Or is the reasoning that the law should give him special treatment and exemptions not given to others?
Also, is the 1st amendment protection even applicable to foreigners on foreign soil?
> The Court held that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply where United States agents searched and seized property located in a foreign country owned by a nonresident alien in the United States. Chief Justice Rehnquist authored the opinion for the Court, joined by Justices White, Scalia, Kennedy and O'Connor, contending that "the people" intended to be protected by the Fourth Amendment were the people of the United States, and that the defendant's "legal but involuntary presence" on U.S. soil (a direct result of his arrest) failed to create a sufficient relationship with the U.S. to allow him to call upon the Constitution for protection.[1]
How does a Fourth Amendment case turning on the interpretation of specific language that is not present in the First Amendment lead to that conclusion?
(Also, since the alleged conspiracy was related to acts that would be committed within the US, by a US citizen, it's far from clear whether, even if the rationale of the case you cite did apply, the result would still be that there was insufficient relationship to the U.S. with regard to the act in question.)
Note that I don't think the First Amendment has any bearing on this case because of the actual conduct at issue, but if it did, I'm not seeing how the case you point to would make it inapplicable based on Assange’s citizenship and location.
It's commonly understood that the conduct of foreigners abroad is not protected by American rights. That is the legal basis for most of the 'War on Terror' military actions and one of the key reasons why the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki was objectionable. The way our system understands the law means that American citizen Anway al-Awlaki (and his son) had rights that were violated when he was killed.
So we're backing away from legal argument to conventional wisdom?
> That is the legal basis for most of the 'War on Terror' military actions
No, it's not. About the closest that comes to the truth is that a lot of the War on Terror actions are based on the legal principle that certain, mostly procedural,. Constitutional rights do not apply to actions taken by the US government overseas against non-citizens, but there is no principal under which the limitations imposed by the first amendment (“Congress shall make no law...”) don't apply to the application of a law underlying a criminal prosecution in regular US federal courts, regardless of the nationality of the defendant or the location of the crime.
> The way our system understands the law means that American citizen Anway al-Awlaki (and his son) had rights that were violated when he was killed.
That's debatable. It's fairly well established that being a US citizen does not exempt you from being targeted in war, and also that an authorization of military force requires no magic words to be a valid exercise of the power to declare war. There's a decent precedential bases that for someone not immediately engaged in active hostility, that is restrained within US territory when and where the civilian government and court system are not impaired, but there is no precedent that I am aware of creating a citizenship-based immunity to war conducted overseas.
I meant understood by legal professionals according to judicial rulings. As far as we can determine the law, foreigners abroad are not afforded the same rights as American citizens. And I don't think the law has so much nuance as to allow the US government to legally kill people but not abridge their freedom of speech.
>... targeted in war...
Anwar al-Awlaki was a non-combatant killed in Yemen, which was not a war zone at the time (same with his son). Those words have a lot of legal implications against the actions of the United States.
So I'm not sure the same logic applies.
They don't claim Assange extracted a password. They just claim that Assange said in the chat "no luck so far"! That is, that he wrote to Manning that he tried.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...
The indictment is "conspiracy" with Manning.
So there's certainly something to back up the claim from this title
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-11...
namely, that "Assange's arrest is 'a vendetta, not justice'"
For more context, at the moment this news from ca one month ago have even more sense:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-mann...
"Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify to grand jury in WikiLeaks case"
Fun to see them exonerate themselves for using broken security by calling a hash a, "portion of the password".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chelsea_Manning
>This article should adhere to the identity guideline because it contains material about one or more trans women. Main biographical articles should give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources, even when it doesn't match what's most common in reliable sources. Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman") that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise. Other articles should use context to determine which name or names to provide on a case-by-case basis. If material violating this guideline is repeatedly inserted, or if there are other related issues, please report the issue to the LGBT noticeboard, or, in the case of living people, to the BLP noticeboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Iden...
>Give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources, even when it doesn't match what is most common in reliable sources. When a person's gender self-designation may come as a surprise to readers, explain it without overemphasis on first occurrence in an article. Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman") that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise. Avoid confusing constructions (Jane Doe fathered a child) by rewriting (e.g., Jane Doe became a parent). Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and "[sic]" may be used where necessary). MOS:MULTIPLENAMES calls for mentioning the former name of a transgender person if they were notable under that name. In other respects, the MoS does not specify when and how to mention former names, or whether to give the former or current name first.
