel from these Muslim majority nations is not in the interest of the United States?
He tasked a 50 day review ranking and classifying nations on their migration controls as well as making diplomatic efforts to mutually improve the standards of these nations. After the 50 days he prohibited entry from the countries which were deemed threats, most of which where Muslim majority. Lower courts tried to then claim he did this because these countries were Muslim, and attempted to use his past words against him. The Supreme Court ruled that his words did not override an otherwise valid justification and upheld his order. [1]
---
The big point here is that the constitution can render laws unlawful, but it itself does not directly provide any protections from otherwise legitimate laws. For maybe the clearest example consider Kleindienst vs Mandel [2]. In that case the US chose to prohibit entry to an individual based exclusively on speech that would be perfectly legal if it had been said within the US. This case made its way to the supreme court and they upheld that this action was not a violation of the first amendment. [2] And it should be clear why (though the fact this made it all the way to supreme court belies my notion of obviousness here) - his speech was used against him but within the confines of other valid laws.
Yeah, the flip side to this argument is pretty heinous: American war criminals can be prosecuted any time, any place they show up outside of Americas' borders.
Except, they can't, because the USA will protect them, even threatening to INVADE any country which attempts to reign their war criminals in.
Look I'm not defending anything our country does and what they did to Manning was unconscionable. I think Manning acted in good faith, she may have crossed the line some but the punishment far exceeded what the situation merited. But I can't say the same about Assange. Now I'll admit the espionage charge is very "odd" for attempting to crack a password. But Assange did some stupid dangerous crap and got himself caught up. Simultaneously embarrassing and royally pissing off the CIA, NSA and the DOD is an epically dumb thing to do. I don't know what he was expecting to happen or what his game plan was. What the hell was he thinking? Manning got thrown under the bus, Assange stood in the middle of the road and dared it to run him over. I don't know how sorry I should feel for him at this point.
We live in a world where if you criticize the government enough to piss off the espionage department of your country, your only choice is to run to east if you live in the west and west if you live in the east.
> Furthermore, because Assange is a foreign national, 1st Amendment protections do not apply in this situation.
Not remotely true, the first amendment protects anyone and everyone from government infringement. All of the bill of rights applies to anyone, citizens or not. Try reading them, they say what the government cannot do, nowhere will you find it saying but only to citizens.
> He's also currently accepting the hospitality of the Russian gov't
That's massaged a bit. if only he'd have had other travel plans to any other non extradition countries (he did), but stopped in an international terminal (for weeks before entering Russia) after diplomatic planes were being force grounded.
> Assange let himself be used by the Russians, either knowingly or naively
What if Assange was being "used" by the United Nations Human Rights Council, or by Canada, or Oxfam, or Letsie III, or Burger King? The premise here appears to be that the Russians are somehow evil. The US isn't at war with Russia and Assange isn't a citizen of either state.
In any case, how was he "used" by Russia? Isn't this sort of leak exactly the kind of thing that Assange and Wikileaks have always stood for? Do you think he'd not have leaked the info if the Russians weren't a factor?
Manning hasn't really been jailed forever. She had her sentence commuted, and the recent legal trouble she finds herself in is entirely of her own creation, no?
IMO both Manning and Snowden have the weakest legal arguments, and Assange the strongest. I would personally have advised him to avoid taking sides in US politics, but he wasn't asking my opinion :). Playing in the big pond as a small fish is a dangerous game.
On the contrary, it's perfectly normal in much of the first world. You are required to testify and jailed in contempt if you don't. The 5th is a US peculiarity.
I'm not sure why you seem to think so. The government does have the ability to force people to testify - just so long as it doesn't force people to incriminate themselves with that testimony. Just like how you get imprisoned for skipping jury duty, you can get held in contempt of court for refusing to testify to a grand jury.
She was released when the last grand jury ran out of time. A new grand jury was called, she refused to appear before it and was put back in jail. Presumably there’s an upper limit on how long she can be in jail (this grand jury also has a time limit, plus once Assange’s trial gets far enough along, there won’t be any point to demand that she appear before the grand jury).
> Presumably there’s an upper limit on how long she can be in jail (this grand jury also has a time limit, plus once Assange’s trial gets far enough along, there won’t be any point to demand that she appear before the grand jury).
That's the limit on civil contempt, but there's no reason she couldn't then be charged with criminal contempt and imprisoned for that.
>There are lots of people in the US that believe strongly in the rule of law.
I find this argument specious. If it were the case, Americas criminal, illegal wars would not be happening.
And they are criminal, and they are illegal - and the world is having a very hard time prosecuting the criminals behind them.
Which is why we need Assange and Snowden and Manning, and the people they inspire, more than ever before. Because real crimes are being committed, and the American people are complicit.
That is a very strange definition of rule of law - not being subservient to your own demise is bad for rule of law but not the exposed misconduct which goes completely unpunished?
Rule of law isn't harmed by even the most vile criminals running away from enforcement or even the most ineffectual enforcement - those undermine its power but not its legitimacy. It is misapplication of the law in the first place that does it.
Fuck that authoritarian "You have to accept the unjust punishment because rules is rules!" mentality. Rules are meant to serve the people not the other way around. The scales are already weighted against justice and the power.
U.S. gov. probably would put Snowden through a secret court process, which is widely regarded as a kangaroo court in service of the spook branch of the government. They will make sure he becomes a terrifying example of what happens to heroic whistleblowers.
Is undeniable that Manning is biologically a man with both X and Y chromosomes. It happens also that psychologically is/feels like/wants to be a woman. Both cases can be applied perfectly. People is complex and can be more than one thing at the same time.
That's roughly equivalent to intentionally mispronouncing someone's last name all the time or using a derogatory nickname for them. It's a light form of bullying. Unless they insist on being called "Master" or "King" or any nonsense like that, it is always best to respect people's wishes and call them the way they would like to be called.
Not even close. Telling the truth is begin honest, not bullier or derogative, and the truth is that people is complex and should embrace their complexity. Being complicated and not plain is that makes us unique and interesting.
This is nothing but a cheap excuse on your behalf for your bullying. Transgender people already way more about their real genes and the issue as a whole than you do, and the idea that you're doing them a favour by telling them the truth would be highly patronizing at least, but in reality you're just being hypocritical, because you know that they already know more about it than you anyway. It's not as if someone just decides to change his or her gender from one day to another, and you know that very well.
What you say about telling the truth is also not true in general, of course. You know very well for yourself that it wouldn't be okay to tell your boss that he's fat and ugly, even if that was the case. We lie for politeness and courtesy several times a day, and that's not just fine, it's indispensable, since we cannot always choose whom to deal with. These things concern basic values of our society that people like you choose to ignore whenever it's convenient to them. But God forbid somebody uses the same whacko principles that you propose on you and tells you the truth about you...
> Being complicated and not plain is that makes us unique and interesting.
Still, that gives you zero reason not to respect other people's 'complexity.'
You are assuming a lot of things about me (lol). I will not give you the correct answers
> the idea that you're doing them a favour by telling them the truth would be...
Should they be provided with a comforting lie instead for the rest of their lives? Santa Claus children's tales style? And you call me hypocrite and patronizer?
> you know that they already know more about it than you
Do I? Because all transgender people are super smart and all non transgender people are dumb? Sounds delusory thinking at its best, or something worse
> God forbid somebody uses the same whacko principles that you propose on you, and tells you the truth about you...
There is also the option to just stand criticism like and adult, and do not care about what a strange says about you. Some people could even benefit from adopting this point of view, but I must admit that shatter like porcelain at the tiniest injury or frustration perceived or imagined is also a popular choice nowadays.
My problem is the publishing the names of assets that risked their lives to provide information. That doesn’t serve “the public,” that serves the enemy. If we are going to argue against spying, we can have that debate, but there is no question that releasing the names of spies is absolutely espionage. Names could have been redacted without compromising the public’s apparent “need” to know.
If we outed the names of dissidents in Turkey or China, wouldn’t that be met with outrage? Yet as long as it is in the interests of opposing the US, it seems like there is a significant crowd that celebrates that. In the context of the United States and Western Europe, espionage was committed.
Has there been any actual evidence that Russian people were involved in the leaking of the john podesta emails? To the contrary, Seth Rich was mentioned as the likely leaker from the very beginning, and his unsolved murder and the various agencies that refuse to investigate it are involved in this to hide the truth.... What if any evidence has been presented to show any link to russian people with regard to john podesta emails. The treasure trove of information about illegal activity by the Clinton campaign was well worth any harm the publication of the emails presented.
The story you are quoting talks about how at the time when wikileaks was going to publish the john podesta email archive, he received another message about more financial information relating to hillary clinton campaign. The story appears to conflate the receiving of this message about financial documents with the prior public release of john podesta emails, using the Meuller report as evidence that this must be a hoax. I don't buy it. The email trove came before it and IMO is unrelated. We may never know, but this is not evidence.
is it a conspiracy theory that it was quoted by the lead investigator that Seth Rich was talking to Wikileaks on a computer that the hard drive was found to be missing on? Is it a conspiracy theory that the lead investigator was quoted as saying they were told to "stand down" on the investigation into Seth Rich's murder. These are facts. I don't care either way, but the facts surrounding Seth Rich, the people who refused to investigate it, it all seems very strange. I also would not think Julian Assange is making up a story about Seth Rich for his own deflection of events. I also don't think it is in his best interest to reveal his sources, albeit they might have been murdered because of it.
Yeah all of that is conspiracy theories. The "lead investigator" you refer to had his allegations taken down by Fox News because they "didn't represent the high standards of news" and he was told to stand down because of the threat of legal action by Rich's family.
I'd note that you fail to cite sources, but here's plenty explaining the conspiracy theory in depth.
Is it the Russians that ran "Jesus can help you beat masturbation" and "Support BLM" ads on Facebook as part of their ad farm site scam?
Or perhaps you mean the "Russians" who was a disgruntled DNC employee that handed DNC emails on a thumb drive to Craig Murray in Washington DC, who then flew to England and delivered the thumb drive to Julian Assange?
> I don't know about cheering, but let's be honest here. Assange let himself be used by the Russians, either knowingly or naively, and he willingly jumped into a hyper partisan US election
I don't blame him. He's doing everything to survive, when everything was being cut off. I think everyone can agree that Trump is an insurgent and outsider. He was a wildcard for Assange at the time. He didn't exactly have a lot of options given his desperate situation.
I don’t believe the source of the secret files is ever protected in a court of law from prosecution, but the publisher may be.
For example the Pentagon Papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg and published by The NY Times. From Wikipedia;
> For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
An FBI agent, military enlisted or officer, etc. would rightly face charges for doseminating classified materials. There is no carte blanche to break the law because of something you don’t like that your Administration is doing. Sometimes the offense is so egregious that it’s a sacrifice someone is willing to make. In those cases if the court of public opinion is enough on the side of the leaker, there is always pardons or jury nullification to fall back on.
But I do think that it’s still precipitated by an illegal act (the leaking) which can rightly be prosecuted because generally classified material is classified for a reason and it’s not up to each individual that comes across it to decide if they agree or not.
The publisher also has to be careful that they are not soliciting or assisting the leaker in providing the materials lest they become an accomplice. I assume, although I’m not fully up to speed on the case, that this is the angle for charging Assange.
Nearly every activity I've seen reported that has been leaked has been, IMHO, illegal in some way. Warrantless wiretapping, war crimes, or violations of international law. The rest have been things that are simply embarrassing, which are by statute, prohibited from being classified in the first place.
Classification has been completely misused in the second half of last century and particularly in the first two decades of this one.
Being "Illegal" isn't black and white, especially in the case of ACLU vs Clapper, which was about bulk metadata collection through FISA.
Originally dismissed by district courts, then successfully appealed as overreaching the PATRIOT act the dismissal was vacated and remanded back to district courts where it was eventually effectively dismissed during Smith v Obama when the program was sunsetted.
On the topic of war crimes, despite claims that war crimes were committed, no formal trials convicting anyone of war crimes came from either Manning's nor Snowden's revelations, despite investigations thereof [1]. This isn't just a nit-picking point, or handwaving away corruption or cover-up. If people have problems with the process, the same process that has revealed War Crimes, then that's a separate subject.
As far as I understand it, if the DOJ and the Inspector General are all on board with whatever is being done, then realistically there’s no way to get it in front of a court or the court of public opinion without risking being charged for disclosing classified material all the way up to treason.
This is where they use Third Party Doctrine which basically means "if you give information to someone else, not involved then obviously it's not private!"
Which essentially means that law enforcement can collect info from your ISP, cell carrier, grocery store, banks, and anyone else without a warrant because it doesn't qualify as a search.
It's a completely broken mindset but there has been zero effort to reform it from any political party.
Yes, that holds water if there is some point where a citizen is selecting to waive their rights to privacy. Interacting with a company as a private citizen does not change the fact one is a private citizen. Without a citizen waiving the right to privacy, such an action would constitute a violation of one's rights. There's effectively no way to "opt out" of clandestine information harvesting and that is by design. Even worse, the intelligence agencies release the tools they created quietly so that they can't get in trouble in court because they're using tools that are "publicly available" lol. give me a break. civil liberties are not being demanded by the people and will likely die as a result.
> There has to be some way to address this, and at the moment there clearly isn't.
I don't see how it could ever happen.
It's arguable that democracy and government accountability in the US ended in the early 1800s. If it ever existed at all, really.
I mean, consider history. The New Deal was arguably appeasement to forestall revolution. We finally elected a black president, who had cultivated almost a "black power" reputation in Chicago, and he ended up barely more liberal than Nixon.
The gold standard here is Daniel Ellsberg who sent the pentagon papers to the Washington Post. Those were the documents that revealed that America had an illegal secret war in Cambodia.
"Julian, meanwhile, is being charged with having gone beyond the limits of journalism by helping Manning to conceal her identity with a new username. He is also charged with having encouraged her to give him documents."
And that's exactly my argument why he's not a journalist.
Specifically, my argument is that if you want to protect journalism from being criminalized, then criminal activity cannot be called journalism.
Again: Ellsberg says otherwise. Let's quote the whole passage:
"Julian, meanwhile, is being charged with having gone beyond the limits of journalism by helping Manning to conceal her identity with a new username. He is also charged with having encouraged her to give him documents. That is criminalizing journalism. I can’t count the number of times that I have been asked for documents by journalists or for more documents. She had already given hundreds of thousands of files to Assange and he wanted more. This is the practice of journalism."
>that's exactly my argument why he's not a journalist...if you want to protect journalism from being criminalized, then criminal activity cannot be called journalism.
