Or is the reasoning that the law should give him special treatment and exemptions not given to others?
Also, is the 1st amendment protection even applicable to foreigners on foreign soil?
> The Court held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply where United States agents searched and seized property located in a foreign country owned by a nonresident alien in the United States. Chief Justice Rehnquist authored the opinion for the Court, joined by Justices White, Scalia, Kennedy and O'Connor, contending that "the people" intended to be protected by the Fourth Amendment were the people of the United States, and that the defendant's "legal but involuntary presence" on U.S. soil (a direct result of his arrest) failed to create a sufficient relationship with the U.S. to allow him to call upon the Constitution for protection.[1]
But again, that doesn’t feed the conspiracy-minded mob or generate clicks.
Edit response to emiliobumachar:
If the US broke international law and their treaties with the UK it would be a really bad look at the very least. Conversely if that doesn’t happen what are you going to be convinced of?
(Sorry about responding this way, but after two months of getting no response from the mods about rate limiting me, I’m just adapting.)
I definitely don't think he should be prosecuted for journalism, but if it is shown that he was Putin's puppet and intentionally helped meddle in US election, then he does deserve whatever sentence he receives.
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks...
It seems to do so.
>The Constitution does distinguish in some respects between the rights of citizens and noncitizens: the right not to be discriminatorily denied the vote and the right to run for federal elective office are expressly restricted to citizens.12 All other rights, however, are written without such a limitation. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection guarantees extend to all "persons." The rights attaching to criminal trials, including the right to a public trial, a trial by jury, the assistance of a lawyer, and the right to confront adverse witnesses, all apply to "the accused." And both the First Amendment's protections of political and religious freedoms and the Fourth Amendment's protection of privacy and liberty apply to "the people."
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
The whole First Amendment, which explicitly exists to defend the freedom of the press. What sort of person thinks that its legal, desirable, or consistent with a free society for the government to tell individuals at the point of a gun what they are allowed to do or say? What sort of sick society do we live in where a significant portion of the populace thinks that its acceptable that government claims of secrecy are sacrosanct and beyond question? The whole case against Assange is based on Wikileaks' exposure of US war crimes via the Bradley/Chelsea Manning leak almost a decade ago. None of the war criminals exposed by those leaks have been prosecuted - only those who exposed their crimes. Anyone who isn't absolutely outraged and disgusted by this is a blot on society and a moral failure in every way.
Isn't this the basis of all law?
I can’t really imagine a less serious offense than (maybe) trying and failing to crack hash.
If the US can prosecute foreigners doing foreign things on foreign soil, it should also strip them of all their rights. Is that your reasoning?
Would you suggest indicting a drone operator of the US Air Force for violating Afghanistan’s law against murdering people?
The U.S. Air Force consists of lawful combatants. They are members of the armed forces and wear uniforms that readily distinguish themselves as combatants, which permits the opposing party to a conflict to abide by principles of distinction and proportionality. They are therefore disanalogous.
CIA operatives, however, engaged in spying or armed conflict, arguably do not enjoy combatant immunity. If the Taliban had captured a CIA drone operator, there is a strong argument that they could have tried, convicted, and sentenced the operator without violating international law.
What part of The Hague Convention of 1907, the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, or the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 did you rely on in forming the opinion you've just shared with us?
Is doing math a form of expression? Breaking a password amounts to thinking for a very long time about all the ways you could rearrange some bits, and choosing one. I'd call it an expression of preference for certain possible results over others, by way of saving one and letting the rest go.
I know, I'm laughing at the thought of framing a cracked password because you're so proud of your expressive art. Still, I am deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say, "You may not run that program."
Isn't shooting a gun at someone a matter of depressing a lever? It's about applying pressure on a lever with your finger.
>Still, I am deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say, "You may not run that program."
Are you also deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say "You may not press that lever".
Isn't the US firing nukes a matter of the US president entering numbers and pressing some buttons?
Isn't running into and maiming a pedestrian while driving a car at a traffic crossing a matter of actually doing nothing instead of braking?
Are you deeply uncomfortable with the thought of govt jailing you for literally doing nothing?
The state would have to argue your intent to log into their computers and you'd have the chance to respond. The jury would decide whether you meant to gain unauthorized access to a computer system or just geeked out over password cracking.
Practically, I could see things going poorly for the over-enthusiastic cracker, but theoretically they'd be within their rights.
As for the more general “expression”, running a program is a function: it transforms one thing into another thing in a deterministic way. That is applying a tool: you would have to argue that the thing you were doing with it, in this case “breaking a password”, was expression, which, well, good luck with that one: you are back to trying to argue that an explicit crime is actually performance art.
All of this is just facts and tools: there is no creativity involved at any stage.
With house locks, it's a plain distinction between breaking into a lock and breaking into a house. With cryptography, I imagine that distinction is really problematic?