Everyone with mens rea is guilty of conspiring, not just the person who committed the actus reus.
That's not strictly true; the agreement is the individual actus reus.
For the US to prosecute Assange, they have to prosecute him in the US, where he does enjoy First Amendment protections, as the First Amendment limits what Congress (and via the Fourteenth, state/local as well) can do.
There seems to be a precedent that US citizens have different legal protections from the US government while abroad when compared with non-citizens. That is why US citizens involved with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or similar hostile organizations will occasionally receive a domestic trial in the criminal justice system while non-citizens generally only face military trials if anything.
It's an interesting situation, as there's counter-examples; the Constitution doesn't, for example, appear to permit assassinations (certainly not of citizens without a trial), but they went ahead and droned Anwar al-Awlaki without any apparent legal consequences.
Anwar Al-Awlaki was unquestionably an enemy combatant due to his overt belonging to a non-state actor engaged in military combat with the United States.
If a person is on trial in the U.S. for breaking U.S. law, then U.S. constitutional protections apply— regardless of citizenship or where the alleged crime took place.
First Amendment deals with US federal government and states.
Neither the federal government nor the states can prosecute you for free speech you engage in as US citizen or resident while in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian government might choose to prosecute you, but the first amendment does prohibit the US government from prosecuting you for speech made overseas as well as on US soil.
An american journalist is living in Brazil and writes an article critical of the US government. The US government can not prosecute them simply because they wrote the article while out of the country.
That would simply be evil.
That doesn't seem to be 100% settled law either. The US government has argued both sides in different court cases.
But again, that doesn’t feed the conspiracy-minded mob or generate clicks.
Edit response to emiliobumachar:
If the US broke international law and their treaties with the UK it would be a really bad look at the very least. Conversely if that doesn’t happen what are you going to be convinced of?
(Sorry about responding this way, but after two months of getting no response from the mods about rate limiting me, I’m just adapting.)
Does anybody think UK would not give all the permissions when asked?
I definitely don't think he should be prosecuted for journalism, but if it is shown that he was Putin's puppet and intentionally helped meddle in US election, then he does deserve whatever sentence he receives.
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/leak-at-wikileaks...
Perhaps it makes Americans feel bad about themselves to hear this, but there are people in the world who feel that America and its 5-eyes allies are actually doing more harm to the world than Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and "so on" - by way of endless, illegal, heinous wars wherein crimes against humanity are constantly ignored by the only people who have the power to do something about it: The American People.
Alas, The American People are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the realisation that many outside of America's reality-distortion fields have already had: America is a net evil force in the world, and its illegal wars must be stopped at all costs.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen. 500,000+ dead victims of America's illegal wars. When Russia and/or China have invaded and destroyed as many sovereign states as the USA has, then the moral stance you propose would be relevant. But, since neither Russia or China have started and engaged in countless, endless illegal wars of aggression in the last decade, the equivalence you desire is inappropriate. America and its allies are committing war crimes daily and have been doing so for decades. Without doing something effective about that, The American People have no chance to do something, next, about Russia or China. It simply doesn't work.
I never claimed they weren't. But it would be naive to think that Russia is much better. But for some reason, WikiLeaks has nothing to say about them, even if it's clear that they are doing pretty dodgy stuff (IRA, poisoning, etc). That to me shows that Wikileaks is not about transparency, but rather has a very strong bias about exposing a very specific target.
Maybe you simply haven't read what Wikileaks has published about Russia.
It's already happened.
The #'s are not in Americas favour. Also: war crimes being covered up/suppressed.
How about you move to Russia or Venezuela and stop USA's illegal wars at any cost from there?
It can be done from anywhere on the globe, as we have learned from Wikileaks and others working to expose the crimes of US's criminal military-industrial complex.
While at the same time most of the MSM coverage focused solely on the Russian/Putin angle, making the Panama Papers more about Putin than anything else.
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/wikileaks-slams-panama-papers-trickle-...
It seems to do so.
>The Constitution does distinguish in some respects between the rights of citizens and noncitizens: the right not to be discriminatorily denied the vote and the right to run for federal elective office are expressly restricted to citizens.12 All other rights, however, are written without such a limitation. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection guarantees extend to all "persons." The rights attaching to criminal trials, including the right to a public trial, a trial by jury, the assistance of a lawyer, and the right to confront adverse witnesses, all apply to "the accused." And both the First Amendment's protections of political and religious freedoms and the Fourth Amendment's protection of privacy and liberty apply to "the people."
