Yes, First Amendment protections apply to non-Americans. However, as you say, Assange is being prosecuted for conspiracy to hack computers, not for his speech.
> 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]
So I'm not sure the same logic applies.
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.
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".
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chelsea_Manning
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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.
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.
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.
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 doesn't seem to be 100% settled law either. The US government has argued both sides in different court cases.
That would simply be evil.
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?