If i were to describe the Assange case in a word, it would be myopic.
once again the US has decided this is the hill it will die on. instead of reforming intelligence agencies, challenging the doctrine of mass surveillance, revisiting the manifest destiny of imperialist foreign policy, or even considering the cost to do nothing at all, the US has arrived at the conclusion that a witch hunt is the best hunt.
prosecuting and jailing Assange does absolutely nothing to stop Wikileaks or wilileaks->next(). Whatever effort the US spent to slander and discredit Assange does nothing to stop people inspired by him, or motivated by US foreign policy in countries that do not enjoy its favour. The US seems completely oblivious to the fact that whatever happens to Assange the journalist, it simply isnt enough to curtail the overwhelming cacophony of demand for free and open journalism across the internet.
Just let the guy go and focus the money, time, and effort on preventing this in the future. nearly every major news outlet and journalist all see Assange as a journalist, not a hacker.
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I don’t know - I’m quite sure a number of wannabe Assanges have decided to have other hobbies after seeing what has been done to him. It’s making an example.
He doesn’t have to actually be in jail for his life to be clearly ruined, and that’s has definitely been done. He has no real freedom, has essentially no real relationships anymore, and is a political toy batted around between nations with the future promise of jail ‘maybe’ in his future, but with no closure.
Sounds like hell to me.
And all those other things sound great to me, Joe random taxpayer, but probably sound pretty terrible to the folks inside the establishment. Have to keep the money flowing or all that work to get the pension goes up in smoke (and that’s assuming they aren’t smuggling drugs and taking a cut or whatever on the side)
They made him a "martyr" in a way, and martyrs have a tendency to have a long shelf-life. Plus, it brought a lot of questionable US practices into light and on public mind. At this point, I do not think we saw the end of it all yet.
He's been in jail (Belmarsh) over two years now (11th April 2019).
They're holding him while the US tries to extradite him. The UN has called for the end of his torture at Belmarsh, but the UK and US seem uninterested.
From Wikipedia:
> On 13 September 2019, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser (UK) ruled that Assange would not be released on 22 September when his prison term ended, because he was a flight risk and his lawyer had not applied for bail. She said when his sentence came to an end, his status would change from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition.
And to that end, when you are in power, you get to choose the nature of your enemies. When you act as you have with Assange, you are effectively choosing suicidal psychos for enemies.
I feel like the mentality going after Assange so hard is that if they successfully throw him in prison it helps prove to establishment people that, no, Assange is the criminal, and establishment is doing nothing wrong. See, he's in prison. Only wrong people go to prison.
All they have to do is keep doing what they are doing - and anywhere he is becomes a prison to him. And they’ve been very successful at that.
Would it be a feather in someones hat if he actually got arrested and extradited to the US? Probably.
Honestly, it would probably also open up a giant can of worms legally and result in exposure of even more embarrassing details or BS that has been pulled. It’s actually working out pretty well for them as-is.
The US' priority in situations like this is overwhelmingly to provide evidence that the threats it makes with criminal laws and defense of national secrets are credible. It has time and time again chosen to die on hills like this. The ethics and optics of it don't seem to factor much into the decisionmaking
When power reaches a certain level, it isn’t about being seen doing the right or ethical thing. It is about demonstrating that it can and will be used against whoever they want with impunity, even if it’s clearly wrong, and they will get away with it.
It stops a lot of people from even attempting to challenge them, and just do what they want without question, which has many advantages. In some situations, it’s even legitimately necessary. It’s also prone to abuse of course.
In order to keep this kind of power, it’s necessary to demonstrate from time to time this power exists and will be used, since if people start not being afraid of having their lives ruined if they challenge said power legitimately, they also stop going along with demands from those in power unquestioningly. And a lot of the ability to destroy someone for whatever reason (including legitimate ones) depends on that unquestioning compliance.
I absolutely agree that's what's motivating the US, but it's interesting the future they're shepherding society towards via their encouragements and punishments:
- Assange: whistleblowers, journalists that embarrass the government will be pursued to the ends of the earth
- Snowden: whistleblowers will not be forgiven and will be abandoned without a home country
- Sacklers: will be protected from prosecution beyond a large fine, albeit smaller than the profits made from the activity that brought the fine
- Wall Street: government funding provided as a bailout after failure due to poor business decisions and no one held accountable or prosecuted.