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
The whole First Amendment, which explicitly exists to defend the freedom of the press. What sort of person thinks that its legal, desirable, or consistent with a free society for the government to tell individuals at the point of a gun what they are allowed to do or say? What sort of sick society do we live in where a significant portion of the populace thinks that its acceptable that government claims of secrecy are sacrosanct and beyond question? The whole case against Assange is based on Wikileaks' exposure of US war crimes via the Bradley/Chelsea Manning leak almost a decade ago. None of the war criminals exposed by those leaks have been prosecuted - only those who exposed their crimes. Anyone who isn't absolutely outraged and disgusted by this is a blot on society and a moral failure in every way.
Isn't this the basis of all law?
I can’t really imagine a less serious offense than (maybe) trying and failing to crack hash.
Assange didn’t succesfully crack the hash, it’s questionable if he even did anything with it.
At best his crime is agreeing to help hack into the DoD network, not actually doing anything in furtherance of that. That’s a ridiculous thing to prosecute someone for.
So if someone tried to break into your home and failed, that means they never committed a crime?
>At best his crime is agreeing to help hack into the DoD network, not actually doing anything in furtherance of that.
That's why the maximum sentence is only 5 years.
If someone acquired the same lock as me, tried to pick it in the privacy of their own home and never actually broke into my home I would sure hope that they wouldn't face criminal charges.
>That's why the maximum sentence is only 5 years.
10 for what he's being charged with, no? I could very well be wrong here, but I thought that's what the 1030(a)(1) carries.
Acquiring the same lock is bad phrasing, since the same model has different keys.
So what you're implying is that people who go around cloning locks to crack them at home, and generate keys, with the intent to break into homes or military installations, have committed no crime?
Of course not (although it wouldn’t be a crime where I’m from until you actually try to break in somewhere).
I’m only implying that this shouldn’t be a crime, not until you actually try to do the deed.
[1] https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/10634797776323747...
If the US can prosecute foreigners doing foreign things on foreign soil, it should also strip them of all their rights. Is that your reasoning?
Would you suggest indicting a drone operator of the US Air Force for violating Afghanistan’s law against murdering people?
The U.S. Air Force consists of lawful combatants. They are members of the armed forces and wear uniforms that readily distinguish themselves as combatants, which permits the opposing party to a conflict to abide by principles of distinction and proportionality. They are therefore disanalogous.
CIA operatives, however, engaged in spying or armed conflict, arguably do not enjoy combatant immunity. If the Taliban had captured a CIA drone operator, there is a strong argument that they could have tried, convicted, and sentenced the operator without violating international law.
What part of The Hague Convention of 1907, the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, or the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 did you rely on in forming the opinion you've just shared with us?
International law is largely a myth due to the extreme power differential between the United States and most other countries. The only hard and fast rule is that might makes right.
You are, perhaps, referring to the ICC, established by the Rome Statute - to which the United States is not a party.
The issue of whether the United States respects international law is not likely to be conducive to productive conversation on HN. It is also beside the point of this specific topic.
One thing I have wondered about is why we haven't seen any organized crime trying to claim uniformed combatant protections - they already have several process steps in many cases.
Not that I think that arguing from the point of international law, and especially war time international law is of much relevancy in this case.
US has in recently shown little respect for many aspects of what was thought to be international law, but through US acts the water has been muddied. The relationship with the ICC, one of the foremost attempts at establishing a legitimate international court for war crimes comes to mind. It is however far from the only issue where US recently shown an amount of disrespect to international law usually only seen from totalitarian regimes.
Is doing math a form of expression? Breaking a password amounts to thinking for a very long time about all the ways you could rearrange some bits, and choosing one. I'd call it an expression of preference for certain possible results over others, by way of saving one and letting the rest go.
I know, I'm laughing at the thought of framing a cracked password because you're so proud of your expressive art. Still, I am deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say, "You may not run that program."
Isn't shooting a gun at someone a matter of depressing a lever? It's about applying pressure on a lever with your finger.
>Still, I am deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say, "You may not run that program."
Are you also deeply uncomfortable with a government having the authority to say "You may not press that lever".
Isn't the US firing nukes a matter of the US president entering numbers and pressing some buttons?