Though I'm aware in Assange's case they do have proof of intent, but I wonder if it sets bad precedent, or is a case where they just dug up either far-reaching, obscure, or some law which is practically never really enforced?
Edit: my original comment was written poorly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#C...
Sure, but context matters. I drive a car every day. If I drive off in someone else's car without permission, I've stolen it.
Assange almost certainly had access to hacked information related to both the DNC and the RNC[0]. Only the DNC hacked info got released. Are we supposed to thank him for withholding just the proper amount of information for us to make our voting decision? Or can we admit that he had an agenda in all of this that didn't align with the best interests of the American people?
[0] https://www.wired.com/2017/01/russia-hacked-older-republican...
"just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know"
By the way, the indictment for the extradition request has nothing to do with the 2016 election, but rather the Iraq war logs from back in 2010. I understand you may not like Assange very much and think he is a bad person, but I would encourage you to consider the bigger picture and that many people are raising the alarm that this is an extremely dangerous attack on the first amendment and the freedom of the press.
What I have a problem with is, these sorts of leaks allow American elections to become a target of nation-state attacks. We shouldn't become used to making electoral decisions based on what the Russian state wants us to know about our politicians-- we need to make those discoveries ourselves, with investigative journalists that have skin in the game.
I understand that the request has nothing to do with the election, and likely would have happened without. Still, when inciting American citizens to break the law, I would hope that one would have some stronger backup than a single embassy's forbearance to carry you through to safety. Conspiracy isn't some newly made up charge, Assange didn't have to encourage Manning to do anything other than release what she had legal access to at the time.
That's separate from the question of whether it's criminal though. I haven't read the indictment yet and don't have an opinion on that.
You mean, like, releasing some leaks, but not releasing other leaks? Yeah, that would really suck.
You seem to be under the impression that he's obligated to be fair. But outside of things like the New York Times what political speech is ever fair? The only obligation I think he has is to not lie or fabricate evidence.
Nothing illegal or particularly surprising was revealed in the 2016 emails; the only illegal act involved here was (presumably) Russian hackers committing several federal felonies in order to get access to those emails.
Yes, they were embarrassing, but any political organization, or indeed any organization at all, will have mundane communications that seem shocking to an outsider. The RNC almost certainly had more shit talking about their candidate in their emails. Assange had access to those RNC emails, and chose not to release them, even though they'd be, if anything, more interesting than the DNC ones. Assange is no information freedom fighter; he amounts to a political operative who collaborates with criminals to ratfuck candidate he doesn't like, for whatever reason.
He has a similar history with e.g. refusals to release Russian state secrets. Why should we celebrate a hypocrite who is motivated primarily by petty personal feuds?
Having worked in government a long time I can in all good faith say that obstructing the distribution of information that will make governments look bad is the primary occupation of vast numbers of government officials.
Some of them will happily use any legal technicality, no matter the principles.
So torture and other war crimes has nothing to do with being criminal and the unrelated issue to this particular crime, that isn't grounded in any evidence what-so-ever (manipulation of the election, really?)
We have a case of computer sabotage and a case of war crimes. There are indeed people that want to turn the criminal into "good guy".
There is no proof that Assange knowingly cooperated with Russia, meaning it would be unlikely that he would have any idea what data they had.
On top of that, Comey and Clapper are not trustworthy sources.
You almost seem mad that the dems suffered damage from a politically motivated revealing of their behavior. Maybe if they didn't do the bad things they would have had nothing to worry about.
I personally think his actions did align with the best interests of the American people. And I think the people who disagree mostly just are sour that Clinton rightfully lost.
And he has said that if he had RNC emails he'd have published them
What agenda would that be?
Edit: It’s a sad state of affairs for HN when a question like this immediately gets downvoted twice without explanation. HN is indeed changing, and not for the better.
1: https://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-12/assange-on-peston... 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/roger-stone-and-wikileaks-dire... 3: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/mar/18...
1. Start with the set of all potentially serious journalists.
2. Filter out the ones who put forth arguments which downplay the dangers to the press of prosecuting Assange.
3. Filter out the ones who don't explicitly argue against prosecuting Assange on 1st Amendment grounds.
Follow the small group that survives #3 to get a variety of (probably) high-quality perspectives from serious journalists.
Use set from #2 as a casual guide for when to prick your ears up and listen to the news.
The next time I get caught trying to hack the government I'm going to try the "but it was for journalism" defense.
In fact, why can't I hack companies and claim I was just trying to get information to leak to the public?
"It's just journalism, you can't arrest me..."
Filtering out everyone who happens to disagree with your opinion is a good way to get stuck in an echo chamber.
