I have frequently seen the argument that Assange should be incarcerated because he is dis-likeable. Thankfully, that is not a crime in the U.S.
It seems that the federal government is trying to prosecute Assange for obtaining classified information from a source, a practice that is common among investigative journalists. (The details, I suppose, are in exactly how he obtained that information from the source). This seems to me to be clearly protected under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
A democracy that prosecutes civillians who obtain secret information from sources for the purpose of disseminating said information to the public will likely not remain a democracy for long.
That's not what they're trying to prosecute him for. They're prosecuting him for conspiracy to break into DoD computers. That's kind of similar, but it's not the same thing.
I suspect that if someone did source research by breaking the security of your computer, you would want them prosecuted, too. Journalists can't be persecuted for what they write, but they're not above the law.
This actually seems like great news for journalists. The fact that this is the only charge implies that prosecutors have decided that wikileaks’ core activity of publishing classified information obtained by others was actually legal.
The fact that assisting someone to break into a DoD computer turns out to be illegal probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. If someone asked for your help breaking into a DoD computer would you say “oh sure, that sounds like a perfectly legal thing that can’t possibly get me into trouble”?
I wouldn't underestimate the US. They could be laying this nice, comfy-looking trap to ease the extradition process from UK. Then once on US soil, the real charges are unveiled.
Sure, in the same sense that the same description could apply to torturing someone with relevant knowledge.
Freedom of the press is the right to publish, not an exemption from all criminal law so long as the object of the crime is acquisition of material for publication.
You're correct, but it's not immediately clear to me what it means to be part of such a conspiracy.
Would simply receiving classified information from Chelsea Manning count? (Probably not, I would guess.)
What about receiving classified information and then remarking "Wow, this is great stuff! I'm going to pass this information on to prominent news organizations through my website called Wikileaks. You don't have more that you could send me, do you?" Would this count as conspiracy if his remark lead to Manning obtaining more information in an illegal manner? It seems that something along these lines may have happened.
It seems to me that Assange should only be prosecuted if he broke into DoD computers himself. It doesn't appear that such an event occurred. I believe that discourse between a journalist and a source (or any two civillians, for that matter) is protected by the 1st Amendment. Thus, encouraging Manning to hack government computers, or even describing to her how to hack government computers[1], should both be protected by the 1st Amendment.
[1] Perhaps this opinion is controversial. Allow me to lay out an example:
Source: "I've sent you all the info I have! Everything else is password-protected."
Reporter: "The password isn't 'password123', is it?"
Source: "Hey, that worked! Let me send you some more stuff to help with your expose."
In this case, or even if the reporter suggested something more technically advanced like "Hey, look up sql injection on Wikipedia," I believe that the reporter's speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. (The source's activities are almost certainly illegal, but that doesn't answer the question of whether they should be prosecuted for them).
No, he’s being prosecuted for working with Manning to break into government computers, including trying to crack a password. That is not protected journalistic activity.
it may be what they are prosecuting him but they sending a very direct message to all the press at the same time. as in, like we have read with many other cases, the government can make any charge they want to get you. you might walk that fine line perfect but it doesn't matter when the people who hold the law in the backpocket can create new lines and stretch them as needed.
what people like assange, snowden, and manning, did, along with organizations like wikileaks, is take the muffled humor everyone joked about knowing their governments were up to no good and put it out in the open. sadly we need people and organizations like this because no matter how much we claim to be free we truly never are.
are there better ways to do what has been done? probably, but it is no less likely that better ways will simply be portrayed as needed to get the same legal outcome.
seeing that they are so narrow in their prosecution they are probably hoping to make it swift but I suspect as the weeks roll by there will be many more people standing behind assange. not necessarily for him but what his actions represented and accomplished.
> it may be what they are prosecuting him but they sending a very direct message to all the press at the same time. as in, like we have read with many other cases, the government can make any charge they want to get you. you might walk that fine line perfect but it doesn't matter when the people who hold the law in the backpocket can create new lines and stretch them as needed.
I have seen cases where the government did that first hand, and it's definitely a problem when it happens. But this is not one of those cases. There is not a fine line between a journalist receiving confidential material from a leaker, and someone trying to help someone else illegally expropriate confidential material from government computers. It's in fact a bright line, one that is absolutely necessary.
