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Comment by trevelyan | Hacker News Reader

Did he? How do you know? As above, evidence rather than speculation please.

Because i read the indictment.

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.

Read it again, Aqueous. And read it literally this time.

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.

Sure, it's an indictment, not a conviction. Whatever you might think of the government's case, it's false to say that "no one has claimed" Assange assisted Manning. The government is clearly making that claim in the indictment.

> 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.

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.

It's like these people don't understand how these charges work.

So - Assange's best defense against this is that, despite his own words, he was lying to Chelsea then, but isn't lying now?

'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.

Claims that Assange assisted Manning with hacking the documents released by Wikileaks are obviously false. Those claims are inconsistent with the indictment and the publicly-released evidence such as the Manning-Lamo chat logs. There is no public evidence that Assange conspired with Manning to get those materials.

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.

A conspiracy to commit a crime is a conspiracy to commit a crime whether or not it was successful. An attempt to help a break-in implicates him in the conspiracy. Assange, by his own words, indicated that he was trying to crack the password hash that Manning gave him. Assange appears to be admitting through his own words that he was assisting in the attempt to commit a crime. What he said is written - verbatim - in the indictment. The indictment was approved by a grand jury. We'll see whether he is guilty if he pleads out or if he is convicted at trial.

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 law is extremely clear: you have to prove intent not just infer it from a vaguely worded chat message that reads the other way. I guess we will see how your predictions about a public trial hold out.

> you have to prove intent

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".

It seems like your only justification here is outright denial. That's an interesting tactic for someone who claims to care about the law and logic.

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.

> There is no actual claim here that Assange did anything to crack the system or assisted Manning in doing so

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.

He said so himself. Please read the indictment.

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