Despite not personally believing Assange is a journalist, I think this underlying story is true: the legal fate of journalists worldwide now hangs on the kinds of law abuse being wreaked on Assange. His rape case and his self imposed incarceration don't alter the risk to journalists and don't diminish the risk to journalists.
Finding stuff out now carries different risks to the old ones and shield laws and other defences like 1st don't cut it all the time.
> The Intercept was widely criticized when computer security experts discovered that the document included nearly invisible yellow “printer dots” that track exactly when and where it was printed, which most modern printers add to every document that gets printed. While there’s no evidence that these printer dots contributed to Winner becoming a suspect (the FBI’s affidavit says she was one of only six people who had printed this document, and the only one of those who had email contact with The Intercept), they could have aided an investigation, and The Intercept, as its editor-in-chief acknowledged, should have taken greater care to remove this metadata before publishing the document.
> That is because it is not only common but ethically required for a journalist to do everything possible to protect a source from detection.
I feel like my eyes just rolled out of their sockets. everything possible? sure -- how about not even running the story at all?
in this same article they quote snowden on how a real journalist would have thought about reality winner: “Bob Woodward stated publicly he would have advised me to remain in place and act as a mole.” imagine what the intercept could have learned by establishing a relationship with reality winner instead of rushing out a big nothing of a story for clicks, assisting a young person in ruining her life in the process. making it seem like the yellow dots were somehow the problem with how the intercept handled reality winner is nothing but a gaslight campaign.
>sure -- how about not even running the story at all?
Winner had already risked her career by sending the documents, presumably as she felt the story was important enough to release to the public. The entire thing was mishandled, The Intercept largely seems to understand that, but not printing it is nearly as bad.
Assange hasn't been indicted for publishing classified information. He's been indicted for aiding Manning in extracting classified information. There's a big difference. The government is arguing that he helped steal the information. There's no threat to press freedom here.
Thanks, I thought I went insane, over the last days I've wondered over and over again, "why can't I see the threat to press freedom", "don't they get it", "why are they spinning that press freedom story"?
As the article mentions, he is basically being charged for encouraging the source to acquire information and attempting to protect the source's identity. That is a threat to a free press.
It goes beyond encouraging. They're claiming he actively aided in some way. He's charged with hacking, basically. And he hasn't been found guilty of anything yet.
The "hacking" they claim he did was unsuccessfully try to crack a Windows password so Manning could access data from another account. That's protecting the source's identity.
Attempting this case is an attack on press freedom, the verdict shows if the attack is successful.
I keep seeing this emphasis on "unsuccessful" and while I understand why that should lead to less severe _potential_ sentence, I fail to understand why it should be important to establish if it was a crime. Same goes for motive.
thank you. i stand corrected. charged with conspiracy to gain access to a gov computer.
"In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department said Assange was charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks"
Charged with conspiracy to gain access to a computer Manning already had access to in a hope to protect Manning from being caught. Expected behavior for a journalist, and a dangerous thing to consider a crime.
>He did something illegal in order to hide the illegal activities of his accomplice.
Something the previous DoJ refused to charge him on as they said it would obviously violate the freedom of the press. As it is not a crime, it is routine behavior among journalists.
Publishing the leaks Manning provided makes him a journalist, your conspiracy theory about his loyalty doesn't change that. If there were any proof of your statement, don't you think that would be something he was charged with?
> The "hacking" they claim he did was unsuccessfully try to crack a Windows password so Manning could access data from another account. That's protecting the source's identity.
It's also unauthorized access to another account. What do we typically call unauthorized access to a computer? Hacking.
What would you think if Assange had assisted Manning by giving him a gun so he could kill someone who'd discovered that he had blown the whistle, in order to help protect his identity, but the gun didn't work?
>It's also unauthorized access to another account. What do we typically call unauthorized access to a computer?
At no point did Assange have unauthorized access to a computer. Manning had legitimate access, and sent a copy of a file to Assange. And it wasn't done to gain new information, just to protect the source of the information.
Your example is ridiculous, you can't compare an act that harms nobody to an attempted murder.
I think that qualifies as materially aiding in the crime. There's a huge difference between receiving and publishing illegally-obtained information that someone else provides you, and in actively aiding in the extraction of that information. I'm happy to let a judge review all the details and decide.
He's on the wrong side of the firewall to be doing anything particularly substantive. I'm just going off one article, but he was trying to guess a password [0]. He didn't succeed.
I'm not sure how people are claiming with a straight face that that sort of activity requires him to be dragged to the US to face the criminal justice system. It would appear to be a pretext for the more serious non-crime of upsetting powerful US politicians and bureaucrats.
> There's no threat to press freedom here.
This small group of people who associate with names like Manning, Snowden and Assange are responsible for one of the most illuminating and thorough views any member of the public has ever had into the practical and informal workings of government, ever. Maybe the post WWII historians have had a competitive viewing platform, but certainly not one so current. They have reshaped how a serious commentator would understand geopolitics.