If you want to protect the standard of "innocent until proven guilty", you shouldn't deem them guilty until proven innocent; though it seems you already have?
Agree :) Sorry I do want nitpick here as it's seen so often - "innocent until proven guilty" might imply that they haven't been found guilty yet (until). "Innocent unless proven guilty" I think is a better phrase :)
Assuming Ellsberg is the gold standard, his behavior would be sufficient, but not necessary, to be in the clear. Put another way, just because you don't live up to his standard, it doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong.
I agree that Assange is no saint. Assuming the allegations of rape are credible, he should stand trial and be punished if convicted. His motivations across a wide variety of leaks are certainly open for questioning.
But did he break any laws with regard to this specific leak? If he did actually assist Manning in cracking passwords (or whatever is alleged), then he should be held accountable for that. If not, he should go free (for that particular charge). It's that simple.
Of course, I don't trust the US gov't to give him a fair trial. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd manufacture evidence in a case like this; my belief is that they'll take any measures necessary when it comes to deterring people from leaking classified information, especially classified information they find embarrassing or damaging.
> But did he break any laws with regard to this specific leak?
According to the DOJ Indictment yes. He conspired with Manning to obtain access to a classified system. That's different than say Glenn Greenwald merely accepting Snowden's documents.
It's worth noting that Manning already had access to the classified system. Assange conspired to help her hide her usage of that access, something Greenwald has called the duty of a journalist. The law itself would violate the First amendment, so he would not have broken anything.
That's fine to say, but what does it actually mean?
How do we protect forces providing oversight and sunlight to parts of the government that we the people really should know about to be informed voters? How do we reasonably protect 'watchers', and how can we have reasonable oversight of the 'watchers'?
Part of the issue is that there is not a clear standard that must be adhered to; where does selection bias count as an editorial action and where does it count as being an agent of a foreign power? If someone is a completely dumb conduit that does not evaluate the data but republishes it without inner knowledge do they have more or less protections than someone that evaluates and 'publishes' the content (I.E. in technical terms 'the press', even if not part of something traditionally obvious as a news organization.)?
Personally, I think this should be part of the duties of the Office of the Inspector General, and the OIG should be shunted to being answerable to the either the Legislature, or the Courts.
Of course, I also believe that OIG should be hounding the Executive constantly, and have the authority and onus to declassify anything classified as soon as possible too. That means that classification stops being a privilege of the Executive, and instead becomes a maintenance item That requires periodic review to reclassify.
I believe you are correct in that the spirit is SOME official watchdog should exist within the government. Even better some department for EACH BRANCH.
However it is also commonly said that a "fourth estate" (or branch) exists, and the top search result that I get for that phrase is:
"What is the role of the Fourth Estate?
In the United States, the term fourth estate is sometimes used to place the press alongside the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. The fourth estate refers to the watchdog role of the press, one that is important to a functioning democracy.Jan 3, 2019
The press should also watch the government, and the oversight branches, and all of them should have oversight over the others as a completely closed system that roots out any actions that are may represent impropriety, immoral, OR illegal actions.
The first amendment doesn't protect conspiring to illegally access a computer system. Further, not all dissemination of classified materials can be classified as a first amendment activity.
In short, there has to be a difference between a spy and a journalist.
Further, it's worth noting that Snowden agreed to sign his life away when he signed the SF-86 form to apply for a US clearance. Glenn Greenwald did not.
>And that's probably something that needs to be argued in front of the Supreme Court. It is vital in a democracy that a government can be held accountable.
And why wouldn't the government be in bed with the Supreme Court?
The Supreme Court is part of the government — you mean the executive? Of course that could be a situation, that’s ostensibly why the founders separated the 3 branches, including giving SCOTUS life terms to increase their independence.
> And that's probably something that needs to be argued in front of the Supreme Court.
do you really want that?
the supreme court will rule 5-4 in favor of the administration, where 2 of those 5 judges were placed there by the current president
what people want is for the thin fabric of society to not be challenged when people already recognize that it exists on shaky legal ground, not nearly in line with the social contract in their head
obama administration had considered an espionage act charge but didn't want the first amendment challenge, if they had the supreme court they would have done it as well
> I do not believe we have enough control over our government.
You're right. We don't and the reason for that is centralization. The way the country was originally designed, an all powerful behemoth of a federal government was never intended to be a thing.
A combination of 2 things has allowed it to happen over time: Federal consolidation in the aftermath of the Civil War and the creation of Federal Reserve.
Those two things set us down the path where we are today and it's why a more decentralized government is advantageous. You can personally influence things that are more local do you. You can get involved in city or county government. You can call your mayor or you councilmen. You can join a school board or run for Sheriff, city/county council. All of those things are possible.
But an individual has almost no power to influence federal policy and when people disagree with federal policy, they have no escape. If you don't like a law in your city, you can work to change it or you can simply move to another city. Same thing with states, even though it's more of a task...but at this level you always have the ability to vote with your feet.
It's not so easy to just leave a country and it's the reason that constitutional amendments are supposed to require 2/3 votes instead of 51%. The country need to be in significant agreement over federal policy...or we will be at each others throats about what is / isn't being imposed on people.
That might be an obsolete notion. It was possible 100 years ago as an agrarian society to talk about decentralization and local government.
But with 450M people in the US for instance, and wages and work the way it is, admit that the vast majority of people don't live in some village or small town. They live in metropolitan cities. With about the same hope of affecting their 'local' govt as the federal one.
And who has time in their life to go politicking at city hall? Average folks barely have room in their lives to go get an official ID so they can vote at their polling place.
This is a middle-class argument that doesn't apply to most citizens in most places.
There are many cities and people certainly, even in a populous city, have more of a chance of effecting change there than they do at the federal level. They also have more of a direct vote in the offices of those cities.
The state of California has a higher population than Canada...there's very little reason that California shouldn't be able to almost entirely self-govern. At the same time, there's very little reason to assume a policy that makes sense in California and will likely be popular with the people there...will make sense in other parts of the country.
Yet we constantly see people unwilling to simply settle for state level policy wins and instead feel the need to force policy nationally. We don't need that any more than we need politicians from South Carolina trying to force national policy that will affect California.
We'd all be a heck of a lot happier if we could stop at the level of just talking about how backwards we all think each other to be rather than constantly fighting to keep the backwardness away.
Not to mention that centralization makes it easier for the electorate to monitor the details. If you look for egregious corruption gone unpunished you find it in the most petty of places for lack of oversite.
I suspect more centralization could help with accountability ironically but there are other issue there including harmonizing different needs and values by region and deciding "who is right".
The three things to optimize and balance are "sensitive to local demands" (treating water by conservation needs in the desert or by great lakes or demands of road salt by road area regardless of climate would be a terrible idea), "ability to scale and administrate effectively" and "respectful of rights" - and all three may clash or agree.
I find that true in my rural community. We're governed by the county and state. And they are vastly more concerned with the opinions of city dwellers than us villagers.
So we are subject to strange rules about parking, shooting, building, water and power that make little sense in our small community.
The answer is de-federalization. There's no need for a 50 state union, IMO. US could have a joint armed forces (if it desired) and a monetary union with independent states. Similar to the EU IMO.
> a lot of people in the US believe it is good for the US government to have absolute power in the world
Seriously? Name one person making this argument? Perhaps you are just misusing the phrase "absolute power". Typically this is used to refer to the unrestricted power of a monarch or dictator. The US doesn't even have this power within the US. It's a childish fantasy (as you say) to think the US has this "in the world" generally.
American hegemony certainly has its warts but it’s also prevailed over the most peaceful period of world history with staggering numbers of people being lifted from poverty.
We shouldn’t blanket trust anybody of course, but it makes more sense to put your faith in the one advocating for free speech and democracy if you believe in human rights and equality.
It’s really easy to point out where we’ve fucked up, but a lot harder to appreciate the regional conflicts that just plain didn’t happen because of the “big stick” as Teddy Roosevelt would call it.
Just as an aside, I have no idea how I feel about this particular case against Assange.
He doesn’t seem like a great guy, but the “helped Manning hack” charges seem pretty trumped up. I’m a little surprised the justice department is even pursuing it considering how much the current administration loved Wikileaks during the election. Any precedent which hampers the press’s ability to publish whistle blown information is, of course, a step back.
You have the power to get the elected representatives to write and change every single law of government. But the citizenry often lacks the coordination, direction, and will to ensure the majority of representatives does so.
The problem of secrecy in government is that the situation is not always clear. If indeed there is some classified information that shouldn't be exposed, that is extremely serious and can't just be aired like a tabloid news story. There is no simple way to keep the public informed of classified information. It's likely that the most reasonable safeguard is to have elected representatives with a strong moral code to vet the situation and act to protect their constituents.
According to a couple of other studies, states choose policies their citizens want only 59% of the time and politicians, overall, vote against the will of the people they represent 35% of the time:
https://promarket.org/study-politicians-vote-will-constituen...
Unless you're using large scale money and influence to interact directly with politicians, neither your will or your direction have any meaning.
That's just a statistical artifact caused by the fact that things generally get passed as soon as they get past 50% support in the legislature, which is about the same time they have around 50% support in the population, and then half the time it happens to be 51% in the legislature but 49% in the population or vice versa.
> The problem of secrecy in government is that the situation is not always clear.
We are always spoon fed the Eisenhower's remarks regarding the "Military Industrial Complex" but I am quite curious as to how many of you (American or not) have even heard about, much less read in full, president Truman's op-ed in the Washington post, dated Dec. 22, 1963.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
You’re being down voted but you’re spot on. It’s tough to have civil discussions when the subject matter is extremely sensitive. How do we verify the classification of certain programs is truly sensitive not simply politically motivated?
To your first point, I believe we are screwed as long as Citizens United stands (0). We the people will always be out-coordinated by the oligarchs and their bureaucrats.
Which leads to your second point. As long campaign spending of the super rich is protected as “free speech” (the result of Citizen’s United) we are stuck with politicians who can be bought and sold. Men and women with strong moral codes cannot be bought, and therefore will not win elections. Exceptions are few and far between.
Citizens United was a massive win for the people against the media companies. Without it the media companies get to decide everything people hear because nobody else is allowed to put forth anything like that level of resources toward political speech. That's why you always hear the media whinging about it -- it's the only way anybody else has any hope of challenging their narratives in front of more of an audience than an individual YouTube channel.
Obviously the poor have no money to buy ads with, but we're not talking about the poor here. Nobody seriously running for office is poor. This is a battle between people who are rich enough to buy ads on a TV network and people who are rich enough to buy the TV network, and Citizens United is a win for the "little guy" in that situation.
The big problem we have in elections isn't that someone can be heard too well, it's that some people can't be heard well enough. But the answer to that is public financing of elections, which doesn't require restricting private speech in any way.
We have plenty of control over government. If you don't like who's in charge, you can vote them out.
If you think that's a ridiculous statement, then consider that every major television network around the world covers our political elections here in the US and the focus is always voter turnout and who we vote for. The only reason for that is: we have all the power.
Of course, if you don't like who gets elected all the time, perhaps you need to consider why your candidates never win because it seems far fewer people agree with your selections. Why is that?
I'm not sure that's the case. Studies seem to suggest that average people have relatively little control over the government compared to corporations and interest groups.
In terms of voter turnout: I think the problem is that voter turnout doesn't happen in a vacuums. We have the voter turnout that we do due to a combination of societal factors, practical factors, current events, etc. That's not to say that it cannot be effected, but I think there's sort of a catch 22: In order to have power people need to increase voter turnout, but in order to increase voter turnout people need to have power.
In terms of your second point (i.e. "...need to consider why your candidates never win...). I think you make a good point, especially in situations where one side or the other refuses to engage in the diplomacy necessary to find a mutually acceptable solution.
However, it also seems to me that a free society would require that people be able to find a situation where they can live in accordance with their views without having to make them acceptable to a plurality of society (I'm excluding "core" social norms such as not stealing and outlawing slavery which everyone would need to agree to). It seems to me that a combination of factors makes it so that is no longer the case:
The increasing power of state and federal governments
The increasing globalization of the issues that affect people's lives
The fact that the United States has diverged into at least three different cultures (in a VERY broad sense coastal, southern, and everyone else)
This seems especially true outside of the largest cities and states. California, Texas, New York City, etc. can have very distinct political/societal systems because they are so large, but I'm not sure I think that's the case for smaller cities and states.
I'm not sure what the solution to this is other than that I don't think its fair to just say "The majority has spoken, if you don't like it leave" now that it's not really possible to leave. (I'm not saying that's what you are trying to communicate. I'm just speaking in general)
People don't make decisions in a vacuum. Their choices are dramatically controlled by the information that they receive and their culture. The media has a large influence on both of these factors, therefore they have a large amount of de facto control over the government even if they don't have direct control over government.
> The US government can engage in unconstitutional conduct with almost zero oversight by making the illegal conduct classified.
There is oversight, just probably not the kind you want.
There's numerous congressional committees which all have oversight of every aspect of the executive branch if they so choose to ask for it. All of which are elected officials. From the Gang of 8 to the Ways and Means committee. They also leak information to the press like a sieve.
There's an inspector general in many of the agencies which can independently investigate criminal activity within the agency.
There's the FBI and the DOJ which can investigate criminal activities whether they involve classified matter or not.
Then there's the FISA court, which oversees the use of secret government surveillance.
Then as a last resort, there are leakers, which leak information to journalists (e.g. Daniel Ellsburg and the Washington Post)
It's more than likely if the government is doing something shady, word will get out.
This sort of thing is why I’ve always been hopeful for truly anonymous communication like that proposed by Freenet, I2P or Tor… as of now, though, none have ended up being practical, in spite of decades of work.
> none have ended up being practical, in spite of decades of work
You are implicitly blaming the projects and the developers, while the rest of the world spends billions on developing software and networks without having any regard for privacy.
Tor is as close as we might get. Onion services (especially v3) are arguably even more anonymous than browsing clear-web sites because there isn't a clear exit node. Tools like Ricochet and OnionShare allow for ethereal onion services that can open the door to some interesting usecases.
> No low latency system will be anonymous in the face of a global passive adversary.
That isn't true. The trivial system is the one where everyone has a broadcast transmitter and transmits constantly even when there isn't a real message.
The implementation of that over the internet is full mesh, which is impractical, but it's a spectrum trading off anonymity for bandwidth and there are potentially interesting points along that spectrum between Tor and full mesh, where they use more bandwidth but then a global passive adversary can't learn anything. Something like virtual circuit switching could potentially work for example.
nothing is IMO. it's a function of raising the cost so it becomes too prohibitive for an adversary to track you. the only way to be "truly" anonymous online is not to go online (or to be truly anonymous irl is to stop being alive).