Absolutely demonstrated where 'the power' exists, and there's no overlap with 'for the people'.
If you go back into the history books, I think it’s wishful thinking that it was ever any other way - plus or minus some ebbs or flows over the years. COINTELPRO and J. Edgar Hoovers blackmailing of government officials and other shenanigans being a pretty solid recent examples that just so happened to be exposed, but especially when you look at how few media outlets were willing to publish the COINTELPRO documents along with how many of the packets just ‘disappeared’ in the mail, it’s clear we just got lucky to know about these. For every one of them that gets out, I’m sure there are 3-5 or more that get caught and stopped.
Yup! And I attribute that in large part to more wealth distributed more widely, which allows more people to have the time and ability to do something to protect their rights. It takes education, time, courage, and treasure to fight these kinds of things.
The more people stand up and say ‘No’ - and show it matters - the better for everyone.
It is also a constant ongoing fight that is never truly won.
Nothing to do with my morals, it’s good old realpolitik/fate of nations type stuff. I stay out of these type of games. If you think anyone who IS into those games cares much about morals or ethics instead of ‘national interests’, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
That doesn’t mean I don’t understand it or why it is the way it is.
I disagree about prosecuting him doing nothing. You can disagree with it, but jailing snowden and assange will reduce the risk of similar people committing similar crimes. If they don't do something now, more snowdens and assanges will emerge, they cannot let it go.
When was the last serious like from within US IC? They jailed reality winner and that seems to have worked the last couple of years at least. It wasn't that she was caught but that they caught her using a technique unknown to her. It has a chilling effect for sure.
It is a risk reduction and diplomatic strategy. It has little to do with the pursuit of justice.
> once again the US has decided this is the hill it will die on.
Nah. This is their standard playbook. If someone undermines them they bash them publicly with a rubber hose, for decades. Maybe it's as an example to others.
And it seems in most cases, once this sort of behaviour is brought before a USA judge it's squashed, but before immense damage done has extracted the pound of flesh they appear to be after. So it's not the entire system that's rotten, just some apples within it.
Clearly, this sort of harassment is illegal. Ebay was a recent example, and they were prosecuted with the full force of the law. Nonetheless these rotten apples, who seem to be within the security apparatus (the CIA and NSA) seem to know how to work the system so they can get away with this with no personal repercussions on them. Until you yankees fix that, this is going to keep happening.
Assange belongs in jail for his role in the Russian disinformation campaign. He is not a journalist in any sense of the word. At best he's a website operator that has occasionally been used for good by other people who took real risks.
I assume you're also opposed to the charges he's currently facing? As none of them have anything to do with the Russian disinformation campaign you think he's involved in.
So push for the current charges against him to be dropped and then presumably the US will charge him with the crime you think he's guilty of. Until then the US is attacking him for publishing documents, which is journalism.
> once again the US has decided this is the hill it will die on.
Wat? If it's too much of a pain to prosecute somebody then they should give up?
> nearly every major news outlet and journalist all see Assange as a journalist, not a hacker. .
So is he a journalist or a hacker? It would sure be nice to know. If he is a journalist then I support him, if he is a hacker then I do not. I'd love an answer to this.
I'd like to see what comes out in court that is not public right now.
I'm tired of everybody presupposing that a trial must be unfair therefore people like Snowden or Assange have a license to do whatever they want.
I went over this with you a few weeks ago. Only one of his eighteen charges has anything to do with hacking, and what actions he took is already very clear from the Manning trial.
The "hacking" he did was saying he'd try to crack a generic Windows password that provided zero additional documents. There's little chance anything else could come out in court as if they had proof he did something else they would have charged him with it. Even further, he'd still be a journalist if found guilty on this charge, as every other charge is for actions that are unquestionably journalism.
And I don't care if you're sick of hearing he can't get a fair trial, it's still true that he can't get a fair trial. Things like his attorney client privilege have already been compromised, and witnesses the US offered deals to for testifying have already recanted their testimony. This isn't a presupposition, it happened.
> There's little chance anything else could come out in court
Famous last words.
You can't have an unfair trial unless you have a trial. He needs to stand trial and if the US govt pulls some unfair BS then I'll be right there to condemn them and I'll be sure to let my representatives know.
