Hacker News Reader

You're conflating two different things: publishing classified material, which the DOJ under Obama didn't charge, and a CFAA violation.

Assange is getting charged for a CFAA violation. "Hacking" isn't a great description of what the law forbids. It forbids obtaining information by "intentionally access[ing] a computer without authorization or exceed[ing] authorized access".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

>You're conflating two different things: publishing classified material, which the DOJ under Obama didn't charge, and a CFAA violation.

I am not. This CFAA violation has been publicly discussed for 8 years now, I know exactly what I mean.

The idea of indicting Assange for publishing classified material has always been a weird conspiracy theory.

> Obama DOJ had decided to not indict Assange for this, this is a politically motivated prosecution by the Trump administration.

Or a politically motivated non-prosecution by the Obama administration. I mean, look, I don't trust the Trump administration as far as I could throw the White House. But I don't really trust the Obama administration with respect to politically-charged prosecution decisions, either. The last administration that I'd really trust with something like that is... um, give me a minute... maybe Carter? Or maybe I was just too young to appreciate that I maybe shouldn't have trusted that administration, either...

But I don't understand this line of thought. Trump vocally likes Assange and wikileaks, while Obama Generally loved the NSA and national surveillance, and seemed perfectly willing to go after Assange.

Trumps best buds Mattis and Pompeo hate Assange far more than Obama did.

Hell, Obama even commuted Mannings sentence.

It’s much harder to condemn a politically motivated non-prosecution than it is to condemn a politically motivated prosecution.

One of these is inherently far worse.

But if it was politically motivated non-prosecution, that implies that prosecution would be the status quo, and not politically motivated.

Lets say your friend works at the police anti-speeding camera department and reviews footage to issue tickets via mail. He recognizes your plates and does not issue a ticket although you did speed and violated the law, and he gives out tickets to others for the same offenses.

He leaves the job and the new guy comes, reviews the old footage, and notices the missed ticket, and issues you a ticket. Are you saying the second guy committed a biased issuance of a ticket? And that's necessarily a bad thing compared to your friend letting you go?

>reviews the old footage

Reviews all the footage or only the footage featuring his enemies?

> Are you saying the second guy committed a biased issuance of a ticket?

Depends entirely on if that person was auditing random (or all) footage or specifically looked up plates of people he doesn't like.

>Why did they not indict him before 2018?

Could be they just saw no reason to bother because there was no possibility of getting him. There is no requirement to indict someone immediately upon collecting evidence, indictment is merely the formal accusation of a felony issued by a grand jury. I don't understand why some of you seem to consider this some wild thing. Furthermore, even if they had all this evidence nobody may have sat down and come up with a legal theory sufficiently tailored, and in fact you yourself raise this in the rest of your post:

>Obama DOJ had decided to not indict Assange for this, this is a politically motivated prosecution by the Trump administration.

Your source does not support this leap. In fact quite the contrary:

>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.

Your quote doesn't even make sense exactly because prosecutors never "have to prosecute" anything. But that aside, what we see now is that they haven't indicted him for "publishing classified material" or anything like that, they've found a genuine potential crime (if proven) that is about direct material aid provided by Assange alone. Going after publishing would invite all sorts of 1A arguments and would probably fail unless the papers were directly involved. But unless the NYT and others were in direct contact with Manning and trying to help her break through government security themselves, this charge doesn't in any way involve them.

I mean, you do see how your own accusations here are symmetric right? Someone could just as well argue that it was Obama making a politically motivated decision not to indict, though I think that'd be a silly argument too. Ask "if at some point in the last 7 years Assange had suddenly voluntarily left and returned directly to the USA and announced he was willing to face whatever they would bring, would the US have then prosecuted or not?"

>Could be they just saw no reason to bother because there was no possibility of getting him. There is no requirement to indict someone immediately upon collecting evidence, indictment is merely the formal accusation of a felony issued by a grand jury. I don't understand why some of you seem to consider this some wild thing

I don't think you know what you're talking about. It is quite unusual to delay indictment like this, perhaps you can find some other examples to prove me wrong?