This is a hopelessly naive view of the outcome of truly anonymous, untraceable, unaccountable communication.
We should all realize that there are much worse outcomes than the current society we live in, and lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe. Truly anonymous communication is a catastrophe-enabler.
> We should all realize that there are much worse outcomes than the current society we live in,
"Could be worse" is not a compelling argument.
> lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe.
I'm curious what you could possibly be thinking of, because to me it seems obvious that the exact opposite is true.
This idea that all communication must be "accountable" to a central authority is very modern, and very very dystopian.
If bad guys can conspire in secret, I consider that an acceptable sacrifice in the name of liberty. Just like ensuring there is no surveillance inside of bathrooms (but what if terrorists assemble their bombs there!).
> I consider that an acceptable sacrifice in the name of liberty
It is remarkable how often zealots are eager to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others to achieve their 'liberty'.
Liberty isn't enhanced by enhancing the ability those who wish to harm us to do so. We have laws and law enforcement for a reason. Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations. That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
> It is remarkable how often zealots are eager to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others to achieve their 'liberty'.
I also find it remarkable how often people are willing to sacrifice any amount of liberty in the name of preserving life.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? That would certainly deter a lot of crime. Of course it's an obviously ridiculous extreme, but it serves to illustrate that you don't really believe that in a tradeoff between liberty and safety, we should always decide in favor of safety. All we're arguing about is where to draw the line.
> Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations.
And it is only very recently that our government was even capable of beginning to block it. Untraceable communication has been the norm for all of human history. We survived. You act like law enforcement is powerless without it, but of course that's not the case.
> That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish.
> Untraceable communication has been the norm for all of human history.
Would you say that there are material, qualitative differences in the way electronic communication increases an organizations ability to execute, vs, say, people hiding handwritten notes in their underwear?
> That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish
What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
> Would you say that there are material, qualitative differences in the way electronic communication increases an organizations ability to execute, vs, say, people hiding handwritten notes in their underwear?
Would you say that unmonitored electronic communication is an order of magnitude more dangerous to society than unmonitored postal mail?
50 years ago, would you have been this alarmist insisting that the government needs to open and examine every single letter that goes through the mail service in order to make sure that nobody is discussing anything illegal?
> What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
I don't know, I haven't seen such a person.
Instead, I'm someone who says that communication has, gotten easier and easier every generation, throughout history. Today's electronic communications are a small evolution past paper mail.
If the government really, legitimately suspects you of something, they're free to ask a judge for permission to install a keylogger, or arrest you and search your hard drive. These are things that happen, and they work, and it's fine.
And ya know, I'm really interested in hearing your answer to the questions I've already posed, instead of trying to further caricature my position by claiming the state of the art before the digital age was hiding hand-written notes in underwear.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? What's the qualitative difference between the safety boost provided by that, and this world you're describing where we somehow re-bottle the pandora's box of cryptography?
I often see words like "illegal" or "unconstitutional" get tossed around in discussions like these. Please don't confuse legality (as ruled by numerous courts) with your own displeasure of events.
The word "classified" means it's not intended for public consumption. Do you imagine that governments should not have the ability to keep information secret? How do you think that would work out.
We elect representatives who are able to review the classified materials and act on our behalf.
That's how the system works. If you think governments shouldn't have secrets you are in the minority.
>The word "classified" means it's not intended for public consumption. Do you imagine that governments should not have the ability to keep information secret? How do you think that would work out.
Some information, like the location of and launch codes for nuclear weapons, names of sources in hostile nations, etc absolutely should be secret.
I don't think that because "governments need secrets" we should set up a system where the government can classify something, rendering it unable to be reviewed by the courts, as described in the article I linked to.
Ooohhh, that's quite on point actually. Guess what Assange disclosed plenty of, at great risk to these sources' safety? He is quite far from any sort of genuine journalistic ethics, and I'm not going to complain if he were to be held responsibile for these actions.
(And yes, he used to claim, with no basis in reality whatsoever, that these sources were self-serving for the most part and thus had it coming for them...or something, honestly it's hard to even guess at a coherent argument from his unhinged claims. By now though, I think we all can agree that this was BS. He has garnered an extensive track record of optimizing his "leaks" for shock value while minimizing effort, and disclosing sources' identity does fit the pattern.)
It's worth noting that Wikileaks had requested help from the Pentagon in censoring these names, but the Pentagon refused.
Are you going to hold them accountable, or is this just a convenient stick to smack Assange with?
It's also interesting that, at least so far, no stories have surfaced about the grave consequences for these listed sources. Considering this would have been huge news, one might want to conclude that no smoke means no fire here.
I don't think the parent is saying the government should not be allowed to keep secrets. The problem is that it's hard to balance that need with the public's need to keep checks on the government. I would personally like to see more transparency in government, even though I know some things really should remain secret. The pendulum has been swinging too far in the wrong direction for some time now.
Government's should indeed be able to have secrets, but few, far between, and with a heavy burden should that secrecy come that it not be tempted to abuse that power.
Charges like these, which such heavy minimum sentences should he be convicted, are exactly what he claimed were waiting for him if he left the Embassy. Over the years, many observers claimed he was delusional in this regard. It appears he wasn’t.
Exactly. This is why the previous Ecuadorian government granted him political asylum - his legitimate fear of persecution by the American government for publishing their embarrassing secrets.
The current government of Ecuador has not only handed him over, however, but has even handed over his personal belongings in the embassy to the US government. So much for protecting him from political persecution!
It's unfortunate Ecuador went back on its promise of asylum, but I will give them some credit that they granted it in the first place, against what was surely strong USA pressure, and protected Assange for 7 years.
For context: Ecuador changed governments in between. While the current president was officially the continuation of the previous one (the one who granted Assange asylum), in effect he turned soon after being elected, to the point the prior president considers him a traitor to all he initially stood for.
So you must give credit to the prior government, not the current one.
(A) Ecuador received a $4.2B loan from the US-dominated IMF, which was approved around the same time Assange was dragged out of the embassy, and
(B) President Moreno was caught up in the INA Papers scandal where many personal photos, messages, and documents were published, and Moreno accused Assange of involvement shortly before evicting Assange.
The executive branch of the US government did as well. Drastically. The opinion of the US Justice department through each of those two wildly different presidents however, did not change.
The difference is that before the election, Lenin Moreno was seen as the successor of Rafael Correa (unlike the Trump and Obama situation). Correa's grant of asylum to Assange was seen as a political/ideological stand, and his successor was expected to continue it. When Moreno got elected he reverted enough of Correa's policies that the latter considers him a traitor [1]. That was unexpected.
> "“The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange,” Mr. Correa tweeted. “Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.”
Ecuador didn't exactly "[go] back on its promise of asylum". Assange violated the terms of his asylum. Whether that's justification for handing him over to the U.S. is a separate argument, but Ecuador was justified in terminating the asylum.
This is only true if you take what the government of Ecuador has claimed at face value.
The reality is that Latin American governments often make deceptive and untrue claims to support activities that benefit them.
In this case, Ecuador made several unsubstantiated claims ostensibly designed to humiliate Assange, which fall short of any reasonable attempt to prove that Assange violated the terms of his asylum.
I don't think most of South America know who Assange is, it's pretty fringe nerdy news over here, I would guess Ecuatorians a bit more though, but doubt most are into the detail but rather have a vague idea.
There's a new leader in Ecuador, more US friendly, and they leaned on him with the IMF --- they got a huge loan just as they gave him up. It does seem that he is a bit of an asshole, but I don't think it's conspiratorial
to think there's more to it than that.
That's what the government that handed Assange over, and which is now cooperating with his persecutors, claimed - without any evidence, of course. That government also happens to be pursuing friendly relations with the United States, and also just happened to receive a large IMF loan, not that those things could possibly be related to the decision to revoke Assange's asylum.
Political asylum is not normally revoked because someone is a bad house guest, and one former embassy employee has gone on the record stating that the new Ecuadorian government did its best to make Assange's life in the embassy living hell, and that he was actually a courteous guest. It is in the interest of the Ecuadorian government to defame Assange and to make excuses for their sudden cooperation with American authorities.
Not of any of the lurid claims made by the Ecuadorian government. The fact that the Ecuadorian government has shown itself willing to release videos of Assange that they consider embarrassing (like him exercising), without that video actually substantiating any of their salacious claims, suggests that those claims are false.
I am not sure that would have worked. The stuff he and Wikileaks published ended up taking a lot of the narrative control away from very powerful interests.
That is a straight up attack on legitimacy. And legitimacy is one of a few basic political powers. That makes it a big deal. (Others are having an army, ownership of the means of production, etc...)
It’s a different leader of Ecuador. Assuming a consistent position is like assuming consistency between the Obama and Trump administrations. Unrealistic expectation from a past that no longer exists.
I agree, but it's a bit more complex than that. Obama and Trump are officially political enemies and stand for different visions for the US.
In contrast, Lenin Moreno (current president of Ecuador) was the political succesor of Rafael Correa (previous president) and was in line with Correa's policies... until after being elected. He then turned around many of Correa's policies and is seen as a traitor by the latter.
This is more as if Hillary had won (ok, I know, not a perfect analogy!) and afterwards tore down everything Obama stood for.
It sounds like he either arrogantly or through mental illness drastically wore out his welcome. I'm leaning on his mental illness being the reason. If his safety were so important to him he wouldn't have bit the hand that fed him.
The new Ecuadorian government - the same one that handed him over and which has a clear interest in justifying this action by defaming him - has not provided any evidence to substantiate their lurid claims, despite their apparent willingness to leak various surveillance videos of him to the press. It's sad to see people taking baseless accusations by an involved party at face value.
Indeed. I remember many of his critics saying "but what does he have to lose if he's actually innocent of the Swedish sexual assault charges?!"
This is exactly what he said would happen if he would give in to the Swedish/UK authorities.
Many may not remember, but Assange also said that the Swedish charges were manufactured precisely so he can be 1) discredited and 2) eventually extradited to U.S. once in custody.
That result was entirely his choice. He chose to go to the UK. That's not where you go if you're fearful of the US picking you up.
He chose to leave Sweden where he wouldn't likely be extradited to the US as Sweden considers espionage a political crime and does not extradite people for political crimes ....
Which is irrelevant, because they'd manufacture some other charge to get him on.
Every single person on the entire planet can be charged with dozens of things by a u.s. prosecutor with enough time and incentive. That's how the laws are designed. If they want you, they _will_ get you.
Mail fraud, wire fraud, intellectual property theft, copyright infringement/piracy, subpeonas, a law from 1806 about people with white hair, i-dont-like-your-face, etc.
My point isn't so much that this one specific violation wouldn't qualify for extradition. It's that the laws are so intentionally vague and broad and numerous that they can be interpreted in such a way to charge _anybody_ with _something_ if they want to.
... but where he was charged with rape. So he gave up protection from extradition to the US in exchange for protection against the rape charge. A cynic might think it tells you which one he thought he had more reason to fear.
Sweden has allowed the US government to just black bag people in the past.
The UK doesn't from their soil. There's good reason to think they don't have a issue with extraordinary rendition in the global sense; I think they just don't like the idea of a former colony subverting their legal system. But all of that means that it's more likely for Assange to stay in the legal system in the UK rather than being black bagged.
I'm sure he'd prefer to leave the UK too if he could, but between Sweden and the UK, when facing this amount of scrutiny from the US, the UK is his obvious choice since they don't allow extraordinary rendition starting from their soil.
One incident does not constitute a habit, especially when you consider all of the backlash cited on the same link. Prior to the Bush administration, the US had a much better reputation for fair treatment and trial and given everything which has happened since you really need to establish that the Swedish government would do the same thing.
I mean, there was very little actual backlash. No one living took the blame.
And the reputation the US used wasn't their good side, it was the economic threats against Sweden that made them capitulate. The US is still more than willing to take such measures to get what it wants.
The whole point of extraordinary rendition is that it's outside the legal process. The individuals in the wiki link I gave you successfully sued and won on the fact that Sweden had allowed their kidnapping when Sweden wouldn't have allowed an extradition.
Ah yes, the completely logical argument that in order to be able to complete a rendition outside the legal process, those dastardly Swedes decided to commence a very public legal process against him requiring him to be on trial in Sweden...
(The UK makes dubious decisions to repatriate asylum seekers to countries like Egypt all the time FWIW)
That is a pretty logical argument. The Swedes have a legal system that is going to be quite different from the Anglophone common law systems and we can't really predict exactly what will happen. As monocasa linked, the Swedish legal system is not in a position to resist US demands backed by a threatening attitude. One incident is more than enough to establish that Sweden will likely fold if pressured.
It is reasonable to think that the Swedes have identified a different avenue that they can use to have Assange leave the country care of the US, and that they would exercise that option once they have him in custody.
That is almost certainly what Assange thinks. I don't know I've ever seen the likely penalty for what he was charged with, but I doubt it is more than a decade and he would have spent longer than that in the Ecuadorian Embassy the way things were shaping up. His actions are only rational if he is expecting the US to be involved.
... yes, Sweden's public historical willingness to cooperate extralegally with the US in ways that the UK is not is in fact pretty good evidence of... exactly that situation being capable of occurring.
You miss the point. If Sweden's true motivation lay in doing something outside the legal system, what on earth was the protracted legal process for unrelated allegations of offences committed in Sweden all about? And if Assange's true motivation was fear that the Swedes were unusually willing to act outside rather the legal process rather than within it, why was he so ambivalent about this threat that he chose to live there and stayed there until his lawyer received notification legal proceedings against him had reached the stage where he was due to be charged?
It's certainly amusing to see Assange fans rewrite history to make the UK the good guy when it comes to not cooperating with the US over extraordinary renditions (or indeed ordinary ones). Even the UK government wouldn't make that claim.
IMO I think Asssange has had trouble with the truth in favor of cultivating his image for a long while now.
Granted, that's a very human thing to do. He's not alone... politicians all the time.
Back in the day when there was a wikileaks facebook page, if you followed up asking about "hey you said you'd release X" after they talked something up and did nothing ... they'd just delete your comment.
... for which they wanted him to return to Sweden to face questioning, right? To avoid that return to Sweden, he sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy, right?
No, observers claimed he was delusional to think he would be charged with a capital crime (meaning he could be executed if convicted), because that would violate the terms of any extradition.
Everyone thought he would be charged with a number of crimes if he ever left the embassy.
