EFF Statement on Assange Indictment and Arrest | Hacker News Reader

EFF Statement on Assange Indictment and Arrest

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100 pointsjrepinc40 comments

It's good to see EFF taking a principled stance on Assange. Too many organizations have chosen to throw WikiLeaks under the bus after their 2016 election leak harmed the "wrong" American political team.

It's a shame that the American political machine is so good at character assassination (of both Assange and WikiLeaks), despite the sorely-needed transparency they've offered to many modern democracies. The world needs more organizations like WikiLeaks, not fewer.

I very much approve of the 'idea' of WikiLeaks. I am not particularly fond of WikiLeaks as an organization. I don't like the way they hold on to material until they think it will make the biggest impact. It makes me wonder how much they've held on to for other reasons, e.g., because it might harm someone they support. To me, WikiLeaks withholding information for political reasons is no better than the originator of the information keeping it secret for political reasons.

I politely called them out on this once, in a comment on one of their early Facebook posts. The comment was deleted quickly. Apparently they are not fans of criticism either.

In spite of my misgivings, and my general disdain for Assange as an individual, I too am glad to see the EFF taking a principled stance.

>It makes me wonder how much they've held on to for other reasons, e.g., because it might harm someone they support.

Has anyone ever tried to call them out on this by releasing a leak that wikileaks refused to publish?

I don’t remember ever hearing such a claim.

I don't know if anyone tried, but if you followed early tweets they talked a lot about having something that was damning and then ... never mentioned it again.

Just taking them at their word you have to wonder what was up.

This has definitely happened. Wikileaks refused to release info on Russia during the 2016 election. Wikileaks may have started out with good intentions, but it seems to be making some explicitly political actions.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/world/europe/russian-docu...

Was that info any good? Haven’t really seen many stories about it.

There's plenty of legitimate reasons to not release information. Verifying the informations accuracy, that it hasn't been tampered with, and the source is credible is a really high bar to meet. Just because someone dumps data doesn't mean WikiLeaks is going to publish it

So selectively Open Democracy but not Open Truth?

I think a lot of people, including the media really liked the idea of WikiLeaks, me included.... until it became clear that whatever WikiLeaks was, it wasn't the the open and nobody gets a pass kind of leak site folks wanted it to be.

But yeah whatever the situation here the law should be applied evenly. We'll see.

Agree on the EFF part but what did the "political machine" do in this case? I thought it was more of the media reporting making Assange look like the dick he actually is. Would be nice to have Wikileaks without him.

Sooo.. you've hung out with Assange? edit: My point is, the fact that you feel comfortable calling him actually a dick despite only knowing him through media portrayal means that the character assassination has worked.

Just about everyone who has ever worked with him has come to the same conclusion, including many people who have entirely overlapping ideologies. See Emma Best's Twitter account for a prime example.

Right, good point. Almost everyone will only know Assange through media portrayal so if you run something like Wikileaks, which relies on reputation to remain relevant, it's important to have a leader that knows how stay out of the spotlight. It's difficult in such a polarized arena.

I think it was more news organizations rightfully view WikiLeaks less as a journalistic org and one that wants to craft their leaks to their liking in order to achieve outcomes. Amusingly, that's sort of what you seem to accuse the other news organizations of....

After that started to become clear news sites were less likely to simply cite Wikileaks copy and paste style as they had been in the past. I think that was a responsible choice.

>Too many organizations have chosen to throw WikiLeaks under the bus after their 2016 election leak harmed the "wrong" American political team.

I think it was about the fact that he selectively decided what to release in order to harm his own opponents. Wasn't very principled of him, and he effectively did the same thing he pretends to be fighting against.

I'm still personally shocked that Snowden is so widely vilified by my fellow citizens. The guys exposes massive violations of right-to-privacy and the people that he informed call him a traitor.

I’ve heard people say that he released it and fled to Russia. As in, he released it for Russia. The news and people’s biases twisted the story to fit their worldview

> While the indictment of Julian Assange centers on an alleged attempt to break a password—an attempt that was not apparently successful—it is still, at root, an attack on the publication of leaked material[.]

So if a reporter goes to a Congressman's house, tries to pick the lock, and fails, and later manages to get the same documents based on a leak from the Congressman's office, should the reporter be free from liability for the attempted break-in?

The law correctly gives reporters a lot of leeway, so long as they stay on the right side of the line. To give reporters so much freedom, society must be able to clearly distinguish protected reporting activity from unprotected criminal activity. For that reason it is incumbent on people claiming the shield of press freedom to avoid conduct that crosses the line, and for organizations like EFF to avoid trying to blur that line.

The trouble in this case is that the behavior being prosecuted is not the sort of thing that would result in prosecution under many other circumstances. There is a law against it, but enforcing it in this context gives the impression of selective prosecution.

They haven't discovered a crime, investigated it to determine who was behind it and arrested them; they've discovered a man they wish to charge and went around looking for something to charge him with.

Or maybe they discovered that some one had leaked classified information (a crime) and during the investigation of that crime, discovered that Assange had conspired with that individual (also a crime)? That explanation makes sense to me. Maybe it isn't what happened, we will have to let the courts decide on the facts of the case.

The indictment is embarrassingly weak and I am no fan of Assange to say the least. I’m surprised there’s nothing on the dnc hacks.

