You Don't Have to Like Assange to Defend Him

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-assange-arrested-journalists-defend/586936/

by zwieback • 7 years ago

219 107 7 years ago

Assange is accused of working with Manning to crack a Linux password hash of a government computer so Manning could gain access. It’s not about publishing any data obtained; he was, it seems, not a passive receiver.

https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/docu...

ordinaryradical2• 7 years ago

This is the critical difference. If the NY Times stole the Pentagon Papers themselves, they committed a crime regardless of whether or not they choose to publish the material. If Daniel Ellsberg steals the Pentagon Papers and the Times and Washington Post choose to publish them as part of their reporting on the Vietnam War, they are not somehow made accessories to his crime through publication.

Assange can publish whatever he wants* (*according to the US laws that govern freedom of speech, etc.) but as soon as he becomes actively involved in the exfiltration of classified material he is breaking the law.

drivingmenuts• 7 years ago

I understand the basis for the charges: Assange supposedly committed a crime against the US and so we claim jurisdiction, but does he have Constitutional rights, not just the ones extending from treaties and agreements?

deogeo4• 7 years ago

*according to the US laws that govern freedom of speech, etc.

He's an Australian currently in the UK though. I don't like the global reach of US laws.

devoply• 7 years ago

At the end of the day they are going to send him away for life. The reason being that he did in no way apologize for his actions or feel any remorse. I am sure they have a litany of ways of doing that. This is just one of them. I am sure by the time this goes to trial there will be many more charges or if he beats one charge they will try him on something else. You can't escape the long arm of the US law.

cheez• 7 years ago

This is the key thing. You cannot escape law by "being right". If you have to be punished for some reason, they will find a reason. Show me the man, and all that.

That being said: I hope it's just a few years. That's fair for what he is accused of.

ninjin2• 7 years ago

Sure, but would you be equally damning of the actions of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI? [1] We are talking about breaking into a physical office in that case and I admit that it is different in that they mailed the documents anonymously to journalists, but let us not pretend that things are as black and white as active vs passive – would it have been okay if Manning and Assange had provided the documents to another media outlet?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...

Update (no replies yet): I should clarify that I care very little about the legal aspects as there are obviously legal implications, rather I think this is an interesting question from a moral standpoint.

ameister144• 7 years ago

I think it's important to note that if the Citizen's Commission members were identified within the 5 years after the theft, they would have been tried and jailed. That's the risk you take. They kept their silence about their identities for over 40 years.

CogitoCogito2• 7 years ago

That indictment is pretty interesting. It is short and pretty clear, but I'm still having trouble understanding what the indictment actually alleges he did.

7. On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password...
25. [...] Assange indicated that he had been trying to crack the password by stating that he had "no luck so far."

It seems to me that essentially the entire indictment discusses what Manning was doing. Is this all they have on Assange? I mean is the only evidence that he helped crack the password that single statement of his? He could have just said that and never done anything.

I mean sure presumably there is more evidence, but this indictment seems pretty thin to me.

maxlybbert3• 7 years ago

The indictment just has to establish enough to arrest the person. And many prosecutors work hard to make sure it contains no more than enough to meet that standard.

They’ll get a chance to amend the indictment before trial.

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

Indictments are summaries of the allegations for which the grand jury has found probable cause based on evidence. They don't need to contain any evidence themselves, as their purpose isn't to prove charges but to state them.

I mean sure presumably there is more evidence, but this indictment seems pretty thin to me.

All criminal conspiracy legally needs is a agreed common purpose which is itself criminal and a concrete act by any of the participants to advance the common purpose.

EthanHeilman• 7 years ago

This isn't about Assange trying to crack a password this is about punishing Assange for journalistic work he did. Since such journalism is not a crime in itself they have found some other minor crime which they can make a federal case out of.

matthewmarkus• 7 years ago

Yes, this is another example of a dual-track justice system. Note how CIA officers aren't prosecuted for hacking the Senate [1, 2], but an activist is indicted for allegedly failing to decrypt some files.

