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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about 'secret charges' but there are these recent charges. [1]

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wi...

What base do these have? Assange isn't a US citizen, so he can't be charged for treason like Snowden and Manning. He just gained information and published it.

AFAIK they could try and charge him under the Espionage Act but it would be difficult and unlikely to succeed. I think there are one or two other possible charges but both are also unlikely to succeed. As long as they can make his life a living hell though (long trial, loss of freedoms until found innocent) that would hopefully (from the USG perspective) discourage other leakers.

> AFAIK they could try and charge him under the Espionage Act but it would be difficult and unlikely to succeed.

So you are saying the US has laws which within US jurisdiction says that it's OK to file for extradition of non-US citizens anywhere in the world, if the US doesn't like what they do?

Good for them, I guess, but why should the rest of the world comply?

If we should comply with this for the US, surely we should do so too for Iran, China and Russia, just to mention a few. Is that a direction which anyone have any illusions about ever ending well?

This is nothing new. We comply with the US because it's politically good and vice versa for those other nations. However the UK does have a decent record denying extraditions to the US from what I've seen (Gary McKinnon for example).

Have you not heard of Kim Dotcom? He's battling extradition to the USA despite never having set foot in the country nor registered a business there.

Yes, but he deprived MPAA and RIAA of revenue, so that's fair game.

> So you are saying the US has laws which within US jurisdiction says that it's OK to file for extradition of non-US citizens anywhere in the world, if the US doesn't like what they do?

The US certainly has laws which criminalize behavior outside of the US by non-US citizens; and certainly has attempted extradition (and simple forcible seizure, even in the presence of an extradition treaty with the country where the target was located) based on those laws.

> Good for them, I guess, but why should the rest of the world comply?

That depends on the specifics of the particular case.

I believe the US traditionally sidesteps this legal thorn by detaining people without charge at gitmo for as long as they like. Non-US citizens have minimal to no rights under US law, so it's all just peachy

Doesn't the US Bill of Rights talk in several places about "any person":

Fifth Amendment to USA Constitution:

>nor shall any person [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

Sounds like quite a strong right.

FWIW this contrasts with the pages referring to "the people" which are limited and not universal, "any person" means any person.

I'm not a US legal scholar but I wouldn't be surprised to know the US Supreme Court might have ruled that such rights do not apply to non-US citizens.

yeah otherwise it would be hard to justify the invasion of Iraq among other things.

Declaration of war comes under "due process of law" surely.

> such laws generally don't apply to war. they don't even apply to soldiers.

No declaration of war was made on Iraq.

> No declaration of war was made on Iraq.

Yes, it was; no special language is needed in a declaration of war; the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" was plainly and unmistakeably a conditional declaration of war, the conditions for which were fulfilled.

If you declare war, you have to follow Geneva rules, so you can't do Guantanamo detentions; if you do Guantanamo detentions, you're not legally at war. Pick one.

> If you declare war, you have to follow Geneva rules,

The applicability of the Geneva Conventions is affected by the fact of war, but independent of whether there is a declaration. And even if it wasn't, violations of the Conventions would not reach back in time and change whether a declaration had occurred.

such laws generally don't apply to war. they don't even apply to soldiers.

an officer can order hundreds of soldiers to charge into certain death without repercussions - as long as the military goal he's trying to achieve is justifiable.

> such laws generally don't apply to war. they don't even apply to soldiers.

There was never a formal declaration of war on Iraq. Just saying.

Yes, but Guantanamo is outside the US and so the Constitution doesn't apply.

It doesn't say "any person in the USA" nor "any US citizen", when it wants to specify that then the amendment uses "the people". Would be interested in the actual caselaw for this?

> Yes, but Guantanamo is outside the US and so the Constitution doesn't apply.

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any support for the idea that the Constitution only limits the actions of the US government that happen to be within the US rather than on territory leased from another country and subject to full control by the US government.

Some quick Googling tells me that the fifth amendment was ratified in 1791, 74 years before slavery was abolished. So apparently the US didn't really take that one seriously from the start.

More recently, I recall the case of David Hicks, an Australian citizen. He was declared an "enemy combatant", detained without charge and tortured in Guantanamo bay until he signed a confession to a law which did not exist at the time he was detained.

You should read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks#Guantanamo_Bay

Regardless of the stupidity and provocativeness of Hicks' actions, he is a citizen of a nation that is supposedly a US ally, and one would think a person under the US constitution, but he received no protection. The US abused him while the AU government did nothing.

The US government ignores it's own constitution whenever it finds it inconvenient, and any objections are arm-waved away as being legal by the findings of a secret court no US citizen is allowed to know the inner workings of.

It doesn't matter what's written on some crusty paper in a museum somewhere if no one actually abides by it. The US constitution is dead, and I would certainly not trust my liberty to the tender mercies of those who have nailed it's corpse to their standard.

There were many cases when USA kidnapped citizens of other countries and put them to jail.

If other countries did that to US citizens we all know the uproar it would cause in the US. Incredible hypocrisy.

Neither Snowden nor Manning was charged with treason.

opponents to the US In many countries around the world were captured and sent to Guantanamo. Do you need any rules when you are the one with the largest power In the world?

It would be extraordinarily difficult to charge him with treason even if he was an American citizen.

They don't specifically state what they are charging him with in that article, just that they "seek to put him in jail".

That's even worse imo. They can't find something he has done wrong but still want to imprison him.

I cannot help but suspect the recent "stealthing" headlines following Comey's(?) 180° turn against Wikileaks is part of the campaign. Sure, it is an abhorrent act and justifiably prosecutable, and just so happens to be what Sweden was wanting to question Assange about, but when WSJ, WaPo, Fox, USA Today, CNN & Fox run the same headlines for two weeks on a prior low-priority subject(for them & their advertisers), I cannot help but wonder at the genesis for this particular MSM meme of late.

Interesting. So, they are not trying to charge him for publishing documents, but for helping Snowden.

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