US prepares charges to seek arrest of Julian Assange | Hacker News Reader

US prepares charges to seek arrest of Julian Assange

cnn.com

Absolutely ridiculous. What's the charge here? It's not illegal for third parties to disclose factual information about the government. If it was, the staff at almost every newspaper would be thrown in jail on a daily basis.

There is no concept of a journalist license. Wikileaks for better or worse is as legally engaged in journalism as anyone else. Any attempt to deny this by comparing them to large established news organizations is just an appeal to authority.

I get that a lot of people don't like them now because of their garbage politics, but are we seriously prepared to throw away protection of journalists for this? Who's next, Glenn Greenwald?

> The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials. [2013]

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

The likely charge is in the article.

> He said WikiLeaks "directed Chelsea Manning to intercept specific secret information, and it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States."

All this proves -once again- is that US authorities are quite prepared to ignore their own laws and constitution.

This sadly applies to about every country, albeit to different degrees: laws and constitutions should be there to protect everyone's rights from everyone else wills, but in practice they are easily circumvented when they can limit powerful people or governments. One could even say they're there along with moral and religious value sets just to keep common people put.

Viva el Ecuador!

Julian Assange is a national hero and does not deserve, at the very least, to rot in an American prison.

May Ecuador continue to provide him safe keeping.

And may all the UK citizens out there elect a government that won't extradite him should he need to leave!!

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