Not really, a court case only deals with the charges the accused would be on trial for. While it's possible that they'd try to pull out another witness like Thordarson to try and claim he has a history of hacking, anything they had actual evidence of him doing would be a new charge.
>You can't have an unfair trial unless you have a trial.
You absolutely can. Prosecutorial misconduct in the pretrial stages can cause there to be an unfair trial before the trial ever begins. Things like the instances of misconduct mentioned in my previous post, which you should condemn and contact your representatives about already.
This is a standard of US law. As an easy example, an improperly acquired warrant can cause an unfair trial causing a case to be thrown out.
> It would sure be nice to know. If he is a journalist then I support him, if he is a hacker then I do not. I'd love an answer to this.
You mean you decide whether to support someone based on someone else's arbitrary classification, and not on the merits of their actions, like, I don't know, exposing the US' atrocious war crimes?
A court decision is literally someone else's arbitrary classification, namely the judge's. Have you agreed with every court decision ever made?
I suggest you think for yourself as to what's right and what's wrong and vote according to your own conscience, rather than relying on other people thinking for you. You know, how democracy is supposed to work.
My own conscience? I don't have the facts. I don't know what Assange or US prosecutors know. I think, without evidence, that he was working with a US adversary and his entire public image will collapse under scrutiny in court. Should I follow that or wait for more information?
I'm done talking about this on this forum for awhile. Every discussion is the same.
You could know. Transcripts for Assange's convos with Manning are publicly available.
Furthermore, even if Assange did break a law that doesn't mean he did anything wrong. Or do you disagree with the notion of civil disobedience?
Do you also think Snowden did something wrong? He very clearly violated the oath he took, but the government was itself breaking the law and the system was immune to change from the inside.
I don't see why Assange's classification as either a hacker or journalist should affect your moral judgment in any fashion. The point I've been trying to make is that your original moral argument for judging Assange is simplistic, and doesn't apply on the fringes of human behaviour where powerful players are trying to influence the outcomes, because any narratives or facts are guaranteed to be distorted. Why do you think the US just wasted 20 years fighting wars in the middle east?
>I think, without evidence, that he was working with a US adversary and his entire public image will collapse under scrutiny in court. Should I follow that or wait for more information?
None of the charges have anything to do with him working with a US adversary, it's silly to think revelations about that will come out in a trial for a completely unrelated incident.
Remember, the hackers that supposedly stole the DNC documents have already been indicted, and the US Justice System was so convinced that Wikileaks and Assange were not involved in criminal activity that they called them something like "organization A." If he was knowingly working with them, they would have charged him in those indictments. Even from a PR standpoint, why would the US spend years getting negative press about their treatment of Assange if they had a slam dunk like that.
I think he's won a direct trip to Guantanamo for torture if the US gets their hands on him. You aren't going to see a trial, those aren't needed for non Americans
> So is he a journalist or a hacker? It would sure be nice to know.
He clearly isn't a hacker, so of those two he got to be a journalist. He publishes information that might have been acquired by hackers, but nobody claims he hacked anything himself, all he did was make a website for publishing stuff (WikiLeaks). If you are one of those who call programmers "hackers" then you could call him a hacker, but he isn't a hacker in the popular definition of "someone who illegally breaks into others computers".
He was the illegal form of hacker a long time ago and was properly charged for it, but that was decades before wikileaks.
Edit: To be clear, not even USA claims he hacked anything in order to get it published on Wikileaks. People calling him a hacker refers to what he did in the 80's and is completely irrelevant to this case.
The US is charging him with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, for "hacking" into government computers. They are very heavily trying to convince the public he's an evil hacker not a journalist.
About Assange potentially being extradited to America for trial. I contrast it with Prince Andrew. A normal person would be facing criminal charges and have been extradited to America for trial. One justice system for the rich and another justice system for people like Assange
Is that picture from the prison itself (label "Sigurdur Thordarson in now in Litla Hraun prison in Iceland")? If it is, it looks order(s) of magnitude better than majority of earthlings homes.
No that is a picture of him going into the courthouse in Reykjavík. But prison cells in Iceland are pretty nice though, here is an image of a cell in the new prison Hólmsheiði: https://axis.is/wp-content/gallery/holmsheidi/IMG_1081.jpg
But Litla-Hraun is an older building so the cells are not as nice there.