[1] https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/natio...

[2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gvy537/the-cia-ha...

sugerman• 7 years ago

The idea that Wikileaks and Assange are members of the "free media" is a joke.

deogeo4• 7 years ago

Yeah, if the free media is told something is classified, they will do the responsible thing and not pursue the matter any further. They know the government has everybody's best interest at heart, and that if something is classified, it's probably classified for your own good.

rjplatte• 7 years ago

They know the government has everybody's best interest at heart, and that if something is classified, it's probably classified for your own good.

I really hope you're being facetious

threeseed2• 7 years ago

This is the real world here. It's not just black/white.

So you can still ensure that illegal acts are made known to the public without revealing intelligence sources and methods.

Nasrudith3• 7 years ago

The thing is that if it can be decided who does and doesn't qualify it is pretty goddamn abusable to silence critics.

threeseed2• 7 years ago

We regulate most professions e.g. builders, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists etc. Why can't we regulate journalists ?

If you did a college/university degree, if you are a member of some association, if you follow some code of practice and abide by some definition of ethics and values then you are a journalist and a protected entity.

krapp2• 7 years ago

Then why bother with the term at all? What does the "free" in "free press" mean?

The First Amendment of the US constitution forbids Congress from abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. Although the term "free press" isn't specifically mentioned, if one cannot decide what does and does not qualify as "the press" then everything from espionage to outright falsehood can equally be considered an expression of "the press."

As this is not the case, then "the press" and "the free press" must have some established definition, which means some qualifiers must have been decided upon. And yet it doesn't seem as if the US has fallen prey to wholesale government silencing of critics or censorship of criticism either in the mainstream or alternative press, as a result of such definition.

So while it may be possible that defining "the press" could result in abusing that definition to silence critics, it doesn't appear to be inevitable.

Therefore, it can safely be argued whether or not Wikileaks qualifies as the "free press" without fear of a slippery slope to press censorship in general.

peteradio• 7 years ago

I don't have to defend him either.

JohnFen3• 7 years ago

True, I don't have to like him to defend him. I do, however, have to feel confident that I know the facts -- and I don't feel confident at all about that.

awakeasleep• 7 years ago

Actually this is the opposite of the American system of justice.

People are presumed innocent until the facts are known. So it's only afterwards that we should, according to our culture, give up his defense.

JohnFen3• 7 years ago

People are presumed innocent until the facts are known.

Inside the justice system, yes. I am not a part of the justice system, and I have every right to have my own opinion. I'm suspending my personal judgement until I feel I have a better handle on what's happened.

ameister144• 7 years ago

No - you don't need to defend someone to withhold judgement.

jcranmer2• 7 years ago

The judicial system presumes innocence. The media, and public opinion, does not. It's debatable if the court of public opinion should presume innocence as well.

gwbas1c• 7 years ago

I love this quote:

Assange may be an asshole. Scratch that, Assange is an asshole. But we’re going to have to stand up for him anyway.

That being said, the more I read into the story, the harder and harder it is to defend him.

jmull• 7 years ago

I don't think the fact that he once worked with a sincere whistleblower to release information in the public interest should automatically excuse anything else he may have done.

stale20022• 7 years ago

Well, he is only being extradited to the US because of the time that he worked with the sincere whistleblower.

He hasn't been charged for anything else "bad" that you think he has done.

So it seems like it would be pretty easy to denounce this extradition, because it specifically relates to the sincere whistleblower "crime".

aeturnum3• 7 years ago

It would be unfair to say that we must grapple with the particular, legal questions of the current charges but don't have to speak about the general, not-necessarily-legal, questions of Assange's overall behavior.

Al Capone was indicted under charges of tax fraud, though that was not primarily why authorities wanted him. We must consider both consider the justice of those particular charges as well as the justice of general punishment of Capone, whatever the source.