It is critical that, when real journalists invoke their privilege of publication, they be free from any accusation of engaged in illegal conduct to expropriate that material in the first place. Journalists have carefully avoided dabbling in illegal conduct themselves to protect their credibility and the leeway they receive from the law. Assange is the one who jeopardizes that privilege. Because the next time a journalist publishes stolen information, the government can hold up Assange as an example of why the journalist should be investigated to see if they had a hand in illegal activity.
I have no doubt that many folks who should be protesting Assange's arrest but aren't are acting thus because they dislike him. But I haven't seen anyone actually make that argument explicitly. I've seen more of the opposite -- e.g. that even though he may be an asshole, his arrest is wrong and sets a bad precedent.
In my opinion, Assange lost his moral high ground after it came out that he was communicating with Trump Jr. and helping the Trump campaign. And that he delayed and timed the DNC and Podesta leaks to cause maximum advantage to Trump, instead of just releasing them when ready. On top of that Wikileaks lied that they did not have contacts with the Trump campaign.
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.
If he exposed corruption or overreach in the Obama admin, or something that Hillary did as SoS, that had the side effect of Trump winning, that's fair game and he would have my support.
In other words, exposing government overreach = good.
Indiscriminately releasing private entities emails with intent to politically influence and gain political clout = bad.
For all of Snowden's fault of releasing too much information and details of NSA thats expected of a foreign focused intelligence agency like NSA after the initial leaks, atleast he never took partisan political sides.
But those aren't (imho) compelling arguments for charging Assange with a crime. Press protections should not be contingent on making a judgment of whether a journalist's work is deemed "good" or otherwise noble. Also, being a "private entity" is not a litmus test for whether an entity is public and newsworthy -- news orgs aren't barred from publishing secret/confidential material from corporations or entertainment celebrities.
>I have no doubt that many folks who should be protesting Assange's arrest but aren't are acting thus because they dislike him. But I haven't seen anyone actually make that argument explicitly.
I am making that argument explicitly, though I don't claim to speak for everyone. Public opinion and sympathy varies from case to case based on perceptions.
> Also, being a "private entity" is not a litmus test for whether an entity is public and newsworthy
What's newsworthy about leaking someone being on maternity leave? The only newsworthy thing that came out of Podesta's emails was that 4chan and alt right trolls and conspiracy theorists created Pizzagate out of thin air, causing death threats to families and communities.
What's newsworthy about publishing details of agents in secret in places like Afghanistan, apart from endangering their lives at the hands of terrorists? What's newsworthy about publishing social security numbers and passwords unredacted?
Why should press protections apply to someone that tried to crack a NTLM password of a login of the US military? If anyone else did that, they would be prosecuted, why should Assange get special treatment?
Edit: In case you think things like Pizzagate were not aided and abetted by Wikileaks, they helpfully created a wiki for it.
Basically helping spread nonsensical fringe conspiracy theories to destabilize the US, just like Russia wants. Their goal wasn't to expose anything, it was to inflame the US and support Trump at any cost to divide the nation and weaken it.
not out of thin air. but by several suggestive photos, some with pro-pedophilic comments/captions. If you were a PR firm, one of the few ways you could deflect accusations would be to infiltrate that group and make statements on their behalf that are as bizarre and irrational as possible. Which is funny because that's exactly what happened. All the signal was drowned out by orders-of-magnitude more noise.
Was the british pariliament child abuse ring made up out of thin air too ? Why didn't they just drown that out as fake news from alt conspiracists ?
> In my opinion, Assange lost his moral high ground after it came out that he was communicating with Trump Jr. and helping the Trump campaign
In my opinion, Donna Brazile lost her moral high ground after it came out, from Assange, via the Podesta leaks, that she was communicating with the Clinton Campaign and helping them prep the debate questions.
Or does "moral high ground" only apply to one side in your book?
> he delayed and timed the DNC and Podesta leaks to cause maximum advantage
Very unjournalistic of him! Real news organizations never play sides, or game the news cycle, or the political cycle.
For example: I'm confident someone just a happened to stumble upon the Access Hollywood tapes in some dusty archive right at the moment they were released, and no thought was given to timing.
> If he exposed corruption or overreach in the Obama admin, or something that Hillary did as SoS, that had the side effect of Trump winning, that's fair game and he would have my support.
Did he ever mention Libya in any of his leaks or interviews? I forget.