Why would there be anything on the dnc leaks? They just published the leaks, they did not participate in hacking. Publishing leaks is done all the times by journalists, if we're going to start banning this, then free press is literally dead in the US.

The difference seems to be that most journalists report on the leaked documents, whereas Wikileaks essentially data dumps it.

Not saying them releasing Podesta's emails was bad, just I don't think that's what journalists typically do.

>The difference seems to be that most journalists report on the leaked documents, whereas Wikileaks essentially data dumps it.

Would anyone have taken them seriously if they just made claims about what were on the emails? You see the same thing going on with the Democrats regarding the summary of the Mueller report: “we don’t believe you, show us the raw data!”

Dumping the Podesta emails in the hour after Trump's "grab them by the pussy" tape came to light sure gives them the stink of partisan operatives. Lying about Seth Rich's involvement in the emails was cruel and deeply unethical. Giving air to bizarre conspiracy theories about the Clintons satanic rituals was also unethical from a 'media' organization.

Not sure if anything that happened was illegal (leaning toward no) but they were basically indistinguishable from a campaign arm in 2016.

I've personally never went to wikileaks looking at information gathered, but consumed it second hand from journalists reporting on it. As such, I didn't have a problem taking Snowden's leaks seriously yet wasn't eyeballing raw data (nor did the vast majority of people who read about it), so I'll have to disagree.

What you have with the Democrats and the Mueller report is that the "journalist" in this case is the Attorney General who was put into the position by the guy the Mueller report is about. As such, it is a case of not trusting the messenger due to bias so they want to see the actual report.

It depends on the details. If they were more deeply involved in the DNC hacks, perhaps helping plan it in some way, they could be charged with conspiracy for the hacking. That's the least likely. If they knew these leaks were a part of an attempt by the Russian government to influence the election, and they participated and helped with the planning (like timing the releases for maximum impact), they could be charged with conspiracy to interfere in the election. If they coordinated with the Trump campaign during the release of this information, the Trump campaign official(s) involved would be charged with accepting something of value from a foreign national for a campaign, I don't know if that charge would just be against the campaign official or Assange as well.

These are just possible charges, of course. Depending on what Assange knew and when he could have done nothing illegal.

My guess is anything related to the DNC hacks or any of their activity relating to the 2016 election are still tied up in offshoots of the Mueller investigation. Like the ongoing case against Roger Stone, for example. They could be waiting until they get Stone to cooperate with their probe so they have him as a witness to go after Assange. Or maybe the reverse, they want Assange arrested so they can depose him, search his laptop, and compel him to testify against Roger Stone. Probably some combination of the two. Yeah, I think this is probably them just trying to get him extradited and in custody so they can open the door to get more evidence.

I support press freedom, but there is a clear line that was allegedly crossed here. The indictment alleges that Assange encouraged Manning to commit a crime and helped or tried to help gain access to a government computer system that he had no right to access. This is not a grey area at all. If they were charging him for publishing documents it would be a different story. If the case is as weak as many folks seem to be saying it is, then he will have a chance to make that case in court.

The key word is 'allegedly'. We'll see.

The timing of Manning's subpoena and the questioning of her on Assange seems to show that the U.S. government knew Assange was to be going expelled from the embassy, and maybe played a role in making it happen. Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

Very possible, but Ecuador was also becoming increasingly annoyed by Assange / I suspect regretted their initial decision all on their own it seemed.

Like a lot of things around Wikileaks I think some were hopeful that it was a thing that (myself included) ... it just didn't turn out to be as an organization.

Like most folks would be fine protecting a journalist on principal even if he bothers other nations. Maybe less so if you realize that they're not behaving like one and then you start to wonder who you're protecting and what you're enabling.

there was warning signs in the last couple of weeks.

I suspect that he was really pushing the boundaries of hospitality.

There's talk that these charges may simply be a tool to get Assange extradited to the US to get him to testify about the source of the DNC leaks, which some think was an inside job.

I have to ask myself a question: has Wikileaks been “fair” when it comes to obtaining sensitive documents from other state governments vs. the United States? For example, is there any leaks from China or Russia?

That could simply come down to insufficient “people on the inside” of those country’s respective governments to act as a source of leaks. China in particular, I would imagine not too many people are willing to (literally) die over exposing some random state secrets.

Many times they've claimed to have important data on a government, business, about a topic.... and done nothing / never mentioned it again. And that's just going by their own tweets.

What is going on in the background I have no idea, but just based on their own efforts to hype data they claimed to have and never release it made me question what they really valued.

Now a real journalist might have information they never release because they aren't sure if it is legit or sometimes even a government asks them to wait (kind a controversial there) but I don't see them claim to have solid evidence and then just not do anything with it. If I take Wikileaks at their word about their information, then I also have to wonder why they chose not to release information that they claimed to have / would release.... And that doesn't account for things like tipping off various politicians ahead of actual releases and etc.

Wikileaks refused to release a giant dump of stolen Russian documents.

Can you provide information on this? I see it all over, but what information did they supposedly have and who is making this claim?

Although in that case it should be the not-disclosing of Chinese/Russian state secrets that you should be angry about.

The case at hand is the disclosure of documents about the U.S., if you're unhappy about that then it's irrelevant if they were being fair or not and if you're happy about it then your comment seems an odd response to the news that Assange is at risk of being punished for aiding in the leaking of those documents.

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