WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange charged with violating Espionage Act
- Thread starter Smokeymicpot
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You're protected by the 1st Amendment if a source gives you classified information and you publish it (typically after a vetting process to not unduly harm, say, ongoing criminal investigations.) But if you help your source in the act of stealing said information, it's your ass on the line. This isn't complicated, and Assange is no journalistic martyr.
This is what is happening and people are cool with it because Assange’s leaks made people look bad.
please don't put up straw man arguments.
Russian Espionage is now considered as journalism now?
Wouldn't they have to extradite him to charge him with these indictments? Doesn't Britain usually NOT extradite people who will possibly face the death penalty? If those two things are true, then what is the DOJ playing at?
I'm also a bit confused because he's NOT a US citizen and did his supposed crimes on foreign soil.
I'm also a bit confused because he's NOT a US citizen and did his supposed crimes on foreign soil.
I have no doubt this goverment would extradite Assange at the request of the USA. This country has sent people to Jamaica knowing they were not going to be safe and some of those people were killed after being deported to Jamaica.
I wonder if the US can just make an agreement with the UK that prosecutors won't seek the death penalty.
No they did not, but I would have had no problem if they did.
People had the right to know they were being lied to.
if that's what you consider proof than I truly hope you are/were neither a law- nor a social sciences student.
Multiple parties can pursue the same objectives without the need of collusion. For someone like him, it does not seem out of character doing what he apparently did, with or without "foreign" persuasion. Correlation does not imply causation, pretty much the first thing any student has to learn. Particularly in this field, with vested interests of multiple governments I would not be so quick to take a side. In this case, it seems best not to take any side at all.
If you guys need to take your revenge, please do, but stop hurting whistle-blowing in the process. Because THAT does not make you any better than him.
I dunno, that's a bit more slippery slope to suggest that journalists should have carte blanche to hack and breach institutions as long as they find something bad. Lol. There definitely needs to be a line.
See the case of Gary McKinnon, a UK hacker who breached many US NSA and military systems, and was in an extradition fight for 10 years. Theresa May (as Home Secretary at the time) eventually quashed the extradition order to the US, but the fact that he was on UK soil when committing the acts and the fact that he wasn't a US citizen were never accepted as defenses.
Taking "no side" is very much taking a side while pretending you're not doing so.
This is exactly my thought. I’m greatly concerned over the future of journalism and it holding corrupted officials accountable.
Then everything you just said about "journalists" is up in smoke because that's not the role of journalists to actively aid in illegal activities.
true, I take the side of the population who deserves to know if their government, the politicians they vote for, are actively engaging in crimes against humanity.
If your little feud or "winning against the other team" is more important to you than the truth than... I don't know what else to tell you.
I certainly am glad about the whistle blower who only last weak single-handidly blew up one of the right-wing governments in Europe. And I would also want to know if the social democrats I have been voting for my entire life are actually shitty people, no matter the repercussions.
I don’t distinguish between journalists and non-journalists for free speech. If you are lying to the American public to stoke illegal foreign wars then you don’t have a right to classify the information.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks were and are not whistleblowers. They actively looked for dirt on their political opponents with the express intent of harming people via non-redaction (sources in the '00s era leaks, not scrubbing SSNs/etc with the DNC) while scrubbing releases of information harmful to their patron's interests. (Information harmful to Russia was actively redacted numerous times.)
It's offensive to actual journalists and whistleblowers to lump the trash that is WikiLeaks in with them.
Thank you for succinctly highlighting why this isn’t a Pentagon papers redux.
Assange was Manning’s handler, and we know what Assange is.
Another ploy by Trump and his administration to attack our press. This is the same guy who fired Comey because he thought it would get Democrats on his side. He knows people on the left don't like Assange so his Justice Department is trying to use him as a thinly-vieled way to get journalists who make Trump look bad.
It's working too, a lot of people want their pound of flesh.
Frankly, seeing people constantly parrot this horseshit is becoming irritating. YOU may not consider Assange to be a real journalist but numerous legal scholars and high profile journalistic organisations are severely concerned about the implications of these indictments. It's not as if the definition of a journalist is actually legally defined, which is all that matters.
Assange may be an arrogant tool - he was during the late-80s and 90s when he was part of the hacking scene and he still is now, but there's a serious case of not being able to see the forest for the trees here.
Looking at this thread you would think Journalists would be queuing up supporting this.............oh wait.
They are, actually, especially if you look outside the American press.
Dont care about assange as a person...but the US military state being able to charge journalists with crimes like these at their leisure(let's not forget this originally blew up due to the whistleblowing of the US military committing blatant war crimes) is a huge conflict of interest...to say the least. Especially considering who is in charge of it.
Would have to prove that.
Defenitely a difference, but the devil is in the details. The concern here specifically is about how they go after him with these charges rather than his character. I'm certainly no expert, but if lawyers and real journalists are greatly concerned, then I'm concerned too.
BTW, what's the status on the rape charges? Does Sweden get first crack at him?
Sweden officially reopened investigations, but either Ecuador or the UK only told the US beforehand that he was going to be arrested, so they had their extradition papers ready first. Imagine that.
What Assange was doing might be legally considered journalism, that's fine. Pretty sure he considers himself an activist rather than a journalist.
So as long as any organization brands itself as a journalist and puts on a veneer of legitimacy they can publish classified info? That seems ripe for abuse, kinda like what Wikileaks was doing more recently than when they began
Shouldn't the illegal bit which Assange should go to jail for, be the aiding individuals who illegally obtain classified information, rather than the publishing of that info?
Proving that Assange is an agent of a foreign power (or similar inquiry for other purposes) is not an element under the Espionage Act.
In other words, I expect John’s team to try to prove that deliberately obtaining — and cultivating Chelsea Manning in the process — classified materials. Don’t expect all Assange-related materials concerning his affiliations to be in play here; it’s almost assuredly classified.
Yes, and that’s what the charges focus on.
Uh, yes? You don't even need to call yourself a journalist. Classification has no impact on anyone who doesn't have an active security clearance.
If classified information was to fall in your lap and you scanned it and posted it online, there is no cause of action against you, unless you had a security clearance and had access to that same information through your clearance. The person who dug that information out might get in trouble, if they could be pinpointed.
Completely irrelevant. Assange can call himself a moon elephant for all I care. It has zero bearing on the implications of these indictments.
So basically Trump is throwing Assange under the bus and now he, too, like so many before him, who thought, "But I'm different, Trump would never stab me in the back!" is now thinking, "Oh my God. He stabbed me in the back, I was no different than all the others who also thought they were different, but weren't"?
Which I didn't dispute, in the first part of my post that you omitted for some reason.
the fuck is with most of the responses in here?
this shit is overboard and deliberately anti journalism.
Forget Assange exists and look at the charges.
this shit is overboard and deliberately anti journalism.
Forget Assange exists and look at the charges.
There's a reason the Obama Administration didn't want to proceed in this way...
This sets an extraordinarily chilling precedent on the first amendment, no matter what organization you may belong to.
This sets an extraordinarily chilling precedent on the first amendment, no matter what organization you may belong to.
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I didn't quote it because there is no such thing as a legal definition of a journalist. Hence, the variegated struggles over US shield laws.
What I'm saying is that there's no legal definition of journalist in the US.
Indeed. And they focus on actively (not passively) soliciting and enabling the transfer of classified materials that included names of people in-theater.