One of the most up voted comments on another thread about this was in effect "Assange has been cleared." No, he pleaded guilty and served five years in prison, it's just that he already served that time since he was never released pending trial.
Dude was locked up for longer than we would have had him in prison. Time served was the right choice and reinforces that we're not the country assange wants to paint us as.
You've just misunderstood what freedom of speech is. The government won't jail you for your opinions. You can say whatever you want that isn't a threat or call to violence.
Let's be real though. That's why people get to call you names when they disagree with you. They also have that same protected speech.
Protesting is a thing you are doing while exercising your free speech. However, you can be doing 2 things at once. Exercising your free speech while committing the crime of trespassing, etc. That one right doesn't make you legally immune to anything else you're doing.
Of course, people commit crimes while protesting to give their protest some teeth, and in some cases to bring attention to the law they might be protesting. But you should be prepared to be fined and arrested during spicy protests. People sitting in the road acting shocked they get hit and dragged away just make me feel like I'm looking at too many shocked Pikachus. You should expect it. That's why you are there. If you didn't face violence you aren't really showing how strongly you feel. That's what it means to stand against opposition.
Worse, it validates the precedent that non-U.S.-citizens can be prosecuted for breaking U.S. law over things they did outside of the U.S.
Really happy that Assange gets to go home, since he's suffered enough personally, but I really don't like the precedent that I can be prosecuted in, say, Israel under Israeli law for things that I did in Wisconsin (e.g. boycotting).
There are reports of mass violations being committed against hostages in israeli concentration camps such as the one in the Negev desert. Which is now closed (moved elsewhere) because of all the reports coming out
Are you saying they should arrest the journalists that wrote those reports?
No. There is a massive difference between journalists and Assange. He didn't solicit evidence of crimes. He solicited any and all classified information. Then he straight up edited the stuff he did get to make it look like the US was committing war crimes. He also released diplomatic cables entirely calculated to damage the ability of the US to conduct diplomacy. Finally he straight up interfered in an election by releasing private emails that were hacked by Russian Intelligence. Not one to leave things to chance, he didn't exactly edit them this time. (That backfired hard when the Army just released all the footage and reports) Instead he added editorial titles to email chains he knew no one was really going to dig through. Just enough cover so conservative outlets could run attack ads and articles using his product.
Yes, and I've seen the full video and Army reports debunking it. That's why it never went anywhere outside the far left and Russia/China. He had to literally edit the video and create an out of context snuff film before it suited his purposes.
I have in fact seen it. Multiple times. They embedded with anti coalition forces that were shadowing that convoy for hours. Embedding on either side is always a roll of the dice in a war zone. But nobody is going to eat an RPG because of Schroedinger's reporter. And yes it was an RPG, the ground forces found them afterwards and took pictures.
At the end of the day those reporters made a bad decision in a place that didn't have any room for bad decisions. That's all there is to it.
Other sovereign nations get to make their own laws and legal systems without our control. They can make bullshit laws if they want to, like conflating journalism with spying. Then they can charge journalists in another country with a crime and extradite them to face charges. But, spying or journalism or criticizing their king, the details didn't really matter, they could charge anybody anybody, anywhere in the world with any crime they want. And since it's another country, we have no assurances of due process there.
Yeah, they already do that. Don't go and publish a ton of articles criticizing Lese Majeste and expect to freely travel to a Direct Rule Monarchy or any country that is a client state of a Direct Rule Monarchy.
But extreme examples aside, every country in the world will come for you if you want to reveal their military secrets, including who is working for that country secretly in other countries. This isn't just him dropping one video. There was an entire document dump that caused the CIA to pull hundreds of people out of the field. And no matter what your personal feelings on the matter are, countries view their intelligence activities as legitimate, secret, and not subject to whistleblower rules unless a crime (that they have on the books) is being exposed. Raw dogging the entire secret intranet for everything you can fit on a USB is not whistleblowing or reporting.
Travel to those countries? The precedent here is that China has the right to extradite me for supporting democracy in Hong Kong from here in the U.S., never once even leaving my house. Assange was not a U.S. citizen, and located outside of U.S. territory.