If what they are doing isn't journalism, we should replace journalism with what they are doing - a no-holds-barred, factual and blunt examination of what is going on and why. This is a measured and deliberate push to shut down people who deal in facts. That is a threat to the truth-based discourse that we would all like to be involved in.
warms my heart to see such consistency in only the most True Neutral nebbish comments like this floating to the top of the ycombinator comments section
Read between the lines. It is highly questionable that there is actual evidence that he has committed conspiracy - in a perfect world, we would let the courts decide this, but it is obvious that it is not in the interests of the US government to see him go unpunished for what he did (which, even though it is protected under the first amendment, is highly embarrassing and damaging to multiple US administrations). This will have a chilling effect on press freedom, because it will discourage journalists from doing anything that could be construed as aiding a potential source - whatever that means.
To me, the most interesting point is that the Obama administration was in possession of the same information that the Trump administration used to accuse Assange of "hacking", and came to a very different conclusion.
>“The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.”
Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
One of the differences is that the Guardian has not, as far as I know, released the names of gay people living in Saudi Arabia, or Jewish people living in Baghdad.
In fact, it was The Guardian that was responsible for unintentionally exposing the password to an archive containing the unredacted versions of a great deal of the State Department cables they had received from Wikileaks.
They were somehow under the impression that the password they were given only applied to the copy of the archive that they were in possession of.
When they wrote the story of the events, they included a copy of the password for the archive, despite the fact that the archive had ended up on BitTorrent.
35 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 84.9 ms ] threadFinding stuff out now carries different risks to the old ones and shield laws and other defences like 1st don't cut it all the time.
> That is because it is not only common but ethically required for a journalist to do everything possible to protect a source from detection.
I feel like my eyes just rolled out of their sockets. everything possible? sure -- how about not even running the story at all?
in this same article they quote snowden on how a real journalist would have thought about reality winner: “Bob Woodward stated publicly he would have advised me to remain in place and act as a mole.” imagine what the intercept could have learned by establishing a relationship with reality winner instead of rushing out a big nothing of a story for clicks, assisting a young person in ruining her life in the process. making it seem like the yellow dots were somehow the problem with how the intercept handled reality winner is nothing but a gaslight campaign.
Winner had already risked her career by sending the documents, presumably as she felt the story was important enough to release to the public. The entire thing was mishandled, The Intercept largely seems to understand that, but not printing it is nearly as bad.
Right?
To me it just seems unlikely that a respected journalist would do this, but I may just be speaking out of ignorance.
Attempting this case is an attack on press freedom, the verdict shows if the attack is successful.
"In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department said Assange was charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks"
He did something illegal in order to hide the illegal activities of his accomplice.
> Expected behavior for a journalist
He's FSB property. Not a journalist.
Something the previous DoJ refused to charge him on as they said it would obviously violate the freedom of the press. As it is not a crime, it is routine behavior among journalists.
Publishing the leaks Manning provided makes him a journalist, your conspiracy theory about his loyalty doesn't change that. If there were any proof of your statement, don't you think that would be something he was charged with?
The success itself matters a bit. What matters more is actual probability of success.
It's also unauthorized access to another account. What do we typically call unauthorized access to a computer? Hacking.
What would you think if Assange had assisted Manning by giving him a gun so he could kill someone who'd discovered that he had blown the whistle, in order to help protect his identity, but the gun didn't work?
At no point did Assange have unauthorized access to a computer. Manning had legitimate access, and sent a copy of a file to Assange. And it wasn't done to gain new information, just to protect the source of the information.
Your example is ridiculous, you can't compare an act that harms nobody to an attempted murder.
I'm not sure how people are claiming with a straight face that that sort of activity requires him to be dragged to the US to face the criminal justice system. It would appear to be a pretext for the more serious non-crime of upsetting powerful US politicians and bureaucrats.
> There's no threat to press freedom here.
This small group of people who associate with names like Manning, Snowden and Assange are responsible for one of the most illuminating and thorough views any member of the public has ever had into the practical and informal workings of government, ever. Maybe the post WWII historians have had a competitive viewing platform, but certainly not one so current. They have reshaped how a serious commentator would understand geopolitics.
If what they are doing isn't journalism, we should replace journalism with what they are doing - a no-holds-barred, factual and blunt examination of what is going on and why. This is a measured and deliberate push to shut down people who deal in facts. That is a threat to the truth-based discourse that we would all like to be involved in.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/11/wiki...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634740
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644979
>“The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.”
Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...
They were somehow under the impression that the password they were given only applied to the copy of the archive that they were in possession of.
When they wrote the story of the events, they included a copy of the password for the archive, despite the fact that the archive had ended up on BitTorrent.