Yea, she leaked that the debate held in Flint, Michigan would talk about lead contamination in the drinking water, as if that wasn't super obvious.
Yes, it was a shitty move, she wasn't on high moral ground in my book in the first place. But why bring up the whataboutism? Lets agree that both Donna and Assange are political agenda driven partisans not deserving of respect? But it was never a secret with Donna, she was always heavily democratic and partisan and it's known to everyone. Meanwhile Assange tries superhard to appear non-partisan, even begging Trump Jr for some leaks so that he could fake being nonpartisan!
>Very unjournalistic of him! Real news organizations never play sides, or game the news cycle, or the political cycle.
So Assange is bad as Fox News or MSNBC now? I thought the hype about Wikileaks was how clean they were.
>For example: I'm confident someone just a happened to stumble upon the Access Hollywood tapes in some dusty archive right at the moment they were released, and no thought was given to timing.
So Wikileaks is the same as shitty media sources and not some saints out to change the world like 75% of ppl on here are saying?
> It seems that the federal government is trying to prosecute Assange for obtaining classified information from a source
No, they are prosecuting him for conspiring with Manning to gain access to classified material to which Manning did not have lawful access.
Conspiracy to commit a crime involves two or more people agreeing to a common purpose, which purpose involves a crime, and at least one of those people taking at least one overt act to advance toward acheiving the criminal purpose. (Note they the overt act can be by any member of the conspiracy, and all of them.can be charged.)
>and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to news organizations
The news media likes to pretend that there is a special status for news organizations and journalists. This is a common misconception that we need to fight against. The First Amendment is not just for news organization, it is for every US person. Back when the First Amendment was proposed and ratified, anyone could obtain a printing press. The First Amendment makes no distinction for a news organization or other publisher vs an ordinary citizen.
An example of new organizations trying to give themselves special status is Chris Cuomo assertion that if you were not a media organization it would be a crime for you to possess the Wikileaks emails.
I agree that people misinterpret the 1st Amendment as providing protections specific to "news organizations" (though various states have given various state-level protections to news orgs). But the author here doesn't appear to be doing that. The full paragraph and the next:
> Is the WikiLeaks founder, who until Thursday had been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for years, essentially a publisher — though a notably strange one — who believes in taking radical steps to expose government secrets, and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to news organizations?
> Or is he a reckless traitor — and by no means a journalist — who deserves no such consideration and who should be prosecuted without worrying about free-press concerns.
Her rhetorical question allows for Assange, an individual, to be considered a publisher, i.e. a news organization. In the next graf, it's clearer she's framing the conflict as: "Is Assange a journalist and thus are his actions protected by the rights to a free press?". But I agree that the sentence you quoted could have been better stated as:
> and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to journalists.
But I assume the reason why she said "news organizations" is because her intended audience are people who work at news organizations, i.e. they should be reading it as:
> and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to you.
Well, regardless of your opinion of Assange, he cannot be guilty of traitorous activity. He is not a US citizen or even resident. He is not in a position to have committed treason against the US. Might he have committed crimes against the US? Sure, if the conspiracy to break into US Gov systems charge is true.
Now Manning? That was treason, arguably during a time of war. Once upon a time, that was a summary execution. Manning got off easy with the 35 year initial sentence and even easier after Obama commuted the sentence.
Manning wasn’t convicted of treason though. You cannot apply sentencing for charges not convicted.
35 years was excessive sentencing for Manning’s conviction. Considering the volume and seriousness of conduct a sentence of 5-8 years would have been more appropriate as compared to other related convictions.
Whether convicted or not, Manning was found guilty of disclosing tens of thousands of classified documents to someone/some organization Manning knew that was intent on publicly disclosing that information, thus aiding an enemy in a time of war, aka, treason.
Manning may not have been convicted of treason, but it is obvious from the crimes Manning was convicted of, and the circumstances under which the crimes were committed, that treason was committed.
IANAL, but it seems to me that given the conviction they were able to get, prosecution could have easily gotten a treason conviction as well. Seems to me to have been more of a political play. Obama got a "win" in being tough on leakers of classified info, got a tough sentence, and then with a wink of the eye on the way out the door after 2 terms commutes the sentence (yes, not a full pardon).
Like I said, stinks of political interference and nothing to do about the totality of the crime(s) committed.