Of course, the U.S. won't cooperate with the extradition request, but that's just a matter of power relationships, not principles. The principle is that everybody in the world is subject to every country's laws. Or, every person in the world is subject to the laws of the U.S., which fundamentally breaks the rule of law.
It's scary how many people out there are okay with that.
Are you actually managing sources of classified Chinese documents? This breathless attempt to conflate espionage with having an opinion about another country is ridiculous.
And you keep saying espionage, invoking a word as if it's some special kind of crime exempt from the rule of law, and also immutable. China gets to define what espionage is under their laws. The U.S. did mangle it far beyond the common definition to pursue Assange.
That's an expansive definition that also describes what a journalist does, which is what upset defenders of civil liberties about the prosecution of Assange. The usual connotation of the word espionage, however, is that it is done by an organization, against adversaries, for its own benefit. Assange was explicitly seeking information from whistleblowers to release to the world. Like a journalist.
But to my point, the CIA explicitly engages in espionage as its mission. So would President Xi be justified in sending his police to the environs of Langley to drag CIA employees out of their beds and before a court to stand trial in Beijing? I say no, because they're American citizens in the United States. Chinese law should not apply here in America.
Traditionally, courts need to have jurisdiction to hear a dispute, and it comes in multiple types: There's subject-matter jurisdiction; a municipal traffic court has subject matter jurisdiction over traffic infractions. It can't hear a murder case. Then, there's personal jurisdiction, meaning it has power to compel an appearance by a defendant, and impose penalties or assess damages. Personal jurisdiction usually comes from citizenship, or physical presence. State and federal courts have wide-ranging personal jurisdiction, but even then they have to "reach out and touch someone" with service of a summons to effect it. (Trial in-absentia is not allowed in the U.S. unless the defendant waives the right to appear.) Tangentially, the admiralty law system developed because of a lack of a country's courts' personal jurisdiction over foreign nationals, and suing property (the basis of civil forfeiture) came about due to sailors simply returning to their home countries, out of legal reach.
Thus, the idea of prosecuting a foreign national outside of the U.S., for actions undertaken outside of the U.S., in places where U.S. law shouldn't apply—essentially extending a U.S. court's personal jurisdiction to the whole planet—is deeply troubling. Even if it's just one category of crime, like espionage. If there's one exception, then there's no practical protection, since a country can define espionage in any way it wants to trigger the exception. Or not. It could just accuse somebody of espionage, evidence be damned. After all, that person would be hauled off to a foreign land before being able to mount a defense in court.
I'm not going to write an entire paper on the differences between journalists and spies to satisfy an Internet stranger. Organizations like the NYT act completely differently with their sources than Assange did. They release documents only after carefully checking for information that can put people in danger, and they never do something for the sole purpose of harming a country.
We know this law doesn't apply to journalists because they tried to use it against them during the Cold War and the courts told them it wouldn't fly. So all this hand wringing over civil rights is just concern trolling to defend someone who made themselves an enemy of the US by working with Russian intelligence agencies to interfere in our elections.
Edit to add - if you really want to claim our civil courts didn't have jurisdiction we could always have let the military handle it. We certainly wouldn't be watching him go home right now though.
No it was more than that, he actively helped Chelsea hack into files she didn't have access to. He literally hacked into classified databases of the US military. Much worse than leaking info.
Revealing Chinese war crimes is also a crime in China.
If China forcefully extradites an American journalists because the journalist leaks secret Chinese state documents of Uyghur concentration camps... would you be defending China because the journalist did something "illegal"?
Well no, because one of the rules for extradition is both countries must consider it a crime.
And before you answer, I'm pretty sure China has done exactly this from countries friendly to them. Which falls under the heading of journalists needing to be aware of the realities of where they're going. It's just not American journalists because we still have a bigger stick for now.
So again, let me know when the NYT is running information operations to discredit China. Exposing Human Rights violations is not what Assange is guilty of.
Well no, because one of the rules for extradition is both countries must consider it a crime.
No that's not true. Only the country demanding the extradition has to mark someone as a criminal. Often extradition treaties are made so if one country marks someone as a criminal and they flee somewhere else, that country will deliver them the criminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition
In this case America is heavily abusing the extradition treaty by marking a journalist as a criminal because he leaked evidence of war crimes.
I’m pretty sure China has done exactly this from countries friendly to them.
