> An Assange prosecution could give the Trump presidency broad new powers to put Trump’s media “enemies” in jail, instead of just yanking a credential or two
I don't understand how a prosecution of something completely unrelated to what he has done on/with wikileaks automagically translates into donald having 'broad new powers' to start throwing journalists in jail. If Assange is blamed for and/or convicted of some sexual misconduct or whatever (again, unrelated to his 'journalism' work), does the author think that all journalists are guilty of this and subject to imprisonment?
Edit: thanks for the explanations. I look forward to the incoming HN bury brigade, since I asked a question based on a false pretense. Such is the reddit^H^H^H^H^H^Hhackernews way.
It is extremely unlikely that US prosecutors are after him for any alleged "backroom talk/act". WSJ reported that the charges against him “ may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense-related information.”[0] Accordingly, the implications on journalism are real and far-reaching [1].
There's no evidence that the prosecution would be for anything non-'journalism' related; that is unsupported speculation that the author doesn't imply or suggest.
I think the Assange/wikileaks indictment is a misstep by the justice department/current administration.
My understanding is that it's far from clear how a case again Assange/wikileaks would play out in court. Like the article mentions, the New York Times and others have published classified information repeatedly -- how can Assange be indicted but not the NYT? Assange also isn't an American citizen and he hasn't leaked information himself, just published it. I think there's a good chance Assange would be acquitted.
I also think it's a bizarre exagerration to argue that an attempted prosecution of Assage would result in "broad new powers to put Trump’s media 'enemies' in jail".
Don't get me wrong -- I don't much care for Assange. It seems to me that there's a lot of hot air coming from him and he appears to have quite an ego. Also, though I understand there is disagreement about this, I think countries keep secrets for a reason and I consider it naive utopianism to expect everything to be brought into the open. In an ideal world, sure, but the world is not ideal.
While I don't think Assange/wikileaks are necessarily "siding with Russia," I do think that Russia has made use of wikileaks. Wikileaks is heavily promoted in Russian propaganda, and it seems at least plausible that Russia could obtain information and leak it through wikileaks. This is a problem for wikileaks: if you're all about freedom of information and you make public everything passed onto you, it's totally possible for state actors -- the same state actors whose behavior you find reprehensible -- to use you as a tool to further their own interests.
> why was USA so inept in not making use of Wikileaks themselves?
The USA is inept as an organization. In some areas, by design (eg Patent Office, various Courts, Gerrymandering). There are very few areas where it's not completely hypocritical and demonstrates externally rational behavior. "Using wikileaks" would require multiple departments coordinating. That's been impractical for decades.
> Don't get me wrong -- I don't much care for Assange [...]
Why has this blase paragraph become so common? Want to defend Trump's actions on X as consistent with a past president? Include a paragraph on how you don't like him. Want to attack academia for being too much of an echo chamber ("grievance studies")? Make sure to have two paragraph digression on how you're a liberal, not one of those icky conservatives.
Why is it necessary to explain that defending an ethical norm in the case of a certain individual does not imply endorsement for all of that individual's actions? Can't we consider ethical arguments on their own merits, without regard to the underlying ideology of the speaker? Is it a garlic clove to ward off American hyperpartisanship?
It's my perception that such garlic cloves have become ubiquitous, where only a decade ago they were much rarer.
Is it a garlic clove to ward off American hyperpartisanship?
I think so, yes. I find myself doing it. You can't critique anyone or anything these days without whoever you're talking to automatically assuming you're a diehard fan of the other side.
The far right and the far left are so overrepresented in the media and online discourse that it's necessary to distance yourself or be assumed one of them.
> The far right and the far left are so overrepresented in the media and online discourse
I don't think so, no. Not on mainstream forums. They certainly have a lot of their own special forums, but on Reddit, and Facebook, and HackerNews, I find that most commenters are pretty much who you'd expect - random, middle of the road people.
> it's necessary to distance yourself or be assumed one of them
Have you considered the possibility that you only think these people are overrepresented because you assume anybody without a disclaimer is one of them?
I like these disclaimers. If someone comes out and states their opinion or bias on a topic, it gives you more context to understand their thought processes and how they came to the conclusion that they came to. It helps you understand the value system that underpins someone's argument.