Isn't running into and maiming a pedestrian while driving a car at a traffic crossing a matter of actually doing nothing instead of braking?
Are you deeply uncomfortable with the thought of govt jailing you for literally doing nothing?
>many govts' attempts to ban encryption are stupid because you cannot outlaw math
Huh? You can outlaw math. It'd be a stupid idea and quite hard to successfully enforce, but you can outlaw it.
>Which is why the legality of both having and breaking encryption needs to be detached from intent.
This does not make sense at all. Otherwise there would be no legal difference between using a battering ram to break into someone's house and then claiming it was research for materials testing. It also comes down to privacy and property rights.
Case law is well settled in the physical door locks space which also applies pretty well to the digital space with a good balance between research and not breaking into others property. It's perfectly legal to crack your own NTLM hashes, and those of which you have permission to. Imagine someone going around with a saw sawing up doors and then claiming it was their right because the doors weren't properly secured and made of 12 inches of reinforced steel.
This has zero implications on crypto-research because it's always legal to try your cracking on your own encrypted data, or on others' data with their permission, like public challenges. What good will it do to extend it to everyone encrypted data?
There are also privacy and property rights issues at hand. Should you be able to crack someone's private key and impersonate them without legal issues?
Reducing something to its basics and then claiming it should be legal by ignoring the real world consequences like the GP was doing is disingenuous.
>privacy and property rights
This is precisely the issue with DMCA. It is illegal in the US to decrypt a DVD/blu-ray etc (for reference, see why fedora cannot play dvds). So what should have been a reactive law against piracy is now a proactive prohibition codified in law. That's why, laws around encryption should decide on the actions after the fact. You can then use existing law on the actions and encryption is out of the picture. In this case, the actions would be protected by free speech and other protections afforded to journalists.
Indeed, actual journalists have ethics departments that help ensure they don’t step over the line from accepting information gained illegally into encouraging people to commit illegal acts to get them information, and if they commit illegal acts to get information that is always a crime. It’s not even a grey area here.
Yes? I’d be concerned for anyone who isn’t. And to be clear... he didn’t crack it. I’ve run password hashes through rainbow tables for shits and giggles. Should I be dragged out of an embassy next?
>Isn't running into and maiming a pedestrian while driving a car at a traffic crossing a matter of actually doing nothing instead of braking? Are you deeply uncomfortable with the thought of govt jailing you for literally doing nothing?
>And to be clear... he didn’t crack it.
Attempting to commit a crime is a crime even if you failed at it.
>I’ve run password hashes through rainbow tables for shits and giggles. Should I be dragged out of an embassy next?
People shoot at the range all the time but are not prosecuted. But gun murderers are. Dont you see the difference?
Were you cracking an Administrator password of the United States Military protecting classified war logs with an intent to distribute them to the public?
What did you (intend to) do with the resulting passwords.
Luckily, intent still counts for something legally.
The state would have to argue your intent to log into their computers and you'd have the chance to respond. The jury would decide whether you meant to gain unauthorized access to a computer system or just geeked out over password cracking.
Practically, I could see things going poorly for the over-enthusiastic cracker, but theoretically they'd be within their rights.
As for the more general “expression”, running a program is a function: it transforms one thing into another thing in a deterministic way. That is applying a tool: you would have to argue that the thing you were doing with it, in this case “breaking a password”, was expression, which, well, good luck with that one: you are back to trying to argue that an explicit crime is actually performance art.
All of this is just facts and tools: there is no creativity involved at any stage.
With house locks, it's a plain distinction between breaking into a lock and breaking into a house. With cryptography, I imagine that distinction is really problematic?
Though I'm aware in Assange's case they do have proof of intent, but I wonder if it sets bad precedent, or is a case where they just dug up either far-reaching, obscure, or some law which is practically never really enforced?
Edit: my original comment was written poorly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#C...
If Assange can show that he was cracking the password of a US military login as a hobby, he might get away with it.
But I don't think even his ardent supporters would buy that theory.
The only supposed criminal act here is agreeing to help, not actually providing help. This does nothing at all to further the conspiracy.
That is what is being alleged and the chat logs seem to support it. It might come out at trial that he didn't actually do it, of course, but that's what the trial is for.
It does, in fact, have to allege such an act in order to charge conspiracy (but the act in furtherance can be by any party to the conspiracy; that's how conspiracy works.)