Manning was convicted of a real crime, a felony. It doesn't matter how much you wish Manning were convicted of anything else. Manning could only be sentenced for the crimes convicted.
> Back when the First Amendment was proposed and ratified, anyone could obtain a printing press
No, they were rather expensive pieces of equipment. You're better off with a town-cryer example, as anyone could stand on a corner and yell out the news (or their opinions) The town-cryer approach is like today's internet where anyone can throw up a blog. But the modern equivalent of a small printing press from a hundred years is still beyond the reach of most.
WL publishes documents with minimal context and no subtext, no added commentary or presentation whatsoever. Which shows how dependent on presentation has news reporting become. What Assange accomplished should be viewed as a priceless resource for journalists, reams of data and pure info, in unedited original words, there to speak for itself. If "fake news" is the grand enemy today, then the feds are after the one and only purveyor of hard facts without color, what they purport to favor in reactionary ideology.
but they also release selectively. and with precision timing.
I'm deeply conflicted about WL and Assange. I agree that a WL like org is needed for open democracy. but at the same time these fuckers were clearly working against democracy and in cahoots with the Russians.
>“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”
What you describe sounds great, but that's not what WikiLeaks was like. They exposed stuff like "information for every female voter in 79 of Turkey’s 81 provinces — more than 20 million entries’ worth of addresses and cell-phone numbers".
Is that the kind of "reams of data and pure info", "hard facts without color" that should be viewed as a "priceless resource for journalists"? Of course not. That's negligent exposure of people's private information, towards absolutely no public interest whatsoever, and causing much public harm.
>"information for every female voter in 79 of Turkey’s 81 provinces — more than 20 million entries’ worth of addresses and cell-phone numbers".
This is a lie spread by serial fabricator Zeynep Tufekci, WL never released or hosted this dump. Wikileaks retweeted a link to this dump.
natsecgeek/Emma Best posted this dump by an unknown hacker, WL and thousands of others retweeted it. At the time it wasn’t described as “turkish female voter db” or anything.
The voter dump had nothing at all to do with the AKP email dump mentioned in the story.
Thank you for your detailed response. Can you clarify a few points for me?
• You quote some text from my comment and say "This is a lie", but the rest of your statement doesn't appear to contradict anything I wrote, including the part you quoted. Is my understanding correct, that neither the text you quoted nor the rest of my comment are a lie, and in fact are both factually correct?
• How many things has "serial fabricator" Zeynep Tefukci fabricated? Can you provide any other examples of things she has fabricated? Are they all about Wikileaks, or does she fabricate things about lots of people and orgs?
• To be clear, you're saying that Tefukci did not fabricate that Wikileaks tweeted links to the voter dump, nor did she fabricate the irresponsible and harmful information contained in this dump, right? Did she fabricate anything about this incident, or are you just saying we should expect her to mislead us?
• You said "The voter dump had nothing at all to do with the AKP email dump". Zeynep Tefukci claims that Wikileaks tweeted "Here’s the full data for our Turkey AKP emails + more" with a link to the page to download the voter dump: https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-07-27-1469653180-1063...
Is that purported tweet a fabrication, and if so what evidence is there that it's a fabrication? (E.g. the original image that was manipulated to fabricate the screenshot of the tweet, or a link to the tweet whose screenshot was manipulated, or a report asserting that her screenshot was a fabrication from a news source more reputable than HuffPo--not an outrageously high bar, I think we can agree.) Or are you saying that though they tweeted that, nonetheless the voter dump mistake should be considered irrelevant to the AKP email dump story?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 72.0 ms ] threadIt seems that the federal government is trying to prosecute Assange for obtaining classified information from a source, a practice that is common among investigative journalists. (The details, I suppose, are in exactly how he obtained that information from the source). This seems to me to be clearly protected under the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
A democracy that prosecutes civillians who obtain secret information from sources for the purpose of disseminating said information to the public will likely not remain a democracy for long.
So for doing source research.
"[Reporters Without Borders] is also still troubled by the arrest of journalists during #Blacklivesmatter protests in Baltimore and Minneapolis."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/475017281...
This actually seems like great news for journalists. The fact that this is the only charge implies that prosecutors have decided that wikileaks’ core activity of publishing classified information obtained by others was actually legal.