Ethical arguments can't be made on their own merits, they can only be made in the context of shared value systems. By communicating more about your values, you give someone more insight to understand your ethical argument. If I know where our values differ, I can try to account for those differences. Ripping an ethical argument out of context and putting it in a social vacuum makes it alien and difficult to understand.
I really don't think this is very weird or new, but maybe I'm young. The truth is that without the "garlic clove", it's highly likely the next response is something along those lines, ie. "But assange has done abc so xyz".
I think it's less about partisianship and more about keeping conversation on topic.
An easy way to not let it devolve into a conversation about how he's an ass is to initially concede that he is.
It's not, of course, as you point out. One can't defend the ethics or law on the basis of what's good for a particular political party. One should come to a proper understanding of relevant US law, and US jurisdictional limitations (Assange is an Australian citizen and as Chris Hedges points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hyZktgMp4Q "he isn't bound by any law to protect American secrets"), but the hyperpartisanship you speak of is remarkably corporate media driven and not in interest of the American citizenry. Most Americans call themselves independent and did so around the time of the 2016 US election (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/08/a-... and https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160907114001.h...). I think it's because more people (particularly young people) are coming to realize that a two corporate party division is not addressing their needs as citizens of a wealthy country, and the Democrats and Republicans take remarkably similar sides on the most major issues of the day that get national interests involved (chief among them: war -- the single issue that costs the most money and lives).
You'll find similar unnecessary disclaimers before any serious discussion of Pres. Trump these days (such as "I'm no fan of Trump but...") as if a black-and-white ('for us or against us', remember that?) view is right and proper and must be dismissed before any serious discussion can begin. Even when what they're about to describe is a continuation across US administrations. Majoritarian issues don't get that kind of framing. I rarely hear anyone say anything resembling "I'm no fan of mass surveillance, but...", or "I don't like extrajudicial murder like what the US does with the drone war, but...".
JA's lawyers have long believed the sealed indictment existed, without revealing their reasoning. Likely some off-the-record stuff. I think it's a pretty safe bet that this goes back to Obama.
> I also think it's a bizarre exagerration to argue that an attempted prosecution of Assage would result in "broad new powers to put Trump’s media 'enemies' in jail".
I think this depends almost entirely on what Assange is prosecuted for.
It's true that prosecutions of reporters began (after a post-Nixon lull) under Bush, and largely don't rely on anything that an Assange trial would determine. But there are at least two things Assange could be tried for which would seriously erode protections for reporters.
The article points out that the NYT has published classified information - that's basically the problem. Those publications aren't actually guaranteed to be legal. The Pentagon Papers case rejected a prior restraint argument for barring publication, but left open both the possibility of other prior restraint suits and the possibility of simple charges for mishandling classified information. A court case against Assange could be used to set either of those precedents, settling a currently-ambiguous question about press freedoms in the US under a Supreme Court that might well walk back the NYT v US interpretation. (And Assange can be indicted while the NYT isn't because that's discretionary - the DoJ is free to charge whoever they think is most likely to get them a convenient court ruling, however hypocritical that may be.)
Less likely but more even more frightening, some Congressmen have previously talked about charging Assange under the Espionage Act. In fact, a few people have specifically talked about having him subpoenaed without charge so that he could be extradited easily, then invoking Espionage Act once the capital punishment provision wouldn't cause complications. Convicting a non-resident non-citizen of espionage for sharing someone else's leaks would be a fairly shocking decision, but if it happened it would extend legal risk to reporters worldwide.
Edit: I was wrong about the lack of precedent here. A noncitizen has already been successfully charged for acts taken outside the United States which did not involve direct access to US resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Zehe
I haven't seriously followed what charges could be brought over the 2016/Russia question, since it seems relatively unlikely that a Trump DoJ would bring a case there. A subpoena over 2016 could potentially have come out of Congress, but that's not likely to lead to a criminal charge at present.
> Convicting a non-resident non-citizen of espionage for sharing someone else's leaks would be a fairly shocking decision
The usual foreign intelligence case officer is a non-citizen, often non-resident, whose main business is soliciting, recieving, and redistributing other people's leaks of sensitive information.
It is, to say the least, not at all unheard of for such people to be convicted of espionage, as they are literally the primary target of espionage laws.
> I haven't seriously followed what charges could be brought over the 2016/Russia question, since it seems relatively unlikely that a Trump DoJ would bring a case there.