I’m not sure whether you’re really making a blanket statement about what all observers had to say. But if you are, your recollection is incorrect. The issue of capital punishment aside, many voices chimed in to say (especially in the early going) that the United States would not hold these cards close to its chest for such a long time and that he should just go face justice in Sweden.
Back then, I and a number of the other legal dudes on HN were saying that the US would definitely try to extradite Assange no matter how long he tried to stay in the embassy.[1] We all generally agreed he should face justice in Sweden (if he was innocent, as he claimed) because Sweden does not extradite for the crimes he is now charged with...but the UK does. While it's possible Sweden might have deported him to Australia after whatever happened in Sweden, that scenario was never brought up.
[1] We're still trying to extradite Polanski, even though he's been a fugitive for decades. The US legal system has patience, largely because everything takes so long anyways.
Even if guilty and they can prove it, a Swedish jail is probably nicer than a US one and I doubt he would go down for longer for the alleged crimes in Sweden than for those in the US. What was it - sex without a condom? Versus the espionage in the US?
When people are out to get you and you see irregular behavior from people in the government, what is a rational behavior?
The case had gone through not one but two prosecutor, both which dropped the case. Rumors of US influence and a third prosecutor picks up the case.
Could be nothing of course and just part of normal operation by the legal system. Just because people were out to get him doesn't mean he should had reacted paranoid about it.
The terms "many observers" and "many voices" are weasel words, and also blanket statements. Your argument would be much better if you could be more specific about who you are referring to.
What I thought, and still think, is that the idea that Assange would be executed is absurd. I also thought that the idea of Assange being whisked away to "black site" is absurd.
If he is kept incommunicado in similar conditions to Manning (kept naked and unable to talk to anyone, including her lawyer) I don’t see much difference to that and a black site.
Counterexample; the detainee here doesn’t even seem to know what the charges are, and most of the evidence (and its sources) are secret.
There is evidence (here-say) that he fired a rifle during a military confrontation and dug a trench, and according to the guards he said some nasty things to them during his extra-judicial detention, but I don’t see any charges enumerating the laws he broke:
At the end of the day, the conspiracy theorists were right.
Regardless of all the lies that the US government made, they were always going to make an extradiction request the moment Assange stepped out of the embassy.
I mean, our current information is that there were no "secret charges" ... until 2018.
So for 6 of the 7 years he was in there, the "you all are crazy conspiracy people" people were correct, and only for the last year have the crazy conspiracy people been correct.
There was even an administration change in between, which means that it is likely whoever followed up on these charges within the US government had their eye on the prize for more than half a decade.
Requiring a high standard of evidence would appear to be impartial. But state media has direct access to evidence for fleshing out the official narrative, even regardless of how real it actually is (eg yellow cake). Meanwhile those pointing out a "crazy conspiracy" are left hoping for leaks.
Previous speculation about USG extraditing Assange was solidly grounded in looking at underlying motivations and capabilities. Claiming that there would be no extradition was essentially implying that Assange couldn't be charged under US law, presumably due to some combination of the first amendment and jurisdictional issues. To anybody that pays attention to how USG actually operates, this was at best naive. Now the reality has finally been demonstrated.
This tendency to malign a non-official narrative as "crazy" for lack of a smoking gun demonstrates exactly why leakers are so vital. The conversation of 2012 would have looked much different if "he's hiding in the embassy simply to escape a rape charge" had been a completely nonsensical position. But as it was, it provided a basis for FUD while the "Assange bad" drums pushed people into thinking that it's right for something bad to happen to him.
The indictment leaked 5 months before Assange was kicked out of the embassy, 8 months after it was created.
It was, of course, the case that it was a sealed indictment and wasn't supposed to be released at all prior to the individual charged being arrested, but that is kind of a normal thing in our legal system; many of the charges against the individuals prosecuted as a result of the Mueller investigation came in the form of sealed charges, as another prominent instance of the practice.
> but that is kind of a normal thing in our legal system
Ok, well if it is normal then nobody should have been calling anyone at all a conspiracy theorist for saying that the US was going to have an extradition request the moment he stepped out of the embassy.
We were right. He stepped outside and now there are charges.
The DoJ at the time explicitly denied Assange being under sealed indictment, which, if he was, it should not have.
(In general, the US government is not supposed to explicitly lie to the American people, hence the "I can neither confirm nor deny" line that comes up when an issue is classified; you can't say P, because you can't reveal classified information, but you also can't say not-P because you aren't allowed to lie in an official capacity.)
>observers claimed he was delusional to think he would be charged with a capital crime (meaning he could be executed if convicted), because that would violate the terms of any extradition.
While the Foreign Office may insist that we will never extradite if there is a possibility of the death penalty, the Home Office on the other hand can take it upon themselves to waive that requirement and have apparently done so recently in another case, so it is possible and the UK is quite prepared to say that it isn't, while doing it - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44929067
>>>> Is it your belief that he would not end up in US custody? And do you think he also believes that?
>>> Yes, that is my belief. I don't know what he believes.
>> Well, you seem to be implying that he is being dishonest about his fear of being extradited. As if he is doing this so he doesn't have to answer to the charges in Sweden. Based on your statement, you clearly do believe that he isn't actually worried about ending up in US custody.
> I do think he's being dishonest, yes. He has access to skilled lawyers, and his concern about extradition to the US is irrational: it's easier to extradite him where he is.
His specific claim was that the Swedish rape charges were a cover so that Sweden could extradite him to the US. He still hasn't been extradited by Sweden. I wonder if he wouldn't have been better of going to Sweden.
I think it's extremely unlikely that Sweden would extradite him to the US. The UK is far more likely to do that. In Sweden, however, he runs the risk of getting imprisoned for rape.
Right. As I recall, a lot of the prior discussion revolved around the rape charges. One side argued that Assange was hiding from a rape charge and the other arguing that the rape charge was a cover for a secret extradition agreement between Sweden and the US. That latter stance has yet to be proven.
I don't think that there were many people arguing that the US didn't want him but it looks like the US was willing to wait for him to wear out his welcome with the Ecuadorans and completely skip over the Swedes. I wonder had he never gotten to the Ecuadorean embassy if the US would have raised a competing claim with Sweden.
> One side argued that Assange was hiding from a rape charge and the other arguing that the rape charge was a cover for a secret extradition agreement between Sweden and the US.
One side was arguing he was hiding from a rape charge, the other side argued he was hiding from a possible extradition order. Both of those have to do with Assange's likely motivation and are to some degree independent of the facts on the ground - as you point out, the facts of one argument are so far unprovable.
The hiding-from-rape argument has been pretty much debunked by the 7 year timeframe. I don't know what Assange was up for in Sweden, but it beggars belief that he would get more than 7 years jail for a non-violent crime. A fine and community service, maybe. Most aspects of the case must be almost evidence-free and would be a struggle to prove if he says 'didn't happen that way'.
Whatever the truth, he was clearly hiding from a greater threat than the charges the Swedes were bringing against him.
"The hiding-from-rape argument has been pretty much debunked by the 7 year timeframe. I don't know what Assange was up for in Sweden, but it beggars belief that he would get more than 7 years jail for a non-violent crime. A fine and community service, maybe. Most aspects of the case must be almost evidence-free and would be a struggle to prove if he says 'didn't happen that way'."
Isn't rape usually considered a violent crime by default? Apparently rape is between 4 and 10 years in prison in Sweden so it could certainly have been more than 7 if the Swedes decided to throw the book at him. Having made them wait, they might have been more willing to do so.
But think that even if it was certainly less than that Assange's actions don't disprove the accusation. The embassy was arguably more comfortable than prison and effectively allowed him to continue his political activity (despite the Ecuadorans request that he not do so,) and more importantly, there's a bit of a sunk cost impulse: he probably didn't enter the embassy with the expectation of staying for 7 years.
> Isn't rape usually considered a violent crime by default?
The answer to that question is a bit complex and involve a bit of language barrier and differences in the way the law is organized.
Rape is not a specific crime, but a heading in the legal text and a category. As such you have "lesser rape" being defined by one set of circumstances, "rape" with other circumstances, and "serious rape" for a third set of circumstances.
Initiating sex with someone who is sleeping belongs to the first set of circumstances, i.e. lesser rape, and hold a maximum punishment of 4 years and minimum of 6 months.
As for the expected punishment in the Assange case we can look at a predicate where a accused inserted a finger while a woman was sleeping after a party and stopped when she woke up. The punishment was 10 months.
That's a completely different case, though. That's deportation of asylum seekers to their country of origin. Very questionably handled, but still, the UK has also deported people for bad reasons.
Either way, extradition is a very different thing.
It wasn't deportation, because Sweden didn't go through their deportation process. It was Swedish police watching while CIA agents black bagged Swedish residents in the middle of the night.
And yes, it's not extradition either. That's the point I'm making.
He lied about using a condom, the rest was consensual. Realistically how heavy a penalty would he get for that in Sweden? I can't imagine he would have minded sitting out the few months vs getting extradited or living in an embassy.
He really believe Sweden would extradite him, imo.
I do, that's why I'm saying this. Sweden doesn't extradite people for political crimes. And certainly not to countries where they might face extreme punishment, like the death penalty. Sweden also didn't extradite Edward Lee Howard, who was an actual spy, rather than a journalist.
>he claimed were waiting for him if he left the Embassy. Over the years, many observers claimed he was delusional in this regard
That's a bizarre statement.
Most took issue with the hyperbole that was attached to what he would be charged with, "droned" or otherwise dealt with, not if he would or wouldn't be charged with anything.
This is one of those classic conspiracy theory type situations where it is "oh look people said this wasn't a thing and here it is" and it's way not what anyone else said either... and that doesn't prove anything.
1) He'd already been in custody in the UK for some time, so if the US wanted him, and the UK was willing to hand him over, then that would have already taken place, but had not.
2) Under EU rules, if the UK has extradited him to Sweden, and then the US asked for him, both Sweden and the UK would have had to agree to hand him over, making him strictly safer in Sweden than in the UK.
3) Much of Assange and his supporters arguments focused on the risk of being charged with a capital crime, but under EU rules neither the UK nor Sweden could have handed him over to face a capital charge.
4) Much of the remainder of Assange and his supporters arguments focused on the risk of going to Sweden, but he was already in the UK, and the UK is famously willing to cooperate with the US. The UK was not a safe place for Assange to be!
All four points have been vindicated by events so far. What Assange ended up doing was finding a way to avoid going to Sweden and instead hang out in the UK for so long that eventually the US asked, and the UK handed him over, just as expected.
Had Assange quietly gone to Sweden to contest the charges against him, would things have worked out better for him? We'll never know now, but it's very plausible.
> Over the years, many observers claimed he was delusional in this regard.
In any case, the specific claims he made remain, at best, unsubstantiated. He wasn't extradited from Sweden, and he isn't facing a capital charge.
It's doubtful that the Obama admin would have gone this route. There have been quite a few stories that they shied away from such a drastic extension of the definition of 'Espionage'.
Pardoning Manning also doesn't quite with the idea of the (previous) US admin being too invested in punishing Wikileaks.
Except it wasn't a pardon but a commutation - General Petreaus got an actual pardon for spilling secrets to his biographer he was having an affair with - an obvious position for a honeypot.
That still shows a less than friendly attitude to whistleblowers and a hypocritical double standard of holding those in power to a far lower standard. It stinks of cynical "we just want the bad PR to go away but don't want to say she did the right thing" so just commuting to validate the court ruling. Meanwhile Petreaus we should assert that the ruling class are seperate and should be sancrosanct - pardon!
The only reason anyone thought it wouldn't happen is because it involves stepping into controversial legal territory and angering American journalists. Who described it as delusional? What are you talking about?
I mean he's facing these charges, not because he published the leaks themselves, but because he help facilitate the leaking. Journalists don't do that.
Assisting people in an effort to steal classified materials is not in fact something journalists fo all the time. The moment you cross the line from just receiving classified materials to paying for or helping to attempt steal, your stepping into criminality.
Journalists just dumb down whatever press releases are on the newswire that day and then head down to the pub.
There was some golden age that is always a generation ago where journalists did great things, but, they weren't journalists, they were whistleblowers that happened to work for the media.
If you work for the corporate media then this 'golden age' journalism is just not possible. You would be sacked if you wrote the truth or went further than the press releases on the newswire for content.
Like it, don't like it. We've got a basic conflict in play right now. Ordinary people vs a growing, greedy, authoritarian establishment.
Who observes what actually matters. They will get it wrong again.
We can have a healthy discussion about intent, and we should. No matter the intent, it's pretty damn important to understand who is lucid on all of this and who is not.
And for those who are not? Let's talk more, get them lucid. This isn't a personal thing. It's political, and while the norms surrounding politics seem more harsh than necessary, I refuse to subscribe to any of that.
Wrong, right? I personally do not care too much. We get things wrong, and we get them right. The conversation about all of that, the process?
That is what matters, and it's where the good stuff is.
The times are escalating conflict times. Not growing more stable.
> many observers claimed he was delusional in this regard
Did they? I thought it was commonly held he would face such charges. The allegations around delusion were in respect of his ability to evade them for the rest of his life.
Well, wait a second here. Tptacek seems to have been clear in saying that Assange being extradited from the UK itself is much more likely than being extradited from Sweden. Assange ended up being extradited from the UK itself.
Since he was forced out of the embassy into the arms of UK police, and never planned to go to Sweden, I don't think we'll ever know if he would have been extradited from Sweden (or on route to Sweden) or not.
Tptacek was making a point that's a bit more nuanced than you seem to give credit for. He hasn't been "proven wrong" by the UK allowing US to extradite Assange.
Also tptacek: "The fact that they won't render Polanski to the US cuts against Assange's argument."
Let's be real here, he never would have made it to Sweden. One way or another, Assange's fear that leaving the embassy would end in him in an American courtroom was neither irrational nor dishonest.
Ok. Why does that make their singular beliefs relevant? I'd expect the poster I was responding to to link news articles, politicians, political pundits, etc. to show it was a not a commonly held belief that he'd face such charges. Not some prolific poster on a niche tech forum.
Titled Definition of paranoia: supporters of Julian Assange. Feel free to read the text in the contest of today's news.
"More pertinently, Greenwald and the rest of Assange's supporters do not tell us how the Americans could prosecute the incontinent leaker. American democracy is guilty of many crimes and corruptions. But the First Amendment to the US constitution is the finest defence of freedom of speech yet written. The American Civil Liberties Union thinks it would be unconstitutional for a judge to punish Assange... From the 1970s, when the New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers, to today's accounts of secret prisons and the bugging of US citizens, the American courts "have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information". Maybe the authorities could prosecute Assange for alleged links with hackers. I don't know – unlike Assange, I cannot see the future. But why would they bother to imprison him when he is making such a good job of discrediting himself?"