The fact that assisting someone to break into a DoD computer turns out to be illegal probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. If someone asked for your help breaking into a DoD computer would you say “oh sure, that sounds like a perfectly legal thing that can’t possibly get me into trouble”?
Sure, in the same sense that the same description could apply to torturing someone with relevant knowledge.
Freedom of the press is the right to publish, not an exemption from all criminal law so long as the object of the crime is acquisition of material for publication.
Would simply receiving classified information from Chelsea Manning count? (Probably not, I would guess.)
What about receiving classified information and then remarking "Wow, this is great stuff! I'm going to pass this information on to prominent news organizations through my website called Wikileaks. You don't have more that you could send me, do you?" Would this count as conspiracy if his remark lead to Manning obtaining more information in an illegal manner? It seems that something along these lines may have happened.
It seems to me that Assange should only be prosecuted if he broke into DoD computers himself. It doesn't appear that such an event occurred. I believe that discourse between a journalist and a source (or any two civillians, for that matter) is protected by the 1st Amendment. Thus, encouraging Manning to hack government computers, or even describing to her how to hack government computers[1], should both be protected by the 1st Amendment.
[1] Perhaps this opinion is controversial. Allow me to lay out an example:
Source: "I've sent you all the info I have! Everything else is password-protected." Reporter: "The password isn't 'password123', is it?" Source: "Hey, that worked! Let me send you some more stuff to help with your expose."
In this case, or even if the reporter suggested something more technically advanced like "Hey, look up sql injection on Wikipedia," I believe that the reporter's speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. (The source's activities are almost certainly illegal, but that doesn't answer the question of whether they should be prosecuted for them).
what people like assange, snowden, and manning, did, along with organizations like wikileaks, is take the muffled humor everyone joked about knowing their governments were up to no good and put it out in the open. sadly we need people and organizations like this because no matter how much we claim to be free we truly never are.
are there better ways to do what has been done? probably, but it is no less likely that better ways will simply be portrayed as needed to get the same legal outcome.
seeing that they are so narrow in their prosecution they are probably hoping to make it swift but I suspect as the weeks roll by there will be many more people standing behind assange. not necessarily for him but what his actions represented and accomplished.
I have seen cases where the government did that first hand, and it's definitely a problem when it happens. But this is not one of those cases. There is not a fine line between a journalist receiving confidential material from a leaker, and someone trying to help someone else illegally expropriate confidential material from government computers. It's in fact a bright line, one that is absolutely necessary.
It is critical that, when real journalists invoke their privilege of publication, they be free from any accusation of engaged in illegal conduct to expropriate that material in the first place. Journalists have carefully avoided dabbling in illegal conduct themselves to protect their credibility and the leeway they receive from the law. Assange is the one who jeopardizes that privilege. Because the next time a journalist publishes stolen information, the government can hold up Assange as an example of why the journalist should be investigated to see if they had a hand in illegal activity.
In my opinion, Assange lost his moral high ground after it came out that he was communicating with Trump Jr. and helping the Trump campaign. And that he delayed and timed the DNC and Podesta leaks to cause maximum advantage to Trump, instead of just releasing them when ready. On top of that Wikileaks lied that they did not have contacts with the Trump campaign.
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.
If he exposed corruption or overreach in the Obama admin, or something that Hillary did as SoS, that had the side effect of Trump winning, that's fair game and he would have my support.
In other words, exposing government overreach = good.
Indiscriminately releasing private entities emails with intent to politically influence and gain political clout = bad.
For all of Snowden's fault of releasing too much information and details of NSA thats expected of a foreign focused intelligence agency like NSA after the initial leaks, atleast he never took partisan political sides.
>I have no doubt that many folks who should be protesting Assange's arrest but aren't are acting thus because they dislike him. But I haven't seen anyone actually make that argument explicitly.
I am making that argument explicitly, though I don't claim to speak for everyone. Public opinion and sympathy varies from case to case based on perceptions.
> Also, being a "private entity" is not a litmus test for whether an entity is public and newsworthy
What's newsworthy about leaking someone being on maternity leave? The only newsworthy thing that came out of Podesta's emails was that 4chan and alt right trolls and conspiracy theorists created Pizzagate out of thin air, causing death threats to families and communities.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john...
And someone going to Comet Ping Pong and firing shots. Feel free to point me to Podesta's emails being newsworthy.
Not to mention Assange intentionally falsely implying Seth Rich was the real leaker, causing distress to his family.