“Trump DoJ” is too simple of a model; both the Special Counsel's Office at DoJ and other DoJ offices (notably SDNY) are bringing indictments politically uncomfortable to Trump, stemming from (but not always specific to) the “2016/Russia question”.
I mentioned non-resident with the purpose of excluding domestic spies like Anna Chapman, though perhaps "not active in the US" would have been more appropriate.
As for the DoJ, I agree that I simplified the issue. I'm making the assumption that the indictments we've seen so far are much more tractable for those offices than charging Assange would be, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.
I thought Espionage Act charges hadn't been levied against noncitizens operating wholly outside the United States, who would instead be charged under local espionage laws where they acted, US classified materials or other act-specific laws, or UCMJ spying rules in times of war. All of the cases I'd previously read about were either US citizens or foreigners like Truong and Yatskov who acted directly within US borders. It turns out this isn't true.
I'd never heard of Alfred Zehe, but apparently he was a German citizen who did some analysis for the Soviets in Mexico, and was arrested on Espionage Act charges when he later visited Boston. He filed for dismissal over this exact point - that he was a non-citizen, not in the US, and not directly accessing American sources - but was refused. And in a bizarrely ironic twist, it was Robert Mueller who directed prosecutors to withhold documents from the defense over "national security" that had already been offered to Warsaw Pact governments.
So it looks like not only was I wrong on the history of Espionage Act charges, but there's direct evidence that the current Special Counsel has no hesitation aggressively prosecuting such cases. I appreciate the correction.
> Also, though I understand there is disagreement about this, I think countries keep secrets for a reason and I consider it naive utopianism to expect everything to be brought into the open.
The article obliquely addresses this concern:
> Ronald Reagan’s executive secretary for the National Security Council, Rodney McDaniel, estimated that 90 percent of what was classified didn’t need to be. The head of the 9/11 commission put the number at 75 percent.
> This created a huge amount of tension between so-called “real secrets” — things that really should never be made public, like military positions and the designs of mass-destruction weapons — and things that are merely extremely embarrassing to people in power and should come out. The bombing of civilian targets in Iraq was one example. The mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay was another.
While I'm sure that advocates of naively utopian absolute transparency do exist, a much stronger position is that perfectly legitimate reasons of security have been abused to protect bad actors in power. It's a lot easier to argue against leakers and for the necessity of classified information when the system for designating state secrets doesn't conspicuously lack integrity. Rather than "no secrets ever", the argument posits the necessity of leakers in an environment where the majority of secret info should not be secret.
> "If you hate Assange because of his role in the 2016 race, please take a deep breath and consider what a criminal charge that does not involve the 2016 election might mean."
---
Why? There is mounting evidence that Assange - whatever his idealistic intentions might have been with Wikileaks - has become an active conspirator in working with the Russians (and unsavory Americans) in undermining US democracy.
I know the word sounds alarmist but we do actually have an actual era of fascism on our small hands right now. The claims of Russian interference is just one of many checkboxes on the 'must be fascist' list, you can add the refugee crisis, the populist rallies and plenty else to the ticked off boxes.
We don't live in a black and white world. Assange is undoubtedly a remarkable individual but he has a lot to learn and being the pariah whistleblower type is not good for him to learn some of the finer lessons, e.g. in diplomacy.
Assange controls when leaks are leaked, he makes sure Wikipedia is not as transparent as it needs to be, he has sought to monetize war and misery by the deals he has done. Compare and contrast with John Young at Cryptome.
Assange was in control of timing the 2016 email thing, there is no evidence beyond waffle said in Washington that the 'Reds' were behind the hack that got those emails.
Suggesting otherwise is to not fully appreciate how the Russians view the US and its politics. In the Kremlin they do not care who gets in to the White House because they know that whomever is there the policy towards Russia will be the same. If they do engage constructively with the US for a more peaceful world with free trade then they know that they can't do so with a 'puppet' regime elected by their meddling. It is not how it works.
So why do so many people think otherwise? Fascism. Hard to bandy that word around but it is true. Unless the left offer a party with policies that are appealing to people there is no option apart from fascism when regular capitalism fails. Right now we are in a period of badly failing capitalism, nobody has had wage increases for a long time, stocks only go up because of share buy back scams, the 2008 crash was a can kicked down the road by QE and the signs are all there. 1930's Germany was the same, they didn't vote for someone advertising themselves as a fascist, they voted for the Trump of their time.