To be clear, I wasn't arguing either way. I was just saying that a single poster on this site is not a way to get a feel for how common an opinion was back then. Your link is a much better start.
And for some reason having that opinion got my original post flagged and collapsed by default, even though I have a positive score...
I don't know why it was flagged but it could be mod intervention in regard to a discussion about tptacek.
As for the link, I mostly made a lazy search just to provide a link to "news articles, politicians, political pundits". If there was multiple people on HN claiming he was not going to get charged by the US then I would expect to see similar opinion outside HN. I thus tested the theory.
Well, presumably most people reading this think of this niche tech forum as their own community. And looking at the opinions of the most prolific members of that community is likely a good way to get an idea of the opinions held there in general
A common theme for a while was that Assange was just attention seeking and/or using the excuse of extradition to the US as a way to avoid facing justice in Sweden.
There should be no consequences for carrying out criminal activity across borders due to matters of jurisdiction?
International law is incredibly complicated. It's up to the countries involved to make the decision in addition to whether or not extradition makes sense. You don't have to agree with that but once again- what is your alternative?
> There should be no consequences for carrying out criminal activity across borders due to matters of jurisdiction?
In China it's against the law to publicly criticise the government. Should the US extradite people to China to face the penalties for violating that law?
The sad answer is that there are essentially only 3 sovereign countries left in the world. Legal reasoning only comes into play when making the justifications more plausible.
This is the most important part of the indictment, and it's right on page one:
> ASSANGE encouraged sources to (i) circumvent legal safeguards on information; (ii) provide that protected information to WikiLeaks for public dissemination; and (iii) continue the pattern of illegally procuring and providing protected information to WikiLeaks for distribution to the public.
The main charge here is that Assange actively encouraged people to break the law. Since he wasn't a US citizen and had not signed a non-disclosure agreement with the United States, many of the laws protecting classified information do not apply to him directly.
The first section of the indictment describes the various ways in which Assange and/or Wikileaks said, more or less, "gee, it sure would be nice if someone got these classified documents for us." The next section, titled "B. Chelsea Manning Responded to ASSANGE'S Solicitation and Stole Classified Documents from the United States", explains how Assange's solicitation lead directly to the criminal acts committed by Manning.
Finally, we have a section labeled "C. ASSANGE Encouraged Manning to Continue Her Theft of Classified Documents and
Agreed to Help Her Crack a Password Hash to a Military Computer". This described how Assange provided Chelsea Manning with tools allowing her to circumvent passwords and other protections on classified computers.
So this isn't as simple as "a journalist received classified information and is being prosecuted for it." This indictment lays out a very specific crime, which is (Assange) directly encouraging and enabling another individual (Manning) to commit a crime (Espionage) on his behalf.
You can argue about the validity of these charges, even the validity of the classifications levels assigned to some of the material given to Assange, but we should be clear about exactly what is being claimed by the government, as well.
This would criminalize a huge amount of investigative journalism in the United States. Journalists who work in this field solicit classified information all the time. They cultivate connections inside government, and ask for information. They aren't all just sitting back and waiting for sources to fall into their lap. When sources do come to them, they encourage those sources to share more information. That's how the business works, and if the US government wins its case against Assange, that business will be illegal.
The major difference is that journalists do not ask their sources to break the law to obtain information. Assange did, and that makes all the difference.
Whenever a journalist asks their source for classified information, which they do all the time, they're asking their source to break the law.
The legal theory being advanced here would basically outlaw investigative journalism into the activities of the US government, even by foreign journalists.
Whenever a journalist asks their source for classified information, which they do all the time, they're asking their source to break the law.
That's not true but I don't have time to run through an exhaustive legal explanation of why. In a nutshell: the source is responsible for maintaining security of information, because third parties like journalists don't know the bounds of what is covered by confidentiality.
Moreover, asking for information is not the same thing as soliciting information. Asking is fine, soliciting is not (in this context, soliciting means offering them something of value in exchange for the information).
Journalists normally know full well that they're asking sources for classified information. Asking for classified information is absolutely routine in investigative journalism.
> Asking is fine, soliciting is not (in this context, soliciting means offering them something of value in exchange for the information).
Assange didn't purchase the information.
The theories you're supporting would make reporting on US government secrets illegal. You should stop and think about how fundamentally this would undermine the freedom of the press and the ability of the public to know about what their government does in secret.
The theories you're supporting would make reporting on US government secrets illegal. You should stop and think about how fundamentally this would undermine the freedom of the press and the ability of the public to know about what their government does in secret.
Black-and-white/yes-or-no/kindergarten level of analysis? Sure, that's correct.
In the real world? It's not correct at all. For starters, it's perfectly legal to ask for classified information, because it's well understood that a source generally will not provide any classified information (because the source would face criminal sanction if they do). However, if the source is willing to reveal said information, and the journalist did not solicit it, then the journalist is free to publish it because journalists are not covered by classified information laws (in the US).
If, however, the journalist solicits the information (by offering something of value, not necessarily monetary), or by assisting in the acquisition of the information, then they have violated various US laws, because they've crossed the line.
Assange is alleged to have performed acts that could be construed as attempts to access classified information, beyond merely asking for it--specifically, it is alleged that he assisted Manning with attempting to acquire and decrypt classified documents. That is the heart of the issue--if Assange had merely accepted a document dump from Manning (as he generally did with most other sources), he wouldn't be facing 18 charges today.
However, Assange is also not protected by free press rulings. Because he's not a journalist. He's just a parrot. A parrot merely passes on what's given to them. A journalist verifies their sources, the information they've received, and exercises some sort of analysis and judgment in deciding what to publish. Assange literally did none of those things until it came time to interfere in the Trump-Clinton election, when he chose to bury the Trump documents he received and time the release of Clinton-related documents, most of which are now known to have been partial or whole-scale forgeries by the Russian intelligence agencies.
You’re being downvoted for knowing factually correct information that happens to disprove some of the biases that’s HN posters hold, which is a shame. Downvotes aren’t supposed to be a consolation prize for having your inferior arguments lose.
As a reference point, season 3 of the tv show “The Newsroom” has a plot that centers around a new reporter who aids their source in collecting confidential documents from the US government, and every reporter in the newsroom immediately understands they’ve ‘solicited’ information and thus violated the espionage act. I sincerely doubt that this is a concept that a tv show writer can understand and effectively explain, yet would be opaque to a reporter.
As a minor note though, Wikileaks absolutely buried trump related documents and carefully timed the release of Clinton related dumps, which makes sense as Wikileaks had been reduced to a front for Russian intelligence by that time. But the emails they released were themselves authentic, and their veracity can be independently verified by the DKIM system they had enabled. Funnily enough, for all the sound and fury over the Clinton emails, the worst thing that they show is that Clinton received a debate in advance, just like Donald Trump did.
They're being downvoted for making up their own pet legal theories that go against settled American law. Sycophantically justifying the Trump administration's attack on the press isn't "nuanced." A lot of people dislike Assange because they're upset that Clinton's emails reflected badly on her and might have contributed to her loss, or because they're upset he published documents that embarrassed the US. That's no reason to suddenly start inventing novel legal interpretations that outlaw investigative journalism.
Except for the fact that the lawyer above is correct in their interpretation of the law, and you are wrong. You don’t get to decide that laws you disagree with are ‘pet’, ‘novel’ and go against ‘settled’ law. You’re trying to couch your opinion in certainty that it doesn’t deserve - again, because your interpretation of the law is wrong. You should even have a clue that the DoJ understands this difference, because they specifically allege that Assange helping Manning steal further documents constituted ‘solicitation’. Another clue should be the fact that the articles criticizing this charge, and original Obama era decision not to prosecute the violation, are based on the ‘chilling effect’ that it causes, not that no ‘solicitation’ occurred.
If you’re still confused, here’s a short clip from the aforementioned show discussing that it’s wrong with soliciting sources to steal: https://youtu.be/VSPhYdxSTRI
Their statement that American free-speech jurisprudence doesn't apply to non-journalists is a dead giveaway that they're speaking nonsense.
Maybe you're impressed when the Trump administration's DOJ comes up with a novel legal theory to prosecute a journalist for "solicitation." I'm going to rely on Hugo Black's opinion of this sort of attempt to intimidate journalists and crack down on national security reporting - that it is a fundamental threat to democracy and contravenes the First Amendment. You can trust Trump's cronies over at the DOJ if you'd like.
> That's not true but I don't have time to run through an exhaustive legal explanation of why. In a nutshell: the source is responsible for maintaining security of information, because third parties like journalists don't know the bounds of what is covered by confidentiality.
Guess what, your wrong and here's why: all gov't info is bound by confidentiality unless it's on a press release page.
Clearly you aren't a journalist. Journalists solicit leaks all the time from people who would be breaking the law by leaking that information. There is no difference. This indictment specifically criminalizes journalism and runs directly contrary to the 1st Amendment - period.
I'm not convinced that his source broke the law. At the time, Manning was a legal agent of the US gov and presumably had the clearance to view confidential information. The information he attempted to obtain was password protected, but putting a password on a file doesn't doesn't make it a crime to access it if you have legal secret clearance. The crime was handing the info to Assange, which was committed by Manning and who was prosecuted for it.
By analogy, an employee at a bank isn't a criminal for spinning the dial on the vault. They are a bank employee, they have permission to work on-site with the bank's money, be in the vault, and operate their teller station which has the vault's money. it may be against the bank's regulation to open the vault without authorization, but a guy on the outside asking a bank employee to try a vault combo isn't breaking the law if the bank employee was previously authorized to access it. The crime is taking the green papers from the vault and transporting them off bank premises.
Just because you have a secret clearance, and the information is classified at the secret level, doesn't mean you're authorized to view it. You also need to have a "need to know", and considering that Manning wasn't given the password, I doubt she needed to know what was in the document.
Oh, I get that. Unauthorized access is a violation of Manning's military policy. But she was cleared to view confidential information and had access to other military networks. I contend it's not a crime for Assange to aide her in breaking an employment policy, not an espionage law.
It was a crime (on Manning's end) to hand the information over, but it would not have been a crime on Assange's end to receive it...if he had been protected as a journalist.
And even if he had been a journalist for purposes of these laws, he crossed the line when he helped Manning trying to crack the password. It doesn't matter that he failed--the problem is the attempt.
To use your bank analogy, the scenario would be that a guy without a bank account at the bank wanted money from the vault and helped the bank employee figure out the combo. Both the employee and the guy are guilty. On the other hand, if the employee had just given the guy some money from the vault, the guy isn't guilty of anything.
I don’t agree. Personally I don’t feel that the government is entitled to have secrets from the governed, as the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, and you cannot consent unless you are informed. A government with secrets from those it requires the consent of to govern is illegitimate and corrupt.
The fact that some claim that it is or should be illegal to tell someone to collect evidence of uninvestigated and unpunished war crimes for publication for the edification of the public shows you just how far down we’ve slipped down the slope.
The US doesn't either. That is why there are declassification rules that reduce the secrecy level of information after a while.
So yes, you are correct and this trust the government gets to declare something a secret has been abused and the ONLY way to get to the truth was what Assange and Manning did. That this is the ONLY way is pretty important for the legal defense.
So, if the government had a weapon plan with the power of a nuclear bomb, and could easily be created with certain instructions...that should be leaked because something something the government has no entitlement to have secrets from the governed...even if it's to protect those it governs.
The Supreme Court addressed this in New York Times vs. United States (1973), when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, which were classified, and which the government argued must remain secret in order to protect the national security.
The court ruled that in order to restrict freedom of the press, the government "carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint." The court further ruled that freedom of the press can only be restrained if there is clear, serious, immediate harm that would result directly from the publication of the material. Speculative arguments about what could happen are not sufficient to block publication.
Justice Hugo Black's argument is really quite beautiful: "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
Remember what publications we're talking about here. These were documents detailing a war that the US and British governments entered into under false pretenses, and which they continued to lie to the public about. The public was served by knowing this information, and trying to put the people who published it behind bars, and treating them as if they were spies, is disgusting.
Wikileaks is not the New York Times. Wikileaks did not redact certain documents that ended up burning sources and agents, putting lives in danger. Major news publications don't do that. Major news publications also don't tell someone exactly how to hack into something to get a story. They can massage a source, they can solicit sources, they can contact a source...but you can't tell someone how to hack into a military data bank for the purpose of a story and then say it was free speech. The publishing is -not- what the government is charging Assange with.
Hugo Black didn't write that only the New York Times had the right to publish government documents. He also didn't write that only organizations that meet partiallypro's liking can publish government documents.
Wikileaks is fulfilling an important role, publishing documents that shed light on the secret actions of governments. That's a service to democracy.
There idea wide gulf between completely open government and one where secrecy is the default reaponse with very few checks and balances to ensure that those items marked top secret have a valid rationale for being labelled as such.
I would argue that countries like the USA have moved too far in the latter direction and could use a good shove back to the middle.
How can we even be sure such a weapon exists or can exist if we can’t review the workings of it?
This whole “it’s for your own safety, let us protect you with it, trust us (no you can’t read it)” is not informed consent and no amount of mental gymnastics will make it informed consent.
The government requires the consent of the governed or it is illegitimate. Secrets preclude informed consent. There is nothing special or unique about the humans in the government that entitle them to access to secrets whilst denying the governed that same access.
We know that nuclear weapons exist, but generally you can't find plans on how to make the kinds we produce that yield much larger degrees of damage. So, I'm not sure what your point is. We also know that an F-35 and F-22 exist...but we have no idea what the schematics are, we don't even know what it's coated with, they are secret.
That's not true. Nuclear weapons are a 1940's technology, a fat-boy gun style device is simple enough and can be quite powerful. The only thing that's stopping everyone from producing their own is that refining uranium requires a massive amount of energy and scale. Delivery of warheads is the main problem though. What needs to be secret is the delivery / strategy part.
The technology is old, and the theory is open knowledge...it is not well documented or public on how to actually build a working bomb. Especially thermonuclear bombs. There is a reason North Korea struggles to provision a working bomb when it has all the materials in place. The reason Israel got the bomb is because France shared the information with them. Not everyone has that information.
Then again, I think all known practical methods of setting off a fusion bomb involve using a fission bomb to do so, so the barrier to entry for even experimentation/development is extremely high.
Lol, how to actually build it is the easy part. Again, the hard part is the refining uranium to get Uranium-235 and that's (thankfully) mostly a highly resource intensive job with large scale industry needed.
