The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
It is not. It's very illegal, for good reason.
It's also illegal to do the same thing with a computer system.
People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In this case, the information system is government property, which for some reason many people believe gives us special license to take whatever we want from it. But the same principle applies to the property of private individuals, including you.
So do you really want to live in a world where the governing maxim is that information wants to be free, and that justifies any and all means of getting to it, including breaking into secure information systems?
That sword cuts both ways.
The Manning-Lamo chat logs leaked to Wired also clearly show that Manning sought out Assange. If you have any evidence to the contrary on these two points, please post as your claims are running against what is publicly known.
Same metaphor applies. I try to help someone pick the lock as they try to break-in to a house. This is illegal. It's also illegal for a computer intrusion.
Julian Assange took concrete steps in furtherance of a conspiracy. Whether or not he succeeded is besides the point.
Sorry, it's the law.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...
Line 25 under "Acts in Furtherance of the Conspiracy" - by both his requesting more information about the password and his statement that he had "no luck so far" he indicated that he had been attempting to crack the password.
The indictment cites Assange saying, "no luck so far" after asking some questions about the stuff Manning is sending him. You want to read complicity into a vague statement made to excuse non-contribution, whereas there could have been any number of reasons Assange replied that way, such as not alienating a source, or laziness, or knowledge that actually doing anything would put him in legal jeopardy.
There is no actual claim here that Assange did anything to crack the system or assisted Manning in doing so. He is not accused of delivering a password. He is not accused of downloading password cracking software. He is not accused of contacting others to ask for their assistance. He is just accused of saying, "nope, can't help".
If there is evidence that Assange delivered cracked passwords to Manning, I'm sure that people will change their minds and agree with you. But that is not what the indictment claims. And the lack of anything more specific in such a high-profile case suggests there is nothing more that they have on him than an ambiguous statement of sympathy with a source.
'if there is actually evidence presented that Assange delivered passwords to Manning' - don't you mean if there is evidence that Assange attempted to crack passwords for Manning?
Because again the bar here is attempting to assist, not that he actually succeeded.
All you are alleging here is conspiracy with regards to targeting of a separate server that was never hacked. If that is the case then evidence can be certainly presented with regards to it, but the burden is on the prosecution not the defense and the statements alleged as regards it do not seem to indicate much beyond a vague excuse for inaction.
The law is pretty clear here. You, on the other hand, are making up the law as you go along. And you're also saying Assange is a liar.
The intent is proven from the in which Assange agrees to provide assistance cracking a password.
That is the textbook definition of "conspiracy to commit a hacking crime".
Have you read a lot of indictments around conspiracy to commit crimes that end up with convictions? Because I think you have far too naive of a viewpoint about what constitutes evidence.
The indictment claims that Assange was guilty of conspiracy to crack the password, not that he actually cracked the password. Conspiracy is a crime in itself. He didn't have to deliver anything to Manning to be guilty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)
> The indictment cites Assange saying, "no luck so far" [emphasis mine] after asking some questions about the stuff Manning is sending him.
That's evidence that he took actions to further the conspiracy. The "so far" indicates he was attempting something at the time.
There is a literal claim that he did that: "Assange indicated that he had been trying to crack the password".
Whether that holds up or not, or the Government can present stronger evidence to that effect, is another matter.
Using the cracked hash to access a system you have no authorization to access is illegal.
Don't play the government's (and hollywood's, in case of DVD and Blueray) game. Cracking a hash is not a crime.
The US government has claimed exactly this in its indictment of Assange:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...
It's fascinating to me how you can accuse someone of "spreading FUD" without having read the (short) indictment.
In my opinion this is complicated stuff. I think people have not only a right but a moral obligation to leak in order to expose crimes. But it isn't clear that this was Assange's goal. Instead, Assange does a lot of moral posturing and seems mostly driven by ego: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting.
I would be much more sympathetic had Assange or wikileaks provided leaks in a different manner. But they didn't. They released everything, unredacted, without commentary or contextualization which is why the previous poster's restatement of Assange's infantile position is basically accurate:
> So do you really want to live in a world where the governing maxim is that information wants to be free, and that justifies any and all means of getting to it, including breaking into secure information systems?
A tool of nation states in the end.
Nowadays when someone "reads" an article, they just skip to the comment section and unwittingly chose the highest voted memetic comment and adapt its opinion as their own, regardless of the facts laid by the article itself.
Sometimes those people go so far as to write their own articles that spread the questionable memetic idea, which is exactly what the OP's article is.