A lot of "journalists" are actually just parrots, depending on access to have "exclusive" things to say.
now we just have to get Snowden and Kim dot com.
isn't supporting these idiots the same as supporting me to break into your house, install a monitoring product, go through how you act in your relationships with your spouse and kids, what you do in private, then decide which of that I personally am offended by or think is wrong or you would be embarrassed by, and publishing it?
it seems so obvious to me that idiots like this are driven by ego and arrogance, and the hunger for power they hope to achieve by holding the powerful hostage. it's also obvious to me that they will fail.
finally it seems highly likely to me that these useful idiots were used as pawns by factions within the intelligence community to be the mouthpiece for deliberate leaks. The funny thing is these people thought they were revealing secrets about casualties in wars, but in the end they are just casualties in a political turf warf that made fools of them.
they're not heroes they're idiots.
When the Democrats got to sit back and watch wars they secretly liked, under cover of Republican administrations, Julian Assange was a hero who would speak truth to big bad Republican power. Now that they think Julian Assange's public service helped Americans choose the current President, they view him as a villain.
A seeming majority of the mainstream press in the U.S. is staffed by Democrat partisans, so it's no wonder that they say whatever they can to defend it.
To be clear, whether they are guilty of that or not is irrelevant to the point that people beleive they are, and that can explain a lot of the difference in how they are perceived now.
Ignoring that in favor of narrative where all the Democrats are complete hypocrites is no different than what you were accusing others of in your comment.
The Times was allowed to publish the Pentagon Papers, but they didn't facilitate their theft. Ellsberg was charged for the theft, but of course the Nixon admin's misconduct resulted in the charges being dismissed.
Given the corruptness of government, Freedom of Information can be bad.
Unredacted data sounds dangerous, but it asks the question-
"Why is the government doing it to begin with?"
If we could refactor the government, I think that question would be on my short list of things to define in such a way that it guides everything else.
Retrospective control is better than nothing.
Although if you commit benign computer sabotage and happen to acquire information about war crimes, that should be a freebee.
what..?
To my knowledge, no one has been prosecuted for these murders.
That said, having watched (the film) "Untouchables" for the Xth time, it's certainly possible given the powers involved he could be getting the Al Capone treatment.
Put another way, how or why he ends up in jail isn't nearly as important as him ending up in jail. The 1A issue is a non-issue in the sense it's also part of the reason for getting him locked down for some other reason(s).
The accusation is having sex without a condom[1]. In Sweden this is a crime, but it’s not like it’s actual rape.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange...
Judging by how much emphasis on the second option, I find it hard to not read an implied dismissal of the sexual assault charge in your comment.
In our own mis-spent youths we assume some laws don't apply to us, it can be a simple thing like riding a bicycle on a pavement (sidewalk). Then we might flatten an elderly person as they step out their door, putting them in hospital and to no longer have their health. Only then does the penny drop and that the law is not a petty thing. Before that happens we might assume the policeman ticking us off for riding on a pavement is a 'jobsworth' who should be 'out catching murderers'. But no, the law - even this small one does matter.
I am hoping that aside from the Wikileaks circus that something good can come from this regarding how we see women. 'Well, she was asking for it' attitudes should not wash, regardless of how big the ego is. There was no evidence that the original charges were a pretext to nab Assange and send him off to some US courtroom. Assange should have faced the music and apologised for his conduct, then moved on as a free man having paid whatever fines/community service/prison spell the judged deemed appropriate.
If you are in a hole, stop digging. Assange kept digging.
Much has been made of the benefits of the Wikileaks sideshow but I don't see it that way. If someone had some important information to leak they might easily be discouraged to do so given how Wikileaks had monopolised that 'business' (and made it into a monetized business).
It is not rocket science to create a web page and post documents online, the idea you need Wikileaks for that - to filter it for you - is ridiculous. But Wikileaks created a black hole where any secret documents had to go to in order to be perceived by journalists and the public as a legitimate scandal worthy leak.
The idea that Assange has a 'dead man's switch' is also interesting. Imagine that he did have the crown jewels of leaked information stashed away, let's imagine it was something like the identity of the killer in a murder case, withholding that information from the family of the deceased would put him on the same side as the murderer, harbouring them in effect. This would be morally wrong. So we will see what the leverage he has turns out to be.
It seems doing so anonymously might be a bit tricky for folks without technical knowledge. Hell, I'm a programmer and I still would be afraid to publish without the guarantee of anonymity provided by a "trusted" third party.
They also provide protection for people who they deemed to have aligned interests - e.g. Snowden.
I agree though that there shouldn't be a filter on what gets leaked. But it may be necessary given the fact that the US government has the resources and laws that it does.
I would not be surprised to hear that Greenwald had done it, but that does not imply that it is actually common, nor legal.
If all they were doing was publishing... that should be protected by first amendment.