Note that we are talking about 1940's "fat boy" here.
Also, note that the fact that the poorest nation on Earth can do this today kinda says everything.
I think this is one of the things that we should be alarmed at, at how easy it is to make nuclear weapons in today's age. Putting your head in the sand and refusing to accept reality is dangerous.
In that case you and other Americans probably break laws in China and Russia. Should you be handed over to those countries because of that? Because that's what you're saying here
> Journalists that have ethical standards wouldn't do this.
Then all journalists who publish classified information - which are most investigative journalists of any note who cover government - have no ethical standards.
If this goes through with Assange, there's nothing preventing the government from also putting Glenn Greenwald behind bars, along with half of the investigative journalists in Washington, DC.
Let me lay out the case to you. Glenn Greenwald conspired with a government employee to access classified information. He knew that Snowden was offering classified information. He hatched a conspiracy with Snowden to meet in Hong Kong, beyond the reach of the United States government. They intentionally obfuscated their communications. They set up a secret meeting point. They decided on a secret signal that would allow Greenwald to identify Snowden. This looks very much like a conspiracy in which Greenwald knows that Snowden is breaking the law, and in which Greenwald is helping Snowden work out a way to do so.
Of course, prosecuting Greenwald for the Snowden leaks would be a disaster for democracy. Prosecuting Assange would also be disastrous.
I have the feeling that a lot of Democrats have decided to throw in their lot with the intelligence agencies that want Snowden behind bars, because they can't forgive him for publishing Hillary and the DNC's emails. For them, this is political payback. If we start throwing journalists to the wolves because we don't like them politically, that will be a very dark day for democracy.
That's true, but someone who is doing something unlawful that they believe is nevertheless ethical is engaged in civil disobedience and should be prepared to face the civil consequences, including being convicted of a crime and going to jail.
> So this isn't as simple as "a journalist received classified information and is being prosecuted for it." This indictment lays out a very specific crime, which is (Assange) directly encouraging and enabling another individual (Manning) to commit a crime (Espionage) on his behalf.
Nothing about that interpretation is new, thus plenty of high-profile journalists, and journalistic NGO [0] have already responded to that particular "charge" back in April. Like Glenn Greenwald pointing out that "massaging sources" is a major part of investigative journalistic work [1].
I really fail to see how it's criminal for someone in another country to explain how to hack a computer system our govt has. I fail to see how it's criminal for them to even encourage someone to hack the system. They aren't our citizen, they don't get our benefits and rights, they don't have to act the way we want them to.
This isn't different than the Chinese govt demanding us citizens be surrendered who break Chinese social laws.
So, if China were to steal our plans for the thermonuclear weapons, the F-35 and F-22 by using and instructing a US asset...China is off the hook, even though they facilitated the entire operation? How is this not espionage? Is it suddenly not espionage because Wikileaks made their findings public? So what if China did that? What if Russia did that? How is this any different than Mueller charging Russian nationals (nationals we know Russia will not extradite,) in regards to election interference? That was ultimately published information in regards to Podesta and Clinton emails. The people indicted were not all hackers, some of them just instructed...so I guess they are innocent? Your argument makes no sense.
China and other countries do steal our IP routinely and get away with it no punishment. What point are you trying to make?
My argument makes plenty of sense and it's very easy to ingest - if you aren't a member of my country and receive no privileges as tho you're a member of my country then you shouldn't be punished like you're a member of my country. What about that are you exactly arguing against?
e.g. if a journalist (in the usa or outside) knows your employer (gov or private) committed crimes against the population and kept proofs of it inside a toy safe, that you can open easily just by fiddling with it, and the journalist motivates you to go fiddle with the children's toy safe to get the evidence, is it:
a) you and the journalists high profile spy-hackers?
b) you employer a criminal, and incopetent at security?
Seems like classical, straight-up espionage. The only confounding factor is that Assange wasn't (as far as we know) working on behalf of a foreign power. But these days, that's what spies are - not James Bond, but merely a guy who coerces and helps his assets to gain access to and then exfiltrate secret information. Espionage.
> The first section of the indictment describes the various ways in which Assange and/or Wikileaks said, more or less, "gee, it sure would be nice if someone got these classified documents for us."
A lot of news orgs, and individual reporters, have explicitly asked for information about specific topics. Yes, usually not by explicitly mentioning it being classified, but for plenty topics that's basically implied.
By my read the indictment doesn't formulate any limiting principles on the more broad charges that could be levied against many reporters.
> Finally, we have a section labeled "C. ASSANGE Encouraged Manning to Continue Her Theft of Classified Documents and Agreed to Help Her Crack a Password Hash to a Military Computer". This described how Assange provided Chelsea Manning with tools allowing her to circumvent passwords and other protections on classified computers.
Which is why the previous version, which had only this charge, was much less heavily criticized.
The charge could have been limited to working on cracking the password. Instead it explicitly describes activity common to reporters and critical for democracy: publishing information the source obtained "illegally". In quotes because a government with something to hide will generally hide it under a national security secrets act.
Why make charges that could destroy journalism when you could charge with something that doesn't? It's hard to understand, unless of course the press is "the enemy of the people".
I don't think you could manage the same legal challenge with just the latter. Often charges describe all sorts of things that themselves aren't illegal.
At face value it doesn't seem so crazy to charge him for this. I mean it is committing a crime by proxy as opposed to passively obtaining information from a source (the latter of which journalists should be protected for).
If I give tools and a robbery checklist to someone and tell them to rob a bank, surely I'm still able to be charged and probably for a higher crime right? At least that's how these charges seem to me. I guess I don't see how it's invalid.
I do however see how this could set a dangerous precedent should the courts allow loose interpretation of the outcome to mean "reporting leaked information is illegal"
what "crime by proxy" ? Manning was an agent of the US. He (must have) had some level of secret clearance. Just because he didn't know the password to a database doesn't make it a crime.
Those databases are illegal for non-government employees to access. If Manning had secret clearance for database {A, B, and C} but not D, it's an internal IT violation between him (at the time he was male) and his boss. If you or I (presuming you're not a gov employee) tried it, we don't have clearance and therefore it would be a crime, aka hacking.
Yes that she was an agent at the time. But no that she had access to those materials. There are various levels of government access. Even if documents are marked "secret" and you have secret clearance if you don't have the passwords you don't have access. And actually in government sometimes you do have the passwords and still don't have granted access. Any tampering with a computer to gain access you didn't have approval for from your supervisors is considered hacking. Yes it's an internal IT violation, but at a government office which makes it a government offense. I hope that makes sense. It's not like a normal company where you get repercussion from that entity alone at these sorts of government orgs.
You are right, we should be clear about what is being claimed by the government.
However, is there any legitimate alternative method for a whistleblower to expose the US government of warcrimes, as WikiLeaks did? It seems quite unfair for a government to murder innocent civilians and then protect itself by putting the evidence behind a password.
To be clear, the evidence was not behind a password (at least, it was already accessible to Manning). The purpose of cracking the password was to allow Manning to download the information from a different account, in order to obfuscate the source of the leak.
That's incorrect. Assange was trying to brute force the administrator password on a DoD system to give Manning elevated access on the host that she didn't have at the time. It wasn't an obfuscation exercise, it was an attempt to uncover classified information Manning wasn't privy to with her current account access.
*Edit: and it was done after Manning had handed over everything she could access with her own account. At least that's what the charge is in the initial indictment.
Only the last section has any legitimacy IMO. And I suspect it is something along the lines "well, you can google for something called John The Ripper".
And about "gee, it sure would be nice if someone got these classified documents for us." As long as the POTUS is not charged for asking the exact same things to Russians publicly, it would be a shame that a foreign person be charged in US for that.
I still don't really understand how a journalist, non-U.S. citizen, operating entirely outside the U.S. is being indicted for anything.
I understand he obtained U.S. documents and published them.
However, if I obtain on-the-ground images of the Tiananmen Square protests and share them on Facebook with my friend group, should I be subject to Chinese laws?
I don't live in China, I don't have Chinese citizenship, I've never been to China. Should I be subject to Chinese law?
China would say yes, and in such a case you should not ever be in a state that has and/or requires good diplomatic relationship with, or economic support from, China.
Law is, after all, what gets executed, and debating whether it's right or wrong is a luxury you don't have when it's executed on you.
Yes, this is the entire premise of extradition treaties. If you conspire to commit a crime in a different country, you are potentially able to be sent there to be put on trial. As to whether or not those laws are just is a separate issue.
This is not a good understanding of Extradition. Extradition before the age of the internet involved identifying people who had in the past committed a crime in a certain jurisdiction and transporting them back there to face justice. So for example, I murder someone, I flee to the UK, the USA asks the UK to extradite me back. Or indeed JA (allegedly) rapes someone, flees to the UK, Sweden asks for extradition.
What's at question here is: Given Assange was never in the US, how has he committed a crime in the US and the answer is that the US has a funny idea jurisdiction.
Crimes committed against the United States are seen as crimes committed in the United States. This is an issue of sovereignty, as there is no (for most intents and purposes) higher, international court to pursue the case in. Therefore, the case is tried in the United States. It's similar to any other foreign national conspiring in crime in the United States. They don't have to physically be in a country to break a country's laws.
The country that the individual was in when the crime was committed can certainly handle the issue and not extradite, however, generally these agreements avoid that.
If US acknowledged international courts, you could make that argument. But as of now, the US doesn't acknowledge some of the most important international courts, like the ICC. Thus the argument that there are no higher courts is entirely bogus, as it is so by choice.
That's the point of extradition agreements. If we're worried that Brazil's Senate has passed morally incompatible laws and wants to extradite folks from the US, then we won't agree. The State Department is (or tries to be) on top of any foreign legislation that would change our agreements.
I'm not talking about morality but legitimacy, why are you bound to follow laws that were not voted for representatives you chose on a country you never been?
That's why I think there must be limits regarding what reasons a country can use to ask for an extradition, specially if you want to extradite a person that's not even an American for treason, espionage or stuff like that.
The idea of extraterritorial jurisdiction has existed for centuries with piracy laws being some of the earliest examples. Most countries have enshrined the idea into their laws in some manner especially when it concerns laws in which the victim is the nation itself. Many countries go way beyond what the US has. For instance France claims the right to prosecute anyone for any crime committed against a French national regardless of where the crime was committed.
Only if China can exert it's influence in the US. And it can, to a certain extent. It's not unheard of for China to demand that a citizen return home by threatening legal action against his or her family. If China had the same influence over the US as the US does over most of the European countries, then yes, you would be subject to Chinese law if they care enough to pursue it.
Laws aren't magic. They're enforced by power. If any country has the power to enforce their own laws in foreign countries, they'll do it if it's important enough to them. In this case, the upside is definitely big enough.
I'd be more worried and angry if I were a citizen of a European country. This isn't the first time this decade the US has violated the sovereignty of a European country.
> I still don't really understand how a journalist, non-U.S. citizen, operating entirely outside the U.S. is being indicted for anything.
> I understand he obtained U.S. documents and published them.
> However, if I obtain on-the-ground images of the Tiananmen Square protests and share them on Facebook with my friend group, should I be subject to Chinese laws?
> I don't live in China, I don't have Chinese citizenship, I've never been to China. Should I be subject to Chinese law?
I am fairly certain that Julian Assange is doing or attempting literally everything theoretically or practically possible to avoid traveling to the United States.
We're seeing the US flex its international power to get revenge rather than justice, and it's disconcerting to see how many "free" nations are allowing it to happen.
Although I don't pretend to understand the specifics, I expect that any charges against him will be on the corner cases. They won't be a frontal assault on Wikileaks. After all, what's the difference between WL and the New York Times when you get right down to it?
My guess is that hidden on page 1050 (or whatever) of the charges, the meat of the matter will be some sort of Swiss Army knife of Justice Department power involving a kind of conspiracy, meeting with C. Manning, or whatever. Truth is, they can put anyone in prison any time they like.
Thank goodness the intelligence nomenklatura in this country isn't joined at the hip with the Googles, Facebooks, and AT&Ts of the world. Then where would we be?
> After all, what's the difference between WL and the New York Times
The difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times is that WikiLeaks would not have kept Bush's warrantless wiretapping program secret until after the 2004 election - at the request of the Bush administration.
What? NYT regularly publishes information unfavorable to the US government. WikiLeaks on the other hand participates directly in advancing Russian state aims.
One of the most incredible things about that is that the New York Times only published the story when the journalist who had uncovered it threatened to publish it outside the paper. They were willing to sit on one of the biggest stories in their history, at the request of the government, until they were faced with the prospect of getting scooped. Wikileaks would have published right away, informing the US electorate (I mean, "interfering in the 2004 election by providing truthful information to the public").
The actual charges hinge (at this point) on Assange supposedly helping someone to bypass some security to obtain that information.
I don't think they were successful (legally that likely doesn't matter), and we'll how much actually counts as "help".
So with your analogy you obtain information release it, and then help someone try to hack a computer to access more .... that's where we are at this point.
It's a difference. Generally journalists don't help their sources hack into anything.
I suspect if you did China would be happy to take you if they could extradite you.
The heart of their indictment [1] is the conspiracy charge. Basically if you conspire to access a computer system, especially one owned by the US Military and containing classified information, they will come after you.
He instructed and encouraged Manning to steal information for him while Manning was on military duty.
It is not clear he is a journalist as traditional journalism is pretty far away from what Wikileaks has done.
It is also still not legal for journalists to direct people to steal classified information. Publishing it is not necessarily the crime, being involved in the acquisition is. This is why nobody is talking about charging or extraditing Glen Greenwald (published Snowden's materials). Assange was directly involved in getting the materials and exposed himself pretty easily to espionage charges.
If you don't agree about classifying that as espionage, what is espionage to you?
> traditional journalism is pretty far away from what Wikileaks has done.
What you're describing is exactly what investigative journalists do all the time: they encourage sources to leak classified information, which they then publish.
> If you don't agree about classifying that as espionage, what is espionage to you?
Espionage is when a government uses covert means to obtain information on a foreign government for its own gain. When an independent organization obtains and publishes government secrets that it deems to be in the public interest, that's normally called "journalism."
> they encourage sources to leak classified information, which they then publish
Where's the line between "encouraging a source", and trying to crack a salted password hash on their behalf so they can say "Here's the password, use this to get into this classified system"?
That's not what he's accused of doing. The password would not have given Manning access to additional information - just a way to cover her tracks. Whether Assange even tried to crack the password is just speculation, though.
> Assange is quoted saying to Manning that he was "still trying, had had no luck yet, trying different tools".