Well but that's like saying consider yourself lucky to not have been to a Russian or Nigerian jail. American prisons are famously bad and known for it worldwide. I'd compare this cell to a cell in a country that doesn't have a completely broken judicial system and then yeah, it's nothing that special. It's a cell, maybe the bed looks "nice" but at the end of the day it's a place of incarceration not a hotel.
The key takeaway is not that they jailed him now. They should've and probably could have jailed him long ago.
My understanding is that he, a convicted pedophile and all around sociopath, seemingly totally bent on pursuing wildly antisocial endeavours, was protected up until now. He strategically contacted the FBI which was able to lean on the Icelandic law enforcement through a diplomatic route to grant him unofficial immunity, as long as he served the purpose of going after Assange.
Now that he admitted his testimony was based on lies, he is no longer useful and Iceland's law enforcement is finally free to do its job. He was jailed now because he betrayed his loyalty of his handlers. I wonder why he decided to break that, it seems like such a complete blunder. Perhaps he realised his testimony wouldn't hold up in court. Really wish the interview mentioned in the article would be translated to English but I can't find it.
> Sigurdur Thordarson, a key witness for the FBI against Julian Assange, has been jailed in Iceland. ... Thordarson was given immunity by the FBI in exchange for testimony against Julian Assange.
I wonder if this witness's motivation for testifying will factor into the decision of the High Court when it hears the Biden administration's appeal of the rejection of their extradition request.
It's not likely, one of the wonders of the UK extradition process to the US is that the US doesn't need to produce evidence for extradition, they just need "reasonable suspicion". This isn't true the other way around...
> I wonder if this witness's motivation for testifying will factor into the decision of the High Court when it hears the Biden administration's appeal of the rejection of their extradition request.
Is there a cross-appeal or does the Court consider the case de novo? Because the lower court found the standards for a basis for extradition were met, but that the US could not provide adequate guarantees against Assange taking his own life; without a cross-appeal or de novo review, the basic standards shouldn't be relitigated on appeal.
> There is no doubt that he really is guilty of leaking US secrets.
Lets say he is. He is not a US citizen, and he didn't do the leaking on US soil - what duty does he have to keep US secrets secret? In fact, without a confidentiality agreement, I think even US citizens are allowed to leak them. Something to do with the 1st amendment.
If you published secret information given to you by a Russian dissident, would you expect to be extradited to Russia? Even if you had encouraged/helped that dissident?
> Lets say he is. He is not a US citizen, and he didn't do the leaking on US soil - what duty does he have to keep US secrets secret?
Should someone in another country be able to publish your personal secrets? Sure if its North Korea you can't do much but a organization in a friendly country should not be allowed to do so esp if they're important nationally classified material.
If the US believes that he has a duty, and the US has the power and will to enforce that belief, then for all practical purposes, he does have that duty. That's all duties are, really.
What gives the US the power to enforce their views here are a combination of many different factors. The fact the crime in question was committed against the US and in the US (even if Assange was not physically located in the US, the crime happened here, and Assange is accused of being an accessory to that crime). The fact that Assange is physically located in the territory of a close ally of the US. The fact that that ally has no particular love of Assange either. And many other smaller things.
While you give an (afaik) accurate retelling of how Assange got in legal trouble, it amounts to little more than "might makes right" (hidden behind a layer of "might makes the laws").
Whereas I believe the GP was making a moral argument, that Assange deserves it because he leaked US secrets.
There's also the issue of US jurisdiction expanding into other countries being given a level of casual acceptance not afforded to any other country. As another commenter pointed out, these allyships can be very one-sided:
I guess I don't really see the moral angle here, in one direction or the other. Why shouldn't an entity try to impose its understanding of law and ethics where it can afford to? Why should a country's laws end at its own borders, if they don't have to? If the country views its laws as right, it seems to me it ought to attempt to see those laws enforced as widely as possible.
(One other case where the US does this: child sex tourism. The US will prosecute its own citizens if it finds they travelled abroad to have sex with a minor, even if the violation of the law takes place entirely in another country, even if the other country declines to prosecute the crime or even if it sees it as not being a crime. Prosecuting these crimes that are done abroad seems eminently moral to me. I suspect the actual objection to prosecuting Assange is probably more truly centered in whether what he did was even a crime, or wrong. The question of whether the US ought to be able to prosecute him is really a proxy argument.)