The truth is that Julian Assange is being indited for attempting to break into US gov computer systems. If there was no evidence he had done so, there would not be charges pressed. Nothing about this is a free speech matter.
Easier said than done.
In short, sometimes you need to act in the spirit of, rather than the letter of the law to act in the interest of the greater good - but if you overreach, expect the long arm of the law to catch you and punish you for that overreach.
But still, yes I broadly agree with your position.
Civil disobedience comes with consequence and that consequence shows the states true colors IMO.
Egged on by Assange as well it seems.
Even when she said that’s all I have she was encouraged to go digging for more.
So - what if your ethics are wrong? What if you haven't done the work to understand why the laws are the way they are? Are you still being conscientious?
Laws are public and the result of a massive concensus-building process that we've built known as representative democracy, by which, if we choose to actually participate, we all have a say in which laws exist and which don't. 'Ethics' on the other hand are personal and subjective and are not written down anywhere and do not govern others' actions and while they might well be right they may just as easily be wrong.
I'm not saying that there are no cases of justified civil disobedience. Certainly civil rights protests and the leaking of the Pentagon Papers come to mind. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the laws are always wrong and the whistleblowers always right. Each case needs to be discussed on its own merits, through public debate. And sometimes that means that it turned out the laws were right, and the whistleblowers were mistaken.
How dare you speak for or decide for the public then. Have you requested access from us or our representatives? Or you think, "fuck it, owned by everyone, I have a license to do whatever I want".
Even if this ridiculous argument is true, Assange was never a US citizen or taxpayer.
The governed cannot consent if they are uninformed.
Assange is not relevant here; what matters is that the US government was keeping secrets of war crimes from the very people to whom the government is accountable.
There is a strong moral argument to be made that the government has no rights to secrets kept from its citizenry.
If anything, the fact of Americas military-industrial-pharmacuetical complex covering up crimes against humanity (torture program) and real war crimes (every twenty minutes) makes American leaders even more susceptible to corruption and influence by non-democratically elected actors, state or otherwise.
You'd rather the country be run by shady Blackwater types protected by ultimate state secrecy than have to deal with state diplomacy as its always been?
Wikileaks exposed pretty clear cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity where the laws and policies and "ethics" of the situation are very well documented, and are very well understood among the sovereign states which ratified them. These are clear crimes we are talking about.
The American military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex is inconvenienced by these crimes being exposed - not the American people, in whose names these acts are committed, and who bear ultimate responsibility for the actions of their state.
Knowing what is being done in your name by your government representatives is a good thing - you cannot be a responsible citizen otherwise.
Furthermore, the argument I was responding to failed to allow any nuance or qualification to the reasons the government keeps secrets. Certainly there is a big difference between broad policy decisions or matters of chain of responsibility than there is between tactical information and contextual data collection. I understand government secrecy for the latter, but not the former. I certainly am not going to conflate the two, even as I concede that one is necessary and the distinction hard to enforce.
> You'd rather the country be run by shady Blackwater types protected by ultimate state secrecy than have to deal with state diplomacy as its always been?
Secrecy has always been a part of state diplomacy. What world do you love in that this is not the case?
And this is why the world is perpetually at war. Those who have the power to stop the war-mongers (The People) don't have any idea what is really going on - thus diplomacy has been usurped from most democracies around the world, and is thus: broken.
No, that's because we have an entire industrial complex surrounding making war profitable.
We had state secrets far before then and there were very long periods of peace.
The many, many, many times things have leaked with absolutely no major public reaction would show that to be false.
Such arguments don't hold water when the process of classification is determined by a fairly elected representative of that citizenry.
Americans could elect somebody who promised to ditch classification altogether, but they wouldn't, because reality is not so clear.
Democracy being the least worst option doesn't absolve it from criticism.
Yes, they could still vote to abolish state secrets altogether. But I think knowledge about how secrecy is abused is also very much relevant to an informed vote on such a matter.
Specific opinions cannot be expressed by electing a "representative".
Elect an idiot like Trump who leaks secrets to foreign governments at the drop of a hat?
You've skipped over a chunk of logic there which I feel bears closer scrutiny.
The house and the car are owned by people, who feel emotional distress when their privacy is invaded. Governments do not feel emotional distress ever.
It's also hard to argue that governments are harmed by invasions of privacy the same way an individual might be, because governments wield much power in the form of monopolization of force and have more control over how information they dislike is used. See the British parliaments ban on using parliamentary footage for comedy purposes.