So where did the emails come from? If it was not the Russians then it is time to look at the time stamp meta data, which I have not done myself but I believe it points to places outside of the Russian time zones. The same people wanting Brexit and the breakup of the EU are meddling, manipulating everyone to this lovely and actually fascist era of politics we are waking up to.
> So where did the emails come from? If it was not the Russians then it is time to look at the time stamp meta data, which I have not done myself but I believe it points to places outside of the Russian time zones.
They appear to have been downloaded at about the speed of a USB stick, but that leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
Unless I'm misreading, the point of the quoted text isn't to dispute whether that's true. It's specifically to point out that the 2016 election discussion isn't relevant to whether an Assange trial today would be a bad thing.
If Assange is tried by a Trump DoJ, it almost certainly won't be tied to the 2016 election. Rather, it would be for any of Wikileaks' earlier actions - projects like Cablegate or Collateral Murder. Congressmen have already called for Espionage Act charges over those releases, so it's not a hard outcome to imagine. That would open up a range of alarming questions about handling of classified information, where current practice favors openness and disclosure but the legal situation isn't entirely clear.
Narrowly interpreted, transmitting or even linking to classified materials violates secrecy laws even after those materials leave classified control or become publicly accessible. New York Times Co. v. United States set a precedent in which journalists are not prosecuted for handling or publishing leaked materials. Alongside Branzburg v. Hayes and Lovell v. City of Griffin, which extend press rights to citizens generally, it creates a general presumption that only the actual exfiltration of classified material is prosecuted. But NYT v. US was decided narrowly on prior restraint, and no strict protection for publishing already-leaked classified materials exists.
Convicting someone for publishing classified materials which someone else leaked to them would effectively destroy this protection. Convicting a non-resident non-citizen on Espionage Act charges would create a bizarre situation in which interference with United States military actions by any party anywhere in the world would ostensibly be a capital crime in the US.
Those are the concerns at hand. No matter how guilty someone might be of a specific charge, it's still a serious problem if they're convicted of something unrelated which should never have been a crime.
Please elaborate extensively on the evidence the shows Russia to be complicit in election meddling. I've been watching endlessly for some hint the Russia was a compelling force in anything related to the 2016 election. And the same goes for the alleged Wikileaks connection to Russia, because all I've seen is unwarranted speculation and conjecture in this regard.
Personally, I'm waiting until all the cards are revealed before I solidify my opinion on this.
Why the snark? I too would like to know if there's a probable reason that's more specific - you're saying nobody knows, but then you're saying there is a probable reason, but then you're apparently mocking that probable reason. But you haven't provided any substance on the probable reason or why you're mocking it.
Not trying to be too snarky, just my best guess of what the charges will be. I think "national security" is the nose in the camel's tent that's being used to shift the government in a more authoritarian direction.
The charges are sealed and undisclosed. As the article [1] (linked by the article at the rolling stone) points out
> The prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”
> At another point in the document, the prosecutor wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”
meaning that they kept the charges closed and tried to hide their existence AND content until they have arrested him. So all of that is very much on purpose.
I think there's a spectrum of behaviors that range from legitimate news gathering to something very much like espionage.
Scenario 1:
Leaker: Hi, I'm XXX, I work for YYY and I'm witness to event ZZZ that I think must be exposed. I have classified documents to back up what I have to tell you.
Reporter: I'm going to stop you there and make sure my editor, owner, and lawyers are on board with this and determine how to proceed. Please do not communicate any classified material at this time.
Scenario 2:
Leaker: Hi, I'm unhappy with the general state of things and am willing to exfiltrate any secure data I can get my hands on.
Reporter: Great! What do you have access to? No, better, just send me a listing of everything. Here's a secure server and software that should crawl your net and get it out without raising any eyebrows. No wait, even better, I'll send you a USB dongle that will look like a keyboard to the hw event logger with everything you'll need on it.
Not saying Assange did exactly scenario #2, but I think the press can be only so much of an active participant before they incur some liability for the removal of classified information.
40 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadI don't understand how a prosecution of something completely unrelated to what he has done on/with wikileaks automagically translates into donald having 'broad new powers' to start throwing journalists in jail. If Assange is blamed for and/or convicted of some sexual misconduct or whatever (again, unrelated to his 'journalism' work), does the author think that all journalists are guilty of this and subject to imprisonment?