>news orgs aren't barred from publishing secret/confidential material from corporations or entertainment celebrities
That's why I never thought Gawker held a high moral ground.
What's newsworthy about doxxing almost all women in Turkey?
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-hel...
What's newsworthy about publishing details of agents in secret in places like Afghanistan, apart from endangering their lives at the hands of terrorists? What's newsworthy about publishing social security numbers and passwords unredacted?
Why should press protections apply to someone that tried to crack a NTLM password of a login of the US military? If anyone else did that, they would be prosecuted, why should Assange get special treatment?
Edit: In case you think things like Pizzagate were not aided and abetted by Wikileaks, they helpfully created a wiki for it.
https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate
Basically helping spread nonsensical fringe conspiracy theories to destabilize the US, just like Russia wants. Their goal wasn't to expose anything, it was to inflame the US and support Trump at any cost to divide the nation and weaken it.
There was also Hillary's ironic Wall Street speeches and Donna's debate prep. Not a good look!
not out of thin air. but by several suggestive photos, some with pro-pedophilic comments/captions. If you were a PR firm, one of the few ways you could deflect accusations would be to infiltrate that group and make statements on their behalf that are as bizarre and irrational as possible. Which is funny because that's exactly what happened. All the signal was drowned out by orders-of-magnitude more noise.
Was the british pariliament child abuse ring made up out of thin air too ? Why didn't they just drown that out as fake news from alt conspiracists ?
In my opinion, Donna Brazile lost her moral high ground after it came out, from Assange, via the Podesta leaks, that she was communicating with the Clinton Campaign and helping them prep the debate questions.
Or does "moral high ground" only apply to one side in your book?
> he delayed and timed the DNC and Podesta leaks to cause maximum advantage
Very unjournalistic of him! Real news organizations never play sides, or game the news cycle, or the political cycle.
For example: I'm confident someone just a happened to stumble upon the Access Hollywood tapes in some dusty archive right at the moment they were released, and no thought was given to timing.
> If he exposed corruption or overreach in the Obama admin, or something that Hillary did as SoS, that had the side effect of Trump winning, that's fair game and he would have my support.
Did he ever mention Libya in any of his leaks or interviews? I forget.
Yea, she leaked that the debate held in Flint, Michigan would talk about lead contamination in the drinking water, as if that wasn't super obvious.
Yes, it was a shitty move, she wasn't on high moral ground in my book in the first place. But why bring up the whataboutism? Lets agree that both Donna and Assange are political agenda driven partisans not deserving of respect? But it was never a secret with Donna, she was always heavily democratic and partisan and it's known to everyone. Meanwhile Assange tries superhard to appear non-partisan, even begging Trump Jr for some leaks so that he could fake being nonpartisan!
>Very unjournalistic of him! Real news organizations never play sides, or game the news cycle, or the political cycle.
So Assange is bad as Fox News or MSNBC now? I thought the hype about Wikileaks was how clean they were.
>For example: I'm confident someone just a happened to stumble upon the Access Hollywood tapes in some dusty archive right at the moment they were released, and no thought was given to timing.
So Wikileaks is the same as shitty media sources and not some saints out to change the world like 75% of ppl on here are saying?
Thanks for making my point.
Why would Assange lose his moral high ground by acting consistently?
It’s no news that Assange wants to destroy the US, working with the Trump campaign seems like an obvious choice.
You've been breaking this guideline badly, and even creating extra accounts to break it harder. If you won't stop we'll ban the account.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No, they are prosecuting him for conspiring with Manning to gain access to classified material to which Manning did not have lawful access.
Conspiracy to commit a crime involves two or more people agreeing to a common purpose, which purpose involves a crime, and at least one of those people taking at least one overt act to advance toward acheiving the criminal purpose. (Note they the overt act can be by any member of the conspiracy, and all of them.can be charged.)
The news media likes to pretend that there is a special status for news organizations and journalists. This is a common misconception that we need to fight against. The First Amendment is not just for news organization, it is for every US person. Back when the First Amendment was proposed and ratified, anyone could obtain a printing press. The First Amendment makes no distinction for a news organization or other publisher vs an ordinary citizen.