The point is, while I'm not saying government information systems should be a free-for-all, I am personally of the opinion that the larger an organization gets, the less right it has to privacy. I don't agree with your logical leap of "people deserve privacy -> governments are basically people -> governments deserve privacy". Governments don't have a right to privacy the way people do.
The topic of whether there's any meaning to the concept of owning digital property when anything digital is a post-scarcity asset that costs essentially nothing to duplicate is something that society still hasn't really agreed upon.
Right. We're debating whether that might be an ok thing to do under some circumstances. The government that is protesting criminal access to it's records is the government that gets to set what is or is not criminal, which is a clear conflict of interest.
If that government was morally praiseworthy, we might be willing to assume it is capable of rising above this conflict of interest. However, the government in question has, in it's recent history, knowingly opened fire on children with gunships and then attempted to cover it up, so I personally am of the opinion that it doesn't have a track record that would imply it is capable of rising above that conflict of interest.
Hence, I'm not very interested in what US law says on this matter, but I would be inclined to hear what the UN has to say on the matter.
We (some of us) allow corporations to treat proprietary information as intellectual property with the same legal protections as physical property because it benefits society to protect the revenue streams of eg hollywood so that they will continue producing new movies at a profit. But it is a specific hack to protect revenue streams of businesses to incentivize them to produce new and valuable information.
We never agreed to the same protections for the state, or even that such is good or necessary.
I am not sure how treating a video bitstream of war crimes (produced with hardware purchased with my tax money) as “property” that does not belong to me (a member of the group who paid for its production) benefits society. I am not sure how punishing someone who furnished me with a copy of that bitstream as someone who “stole” benefits society or encourages production of new or innovative or valuable information. Recall, that is the whole basis for the concept of “intellectual property” - a metaphor for businesses to profit from spending time and money producing new bitstreams, by shoehorning it into old physical property protection systems. The state is not a business and their prosperity is not an explicit goal of our society.
All it does it protect the state, who has demonstrated over and over again its willingness to break the law, perpetrate violence, and lie to everyone about all of it.
That is not a legal interpretation of “property” that we agreed to.
Except they don't ? "You" can, of course, but it doesn't mean "people" need to. There is no scarcity of digital files in the world. You can create and destroy them at will. With real property, you can't. That's also the basic argument against DRM systems. The file isn't scarce. That you transferred the scarcity of resources to make the file to the file itself is something you brought upon yourself. Nobody asked you to. If it does not suit you, you are free to do everything with pen and paper, and put the papers in your wardrobe. You can't have the benefits and convenience (i.e., lack of scarcity) of digital files, and still pretend that they are scarce. Pick one.
If someone steals a safe, and then brings it to me to unlock and I know they stole it originally, I am in violation of the law and clearly committing a criminal act.
>you deal with them after the fact based on the actions and their broader context. So in this case, the action is "publishing". Whether publishing is legal or not is governed by different laws.
That's done only as a convenience of law enforcement. Just like if you download a Hollywood movie torrent without purchasing it, you're still committing a crime even though law enforcement won't come after you because it takes too many resources.
No, that's not how DMCA, flawed as it may be, works. The illegal part that can be proven is uploading, not downloading. They get your IP when you upload a chunk in the swarm, which serves as evidence. That's a crucial difference. If you are only a leecher who never uploads a single bit, you would not get a notice. Uploading (or publishing) copyrighted content is governed by a set of laws. Publishing news articles is governed by a different set.
I might explain a filesystem and folder structure to someone by using an analogy that uses paper folders etc. But crucial understanding is lost when I do this. There are significant differences between the systems that make certain rules that apply to one system not apply to the other.
Another reason this is not a useful analogy is if we see information as government property, I am using government property each time I identify myself using my ID card or even my name and date of birth. Surely we should now pay tax each time we do this (or the government should license it to us).
Furthermore, in the specific case of the government, which works in service of the people it governs, government owned information is at odds with its purpose. The government got this information from, and uses it in service of, its citizens. As much of it as possible should be public. For instance, land-surveying information should be public, as well as free (with respect to rights).
The property analogy is too limited. We need to understand information as something different.
I do disagree with him being classified as a journalist as from my understanding he published writings from others. That, if we are to classify him, would place him more within the realms of a publisher, not a journalist.
Hence this is not a threat to journalists, but publishers - who are less protected and the legal buck for journalists actions. That's their job. They are there to make sure journalists adhere to standards as much as write articles wanted. But journalist or publisher, etc - your not above the law and the journalist card is not a get out of free jail card. Never has been and some would argue, more the opposite.