>Furthermore, even if they had all this evidence nobody may have sat down and come up with a legal theory sufficiently tailored, and in fact you yourself raise this in the rest of your post:

It's the exact same legal theory they had prepared in 2011 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/pr...

>Someone could just as well argue that it was Obama making a politically motivated decision not to indict, though I think that'd be a silly argument too.

There's an extreme difference between politically motivated indictment and politically motivated non-indictment. That's not silly, that's asinine.

>It is quite unusual to delay indictment like this

It is quite unusual for the suspect to be granted asylum and holed up in a foreign embassy for 7 years too. The entire case is unusual. You don't get to just handwave that away as convenient and appeal to regular cases where none of that comes up. You're the one making the accusations here, so how about you start citing some positive evidence in support? Cite the law or legal precedent that requires indictment in some amount of time, and discuss how that plays out with any expirations, upkeep requirements, or potential for leaks even if it's sealed (and remember with that last one that this very indictment was in fact leaked accidentally, is that more or less likely the more years it exists?).

>Are you kidding? It's the exact same legal theory they had prepared in 2011

Curious then how you chose to first claim that Obama didn't prosecute because it'd necessarily mean going after the media. Can you try to keep your story straight here?

>There's an extreme difference between politically motivated indictment and politically motivated non-indictment. That's not silly, that's asinine.

No there isn't. That's completely absurd, if the Russian intelligence service came over to America next time around and gave someone polonium again like they did in the UK and the whole thing was captured on film, but Trump chose not to indict because it'd imperil some gas deal, are you saying that's no problem or only a minimal issue because hey, he's only "not indicting" right?

>It is quite unusual for the suspect to be granted asylum and holed up in a foreign embassy for 7 years too

There is nothing unusual at all about suspects going into hiding. This is everyday stuff for prosecutions, and the normal thing to do is to indict and keep it sealed, not wait years to indict for funsies.

> the law or legal precedent that requires indictment in some amount of time, and discuss how that plays out with any expirations, upkeep requirements, or potential for leaks even if it's sealed

Why should I? I'm criticizing this indictment as politically motivated, this doesn't have all that much to with the law.

>Curious then how you chose to first claim that Obama didn't prosecute because it'd necessarily mean going after the media. Can you try to keep your story straight here?

That was not my claim, you're being ridiculous. That was wapo quoting DOJ officials.

Can you stop trying to deliberately muddy the waters with this nonsense? You're focusing on twisting my words instead of trying to make an honest argument.

>Can you stop trying to deliberately muddy the waters with this nonsense? You're focusing on twisting my words instead of trying to make an honest argument.

FWIW the feeling is mutual, I see you as doing exactly that to me. Which maybe means we're kind of talking past each other. I don't really want to endlessly go down that rabbit hole because I don't even think you're necessarily wrong to be upset. But I also think your original post failed to make a quality argument, was very low content for a big claim, that "politically motivated" gets tossed around way too lightly (and is a weak argument regardless) and the reasoning you gave is particularly non-sensical (normally such an argument would talk about the motivations of the Administration or prosecutors, although inconveniently for that this Administration has tons of on the record statements about loving Wikileaks). It's also irritating how you have then tried to flip the standard of evidence when it was you who made the accusation. Next time, maybe in your original post tell us what the law and history is around indictments as you understand/have researched it, why this one stands out (not your feelings, actual numbers), why this particular incident of "politics" was wrong if that's what it was (since it was international of course it had to involve "politics" but that's a broader brush then you implied), etc. Putting that all out upfront saves everyone a lot of time trying to endlessly nail down basics down-thread.

This prosecution is clearly politically motivated. Previous admin chose not to indict, politics happened and new admin decided to dig it up again.

That doesn't (and shouldn't!) render the criminal charges against Assange invalid.

The lack of legislation regarding politically motivated prosecutions doesn't mean that we shouldn't criticize them when they happen. It is simply wrong for governments to target individuals like this.

>normally such an argument would talk about the motivations of the Administration or prosecutors, although inconveniently for that this Administration has tons of on the record statements about loving Wikileaks

Pompeo and Mattis sure love WL! The administration isn't a single person, I'm sure Trump loves Pompeo far more than he cares for WL.

Besides, indicting Assange is an obvious move to discredit the Russia conspiracy theorist crowd.