Three such acts are charged in the indictment; two by Manning, one by Assange.
The court's job is not to enforce ryanlol's idea about what the law should be. The court's job is to enforce the actual existing text of the actual existing laws.
The actual existing laws say that attempting to break into a computer to which you do not have access is a crime, even if your effort alone is not the lynchpin. And that conspiring to help someone else attempt is also a crime.
Ah great. Did I ever suggest that?
>The actual existing laws say that attempting to break into a computer to which you do not have access is a crime, even if you do not succeed. And that conspiring to help someone else attempt is also a crime.
This is correct, but doesn't mean that it's right.
"He's selling it as weed, not oregano, so we're punishing him as if he was selling weed".
You called it a "supposed criminal act". Usually "supposed" used in that way means something similar to ostensible. That's why I started my post with "It's not supposed". In fact, that's the first definition Oxford gives for supposedly...
I'm not trying to make a legal argument, this just feels fundamentally wrong to me.
"(b) Whoever conspires to commit or attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section."
Seems pretty straightforward.
Please don't post about how the law works from your gut feelings about the matter. This forum is awash in people just imagining what the law is every time it comes up. Go look at the law itself. There's no requirement as you've imagined there is.
This was a bit snarky before my edit - please excuse me.
Where you are from, can you go around trying to pick locks on front doors and are only prosecuted if you succeed? And the same with cars?
I'm only critizing the analogy, what he did, or tried is still illegal but it's barely a hack attempt and it's obvious they are desperate to charge him with anything, no matter how small the charge.
They guy who drives the getaway car is guilty of murder as much as the people who walk into the building.
This is the entire point of conspiracy law. Driving a car is not a crime! But it is if you're conspiring with other people who are committing crimes. Otherwise, you would be able to take part in a murder and be let off, because all you did was act as lookout.
If you and a friend plan to poison someone, and you buy the poison and give it to your friend who then poisons the target, you are guilty of conspiracy to murder, even though buying the poison may not actually be a crime. Prosecutors may legitimately not have anything else on you because that's "all" you did!
You don't need to invent scenarios, you can use the facts of this case.
Manning already had access and didn't need the password to be cracked. Wikileaks already received information from Manning. Someone in the chat log told Manning they would pass the hash to someone else. They then told Manning "no luck so far".
Keep in mind, they haven't provided any proof that the person Manning was talking to was Assange. They haven't provided any proof that Assange did in fact try to crack it He never wrote that he would try, only that he would pass it on. Or that he actually send the hash to someone else to crack it, and that this person did in fact tried to crack it.
And to top it all off, Manning did not need the password in the first place! People keep forgetting this. The case against Assange appears to be very weak and is probably only intended to get him on US soil to question him about things other than what he is charged with.
Still a crime.
>And to top it all off, Manning did not need the password in the first place! People keep forgetting this.
Still a crime.
The first sentence you quoted was also part of a larger piece about we still need to see the proof that he actually sent it to someone else. So replying "Still a crime" makes zero sense.
In any case, the point is that these are trumped up charge probably to get him to the US so they can question him about russiagate.
To Manning's account. She didn't have access to the account she was trying to crack. Getting access to accounts that aren't yours ("exceed[ing] authorized access")- or conspiracy to do so- is more or less exactly what the CFAA is meant to prohibit. Maybe that account had exactly the same permissions that her account did, but the fact remains that she was not authorized to log in to that account.
> proof that Assange did in fact try to crack it
Proof is for trial. A grand jury just has to find probable cause to bring the indictment. Probable cause is quite a low burden of proof. You may not like it! but this is extremely normal in the American system. You don't need proof to bring an indictment, just probable cause. Assange is not special here. A chat log of someone saying "brb gonna go do the crime" followed by "no luck so far" seems pretty probable-causey to me.
In this case it was Chelsea Manning accessing the computer. Assange didn't touch it.
>It doesn't matter if you guess the password because you knew the owner's dogs's name and date of birth, it's still intentional access
...by Chelsea Manning, not Assange.
Cracking a password is one thing; cracking a password for someone else so they can commit a crime (and you knew this was what they were doing with it) is a crime.
If I know Joe's password, and I pass it on to Steve so Steve can log in and steal Joe's secrets and pass them back to me, I am in a conspiracy to commit a crime under the CFAA.
The guy driving the getaway car is on the hook for the bank theft!