What I mean is that we have to consider both things separately and simultaneously. You're correct that we need to think about if we agree with this particular charge. I'd also say that you have a similar responsibility to say if Assange should be charged for, as you said, "anything else 'bad'" he's done.

Traster• 7 years ago

I don't think that's a fair description of what's happened. What we currently know about are the Manning charges. It's pretty clear that Assange will be pursued for the 2016 election activities, but we likely won't hear about that either until he's already standing trial or it'll never come to light simply because they can put him away for life with the charges they've got now. If the 2010 issues didn't involve him at all no one can seriously content that the US would be letting him go - they have a plethora of reasons to pursue him.

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

I don't think the fact that he once worked with a sincere whistleblower

I don't think that it's at all clear that Manning was a “sincere whistleblower”, even if some of the leaked material was in the public interest, so much as a seriously emotionally damaged individual lashing out collaterally and simultaneously seeking external validation in response to signficant personal institutional mistreatment.

mindslight5• 7 years ago

This is a straw man mischaracterization of what the article is arguing. His work with a "sincere whistleblower ... in the public interest" is the direct and only thing he's been charged for (by USG).

dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

The effort to extradite and prosecute the WikiLeaks founder threatens the free media.

No, it doesn't; press freedom is the right to publish, not the right to actively participate in breaches of non-social (e.g., physical or technical) security measures.

The charges leveled against Assange stem from the 2010 Manning leaks, which were judged to have been in the public interest by some of the world’s most significant and thoughtful news publishers, who ran some of the revelations in their pages.

News publishers don't have any binding authority to decide what is in the public interest; there is no Constitutional prerogative to an institutional press pardon for criminal offenses. Further, this claim is outright dishonest: the decision to publish some of the information as being information whose publication was in the public interest is not a judgement that the leaks themselves were, on balance, in the public interest.

michaelmcmillan2• 7 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDnt_CYDiuE

This debate totally changed the way I look at Assange. So no, I don't have to defend him.

JudgeWapner• 7 years ago

glad you're persuaded by a one-sided "debate".

michaelmcmillan2• 7 years ago

Congratulations on finding yourself in a bubble, where no argument can persuade you. Maybe you should watch the whole debate before declaring it one-sided.

heyyyouu3• 7 years ago

I think there is the small chance the extradition won't go through.The UK courts are particularly considerate when it comes to extraditions -- when compared to other countries, it's not just a a hand-stamp (usually). In fact, Google the term "uk refuses to extradite" and there's pages upon pages of results.

It's probably his best hope. The current charges are thin -- based on one statement he made to manning -- and the feds know this. BUT the reason you never talk to the feds is that it is way, way to easy for them to get you on other charges: purgery (generally the main one if they can't get you for anything else), conspiracy, racketeering, and of course with this one they have a litany of government security charges they can cherry pick as well.

If he doesn't have excellent legal representation (even with) he's in real trouble. His best shot is to fight to not come here in the first place -- if he can make a case that they may bait and switch the charges to national security, and somewhere put the death penalty into play, that could work.

Note that I don't know how it works being that he is actually an Australian citizen -- does the UK care if it's not one of its citizens facing what their courts would consider unfair charges overseas? (which is their standard for denying extradition -- I'm not judging the charges either way)

fmihaila• 7 years ago

... purgery (generally the main one if they can't get you for anything else)

Perjury (for the benefit of those who were as confused as I was).

arthurcolle• 7 years ago

A rather spooky Freudian slip that suggests purging Assange...

macinjosh• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to know the number of refused extraditions the UK has by the country requesting it. I imagine an extradition request from the US would be more likely to be filled than one from a less powerful/friendly country. The US has a "special" relationship [0] with the UK after all.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-SlDs59wKg

heyyyouu3• 7 years ago

They're actually more likely not to extradite to countries with the death penalty, which the US has and the UK doesn't. That's one of the main reasons for the state not to agree to extradition -- the punishment is what the state views as cruel or unusual, which many countries view the death penalty as. Extradition agreements are generally much simpler among countries without it, but that is indeed a generality.

tssva• 7 years ago

As an organization that believed in radical transparency, WikiLeaks wanted all the material in the public domain.