> Why should a country's laws end at its own borders, if they don't have to? If the country views its laws as right, it seems to me it ought to attempt to see those laws enforced as widely as possible.
I really don't want to be extradited to Thailand from Australia because I mocked their King online, or extradited to China for commenting on a Falun Gong forum, or extradited to Saudi Arabia for posting a comment supporting gay rights.
You have probably already broken 100 laws from various countries before you got out of bed
Then it is well those countries lack the power or will to use their power to enforce those laws on you. I mean, I prefer what you prefer in this case as well, although I prefer it because I think those laws are wrong, not because I believe something about national borders by moral right ought to render me immune to prosecution from the next nation over.
> If the country views its laws as right, it seems to me it ought to attempt to see those laws enforced as widely as possible.
Suppose I view my diet and exercise regimen as right - should I try to impose (not just suggest) it on others? A country can view both its own laws, and the sovereignty of other countries, as just.
Or look at it this way: Democratic countries tend to think highly of democracy. Higher than any single law resulting from democracy. By imposing your laws on the people of a different country, you are robbing them of that same democracy you so cherish. Would you give up democratic control of your government, if it resulted in passing a couple of laws you liked?
(For certain extreme examples, such as when that country is engaging in genocide or extreme human rights abuses, I would answer yes. But nothing in this case even approaches such severity.)
> By imposing your laws on the people of a different country, you are robbing them of that same democracy you so cherish.
That would be true only if the US were handling this process extrajudicially. I'm still not sure that would be morally bad, per se, but it would certainly require the exercise of much more power and will.
But in this case, the process is being handled judicially. The people of the United Kingdom elected representatives, who through various means constructed the judicial system and entered into agreements with other countries, including the United States, concerning many things, including extradition. The process they set up to handle that is what is being followed today. This is why I don't really agree that the current situation is undemocratic. It may be that the UK's representatives didn't do exactly what the people would prefer in aggregate, but that is always a danger in representative democracy.
> The people of the United Kingdom elected representatives, who through various means constructed the judicial system and entered into agreements with other countries, including the United States, concerning many things, including extradition.
That's ignoring a lot of behind-the-scenes pressure tactics. In fact, your analysis would cast every one-sided deal or law that is the result of foreign pressure (or corruption, or lobbying) as "democratic", unless it's the result of full-on war.
I see what you're saying. But all countries deal with external pressures and constraints to some degree or another. I don't think we can declare their choices under these constraints undemocratic without rendering the word "democracy" into a purely theoretical concept.
The person who prefers a process that has the chance to land them in prison is rare indeed. But I'm not sure that's a moral argument, at least not as people think of it normally. Admittedly, there is a school, which I sometimes flirt with, that claims that moral statements are simply a specially coded statement of preference. But outside that context, I'm not sure exactly what aspect of Assange's perspective I'm meant to consider in this context.
> I guess I don't really see the moral angle here, in one direction or the other. Why shouldn't an entity try to impose its understanding of law and ethics where it can afford to?
You’ll have a hell of a good time exercising this conviction when China starts doing the same.
They’re already doing it to immediate neighbouring countries and have started doing so in the US through basic means of capitalistic influence.
I mean. They think they’re right. Why shouldn’t they? Who cares about nations having so called “sovereign” laws? What does your 1st amendment rights mean when China thinks you shouldn’t have it?
> You’ll have a hell of a good time exercising this conviction when China starts doing the same.
It would be truly upsetting if that ever happened, but mainly because so many of China's laws are bad, not because of something inherent about national borders. Fortunately I doubt China will ever have the will to use its power to bother me.
While he was not a US citizen, he is involved in a crime committed in the US. Just like if an American had hired an art thief to steal a painting from a European gallery.
The legal concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction is extremely complex and nuanced, but primarily falls upon the diplomatic power of the country that believes you broke their laws. (If you find this interesting you might enjoy reading about US v. Van Der End, in which a Dutch smuggler was arrested and charged in the US for sailing drugs to Canada)
However all of this is moot because he made the mistake of traveling to the UK and is currently being held by the British. In addition to leaking US secrets he also leaked GCHQ secrets and can be charged under the Official Secrets Act if extradition fails.
I don't think they actually published the papers, they just wrote stories using the papers as the source.