Numerous innocent people were mowed down gleefully. Political powers were sabatoging nations. Evil amok. And the only thing you want to talk about is that hacking allegedly occurred and after 7 years imprisonment assange deserves more?
I won't even get into how different it is to break into someone's home as compared to a govt office...
You clearly don't understand the concept of whistleblowing. And you did not read the article you're commenting on:
“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.” So the goal was to protect Manning’s identity, and Assange offered to assist.
The thing with whistle blowing though, is (some) countries have protections for whistle blowers specifically because off-book methods are commonly needed.
So, even if Assange did assist Manning as stated... the "illegality" here isn't really the point (except to people trying to suppress whistle blowing).
The point is whether whistle blower protections turn out to be fit for purpose. ;)
>In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
The Obama administration had the same information that the Trump administration used to make it's "hacking" claim and came to a very different conclusion.
>“The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.”
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, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...
And then, think of it like this: you see a dark house at the end of the street, a dark den of scum and villainy, and you know that crimes have been committed from this house because you've seen the corpses scattered in its yard. Are you not justified in investigating - or at least, reporting to relevant authorities, that something is going wrong?
Because America today is that house, and the only relevant authorities who can do anything about it, are the American people themselves. (The local law enforcement already know about the house - they sell their crack and bury their corpses there too.. such is the state of the American military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex today, the real, tangible crimes of which are and always have been in Wikileaks sights...)
Assange is not a journalist. He conspired to hack a computer system. That is a crime.
Regardless of what you believe to be right, you must acknowledge that sometimes good people have to face consequences for their actions, regardless of the morality of said actions.
The indictment charges Assange with conspiring with Manning to unlawfully gain new access to a protected government computer system. Specifically:
* Assange gave Manning a CD to boot from on the target computer, containing tools to copy the protected password data.
* Assange received a copy of the password hashes from Manning, and attempted to crack them.
Regardless of what reasons the Obama administration had to proceed or not proceed with the indictment at the time (which we are not privy to), these are very clearly defined criminal offenses in the USA, with much precedent behind them. Had Assange not provided the hacking tools, and had he not attempted to crack the passwords, this indictment would never have happened.
Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here; it's about conspiring to hack a government computer.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
what's wrong with this?
> * Assange received a copy of the password hashes from Manning, and attempted to crack them.
Assange tried to find the pre-image of a hash. There's nothing criminal about that either.
It's conspiracy.
> Assange tried to find the pre-image of a hash. There's nothing criminal about that either.
That's also conspiracy. You can't take these two acts out of context. They were done with the intent of stealing and disseminating classified information which is illegal.
But because intent matters, if Assange's intent was to reveal information that the public should know, then what he did shouldn't be illegal.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with briskly thrusting a knife back and forth. But if there’s a person stood in front of you and you intend to kill them, the moral and legal context changes. Context and intent matter.
He has not been under trial yet, so how do you know with such certainty he actually did that?
>Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here;
A lot of very prominent people who deal with politics, activism and journalism disagree with this assessment. On top of that list would be: Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden and Noam Chomsky. Their reasoning seems pretty solid. And unlike some media people, they didn't suddenly flip-flop in their positions on such issues.
And who cares what prominent people think ? They aren't the ones who will be judging whether Assange committed a crime or not. Lots of prominent people have defended guilty people before.
Well, I happen to value Glenn Greenwald's analysis of the impact this prosecution will have on journalism a tad more than unsubstantiated comments from random people on Hacker News.
I understand the claim that this was an effort by Assange to protect his information source, but should it really not be considered Bad to login to someone else's account on a government network and spoof your actions with their name attached? Is it so unreasonable to believe that that's somehow too far?
[0] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indi...
Imagine if these were physical documents in a safe. A journalist helping the source crack that safe would be very illegal.
Actually cracking the safe is illegal. We've been over this for decades. Once it was about simply encrypting. Others about documents on bomb making. Or safe cracking. Or lock picking.
The information is legal. Putting it in practice to gain unauthorized access is illegal.
Terrible analogy. Assange obtained the actual NTLM hash from Manning of the user they were trying to crack the password of and attempted to crack it with the full knowledge that it was a top secret US military login. He wasn't sending her generic knowledge on how to crack NTLM passwords.
>Actually cracking the safe is illegal.
Attempting to crack a safe that you don't have authorization to, with the intent of stealing things from it is also illegal even if you failed to crack it.