Wikileaks and Assange only believe in radical transparency when it isn't applied to themselves.

matt4077• 7 years ago

Being given government secrets and publishing them for the public interest should not be a crime, and it isn't. The New York Times won that case 8-1 or 9-0 at the Supreme Court for the Pentagon Papers.

Assisting with the exfiltration of that data is clearly a different beast. Professional journalists know the difference, and stay clear of it to protect themselves, their employer, and the trust journalists are granted.

Helping to crack a password clearly crosses the line, even if it's minor in the scheme of things, or unsuccessful. There will be endless handwringing here on HN over the precise definition of "assistance", because somehow the tech community cannot handle the ambiguity of non-binary real world situations. Would it be material assistance to let your whistleblower use your USB stick? What if you bought them a coffee on the morning they did the deed? etc... But the inability to precisely define the single tree that makes the forest doesn't stop us from making any "forest or desert?" decisions.

Of course this sets an ugly precedent. To the ignorant, it suddenly becomes far less extraordinary to see a publisher of secrets in jail. The Atlantic is rightly worried here, because who knows how long the courts will still operate independently, considering the current trajectory of other institutions like DoJ?

alexandercrohde• 7 years ago

So he helped crack a password like, what a decade ago?

Time served for having to live in an embassy for the last several years?

You're right, it's illegal, but it just doesn't feel that bad to me. Not even remotely on the level of the problems we face as a country this day. It almost feels petty.

dahdum3• 7 years ago

He didn’t have to live in the embassy. Sweden was by all accounts far less likely to extradite him, but he choose to flee rather than face his rape charges.

Even if he had been convicted in Sweden he would have been out by now.

mLuby2• 7 years ago

Good comment. Though I expect the handwringing will be less over the nature of assistance and more whether an illegal act (cracking a password) is justified by the greater good (whistleblowing).

madrox• 7 years ago

There was no principle at play when Assange choose to publish the material he did. I fail to see what principles we're defending by choosing to defend him.

throwaway666662• 7 years ago

Barrack Obama pardoned Manning on his last day in office. If Assange's only crime is assisting Manning, and Manning's sentence has been commuted by the very President of the United States and is now free, why are we on a hunt for Assange?

It may sound a bit silly but is an honest question.

It's like... if I commit a robbery and you drive the getaway vehicle, I am (the actual robber) deemed innocent and let go, but you still go to prison for being an accomplice. It makes little sense?

sl1ck731• 7 years ago

IANAL but maintaining precedence seems reasonable, the same reason Manning was commuted and not pardoned. Not giving the green light for future offenses.

leetcrew• 7 years ago

a president commuting a sentence is orthogonal to whether or not a crime actually occurred. imo, the president was reacting to the political reality that, in the public eye, manning was becoming a sympathetic character and had already been punished enough. there's no particular reason why the same deal would be extended to assange, who has essentially spent the last several years thumbing his nose at the US government.

it's like... if I commit a robbery and you drive the getaway vehicle, I am (the actual robber) deemed innocent and let go, but you still go to prison for being an accomplice. It makes little sense?

it could easily be the case that there's enough evidence to show that a robbery occurred and that I drove the getaway car, but not enough to convict you of the robbery itself. the fact that one of the accused in an alleged conspiracy is found not guilty really has no bearing on whether others can still be convicted.

throwaway666662• 7 years ago

Got it, thanks for your comment. Makes sense.

calhoun1372• 7 years ago

The attempt of the US government to prosecute Assange is the gravest possible threat to press freedom imaginable.

People are talking about a hashed password like its something new, but this is not new information at all. The Obama justice department had all the same chat logs - no new evidence has been discovered since then - and knew all about this but decided they couldn't prosecute without endangering press freedom.[1]

So if you don't think this is a major assault on press freedom, you should at least realize you are disagreeing not only with me but literally the Obama justice department which looked at this for years. Why is it that they came to this conclusion and never moved forward with the case, but now the TRUMP administration is pursuing it anyway?

