> What happens when the US government's whole case against Assange collapses?
He walks a free man. Problematic as the American justice system is, Assange’s isolation was a function of his fugitive status. Nothing about U.S. detention per se.
It’s high time, either way, for both sides to be heard in court.
> It’s high time, either way, for both sides to be heard in court.
This is one of those positions that is designed to sound reasonable by appealing to "the middle ground" for its own sake.
It's not time for both sides to be heard in court. It never was. To bring someone into court, you need to make the case that they did something wrong first.
> To bring someone into court, you need to make the case that they did something wrong first
I’m not a fan of our espionage laws. But they are, indisputably, laws. There has been a lot of evaluation of the questions of jurisdiction and standing. Barring wild, new evidence, I don’t see good reason to question that string of precedence.
As far as I understood what was happening is that he may have broken the law by how he got the information, not by releasing the info. I think the accusation is that he essentially encouraged someone to hack into computers, which sounds similar to encouraging someone to break into someone's home or office, to retrieve info.
I haven't followed the case too closely so maybe I'm wrong on that. But if that's what they're accusing him of doing, I struggle to see how that's just doing journalism. Maybe journalistic methods to extract info aren't so black and white and some do similar things and yet I imagine there is a line where that info gathering becomes illegal.
> I think the accusation is that he essentially encouraged someone to hack into computers, which sounds similar to encouraging someone to break into someone's home or office, to retrieve info.
He told Manning "curious eyes never run dry," but more importantly that is one of the eighteen charges he faces. The others are all for publishing classified documents.
If he only faced that one charge, I'd still disagree that it matters but I would understand your point of view. As is, they're using that charge to justify an attack on the free press.
No, he broke the espionage law by releasing the info. It is ludicrously broad.
It's the same reason Snowden refuses to come home. He's repeatedly promised to come home if they tighten the definition of the espionage to include, y'know, just espionage. Congress refuses.
I just looked into the indictment and the laws he's accused of breaking and yeah, they're all in the espionage section. It does seem quite broad to me. I also think way too much stuff is classified these days. At the same time, I guess I'm confused at what a government should do. The way I read the US code title 18 793 is that it's basically illegal to access and disseminate classified information. If that isn't a law, what's the point of having classified information? Shouldn't it be illegal? How could the law be tightened? I'm open for ideas, just not seeing how to tighten it.
I am not following this case to the tiniest detail but I remember, when Assange was originally extracted from the embassy it was advertised that primary charges are around some sexual assault - if I remember correctly these charges had been dropped..
I can recommend reading this interview [0] with Niels Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
It gives a pretty good run-down of what happened, by somebody who's impartial, qualified, and actually had access to a lot of evidence and official documentation around the case.
A somewhat long read, but absolutely worth it in terms of what it reveals. Case in point: Assange was never even accused by anybody of sexual assault or rape, Swedish police changed witness testimonies to fabricate that claim, then leaked it the same night to Swedish press.
Espionage laws are void (per the first amendment), and hence not relevant to legitimate court cases (regardless of how much existing practice fails to respect that). One could perhaps argue that he incited Manning to violate employment-related nondiclosure agreements, but in addition to being iffy on the face of it, AFAIK no has actually made such a argument separately from the anti-free-press-laws argument.
Well, that too, but even ignoring the inalienable rights angle and focusing purely on what's legal, the constitution supersedes congressional law by design.
So you agree with him staying in the UK and being charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking GCHQ documents?
Wikileaks has leaked documents from the US, UK, Australia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, European Union, and United Nations. He could hang out in Asia or Russia, but would anywhere else be subject to local laws.
If the UK prosecutors think they have a case, they should file it. They're not subject to a statute of limitations, but justice would be served by not dragging the process out any longer.
AFAIK, in the US, the government can bring criminal trials based on indictments either by prosecutorial discretion or by grand jury, both of which require a belief that there is enough evidence to convict but neither having to prove the guilt before the case.
I'm not sure what counts in the Assange case as it relates to someone outside of the US, however I believe many people have been tried in US courts for hacking into American companies from overseas. I don't believe one has to physically be in the US to break American laws and be tried for them, just as a company doesn't have to be in Europe to violate GDPR.
I'm confused why you see it as fallacious. My logic was comparing the jurisdiction to charge a person for a crime they committed digitally upon a geographic region without having to be in that geographic region.
Could you say more why you see it as a fallacious comparison?
GDPR fines companies that operate in the EU. If you don't operate in the EU, you don't have to comply. The only penalty possible in that case is that your operations that are in the EU will be fined. You won't be deported, and also it applies to corporations, not individuals.
I think the analogy is still apt for having laws that charge someone outside of one's geographic region or citizenship. I do agree with you that the analogy does not go much further than that, as GDPR is not for individuals, does not have incarceration as a punishment, and does not have extradition to seek that punishment.
I guess my analogy was specifically targeting whether one government could have a law governing someone's behavior outside of that region, because I was responding to the assumption that he hasn't done anything wrong, and I think in regard to the current laws of the US government, he may have.
>It’s high time, either way, for both sides to be heard in court.
As most of the charges against Assange are related to espionage, it's very likely he will not even be presented an opportunity to defend himself in court, like what happened with Ellsberg. It's nice to think that the courts might ultimately make a fair ruling, but the amount of government misconduct means that will never happen.
They've already compromised the attorney-client privlage, a fair case is already impossible.
He walks a free man. Problematic as the American justice system is, Assange’s isolation was a function of his fugitive status. Nothing about U.S. detention per se.
It’s high time, either way, for both sides to be heard in court.