An example of new organizations trying to give themselves special status is Chris Cuomo assertion that if you were not a media organization it would be a crime for you to possess the Wikileaks emails.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
> Is the WikiLeaks founder, who until Thursday had been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for years, essentially a publisher — though a notably strange one — who believes in taking radical steps to expose government secrets, and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to news organizations?
> Or is he a reckless traitor — and by no means a journalist — who deserves no such consideration and who should be prosecuted without worrying about free-press concerns.
Her rhetorical question allows for Assange, an individual, to be considered a publisher, i.e. a news organization. In the next graf, it's clearer she's framing the conflict as: "Is Assange a journalist and thus are his actions protected by the rights to a free press?". But I agree that the sentence you quoted could have been better stated as:
> and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to journalists.
But I assume the reason why she said "news organizations" is because her intended audience are people who work at news organizations, i.e. they should be reading it as:
> and who thus should be afforded the same First Amendment protections given to you.
Now Manning? That was treason, arguably during a time of war. Once upon a time, that was a summary execution. Manning got off easy with the 35 year initial sentence and even easier after Obama commuted the sentence.
35 years was excessive sentencing for Manning’s conviction. Considering the volume and seriousness of conduct a sentence of 5-8 years would have been more appropriate as compared to other related convictions.
Manning may not have been convicted of treason, but it is obvious from the crimes Manning was convicted of, and the circumstances under which the crimes were committed, that treason was committed.
IANAL, but it seems to me that given the conviction they were able to get, prosecution could have easily gotten a treason conviction as well. Seems to me to have been more of a political play. Obama got a "win" in being tough on leakers of classified info, got a tough sentence, and then with a wink of the eye on the way out the door after 2 terms commutes the sentence (yes, not a full pardon).
Like I said, stinks of political interference and nothing to do about the totality of the crime(s) committed.
No, they were rather expensive pieces of equipment. You're better off with a town-cryer example, as anyone could stand on a corner and yell out the news (or their opinions) The town-cryer approach is like today's internet where anyone can throw up a blog. But the modern equivalent of a small printing press from a hundred years is still beyond the reach of most.
I'm deeply conflicted about WL and Assange. I agree that a WL like org is needed for open democracy. but at the same time these fuckers were clearly working against democracy and in cahoots with the Russians.
>“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”
What a joke.
And propagating nonsense on the website.
https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate
Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...
Is that the kind of "reams of data and pure info", "hard facts without color" that should be viewed as a "priceless resource for journalists"? Of course not. That's negligent exposure of people's private information, towards absolutely no public interest whatsoever, and causing much public harm.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-hel...
This is a lie spread by serial fabricator Zeynep Tufekci, WL never released or hosted this dump. Wikileaks retweeted a link to this dump.
natsecgeek/Emma Best posted this dump by an unknown hacker, WL and thousands of others retweeted it. At the time it wasn’t described as “turkish female voter db” or anything.
The voter dump had nothing at all to do with the AKP email dump mentioned in the story.
WL never even had the voter data https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoV8zQrUIAA2bPG?format=jpg&name=...
• You quote some text from my comment and say "This is a lie", but the rest of your statement doesn't appear to contradict anything I wrote, including the part you quoted. Is my understanding correct, that neither the text you quoted nor the rest of my comment are a lie, and in fact are both factually correct?
• How many things has "serial fabricator" Zeynep Tefukci fabricated? Can you provide any other examples of things she has fabricated? Are they all about Wikileaks, or does she fabricate things about lots of people and orgs?
• To be clear, you're saying that Tefukci did not fabricate that Wikileaks tweeted links to the voter dump, nor did she fabricate the irresponsible and harmful information contained in this dump, right? Did she fabricate anything about this incident, or are you just saying we should expect her to mislead us?
• You said "The voter dump had nothing at all to do with the AKP email dump". Zeynep Tefukci claims that Wikileaks tweeted "Here’s the full data for our Turkey AKP emails + more" with a link to the page to download the voter dump: https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-07-27-1469653180-1063...
Is that purported tweet a fabrication, and if so what evidence is there that it's a fabrication? (E.g. the original image that was manipulated to fabricate the screenshot of the tweet, or a link to the tweet whose screenshot was manipulated, or a report asserting that her screenshot was a fabrication from a news source more reputable than HuffPo--not an outrageously high bar, I think we can agree.) Or are you saying that though they tweeted that, nonetheless the voter dump mistake should be considered irrelevant to the AKP email dump story?