If Assange conspired with manning that would be a different story, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
I have a lot of issues with Assange, particularly as it pertains to Wikileaks handling of the DNC leaks, and Assange's collaboration with nationalist parties around the world... but despite my distaste for the guy...in this case I don't think he committed a crime.
That's literally the exactly what he is charged with.
I'm guessing that they have evidence that yes, he did conspire.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks...
Honestly I think the only people who don’t like this guy are corrupt politicians, or people who wish to give shelter to or benefit from corrupt politicians.
Edit: As I get down voted, I should clarify that I mean for a civilian. I believe my professor was talking about this case since it was relatively new at that time [1].
[1]https://www.rcfp.org/national-security-trumps-first-amendmen...
You should get a refund on your tuition; a number of First Amendment protections have been articulated in national security related cases, notably the rule against prior restraint in the Pentagon Papers case which is what allowed their publication.
They key phrase here is "prior restraint." That's not the issue here; the information has been published already. So the holding in the Pentagon Papers case (aka _New York Times_) doesn't apply to this set of circumstances.
Moreover, the Pentagon Papers case made no law. The opinion itself only reversed an appellate court decision and affirmed the judgment of a district court.
Read it yourself: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/713/#tab-opi...
First Amendment law respecting the dissemination of classified information -- by "journalists" (whatever they may be), or otherwise -- is not as settled as people think, and it's my personal view that unless the Supreme Court concludes otherwise, Mr. Assange could find himself in very hot water, as Chelsea Manning did.
In other words, comment downvoting is used for disagreement, but the effect of silencing discussions will also silence information users may be able to use to know why such comments are disagreeable.
If you do it to a privately held company, it's whistle-blowing. If you do it to the government, it's treason.
Not to mention that DNC and Podesta were private entities, not government officials and zero illegality was revealed by those leaks. He later was asking Trump Jr to ask Trump to recommend himself as the Aussie ambassador to the US as payment for helping Trump win.
To my knowledge that's never been seriously questioned.
What is he being charged again?
An unliked person is the worst thing for a constitutional test, because almost no one can separate their ideals from their emotions. There were similar likability problems with Larry Flint.
This is factually inaccurate - Assange has not been charged with a crime by any country. There was an investigation in Sweden but no charges were brought.
Presumably he will be indicted in the US momentarily.
As yet, not a single country has charged him with a crime.
Edit: yes, the US has now indicted him on a conspiracy charge—his first.
Its why you never ever do anything illegal when you are in the US. I would try to smuggle a bag of heroine into Singapore before ignoring a red light in New York.
IANAL but this seeming to be the crux of the article brings with it a lot of legal baggage such as constitutional precedent, being charged ex-post facto for releasing info that's now public/republished, and the proverbial "letter of the law vs. the sprit of the law" type argument.
I can understand any motive behind prosecuting Assange for leaking military secrets; these are strategic parts of a nation state's defence and sovereignty. Go figure.
However, and it's not a popular opinion but, I do believe that if you opt to run for and eventually serve in public office your correspondences (both intra and inter governmental) should be totally public. Secrecy in this area I think leads to corruption viz. misuse of power, brokering sweetheart deals with private companies, and facilitating lobbying by special interest groups all of which, inter alia, don't have the public interest at heart. The classified nature of these comms IMO is purposefully designed to be a grayer area and thicker line than it needs to be.
In that light I don't think he should be reprimanded for any charges surrounding political/cable leakages (which exposed some of the issues I just listed) as much as any journalist would be for exposing mal-intent of an elected official or diplomat.
One line is passive versus active gathering of classified information. It's clear that the article doesn't think the line should be drawn here.
But where then? The article says: "If he explicitly agreed to act as a Russian agent, he should lose his First Amendment protection," but I don't understand what line is being drawn.
- convert your USD savings into other assets (e.g. EUR)
- sell US-related stocks
- boycott US-produced goods and services if there are replacements
My take was that WikiLeaks is just doing what journalists do. Sourcing newsworthy information and publishing it. All the major papers, channels and such were republishing, in my mind proving the point. Meanwhile, assange was/is an Australian citizen and the efforts against him are clearly two faced. The charges against him weren't the reason for the charges against him.
Anyway... I walked over and read the petition, intending to sign it. Free Afghanistan! US out of Saudi Arabia. Down with the patriarchy! Capitalism must go! Fuck the zionist-imperialist deep state Etc^... it also had some stuff about assange.
My (long winded) point is that this is a microcosm of the wider affair.
WikiLeaks, assange and the leaks that got him in trouble are journalistic. I don't think he sees it that way though. I think he sees it in more political-activism terms. The journalism defense is mostly made by other people, for him.
I still think he should go free though.
^Made up specifics. I don't remember what all the stuff was. Just that it was typical left-radical student politics of the time and place. Iircc, voluntary student unionism was the (sort of parochial-australian-student issue of the day).