Assange is also accused of assisting his source in attempting (unsuccessfully) to crack a password hash, thereby (the prosecution alleges) taking on more the Daniel Ellsberg role rather than the Washington Post role.
Not commenting on the appropriateness or not of prosecuting Assange, but the situations have significant differences.
He assisted his source in a failed attempt to crack a password hash? This is the "significant difference" you think makes him worthy of prosecution? He was a journalist exposing war crimes. He is not a US citizen and is not subject to US laws. If China extended their ban on youths playing video games for more than a few hours in a week to the world, you would probably have a problem with them forcing authorities in a country you're vacationing in to arrest your children and extradite them to China.
Yes, one of them, the other being that he published the full documents and not just stories using them as a source.
> you think makes him worthy of prosecution
It was so obvious I would get downvoted by Assange stans for answering the GP's question, that I literally preemptively stated I wasn't saying this. Wasn't enough apparently.
You're being downvoted as you are just wrong. Though the New York Times did not publish the full papers, it was because the leaked documents took up five books. You can find Ellsberg's annotated copies of the books the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersde00beac
I don't understand how that shows I'm "just wrong"...? We agree that Assange published the documents in full and The New York Times didn't.
You have linked to the version published after Senator Gravel made them public domain by submitting to the congressional record - nothing comparable happened prior to Wikileaks publishing it's material.
The New York Times and other publications published multiple pages of the Pentagon Papers, they just were unable to realistically publish the entire leak. If you read the Supreme Court case involving the Times, it clearly says it was about publishing the contents of a classified study, not writing articles about a classified study.
There is no content difference, both contained leaked documents and articles about them, the only difference is the limitations of the medium.
> How is it different from the Washington Post leaking the Pentagon papers? Honest question, not snarky.
2 main ways: first, Julian is an Australian and never lived in the US, and Daniel Elsberg was a US citizen living in the US the time he released the PP and thus was protected under some semblance of need for a trail to ensure he was in fact an enemy combatant or a spy for a foreign nation-state--these charges were then dropped subsequently when the public was made aware of Watergate and Nixon stepping down.
Secondly, it's a blatant selective application of the Law, even with Snowden who has repeatedly asked to be tried by a jury of his peers, which will never happen. There is nothing more to it than that, Jullian never stepped foot in the US and the leaks were ultimately done by Chelsea Manning and hosted on Wikleaks and sent to major publications around the World, who has also been through hell and back before getting her sentence commuted.
Ultimately, it's become a politicized issue and Julian Assange has been a the bane for the DoD and Intelligence Agencies of not just the US but many other countries, so despite the UN calling his continued arrest a Crime Against Humanity, nothing will change until he is either made an example of, ironically this means that Assange will have lived up to his supposed reputation for being a megalomaniac and thus will become a martyr the same way Arron Scwartz has become from the FOSS community.
Suffice it to say, I'm a big fan of Jullian and followed his work since his talks at the CCC (2011?) and all of his Wiki stuff which involved Bitcoin etc... I fear the Julian we all knew has likely been eroded away and has clearly had his faculties get destroyed along with his physical health, mental health--he was diagnosed as autistic but I'm sure the PTSD, loneliness and forced isolation have been more severe than anything else after all these years.
Julian isn't a hero, he is a deeply flawed Human being who decided that he couldn't bare not acting at a time of crisis; something that we should as a species should laud, but instead we are forced to witness the systematic destruction of a Man's life for making the World aware of what took place in perpetual and unjust wars.
Political candidate B in conjunction with an aligned foreign country paid him to publish only the material on A. Some elements of A were false and constructed by Candidate B to smear Candidate A.
He knew this.
He chose sides, while simultaneously claiming he is neutral.
I have not judged, I have only stated the facts.
EDIT: We also do not know how both sets of secrets were acquired. There are claims he was involved with the exfiltration, a statement that has not been proven or disproven yet since there has been no trial.
EDIT #2: He also has at least one motivation to help Candidate B as Candidate A has stated a desire to prosecute him heavily.
And there won't be. The whole thing is already way too dirty to bring to trial. Word is the CIA was paying the security firm WikiLeaks hired to provide them with his conversations with lawyers and basically everything else. There's a court case in Spain going on right now over this.