Accusing America of violating press freedom doesn't mean I'm somehow defending Chinese press freedom. There's a reason I'm equating America to China here.
Yes, and the "Iraq War Logs". So again, get back to me when the NYT releases just whatever they can get with the express intent of harming the US war effort and reputation on the global stage.
Sure, except journalists openly talk about how they let themselves be manipulated by the Bush White House. And they report on thousands of different public interest stories, from street paving in NY to global politics.
And none of it includes what Assange did, except their coverage of his actions as a story.
He was not in trouble for leaking information. He literally helped Chelsea hack into classified files she didn't have access to, he actively participated in breaching security inside the US military. Very illegal no matter where you stand.
Alright it take it back, he tried to help crack a password, but he likely failed. Looks like he was still actively pushing Chelsea to gather more classified info. I'm sorry but this is not the behavior of a journalist
In a pretrial hearing in Manning's case, prosecutors presented evidence that Manning had asked Assange—who was instant messaging with Manning under the name Nathaniel Frank—if he had experience cracking hashes. Assange allegedly responded that he possessed rainbow tables for that, and Manning sent him a hashed password string. According to Thursday's unsealed indictment, Assange followed up two days later asking for more information about the password, and writing that he'd had "no luck so far." The indictment further alleges that Assange actively encouraged Manning to gather even more information, after Manning said she had given all she had.
It's not clear if Assange ever successfully cracked the password. According to the indictment, that password would have given Manning administrative privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull more files from it while concealing the traces of her leaks from investigators.
You've got a giant nothing burger there don't keep digging deeper.
There's a reason all serious journalists are defending Assagne and describing the case against him as a very dangerous precedent against press freedom.
The fact of the matter is that Assange's policy of "leak everything" mainly only applied to the United States, which put united states assets (spies in authoritarian regimes) in danger and ended up in prison. And Assange did not extend the same courtesy to the Russians when documents were leaked from their end, and would redact and editorialize the leaks. Stack that on top conspiring to steal classified information and its not so much of a nothing burger as you call it. Yeah, let's give blanket immunity to "journalists" who actively try to steal state secrets, leak it straight into a pipeline, and selectively put our -only- our allies in literally mortal danger while protecting that of our adversaries. Come on dude.
What makes you think I'm defending the actions of the US? I remember watching the drone video when I was 18 years old, it was incredibly shocking and it forever changed how i saw the US military. Alternatively, do you support assange releasing the name of people in Authoritarian regimes who were working with the US? Who were imprisoned or possibly killed?
What I'm pointing out is that assange is not your ally, despite him exposing the atrocities of the US, much less a journalist. There are codes of ethics that journalists follow (and laws they have to follow as well) and if he did that, it likely could left him in a better position legally. Instead he was cavalier, and possibly even malicious with his actions. He should have kept a lawyer that specializes in whistleblower law on staff. But he probably thought because he was in Europe he could do whatever the fuck he wanted without consequence.
Did Russia claim to have freedom of speech?
I'm done here, it almost seems you are missing the point on purpose. This case is very clearly not about freedom speech.
There's no code of ethics for journalists. We just saw all our mainstream newspapers spread the blatant hoax that Hamas raped women and beheaded babies. And lied about having seen evidence. Which is now proven out doesn't exist. On top of that they hired ex-israeli soldiers without any journalistic experience to write the propaganda story.
You're enthusiastically painting Assagne in a bad light because he is receiving criticism. And bringing up examples from after him being prosecuted as retroactive justification.
Of course Russia would support his efforts. We do the exact same thing. When there's an adversary in a country we don't like, we support them. The Taliban and the Russians are a prime example.
"Assange is in critical condition after [near fatal car accident in bumfuck nowhere, mysteriously poisoned, ran off the road, etc.]. Although the incident seems quite suspicious, authorities have already ruled out assassination. If you question this, we will find you."
Unfortunately, he managed to escape trial until the statute of limitations ran out. But of course, some will defend him as a completely holsum rapist who was framed by the CIA, because you can't believe those lying Swedish women, especially when the accused flees the country known for its humane justice system as soon as he hears he's charged.
Wow to the people downvoting you need to rethink your definition of informed consent. Julian Assange is a repellent sociopath to anyone with two eyes and an open mind.