Just like going around the neighborhood trying the doors of homes or pulling handles of cars is illegal.
Assange did not steal and leak the materials, he was the outside party publishing them.
On the other hand Ellsberg was the person working for the government who copied and leaked all the materials and knew he might face charges for that reason.
In this comparison Manning would be compared to Ellsberg. And Assange would be the reporter at The NY Times or WaPo (I’m brain farting here) who published them.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
So imagine if a journalist did that, and told someone "if you break into this person's house, I will publish your findings. Since neither of us like this person."
Would that be illegal? It would definitely be illegal.
A better analogy would be that as he was casing the joint, he called up someone, told them he was going to break in, and asked for instructions on how to pick locks. At that point, rendering such assistance makes you an accomplice.
"Publishing" documents is not what Assange is being indicted for, and his defenders refuse to accept that point. It is cited as an aggravating circumstance, which is indeed arguably an overreach.
It seems you people think it's ok to have someone end up like this guy for helping a source get us information we all benefited from. You can say trying to protect this source's identity is conspiracy to commit computer hacking, but your head needs to be buried very deep into the sand to pretend this is anything but the excuse used to get him.
The actual crime here is holding governments accountable. Trying, at least.
I understand most of you didn't love him for exposing problems inside a political party otherwise set to win the election. I really do. I understand he didn't do much to be loved by the public. I understand 10 years of propaganda could make most people change their mind about a saint. But here, too?
I listened to his most recent interview today and I really enjoyed his views. I half expect people to point out this is Russian state media, and yes, the reds are out to get you but can listen to it in the background, that way the watermark can't bother you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A
I lost one fifth of my karma yesterday defending the guy, let's see if this comment goes the same way.
Edit: funny enough my comment went to -3 in no time before slowing crawling its way back to +1. Almost like if... Nah.
The previous Obama administration went very hard against whistle blowers, but even they ultimately decided that prosecuting Assange for this would be a step too far.
What's happening seems to be people don't like him for various reasons (fair enough), are blind to the larger issues and chilling effects caused by this prosecution, and so with motivated reasoning decide this is not about politics and is about hacking, he's a bad hacker who tried to crack a Government password, and they're just standing up for some principal of not trying to hack Govt passwords or some such.
I could have sworn that you used to be able to still read [flagged] comments here. When did that change, or am I misremembering?
1. Did Assange send Manning the name of utility that would crack the password?
Or
2. Did Assange send Manning a link to the utility in order to download it?
Or
3. Did Assange send Manning a page of Google search results, and/or a Wikipedia page, a technical article or blog post with the computer science fundamentals behind password-cracking?
Or
4. Did Assange send Manning a technical article or blog post with step by step instructions to crack the password?
Or
5. Did Assange crack the password himself?
I apologize if this information has been released somewhere and I haven’t seen it. In addition, apologize if the questions that I asked sound painfully fundamental or demeaning towards Assange or Manning.
What I am trying to get at is how easy it seems to get in trouble with the law in this case. Suppose someone comes up to me and says they want to know how to hotwire a car (or whatever the term is) in order to steal it, I happen to blurt out that this someone can “just Google that”, and then this person goes out and does just that without me being totally sure about their intent to do so. Am I now an accomplice to the crime?
Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama...
No, releasing documents is not conduct that he is charged with.
> Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama...
Commutation is not a pardon; it is merely a limitation on punishment. Now, a pardon still wouldn't invalidate the Assange charges, but the idea that the fact that a coconspirator got less punishment than their original sentence negates the validity of charges against someone else in the conspiracy is laughable.
US doesn’t exactly have a strong track record of successfully extraditing people from the UK for hacking the military.
edit: I don't really care about the difference between pardon an commuted sentence because they both are a get out of jail free card.
If he did attempt to break the password hash, he conspired to hack military systems. I don't see why someone who attempted to break a password hash for access to classified documents shouldn't be prosecuted, journalist or not.
Presumably there are quite a few reasonable people who disagree on the necessity of prosecuting “crimes” like this. Why’s your way the right way?
Here's a better lens: Assange attempted to solve a math problem.
Solving a hash is not the same as breaking a physical lock, or attempting entry.
He's only charged with one crime, not multiple, and the “one password” is an integral part of the one crime he is charged with. What “supposed crimes” beside that are you referring to?