>Next time, maybe in your original post tell us what the law and history is around indictments as you understand/have researched it, why this one stands out (not your feelings, actual numbers), why this particular incident of "politics" was wrong if that's what it was (since it was international of course it had to involve "politics" but that's a broader brush then you implied), etc.

I'm sorry, but this is just terribly lazy of you.

> This prosecution is clearly politically motivated. Previous admin chose not to indict, politics happened and new admin decided to dig it up again.

That is not a logical statement.

One administration choosing to treat a case differently than another administration can happen without bad politics. Different people see things differently. Assange's recent loss of asylum got the attention of new decision makers so the timing doesn't mean anything either.

Your original and continued statements amount to: "I have no evidence but darn it I know it!"

Of course bad politics could be involved. I.e. a campaign PR move, instead of making rational decisions in the countries interest. But you didn't reference any evidence.

Here is some evidence: Trump doesn't seem to approach anything without overwhelming self-interest. (That argument has nothing to do with your nonsensical argument.)

But that is not conclusive. Maybe someone competent made a well thought out decision (whether or not you and I agree with it).

>Assange's recent loss of asylum got the attention of new decision makers so the timing doesn't mean anything either

Both the indictment and extradition request long predate Assanges loss of asylum.

>One administration choosing to treat a case differently than another administration can happen without bad politics.

I believe it is inherently bad politics to single out an individual case like this. Is Trump DOJ reviewing all cases Obama DOJ decided to not prosecute or did someone just happen to feel like going after Assange?

I think odds are it’s the latter.

> There is nothing unusual at all about suspects going into hiding. This is everyday stuff for prosecutions, and the normal thing to do is to indict and keep it sealed, not wait years to indict for funsies.

Are there other examples of suspects being granted asylum by a foreign government? It seems to me like that wouldn't be very likely in a vast majority of cases. It seems just as reasonable that DOJ needed to wait until Ecuador had dropped asylum and given the green light.

It seems like a stretch to say that the timing alone proves this is politically motivated when there were extenuating circumstances preventing the indictment. If you think the political landscape or future charges have a possibility of swaying Ecuador into discontinuing their grant of asylum then this seems like a pretty reasonable course of events.

>Are there other examples of suspects being granted asylum by a foreign government?

I don't know if that matters very much. Unlike most fugitives, DOJ knew exactly where Assange is and that he'd have to come out eventually.

>It seems just as reasonable that DOJ needed to wait until Ecuador had dropped asylum and given the green light.

But DOJ didn't wait until Ecuador dropped the asylum.

>It seems like a stretch to say that the timing alone proves this is politically motivated when there were extenuating circumstances preventing the indictment

There was nothing preventing the indictment, there were circumstances that would prevent unsealing the indictment.

> I don't know if that matters very much. Unlike most fugitives, DOJ knew exactly where Assange is and that he'd have to come out eventually.

Sure, and that's exactly what they did. By waiting for him to come out once Ecuador dropped terminated their asylum. It absolutely matters in that they would be violating Ecuadorian sovereignty by doing anything but waiting for something like this to happen.

> But DOJ didn't wait until Ecuador dropped the asylum.

Well that's just flat out false. Here Moreno (Ecuador's president) says: "Ecuador sovereignly has decided to terminate the diplomatic asylum granted to Mr. Assange in 2012." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHVqbKgsnDw

> There was nothing preventing the indictment, there were circumstances that would prevent unsealing the indictment.

I get your point about filing and then unsealing but that's just mincing words. You can disagree with process but I don't think that makes it "political". I don't pretend to know why prosecutors decide when to file anything and I think you need to bring some proof that this would be improper if you are going to assert some wrongdoing here.

>Well that's just flat out false. Here Moreno (Ecuador's president) says: "Ecuador sovereignly has decided to terminate the diplomatic asylum granted to Mr. Assange in 2012."

The indictment predates your video by many months.

>I get your point about filing and then unsealing but that's just mincing words.

Why was Assange not indicted before 2018 if the indictment wasn’t politically motivated?

During Obama admin DOJ officials said that they did not want to charge Assange for this, the elections suddenly changed this.