Edit: thanks for the explanations. I look forward to the incoming HN bury brigade, since I asked a question based on a false pretense. Such is the reddit^H^H^H^H^H^Hhackernews way.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-optimistic-it-will-prose...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-conclud...
My understanding is that it's far from clear how a case again Assange/wikileaks would play out in court. Like the article mentions, the New York Times and others have published classified information repeatedly -- how can Assange be indicted but not the NYT? Assange also isn't an American citizen and he hasn't leaked information himself, just published it. I think there's a good chance Assange would be acquitted.
I also think it's a bizarre exagerration to argue that an attempted prosecution of Assage would result in "broad new powers to put Trump’s media 'enemies' in jail".
Don't get me wrong -- I don't much care for Assange. It seems to me that there's a lot of hot air coming from him and he appears to have quite an ego. Also, though I understand there is disagreement about this, I think countries keep secrets for a reason and I consider it naive utopianism to expect everything to be brought into the open. In an ideal world, sure, but the world is not ideal.
While I don't think Assange/wikileaks are necessarily "siding with Russia," I do think that Russia has made use of wikileaks. Wikileaks is heavily promoted in Russian propaganda, and it seems at least plausible that Russia could obtain information and leak it through wikileaks. This is a problem for wikileaks: if you're all about freedom of information and you make public everything passed onto you, it's totally possible for state actors -- the same state actors whose behavior you find reprehensible -- to use you as a tool to further their own interests.
That is how power is gained, by taking risks. Maybe this will fail in court, maybe it won't. If it won't, the government will get more power.
"how can Assange be indicted but not the NYT?"
To demonstrate power, you don't need to be fair. In fact, not being fair is much more scary.
"I do think that Russia has made use of wikileaks"
To me, this begs a question, why was USA so inept in not making use of Wikileaks themselves? If it is an "independent" organization up for grabs.
Perhaps to get more power, you need a good enemy, too. That's why.
No it doesn't :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
The USA is inept as an organization. In some areas, by design (eg Patent Office, various Courts, Gerrymandering). There are very few areas where it's not completely hypocritical and demonstrates externally rational behavior. "Using wikileaks" would require multiple departments coordinating. That's been impractical for decades.
Why has this blase paragraph become so common? Want to defend Trump's actions on X as consistent with a past president? Include a paragraph on how you don't like him. Want to attack academia for being too much of an echo chamber ("grievance studies")? Make sure to have two paragraph digression on how you're a liberal, not one of those icky conservatives.
Why is it necessary to explain that defending an ethical norm in the case of a certain individual does not imply endorsement for all of that individual's actions? Can't we consider ethical arguments on their own merits, without regard to the underlying ideology of the speaker? Is it a garlic clove to ward off American hyperpartisanship?
It's my perception that such garlic cloves have become ubiquitous, where only a decade ago they were much rarer.
I think so, yes. I find myself doing it. You can't critique anyone or anything these days without whoever you're talking to automatically assuming you're a diehard fan of the other side.
I don't think so, no. Not on mainstream forums. They certainly have a lot of their own special forums, but on Reddit, and Facebook, and HackerNews, I find that most commenters are pretty much who you'd expect - random, middle of the road people.
> it's necessary to distance yourself or be assumed one of them
Have you considered the possibility that you only think these people are overrepresented because you assume anybody without a disclaimer is one of them?
I like these disclaimers. If someone comes out and states their opinion or bias on a topic, it gives you more context to understand their thought processes and how they came to the conclusion that they came to. It helps you understand the value system that underpins someone's argument.
Ethical arguments can't be made on their own merits, they can only be made in the context of shared value systems. By communicating more about your values, you give someone more insight to understand your ethical argument. If I know where our values differ, I can try to account for those differences. Ripping an ethical argument out of context and putting it in a social vacuum makes it alien and difficult to understand.
I think it's less about partisianship and more about keeping conversation on topic.
An easy way to not let it devolve into a conversation about how he's an ass is to initially concede that he is.
You'll find similar unnecessary disclaimers before any serious discussion of Pres. Trump these days (such as "I'm no fan of Trump but...") as if a black-and-white ('for us or against us', remember that?) view is right and proper and must be dismissed before any serious discussion can begin. Even when what they're about to describe is a continuation across US administrations. Majoritarian issues don't get that kind of framing. I rarely hear anyone say anything resembling "I'm no fan of mass surveillance, but...", or "I don't like extrajudicial murder like what the US does with the drone war, but...".