So the CIA explicitly did what they are chartered to do? They spied on conversations taking place in another countries embassy?
While it might be the subject of a court case in Spain, it probably will not play out the way Assange apologists hope. The actions taken by Undercover Global at the behest of the CIA were likely coordinated by the CITCO and with the blessing of the British government.
I doubt Spain would be doing an investigation into the case and arrest people if it truly was properly coordinated with Spanish intelligence networks. And even if they did coordinate it still wasn't seen as legal by the Spanish justice system as the case has been going for years and it is still making progress.
Exactly. If what Assange did was a crime, the New York times commits the same crime every couple of months. This "New York times problem" was shown to be a frequent point of internal discussion in the recent leaks regarding the US plans for kidnapping Assange
This is an extraordinary claim. To my best recollection, he was only given information on the Clinton campaign. Do you have any source, any evidence whatsoever that he had damaging information on Trump around the time that WikiLeaks released the Clinton State Department/Podesta emails?
>He chose sides, while simultaneously claiming he is neutral.
It's interesting that you can look at hard evidence of a 100% political prosecution of a _journalist_, and not think one layer deeper than what information you've been fed about him. If the United States is willing to imprison a journalist who has never set foot in the US on false charges, what makes you think they won't also manufacture a second scenario to turn public opinion against him?
"I don't agree with the political prosecution of Julian Assange, but he is responsible for (AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY FALSE FLAG), therefore I do not care what happens to him."
Assange said if he was given stuff to leak about Trump and was able to verify it the same way he verifies anything, he would release it. There's no reason not to, it's not like Assange is the only person in the world capable of releasing stuff and performing journalism. The idea that he covered up Trump leaks is ridiculous - the leaker would just go to someone else and it'd get out regardless. This is proven by the many many Trump leaks that did get out to mainstream media.
Your point is he selectively choose to published articles for one side. You feel a journalist should publish everything or they committed a crime?
CNN selectively chooses news stories, fox news as well as your local news. Why do you hear about fires and shootings but not the great Apple pie your neighbour made because those news stations select news that will bring in viewers.
In this case he published a drone camera killing which was bad for the party in power. He published the leaked emails which was bad for a different party. I can't agree he has taken a political party's side because it is not clear which political party. One thing is he has enemies in both parties and no friends.
I find the jurisdictional issues interesting as well. He is not a U.S. citizen, he was not in the United States.
Obviously, I would propose that someone who hacks U.S. interests having never set foot in the United States should be held accountable by U.S. courts, but he was even on the fringe of that in the promotion of it.
> Obviously, I would propose that someone who hacks U.S. interests having never set foot in the United States should be held accountable by U.S. courts.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but where this gets difficult is the inverse. When a US citizen commits a crime in a foreign country, will the US let the their citizen be tried outside the US?
> When a US citizen commits a crime in a foreign country, will the US let the their citizen be tried outside the US?
If they’re just another Joe Schmoe, they’ll be hung to dry. If they have connections, they not only won’t be extradited, they’ll be smuggled out of the country they committed bald-faced murder in to turn it into a question of extradition when it was not.
> There is no doubt that he really is guilty of leaking US secrets.
The problem is that illegal activites and blatant murder are being protected under the concept of "secrets".
We are not talking about leaking plans to made a nuclear bomb here or trademark secrets. We are talking about proofs of obstruction to justice and violation of international laws by part of US.
If a senator would be caught red-handed importing and selling cocaine, could just shout "but, but, this was a secret!! to the police?". Probably not.
once again the US has decided this is the hill it will die on. instead of reforming intelligence agencies, challenging the doctrine of mass surveillance, revisiting the manifest destiny of imperialist foreign policy, or even considering the cost to do nothing at all, the US has arrived at the conclusion that a witch hunt is the best hunt.
prosecuting and jailing Assange does absolutely nothing to stop Wikileaks or wilileaks->next(). Whatever effort the US spent to slander and discredit Assange does nothing to stop people inspired by him, or motivated by US foreign policy in countries that do not enjoy its favour. The US seems completely oblivious to the fact that whatever happens to Assange the journalist, it simply isnt enough to curtail the overwhelming cacophony of demand for free and open journalism across the internet.
Just let the guy go and focus the money, time, and effort on preventing this in the future. nearly every major news outlet and journalist all see Assange as a journalist, not a hacker. .