Which is evidence that he probably wasn't trying at all (and was lying to Manning) because any moderately-competent teenager with a computer can tell you that the only tool you need to use is johntheripper.
Where's the line though? What if you manage to blow up a building using nothing but your computer, outside of the US, as a non-US citizen. Should you then be subjected to US law?
It really is a fucked up world we live in, where a whistle-blower exposing Western governments for acting illegally is arrested and the persons who were spying on people have little to no consequences. I hope these charges get dropped, he has done and continues to do a great service to the world. The West got caught with their trousers down and they just need to deal with it. If you don't like get caught, stop acting in bad faith against the people.
I think Assange's self-imprisonment should also be considered in any punishment, there's no doubt that it took a toll on his mental and physical well-being.
I wonder what will happen with regard to the extraditions. Apparently Sweden has issued an European Arrest Warrant to get him to Sweden after he has served his current British sentence (for skipping bail).
EAW's are (apparently) different to the normal extradition process, and is more streamlined and does not involve diplomatic channels. I've heard Swedish law commentators say that the EAW would be honoured before any non-EU extradition, if this was a normal case.
If he eventually get's to Sweden before the US, it will be very interesting to see if Sweden will turn him over. I would guess so, but perhaps that's just my teenage bitterness from the The Piratebay trial still lingering...
Precedence of the extradition requests is a matter for the Home Secretary, if I'm not mistaken, and there are various guidelines to determine which request should be given precedence.
Given the previous EAW was withdrawn due to the impossibility of serving it, it is relatively likely any new EAW will be considered practically identical to the original one and therefore the date of the original warrant used to grant precedence. There's also the matter of statute of limitations: the Swedish offences (one? two? I forget how many of the original four have passed the limit) need to go to court in the relatively near future, whereas the US offences have no limit as I understand it; this furthers the argument that the Swedish request should be given precedence.
As for whether he gets to Sweden before the US, remember that he can then challenge the extradition to the US in both Swedish and English courts, and Sweden considers espionage a political crime for which it won't extradite. (Okay, very hypothetically extraordinary rendition has happened from Sweden with some level of Swedish consent before, but for such a thing to be done to such a high profile person would be… truly extraordinary.)
People on HN: Of course the government aren't spying on citizens. What are you? Some kind of tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy theory nutjob?
[After Snowden]
People on HN: Well obviously the government were spying on everyone. Were you really that naïve?
[Before Assange Indictment]
People on HN: That Assange guy is a completely delusional whack-job. How can anyone be so stupid to believe the UK/Sweden would cooperate with the US in taking him down permanently?
That's an extreme misrepresentation. Unless your argument is that on this site there was probably someone who held that opinion at the time. But before Snowden, many people here were under no delusions about US government spying, and few people have ever doubted the UK's willingness to cooperate with the US on anything. People only doubted, and still doubt, Sweden's willingness to extradite Assange to the US for espionage. They don't do that. Sweden wants him for rape.
Sweden allows the CIA to just black bag people, outside of the legal system. That's the fear of being extradited to Sweden; the UK doesn't allow the CIA to do that.
It wasn't deportation, because Sweden didn't go through their deportation process. It was Swedish police watching while CIA agents black bagged Swedish residents in the middle of the night.
"People on HN: Of course the government aren't spying on citizens. What are you? Some kind of tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy theory nutjob?"
This never made any sense to me, and I brought it up any time it was mentioned. It is the nature of spooks to spy on everybody. The pretence that somehow magically their spooks don't spy on US citizens never passed the sniff test.
Think about it, how could they possibly _tell_ if someone is actually a citizen? They've got no reliable way to do that, and obviously the grey areas are _exactly_ where you should look for bad guys, so in practice _obviously_ they will spy on citizens.
Thousands of people comment on hacker news, including people who said the opposite of what you attribute to HN. It's unwise to to treat the people that you are arguing with on Tuesday as if they are are the same people you are arguing with on Monday.
Is it really the majority however? Or just how the majority appears? I know that it can sometimes feel like one is in the minority because disagreement stands out more than agreement.
So did he commit espionage, or expose war crimes? Let’s hope the courts decide wisely, because this case will settle the question of whether governments and militaries can be held accountable by their people.
To expand, he exposed war crimes. But he also exposed a bunch of unrelated, not-war-crime stuff due to his refusal to redact. Contrast that with e.g. Snowden or the Panama Papers leakers, who disclosed information more carefully.
I don’t think you have to make the distinction. Espionage is espionage regardless of what you’re looking for or what you find. Having pure motives doesn’t matter.
It is true those things could influence whether charges are filed, or pardons granted. IIRC, it’s the legal difference between an affirmative defense and simply being innocent.
> Espionage is espionage regardless of what you’re looking for or what you find. Having pure motives doesn’t matter.
The Espionage Act is framed within the confines of the Constitution, including the First Amendment. Being a journalist (i.e. taking an active role in curating and analyzing the materials) has historically mattered to the courts (e.g. around Deep Throat).
It's not an exclusive or. Assange worked with a number of people (including Manning) to obtain classified information. Some of that classified information detailed war crimes. Some did not; some of it was diplomatic cables, lists of informants, etc. Publishing the latter stuff almost certainly got people killed. Maybe we can agree to forgive him for the portion of the espionage which exposed war crimes, but I see no reason he should be given blanket immunity for everything he's done.
In addition, The Guardian's editor (David Leigh) actually published several articles (that WikiLeaks wasn't going to publish) BY ACCIDENT. He then blamed the release of documents on Julian Assange[1].
In addition he published the password for a GPG-encrypted archive of documents that were shared via BitTorrent in a book and claimed that WikiLeaks was given plenty of notice to fix the issue -- not understanding that you cannot change the password of an existing file that was already distributed and probably in the hands of the NSA.
You’re leaving out that the file in question was supposed to be temporary (via a server up for a few hours) and the BitTorrent leak happened later, unbeknownst to the Guardian staff, when WikiLeaks reused the same password for an insurance distribution.
Also, think analytically about what “probably in the hands of the NSA” contributes other than fearmongering: the data in question belonged to the U.S. State Department — if the NSA wanted it, they can just ask! (Or brute-force it, in all likelihood) It’s everyone else who would be interested in the archive.
> the data in question belonged to the U.S. State Department — if the NSA wanted it, they can just ask!
The US government may not have known exactly what the leaks contained, and providing the passphrase gives cryptographic evidence that they were in fact in possession of certain documents that might not have been revealed publicly. So my invocation of the NSA is not just fearmongering -- the reason why journalists may choose to not disclose something is for their own safety and not just the safety of the public or sources.
Also, it's a bit interesting you assume that the NSA could break GPG. If anything, the Snowden revelations showed that GPG is hard-to-break even for the NSA (if not secure).
> The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange.
The leak informed major corruption by the government. That's what the leak has done and I don't think any person in their right mind argues it's a wrong thing to do.
Even the U.S. has whistle blower protection laws to allow such leaks. I'd argue that this would be a very good example of WikiLeaks doing good.
I come from a corrupt, third world country (Iran), who has recently had it's share of corruption and violent election issues.
Anyone exposing those crimes of the government would be a champion. What happens after the leaks, the uprising and violence, is not the responsibility of whistle blower but people who commit those specific crimes.
It looks like all counts were from 2010, and not anything to do with the 2016 election. [DOJ Indictment: 1] Much of it has to do with First Amendment issues, sure. But not all of it. A large piece of his crimes were conspiracy to access computers without authorization.
I'm not sure the Julian Assange hill is the one I'd die on if I was worried about first amendment protection of the press.
You mean guessing a password on a computer system with warning messages that say: "This is a classified system. Unauthorized access is a violation of US Code punishable by up to 20 years in prison" ?
I suspect that it might be harder to extradite him on these offences because the extradition treaty between the US and the UK, like all such treaties, bans extradition for “political offences.” (See article 4-1) If he is extradited on the hacking offence the US can’t also try him for espionage without the UK’s permission.
Espionage is not a political offense in either the US or the UK.
A political offense means something like being charged with a crime for offending the "good name" of the prime minister (see, e.g., Turkey or India for examples).
How in the world is being prosecuted for publishing a country's dirty laundry not the same as being prosecuted for a political offense... (Not saying you're wrong, just questioning whoever came up with that definition and if we should maybe change it.)
He is not being prosecuted for publishing. That’s the game here. They found a “gotcha” to nail him on something else. Al Capone didn’t get charged with being a mobster, but they found a way to get him. Same deal.
Right, because by assisting Manning in decrypting the files, Assange crossed the line that would have protected him as a journalist under well-established court rulings protecting freedom of the press.
He did not assist Manning in decrypting any files. Manning only accessed plaintext files. You are likely confusing the discussion related to cracking a password hash, which was unrelated to the documents.
Well, for starters all the information that Assange published while running Wikileaks embarasses the previous political administration, not the current (Trump) administration... Moreover, Assange isn't being charged with embarassing anyone, since American journalists do that all the time. Assange is being charged with specific illegal acts that actual journalists don't do, like actually trying to break encryption on classified documents.
Journalists do try to break encryption on classified documents, and Assange is not being charged with that. The documents were not encrypted and were obtained in cleartext from Manning.
Journalists do not try to break encryption on classified documents (because the case law protecting them for publishing classified information does not protect them if they actively attempt to acquire it), and that is actually one of the acts Assange is charged with if you read the indictment...
I did read the indictments, and they contain no such charge that i can see. Which page do you believe indicates he tried to break encryption on classified documents?
> embarasses the previous political administration, not the current (Trump) administration
Is there a difference? Might be my non-USA-citizen point of view, so please correct me if I'm wrong from a USA perspective and this is not retaliation for embarrassment, but the USA government is still the USA government. If the CIA tortured people in Iraq under Obama* , I don't expect it would cease to be done under Trump. (Also not if he says so, since of course you would say that. It's inhumane, and yet it happens.)
* There have been so many scandals, forgive me if the torture one wasn't actually in Iraq or wasn't under Obama or something. It's just meant as an example of the inhumane stuff that is revealed about the USA thanks to people like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, etc.
> Espionage is not a political offense in either the US or the UK.
But it is in Sweden. That fact is conveniently forgotten when people were and continue to push the narrative of "Assange shouldn't be extradited to Sweden because they'll hand him over to the US".
Right, if Assange had just gone to Sweden in the first place to face the rape charges, he'd be a free man right now because Sweden wouldn't extradite for any of these charges.
Obviously, Assange was more worried about the rape charges--he waited until the statute of limitations on filing charges expired before he agreed to talk to the investigators.
They haven't popped back up. He's being prosecuted for evading the original arrest. Of course this is obviously just a pretext for the US getting their foot in the door.
No, he's been convicted of breach of bail in England; the Swedish prosecutors have reopened their investigation into the rape offence and have mentioned they are likely to seek extradition after he has completed his sentence in England.
That link doesn't say anything about rape charges, just the charges for failing to appear in court.
The article also slyly paints him in a negative light just for resisting what he considered to be an unlawful arrest, which is the natural right of any human being.
It’s amazing to me the distinction the government is making here with Wikileaks. How many things related to the Russian probe were leaked last year? Wasn’t it one “bombshell” after another? No problems there even though that information turned out to be false but was plastered across every tv screen in the country.
Reporters who reported on those leaks are largely in the clear.
Had they tried to give someone help someone " (i) circumvent legal safeguards on information" ... they likely would be in a lot of trouble. Such as "hey man here's how to hack Muller's computer" and so forth (that's a very blunt example but it would qualify).
That isn't a line that gets crossed by reporters very often in the US. It's hard to talk about in here as so few people want to talk about the actual charges, but that step in assisting (or trying to) is the key to these charges.
Of course reporters are largely in the clear based on what we know so far. But the DOJ and intelligence agency officers who selectively leaked information about the Russia investigation and unmasked people to the press in order to foment their own narrative should technically be prosecuted just as Manning and Snowden were.
If enough insiders keep doing it and they all mostly agree with each other, and they are the only ones in charge of initiating these prosecutions, obviously they aren't going to prosecute themselves for breaking the rules in the same manner they went after relative outsiders such as Manning and Snowden. And they obviously would turn a blind eye to reporters they are cozy with, compared to how deeply they looked into Assange.
It's a tough line to find there with what you propose. I'm not happy about all leaks, particularly those that seem to intend to deceive / distort.
On the other hand it's hard to really draw that line when it comes to intent for sure without shutting down all and any leaks, and leaks are an important part of democracy.
Every government has to find a way to deal with them, and hopefully not cross the ever moving line.
The hacking thing though, I think that's a legitimate line. How much Assange did or did at all, courts get to decide that.
So what is the following page, other than a tool to help circumvent legal safeguards on information? It even includes information on how to encrypt your leak so that you're not caught...
Encrypting your own information, or providing information is clearly not the same as "here's how to hack someone's computer" (again blunt example but it is the gist of the difference).
I am primarily concerned with how the government establishes jurisdiction in this case. Assange is a foreigner, and every single one of his actions were done in a foreign country. At what point does the United States government gain the authority to apply United States legal code to his actions? There might be an obvious answer to this, but I honestly don't understand it.
We can only hope that US voters will end up electing a government with a functioning moral compass in the near future. Perhaps said government could end up pardoning the whistleblowers exposing the crimes of the previous governments.
You could spend all day arguing whether Assange is a journalist/publisher, or whether he's still just Mendax getting his rocks off. You could argue about Manning and Snowden's methods. You could argue about every other whistleblower's way of coming forward. But you can't deny that each of these people exposed serious crimes perpetrated by the US government. Spying on citizens, torture, war crimes, etc.
Legal question: if Charlie steals classified files and gives them to Ann, and then Bob gives Charlie $1M (no known connection between Bob and Charlie), can Bob be prosecuted for post-facto "encouraging sources to (i) circumvent legal safeguards on information; (ii) provide that protected information to Ann for public dissemination; and (iii) continuing the pattern of illegally procuring and providing protected information to Ann for distribution to the public"?
>> The United States has asked Britain to extradite Mr. Assange, who is fighting the move, and the filing of the new charges clears the way for British courts to weigh whether it would be lawful to transfer custody of him to a place where he will face Espionage Act charges.
Unfortunately, with Theresa May's resignation today (effective 7 June) the way the wind blows is that Boris Johnson will become the new leader of the Tory party and prime minister of the UK. I can't imagine that the US extradition request will be resisted for very long after that.
Interstingly, unless the UK finds a way to extradite Assange to two nations at once, this will rather leave the Swedish prosecutor who asked for it first with a bit of an embarassing turn of events to deal with. I really don't see the UK (especially the UK under BoJo) giving priority to a rape trial in Sweden over an espionage trial in the US. One of those is much more photogenic.