I think this depends almost entirely on what Assange is prosecuted for.
It's true that prosecutions of reporters began (after a post-Nixon lull) under Bush, and largely don't rely on anything that an Assange trial would determine. But there are at least two things Assange could be tried for which would seriously erode protections for reporters.
The article points out that the NYT has published classified information - that's basically the problem. Those publications aren't actually guaranteed to be legal. The Pentagon Papers case rejected a prior restraint argument for barring publication, but left open both the possibility of other prior restraint suits and the possibility of simple charges for mishandling classified information. A court case against Assange could be used to set either of those precedents, settling a currently-ambiguous question about press freedoms in the US under a Supreme Court that might well walk back the NYT v US interpretation. (And Assange can be indicted while the NYT isn't because that's discretionary - the DoJ is free to charge whoever they think is most likely to get them a convenient court ruling, however hypocritical that may be.)
Less likely but more even more frightening, some Congressmen have previously talked about charging Assange under the Espionage Act. In fact, a few people have specifically talked about having him subpoenaed without charge so that he could be extradited easily, then invoking Espionage Act once the capital punishment provision wouldn't cause complications. Convicting a non-resident non-citizen of espionage for sharing someone else's leaks would be a fairly shocking decision, but if it happened it would extend legal risk to reporters worldwide.
Edit: I was wrong about the lack of precedent here. A noncitizen has already been successfully charged for acts taken outside the United States which did not involve direct access to US resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Zehe
I haven't seriously followed what charges could be brought over the 2016/Russia question, since it seems relatively unlikely that a Trump DoJ would bring a case there. A subpoena over 2016 could potentially have come out of Congress, but that's not likely to lead to a criminal charge at present.
The usual foreign intelligence case officer is a non-citizen, often non-resident, whose main business is soliciting, recieving, and redistributing other people's leaks of sensitive information.
It is, to say the least, not at all unheard of for such people to be convicted of espionage, as they are literally the primary target of espionage laws.
> I haven't seriously followed what charges could be brought over the 2016/Russia question, since it seems relatively unlikely that a Trump DoJ would bring a case there.
“Trump DoJ” is too simple of a model; both the Special Counsel's Office at DoJ and other DoJ offices (notably SDNY) are bringing indictments politically uncomfortable to Trump, stemming from (but not always specific to) the “2016/Russia question”.
As for the DoJ, I agree that I simplified the issue. I'm making the assumption that the indictments we've seen so far are much more tractable for those offices than charging Assange would be, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.
I thought Espionage Act charges hadn't been levied against noncitizens operating wholly outside the United States, who would instead be charged under local espionage laws where they acted, US classified materials or other act-specific laws, or UCMJ spying rules in times of war. All of the cases I'd previously read about were either US citizens or foreigners like Truong and Yatskov who acted directly within US borders. It turns out this isn't true.
I'd never heard of Alfred Zehe, but apparently he was a German citizen who did some analysis for the Soviets in Mexico, and was arrested on Espionage Act charges when he later visited Boston. He filed for dismissal over this exact point - that he was a non-citizen, not in the US, and not directly accessing American sources - but was refused. And in a bizarrely ironic twist, it was Robert Mueller who directed prosecutors to withhold documents from the defense over "national security" that had already been offered to Warsaw Pact governments.
So it looks like not only was I wrong on the history of Espionage Act charges, but there's direct evidence that the current Special Counsel has no hesitation aggressively prosecuting such cases. I appreciate the correction.
The article obliquely addresses this concern:
> Ronald Reagan’s executive secretary for the National Security Council, Rodney McDaniel, estimated that 90 percent of what was classified didn’t need to be. The head of the 9/11 commission put the number at 75 percent.
> This created a huge amount of tension between so-called “real secrets” — things that really should never be made public, like military positions and the designs of mass-destruction weapons — and things that are merely extremely embarrassing to people in power and should come out. The bombing of civilian targets in Iraq was one example. The mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay was another.
While I'm sure that advocates of naively utopian absolute transparency do exist, a much stronger position is that perfectly legitimate reasons of security have been abused to protect bad actors in power. It's a lot easier to argue against leakers and for the necessity of classified information when the system for designating state secrets doesn't conspicuously lack integrity. Rather than "no secrets ever", the argument posits the necessity of leakers in an environment where the majority of secret info should not be secret.