Read the section "Manners and Means of the Conspiracy"[1] in the indictment. If you removed the second half of bullet 18 (the only part pertaining to the password), this could be used against almost any journalist.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
Yeah, it's normal for journalists to engage with sources and to acquire information from them, sometimes information that the sources have themselves obtained illegally. But it crosses a bright line for them to collaborate in the illegal acquisition.
Now, you might argue that but for the agreement about the password, the “manner and means” section is largely descriptive of normal journalistic practice. But the manner and means, while necessary description and support, aren't the heart of a conspiracy charge. The “purpose and object” is, and the password is the key part of the manner and means supporting the distinction of the purpose and object from what occurs in normal journalistic practice.
The password isn't a side issue; it's what distinguishes this from “I talked to a source and got copies of documents they stole from safe deposit boxes at the bank where they work” and “I was let into the bank by the source and tried to drill out the lock of a safe deposit box he lacked the key for”.
The former is within the scope of journalism. The latter is not.
If you don't agree with this, what do you take that to mean?
The "Purpose and Object of the Conspiracy" section is not a collection of acts that constitute the conspiracy. It's the objective of the conspiracy. An objective is not an act.
I agree that actually attempting to crack a password so that a source can cover his/her tracks is beyond the actions of a journalist.
And as far as "collaborate in advance" not being a journalistic activity- do you not consider "cultivating sources"[1] to be a core journalistic activity?
Let's say a source/whistleblower reaches out to an NYT journalist. They communicate over "Signal" an encrypted chat. The source worries about being detected in passing the confidential material they've obtained. The NYT journalists assists the source by providing a link to this NYT article "How to tell us a secret"[2].
You could then remove the second half of section 18- add in some other part about the journalist conspiring to assist the source in covering his/her tracks, and reuse this indictment.
That's the threat to journalism.
[1] https://ijnet.org/en/story/developing-and-cultivating-source... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/reader-center/confidentia...
That's not collaboration in advance in the source illegally gaining access to the material. Were the collaboration about delivery from the source alone, I'd agree that there was a potential threat to routine journalistic activity, but that is not the case here.
A grand jury has already decided that: that's what an indictment means.
Did I misunderstand you?
The reason, they hope to “define” what s true journalist is, so that they can remain gatekeepers of who journalists are and what is news. Baffling.
[1]https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activ...
>“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.”
It's up for a trial to determine how much / if any of that happened, but if it did it seems well outside the boundaries of what a journalist should do.
I don't expect a journalist to be assisting someone in accessing information illegally. If the journalist is just given it fine they should be protected, but this seems a good step beyond that.
The article talks about how it would have helped protect that source but it's clear it also would have provided more information / assisted in that process.
Let alone a concern I would have if I were a journalist (I'm not) that providing my source with some cover of another real world person could seriously harm that other person.
In my view Assange should be sentenced to a hundred hours of community service immediately after the people responsible for planning and executing the vastly more consequential crimes Assange revealed are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
He is guilty of skipping bail, which is a serious crime. It's possible that there's merit for what Sweden wanted to extradite him for, and the courts should look at the merits of extraditing him to Sweden
Everyone's going to take a different side, based on:
- He helped make available information genuinely in the public interest about US technically-not-quite war crimes.
- He's alleged to have committed sex crimes in Sweden
- He arguably delivered the presidency to Trump
Edit: it's kind of an ethical version of rock-paper-scissors - no matter what position you take, Assange himself has provided a reason not to take that position.
The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Russian Agents.
These never existed, and were the most obvious part of his character assassination.
Unless you have a link to a Swedish government domain which has published such things?
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html
> 4. Rape
> On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state.
Whatever you think of Assange's guilt or innocence, it is a fact that he was charged with rape.
The entire purpose of that court's review was to determine if the European arrest warrant could be considered valid in the UK.
It explains very clearly and in great detail that he has not been "charged" because that's not how the Swedish judicial system works.
Personally, I think his support of Trump was a transparent attempt to receive some kind of quid pro quo when the inevitable prosecution happened. Obama has already set the precedent by commuting Chelsea Manning's sentence. It wouldn't be that unexpected for Trump to do the same for Assange.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
So many that supported him earlier don't support him anymore because he was delaying and timing leaks and selectively leaking things to help get Trump elected. I personally felt he lost the moral high ground after that.
Isn't it also possible, that he was selectively leaking things to ensure that someone he knew to be a war criminal would not gain power in the American presidency?
If only I wanted to cast vague and unsubstantiated aspersions; then I'd be fine.
But now, that claim is back and the same week Ecuador receives 4.2 billion... Great Timing.