It's not just american journalists that are at risk, but this is meant to send a chilling message to anyone anywhere on earth that you better not report on the US government negatively or else we will have you extradited, prosecuted as a spy, and thrown in solitary.

Anyone cheering on the US government as they try to set a precedent for prosecuting journalists as spies needs to think more carefully about this issue.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...

dahdum3• 7 years ago

The article you posted highlights exactly what's happening here, he's being charged with hacking, not publishing.

One former law enforcement official said the U.S. government could bring charges against Assange if it discovered a crime, such as evidence that he directly hacked into a U.S. government computer. But the Justice officials said he would almost certainly not be prosecuted for receiving classified material from Manning.

calhoun1372• 7 years ago

The indictment is not only about hacking, but about aiding the source in avoiding detection, and encouraging them for more documents.

There is zero allegation of hacking. Rather they are saying Manning sent a hashed password and Julian said in the chat he sent it to his team and then it never went anywhere. Calling this hacking is a big stretch.

This article from 2011 shows the Obama justice department knew all about this[1], check out the last two paragraphs which I will post here:

"In the exchange prosecutors showed in the courtroom, Manning appeared to have sent Assange a “hash,” or encrypted, password. Assange said he’d passed it on to members of his team, but the exchange prosecutors showed did not indicate whether WikiLeaks ever actually helped Manning with the password.

That chat could be a critical one for the parallel criminal investigation the Justice Department is pursuing into Assange and WikiLeaks. If Assange gave Manning advice or assistance in breaking into computer systems, that could transform Assange’s role from a mere recipient of secret data to a conspirator in efforts to steal it."

I am curious why you think the Trump administration is pursuing this now whereas the Obama DOJ declined to prosecute sighting the "new york times problem" as described in the previous link.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2011/12/defense-manning-was-o...

norin• 7 years ago

I don't think we have all the facts, though I think he's going away longer than Noriega when the US gets their hands on him.

trpc• 7 years ago

Imagine these comments in pre-Obama era, I remember when the left and liberals considered Assange a hero because he exposed the American right wing government back then, no wonder that the tech industry is so left wing to an unbearable and dishonest degree, just because they lost an election to a TV celebrity that they can't imagine despite controlling the entire media and government, the American people could dare challenge them and elect an outsider even if he's a joke like Trump, it must be a Russian conspiracy! it must be everything except that there are other people with other views, right?! The people can't have a another view when we control everything? how dare they? We must destroy even the heroes we made to make sure the people don't dare and have a choice we don't like again ever!

goldcd• 7 years ago

Indeed - I don't like him (but on this basis I'm not a great fan of myself either) - but what wikileaks exposed is important. I'm not even saying it's true, or of importance, or of anything.

Just, as an example:

https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

Here's something I hadn't seen before. I didn't see this on my "morning news" - and I'd really just like to know if this is:

a) true b) if it is, somebody I've employed will step up and defend/explain it.

hlurhhh• 7 years ago

What do you mean is this true?

cmroanirgo• 7 years ago

What I particularly don't understand is how his government, my government, Australia, has left him hanging for all this time with never a reproach about the situation. I can only assume that the 5 eyes network is so tightly knit that it's inconceivable to our politicians to do the right thing and say "No, he's one of ours: you might have grievance with him -- but tough luck".

Instead, he's been holed up in the embassy of a country that initially had the fortitude to say just that. But since the Equidorian political landscape had shifted, so has the message it has sent. Sadly it shifted to what the Australian government has been doing all along, and has colluded in hanging him out to dry.

Tragically, when he arrives on US soil I suspect he in for a very bad time.

I don't particularly agree with Assange's methodology, but I find the actions of the Australian and UK political landscape utterly deplorable.

irrational• 7 years ago

I don't dislike him, but I won't defend him. I feel that what he did was wrong.

You Don't Have to Like Assange to Defend Him

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