--- Why? There is mounting evidence that Assange - whatever his idealistic intentions might have been with Wikileaks - has become an active conspirator in working with the Russians (and unsavory Americans) in undermining US democracy.
We don't live in a black and white world. Assange is undoubtedly a remarkable individual but he has a lot to learn and being the pariah whistleblower type is not good for him to learn some of the finer lessons, e.g. in diplomacy.
Assange controls when leaks are leaked, he makes sure Wikipedia is not as transparent as it needs to be, he has sought to monetize war and misery by the deals he has done. Compare and contrast with John Young at Cryptome.
Assange was in control of timing the 2016 email thing, there is no evidence beyond waffle said in Washington that the 'Reds' were behind the hack that got those emails.
Suggesting otherwise is to not fully appreciate how the Russians view the US and its politics. In the Kremlin they do not care who gets in to the White House because they know that whomever is there the policy towards Russia will be the same. If they do engage constructively with the US for a more peaceful world with free trade then they know that they can't do so with a 'puppet' regime elected by their meddling. It is not how it works.
So why do so many people think otherwise? Fascism. Hard to bandy that word around but it is true. Unless the left offer a party with policies that are appealing to people there is no option apart from fascism when regular capitalism fails. Right now we are in a period of badly failing capitalism, nobody has had wage increases for a long time, stocks only go up because of share buy back scams, the 2008 crash was a can kicked down the road by QE and the signs are all there. 1930's Germany was the same, they didn't vote for someone advertising themselves as a fascist, they voted for the Trump of their time.
So where did the emails come from? If it was not the Russians then it is time to look at the time stamp meta data, which I have not done myself but I believe it points to places outside of the Russian time zones. The same people wanting Brexit and the breakup of the EU are meddling, manipulating everyone to this lovely and actually fascist era of politics we are waking up to.
They appear to have been downloaded at about the speed of a USB stick, but that leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
If Assange is tried by a Trump DoJ, it almost certainly won't be tied to the 2016 election. Rather, it would be for any of Wikileaks' earlier actions - projects like Cablegate or Collateral Murder. Congressmen have already called for Espionage Act charges over those releases, so it's not a hard outcome to imagine. That would open up a range of alarming questions about handling of classified information, where current practice favors openness and disclosure but the legal situation isn't entirely clear.
Narrowly interpreted, transmitting or even linking to classified materials violates secrecy laws even after those materials leave classified control or become publicly accessible. New York Times Co. v. United States set a precedent in which journalists are not prosecuted for handling or publishing leaked materials. Alongside Branzburg v. Hayes and Lovell v. City of Griffin, which extend press rights to citizens generally, it creates a general presumption that only the actual exfiltration of classified material is prosecuted. But NYT v. US was decided narrowly on prior restraint, and no strict protection for publishing already-leaked classified materials exists.
Convicting someone for publishing classified materials which someone else leaked to them would effectively destroy this protection. Convicting a non-resident non-citizen on Espionage Act charges would create a bizarre situation in which interference with United States military actions by any party anywhere in the world would ostensibly be a capital crime in the US.
Those are the concerns at hand. No matter how guilty someone might be of a specific charge, it's still a serious problem if they're convicted of something unrelated which should never have been a crime.
Personally, I'm waiting until all the cards are revealed before I solidify my opinion on this.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller-indic...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-hel...
> The prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”
> At another point in the document, the prosecutor wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”
meaning that they kept the charges closed and tried to hide their existence AND content until they have arrested him. So all of that is very much on purpose.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/accidental-filing-indic...
Scenario 1: Leaker: Hi, I'm XXX, I work for YYY and I'm witness to event ZZZ that I think must be exposed. I have classified documents to back up what I have to tell you. Reporter: I'm going to stop you there and make sure my editor, owner, and lawyers are on board with this and determine how to proceed. Please do not communicate any classified material at this time.
Scenario 2: Leaker: Hi, I'm unhappy with the general state of things and am willing to exfiltrate any secure data I can get my hands on. Reporter: Great! What do you have access to? No, better, just send me a listing of everything. Here's a secure server and software that should crawl your net and get it out without raising any eyebrows. No wait, even better, I'll send you a USB dongle that will look like a keyboard to the hw event logger with everything you'll need on it.
Not saying Assange did exactly scenario #2, but I think the press can be only so much of an active participant before they incur some liability for the removal of classified information.