The guy driving the getaway car from the FBI field-office break-in* (or whoever) is going to be on the hook for burglary, even if the burglary was done for laudable reasons. I think Obama 100% did the right thing commuting Manning's sentence, and was pleased to see her go free. I'm not at all sure prosecuting Assange for essentially the same crime is in the interest of the nation or justice or whatever.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
If a whistleblower can't intend to get information of a government network, how are they meant to make an allegation with some substance behind it? Are they meant to have unsubstantiated word of mouth? We had that for years with ECHELON, the moderate middle just didn't take any of it seriously until the breaking-the-law levels of leaking happened (yes, the legal details are different with Snowden, but the strategy is very similar - leaker gets hit with incidental charges).
The argument here seems to be that while in theory whistleblowing would be OK; none of the ways to attempt a credible whistleblow in the real world are legal. There is a lot of disagreement in this article's comments about what the law says, so it isn't obvious how a whistleblower, who could be anyone here, is meant to follow the details of what they are and are not allowed to attempt.
Assange isn't even a US citizen, so he isn't expected to know US law. Functionally, all this rigmarole is to ensure that if the US government does something sketchy or even illegal then any foreigner who talks about it is legally subject to one of the US's famous black-bag-over-the-head abductions. The charges seem to be independent of what he leaked.
Ignorance of the law is not a legal defense. Most Americans are not aware of the bulk of laws that apply to them.
Assange cannot frame narratives, suppress journalism or push talking points through media outlets under his control. He didn't control anything except one twitter feed.
The only thing that people really pay attention to and the only reason he has a platform at all is because of what he leaks. Most people don't even have any idea what his opinions are - although the effect of the leaks is felt far and wide.
This absolutely SHOULD be seen as an ideological clash between proponents of journalism (it's not even about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of journalism) and war hawks. And taking the side of the journalist murderers? Not a good look.
It is that simple and you can tell it's that simple because Assange is getting prosecuted for exposing the murders and the murderers are going free and nobody even disputes (except in a very legalistic sense) that they were murderers.
The idea that he's a stooge for Russia? There's your propaganda - it's pretty much no different to the red scare of yesteryear.
Maybe it's a crime in the US, but it's still a ludicrous crime.
> If I know Joe's password, and I pass it on to Steve so Steve can log in and steal Joe's secrets and pass them back to me, I am in a conspiracy to commit a crime under the CFAA.
This is of course not at all similar to what happened here, a very strange example.
I do think that presents big press freedom issues; it'd be easy to see news organizations under fire in this fashion. Convincing a source to hand over stuff isn't much (or at all, really) different than the behavior described in the Assange/Manning case.
Sure, but context matters. I drive a car every day. If I drive off in someone else's car without permission, I've stolen it.
Though I'm aware in Assange's case they do have proof of intent, but I wonder if it sets bad precedent, or is a case where they just dug up some law which is practically never really enforced?
I'm not sure what the gray area is supposed to be here.
If I teach you lock picking skills as a fun hobby, that's clearly okay.
If I teach you lock picking skills knowing you aspire to be a house robber, that is grayish legally and wrong ethically.
But if I break into a specific bank vault for you to help you steal stuff, and we talked about stealing the stuff before I helped you, then I'm clearly involved in a criminal conspiracy.
Assange committed a crime, and if he played the same role in helping to empty your bank account you'd want these laws to exist.
The ethical question here is about whether that crime was ethically jusified. I.e., it's about civil disobedience, not about whether blatant conspiracy should be legal.
But for your bank account comparison to make sense Manning would've already have emptied your bank account before JA broke the law.
Regardless, imagine two independent people trying to murder someone. The first shoots a fatal bullet and the victim is about to imminently die, even if the best medical aid were to be immediately provided. Then the second murderer comes on the scene, does not realize that the victim is fatally wounded, and shoots another bullet, instantly killing him.
Both these people would be fully responsible for the murder, not just attempted murder. Arguments from them saying "no, the other killed him, I did not", do not fly in court.
Picking someone else's door lock is legal if they ask you to.
Picking someone else's lock, if it's not actually in a door and isn't protecting anything, is not illegal, even if they don't ask you to or give permission. You're just picking up a lock and fiddling with it, there's no trespass.
Picking someone else's door lock to burgle their home is illegal.
Handing someone a lockpick so that they can burgle a home for you is illegal.
Even more so, trying to create a key that you can hand to someone to get into that home....