To see all the concern here in this community I trust to be objective and fair is heartening. Based on what you see in social and mainstream media, you'd think Assange is a demon who deserves no justice and that journalism/free speech is not a protected right.
Peoples talking about loss of justice. Do i have to remind that long before Weinstein (but this case it typical), allegated suspects are found guilty and suffer from irrationnal blaming and crowd punishment long before they face a real judge...thanks to ww2 and Nuremberg.
This is what happens when justice system is more based on Public Relation than establishing the reality of facts and make a judgement from it.
Its funny how some people did 180 on Assange very quickly after the DNC email leaks. The whole point of auch leaks is you can not pick and choose which ones you like and which ones you dont!!
Some even claimed that he was a Russian asset. This is really depressing.
He is receiving his full consular assistance entitlements. They are scant. What I think about him isn't the point here, what needs to be understood is that he is entitled to help from the embassy, and though said through gritted teeth, no Australian Minister for foreign affairs has ever said they are denying him support, and have said in very luke-warm voice they confirm he is being offered them.
They don't amount to much. They confirm he has access to a lawyer. They confirm his state of health. They can't get him out of Belmarsh, or prevent the extradition.
What good could this possibly serve to imprison him? Shouldn’t western governments be spending more time supporting destabilizing efforts in authoritarian countries?
>Shouldn’t western governments be spending more time supporting destabilizing efforts in authoritarian countries?
No? That's for the people of the country to do, not foreign powers. There has never in history been a government that hasn't fallen to its own people. There also isn't an example of US or Western imperialist forces 'destabilizing' that has lead to better conditions for the people of that country. Libya has open slave trade right now while people die with arm floaties crossing the Mediterranean.
The UK won’t extradite Assange if he faces execution. The US will have to make a binding promise not to sentence him to death if it wants to actually get custody.
I’m not surprised to see new charges filed. But these charges seem very likely to backfire. By overcharging, the US may well cause the UK to balk. I have to assume that someone expects to negotiate a shorter list of charges, so they started with a crazy opening offer.
>The UK won’t extradite Assange if he faces execution. The US will have to make a binding promise not to sentence him to death if it wants to actually get custody.
I know that previous non-binding promises (which were then ignored; i.e., people were executed) caused diplomatic trouble, so I still expect the US to make a binding promise.
Even if it is expressly told, in private, by the Home Secretary, that it doesn't have to, even while the UK government claims a different policy in public, as has apparently already happened in this other case? Also, the Home Office could make an exception at the very last minute if it wants to. There would be questions asked, but it would be largely moot if he is already out of the country.
To extradite without such a guarantee is a blatant violation of the UK's obligations as a signatory of the ECHR, as to do so would violate his right to life.
If there's any reason to suspect that no such guarantee exists, they may well apply to the ECtHR after any Supreme Court decision to extradite him, and it would be unlikely that he'd be extradited until the ECtHR judgment had happened.
That said, if it comes to light after he's been extradited any application to the ECtHR would likely do little for him, though it would be politically damaging.
>'The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner said a senior British government official told him that this case was not the first time that the UK had dropped its request for assurances that the death penalty would not be used.'
>'What ministers and MPs believe is that Mr Javid is attempting to smooth the way for the Americans to take the cases by letting them know that the UK will not, for once, kick up a fuss about the death penalty.'
>'In other words, this is all part of a deal. And some sources suggest this is a deal with precedent, that this is not the first time the UK has turned a blind eye towards its death penalty policy.'
>'The Security Minister, Ben Wallace, told MPs that it had happened before but not while he has been in his job.'
>'He explained that little-known guidance to ministers, known as the Overseas Security and Justice Assistance guidance, that was last updated January 2017, allowed the Home Secretary to make an exception to the rule.'
>'It states "written assurances should be sought before agreeing to the provision of assistance that anyone found guilty would not face the death penalty" but "where no assurances are forthcoming or where there are strong reasons not to seek assurances, the case should automatically be deemed 'High Risk' and FCO Ministers should be consulted to determine whether, given the specific circumstances of the case, we should nevertheless provide assistance".'
There is reason to strongly suspect that no such concrete guarantee exists and it is in fact entirely down to the personal whims of whomever currently happens to occupy the Home Office, while the Foreign Office is busy keeping an image going of something entirely different. As is tradition.
Let’s say they make a binding promise and then try and execute him anyway.
What then? He’s dead, and US-UK relations are basically unaffected. Where is the recourse? Who would seek it? No one would be punished, just as for the other violent crimes being discussed in this thread.
Or, what’s worse: they don’t kill him quickly, but instead torture him to death like they tried (and almost succeeded in doing) to Manning. They could even do it in the context of a multi-year protracted non-capital trial, making it seem like they were intending to comply with their promise.
Their goal is suffering and intimidation, make no mistake. Death or not, they are within sight of their endgame. Once he is in their custody, his life will become very, very painful, regardless of what the law says or whether or not he is given a trial or whether or not he is convicted or whether or not is is fair or just. He will suffer, and probably die.
Remember, he is the adversary of the organization who hacked their own Senate to avoid oversight. (No legal repercussions for that, either. The CIA is allowed to hack the legislature.) They give zero fucks about the law, because they know it doesn’t apply to them.
(To add insult to injury: that oversight they were avoiding? It was because they torture people.)
Even Mengele didn’t have that kind of carte blanche.
Literally no law in any country practically applies to the US military intelligence machine at this point.
It’s my understanding that the US used to claim that it was inappropriate for the State Department to make binding promises that someone would not be sentenced to death because the State Department is part of the executive branch and should not interfere with the judicial branch.
The US got away with this argument for a long time. Eventually, countries made it clear that the US would have to solve its own separation of powers issues if it hoped to ever get extradition requests approved. This is the diplomatic equivalent of saying “that sounds like a personal problem to me.”
The US did eventually find a way to provide those promises without interfering with the courts. Reneging on a promise like that is the kind of thing the US can only do once: sure they would get to execute Assange, but the natural result would be that the UK and other countries would stop extraditing people.
I’m not an expert on extradition, but based on the initial hearing, it sounds like both the UK courts and the UK government have to approve the extradition request. I believe that negotiating with the government is expected, and coordination on that side of things is definitely likely.
However, coordinating with the judge without Assange’s lawyers would be highly inappropriate. It wouldn’t surprise me if the appropriate government minister offered legal help in drafting the court documents, but I don’t think it would go beyond that.
I think this is largely a smoke screen and believe Assange will not be convicted of much. I think Assange has key information that will be useful in establishing that the prior administration used the DOJ and FBI to spy on political adversaries during a campaign year and I think the current administration, DOJ and FBI are intent on making that case.
Listen to Eisenhower's farewell address and read up on JFK assassination, about which Trump so conveniently blocked a load of material until 2021. How much more important can the secret service be than the government?
If the US government loses (it should based on the Pentagon Papers precedent, but who really knows how the conservative-stacked Supreme Court will rule), then it should settle hopefully once and for all that these sort of cases can't be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
The US government has kept threatening all national security whistleblowers with the Espionage Act so they take the 5-10 years in prison plea deals for the past couple of decades. Considering it's very unlikely Assange will take a plea deal on this one, I hope he gets to win, for all future national security whistleblowers' sake.
The charge is that Assange helped Manning access classified material, not that he published classified materials. The distinction is important. It's why I can't hack into a CIA office, publish the materials online and claim I'm a journalist so I can't be prosecuted.
Assange is not a journalist, and thus is not protected by legal cases protecting members of the press.
(Posting unverified documents without making any attempts to verify them is not a journalistic activity.)
EDIT: downvotes don't change reality...Courts have analyzed what makes someone a journalist for purposes of these laws, and at a minimum, whether investigation/research or discourse (i.e., writing or video reporting) is involved, they all agree that analysis of the investigated/researched material is required. Assange put no effort into analyzing the materials he received; he simply published everything (except the Trump stuff).
> (Posting unverified documents without making any attempts to verify them is not a journalistic activity.)
Seems like main stream media in the US proved the last few years that they were not journalistic by not making any attempt to verify the Steele Dossier.
They verified the source and voracity of the dossier, the dossier was the news the findings of the dossier were not presented as fact initially. Eventually some of the findings from the dossier were verified.
Hmm. I didn't read that in the Mueller report, and yet, I though the Mueller investigation was initiated with a FISA warrant request based on the unverified Steele Dossier.
That is nonsense you hear on Fox News. Investigation started because Trump sacked Comey and so Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to lead a special counsel:
"Yet, 10 months after the probe started and a month after Robert Mueller was named special counsel in the Russia probe, Comey cast doubt on the the Steele dossier, calling it “unverified” and “salacious” in sworn testimony before Congress.
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page further corroborated Comey’s concerns in recent testimony before House lawmakers, revealing that the FBI had not corroborated the collusion charges by May 2017, despite nine months of exhaustive counterintelligence investigation." [1]
Also, the FBI was given information about the dossier prior to the FISA application that should have made them think twice:
"Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media.
The concerns were flagged in a typed memo and in handwritten notes taken by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016.
Her observations were recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked collusion theory." [1]
I have a theory about the Steele Dossier. I posit that Comey and company didn't bother with trying to verify it because they knew ahead of time it would bear out to be unproven. Why would they know that? Perhaps they helped Steele write it.
I suspect you are being downvoted because you have not provided any sources. Can you reference specific court cases for this claim?
> Courts have analyzed what makes someone a journalist for purposes of these laws, and at a minimum, whether investigation/research or discourse (i.e., writing or video reporting) is involved, they all agree that analysis of the investigated/researched material is required.
Assuming this is true, doesn't that prove he analyzed it and decided what he thought relevant to be published? You may not like the metric he used in his analysis, but have the courts ever up held standards as to what metrics used count?
Executive power has disproportionately increased vastly in the ~50 years since the Pentagon Papers. Covert warfare irrespective of congressional approval, public knowledge, or international boundaries like that exposed in the Pentagon Papers has become normalized since at least 2001.
Pretending judges are somehow magically independent and immune to political influences and pressures is silly.
With that being said I'm not sure I agree 100% with the parent comment you were replying to.
The "US" didn't lose. Nixon lost because he went up against the establishment powers who backed the NYTimes. So the "US" won.
The supreme court isn't an "independent judiciary". They are part of the power structure. The supreme court is a political court filled with political appointees. It's why appointments to the supreme court are political fiascos.
Somehow I don't think assange is going to get the same treatment as the nytimes since he doesn't have the backing of political or media bigshots that the nytimes does.
Assange is the enemy of both the republican and democratic parties. He is the enemy of the nytimes, wapo and all establishment media. Assange will get no more a fair trial in the US than a ugyhur would get in a chinese court.
Just like the Pentagon Papers ruling was a sure thing long before Nixon decided to go after the NYTimes. Assange's fate is sealed.
You seem to be defining the "US power structure" as "what won those cases". Then the "US power structure" always wins, by definition.
It's hard to see what evidence would be sufficient to persuade you that your view is mistaken. For those who don't share your initial assumption, however, your argument is completely unpersuasive.
>This is utter nonsense. US government routinely loses high profile cases.
Not when both sides agree they shouldn't lose.
If he was just being extradited because "hurr-durr, muh classified info" or "hurr-dur, muh DNC emails" it would be a toss up but because both sides of the government want him screwed for various reasons he will be screwed.
Or instead of describing Wikileaks publications as "theft" you could describe it as publishing whistle-blowers who are exposing illegal corruption (like the NSA spying case), and whistle-blowers are legally protected in many contexts.
This is in reply to @ztratar original comment which is now flagged and so I can't see it - where he was wondering why the Assange case was a first amendment issue.
Side comment: while I totally disagreed with zratar's comments, not sure why he's flagged - which ends up being a form of censorship here. Can't imagine what he said was so offensive it had to disappear.
@buxtehude I agree with you, and while I also didn't agree zratar's comment I don't like the idea of it being hidden here as it's part of the conversation. I did "vouch" for his comment on that premise so maybe you can see it again.
Whistle-blowing is legally protected in many contexts, but not this one. There's a long continuum of things one is expected to try first -- from complaining to your boss, to reaching out to relevant oversight officials and Congress, to contacting the press -- before you simply send hundreds of thousands of documents to a foreigner working for a GRU propaganda laundry.
> Free speech doesn't cover the theft of dangerous, classified information and potentially treasonous activities.
Treason [noun]: The crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.
He didn't betray his county. He's not a U.S. citizen.
He didn't try to kill any sovereign. The U.S. doesn't have a monarch, and to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't tried to assassinate any sitting president.
There is no evidence that the leaking of evidence of war crimes would overthrow the government. It would probably see a lot of people fired, but given the structure of the U.S. Government, it's nigh on impossible to overthrow a government. Even for something as egregious as war crimes.
This is what I’m not getting. How can someone be indicted of espionage if this happened outside of the country? E.g. it’s not illegal to spy on the other countries from within the US.
Earlier you were flagged, so I could not reply to you directly, but I wanted to share with you an article which explores the first amendment issues and the Assange case which you should read: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indi...
The article explains how there is a very strong press freedom issue at play:
But in 2013, the Obama DOJ concluded that it could not prosecute Assange in connection with the publication of those documents because there was no way to distinguish what WikiLeaks did from what the New York Times, The Guardian, and numerous media outlets around the world routinely do: namely, work with sources to publish classified documents.
I'm sharing the same link a little lower - hope this isn't breaking any HN rules - but wanted to share it with you.
Way back before he holed-up in the Ecuadorian, well before his hero status in some quarters tarnished from the 2016 election, I had this guy pegged as a Russian operative. I'm sure he probably viewed himself as in charge.
The nature of espionage has certainly changed over the decades. We can't allow free-lance operatives (more in line, I think, with his self image) to conduct espionage against us. He's a legitimate target.
It's fallen into the memory hole. See the current Wikipedia page, no mention of Assange's ideologies from teenage years all the way through founding WikiLeaks. And also no information doing simple internet searches. I'm not motivated to try digging deeper, because, well...not worth the effort.
IIRC (...and maybe I don't) it was easy to run across allegations (which seemed to make sense) of his ideological leanings...I think related to hangers-on of the cult his mother got the family involved in.
That and his frequent appearances on Russian media at the time (8+ years ago). People forget, and however it happens, information falls into the memory hole.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-...
Without the ability for the press to publicize illegal actions so that voters can remove officials who allow it, the US government can engage in unconstitutional conduct with almost zero oversight by making the illegal conduct classified.