Julian Assange's Barrister speaks out | Hacker News Reader

Julian Assange's Barrister speaks out

couriermail.com.au

39 pointsjedwhite16 comments

From what I've read about this elsewhere, Julian seems to be a bit of a slut. But there is a lot less meat than "rape allegations" would seem to imply. Furthermore the whole thing seems to be politically motivated.

Somehow I'm very much not surprised.

Incidentally I prefer the version at http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/sex-by-surprise-at-hear... because it has more detail about the whole sordid affair.

Are there similar articles written discussing the rape allegations in the US press? I seem to have missed them...

Yes http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/sex-by-surprise-at-hear...

Ok. I have officially heard enough about Julian Assange.

Unless there is considerably new information on this story -- charges filed, some new tech angle, unforeseen reaction to the leaks -- I am flagging any new posts I see.

I don't flag much at all, I have a very high threshold, but this is really pushing the limits. At the very least let's agree that there are good people on both sides of this issue. Some folks think Assange is a criminal. Others don't.

It's fair to say that postings going on about possible sinister plots, political action recommendations, and ways to get back at whomever opposes wikileaks doesn't help me form a better startup, doesn't inform me on startup or hacker-related issues, and can only serve to keep alive a constant bickering argument. That's not why I'm here. I just can't see all of these postings as anything more than emotional appeals to light the torches and go storm the castle. Great political fodder, perhaps, but some of us like Dr. Frankenstein and don't want the castle stormed.

So to all of you who are out there wanting to make a difference and change the world, I feel your pain. Go organize, protest, and plot somewhere else please. Godspeed.

First it will be wikileaks servers getting shutdown and the hackers there getting jailed on trumped up charges. And us "normal" hackers won't care. Then the Torrents will get closed off. It's all piracy, what do we care. Then maybe Google will start shutting down Google Docs accounts and censoring more search results (hello China) because someone has shared documents that ought not to. But we won't care. We'll move to dropbox and DuckDuckGo. Until eventually it's YOUR server getting shut down, my "normal" hacker friend. And then who will speak up for you?

Listen to me very carefully. I think free speech is the best thing that each of us owns, and I know for a fact that freedoms are terribly under assault. I am terribly concerned that we are losing the last bit of freedoms we have. We live in a secrecy state that is only getting worse.

But that emotional reaction doesn't make what wikileaks does right. It's completely possible that they have done a great good service -- and they are also criminals. You know what I feel about wikileaks? That idiots who agree with you are more dangerous to your cause than clever people who disagree.

Perhaps you disagree. Fine. I don't expect everybody to agree with me. My point is that this is not a black-and-white, good-versus-evil argument. Everybody wants it to be one. Freedoms have limits. Hell, everything has limits. If you'd like to discuss this at the meta level? Email me. A few other HNers have and I enjoy the discussion. But on a board like this you're only going to get gut reactions and cartoonish slogans. The conversation is just not going to go anywhere except to a bad place. Like trotting out the old "they came for the Jews" thing, or bringing up Nazis. We're a hair away from calling each other asshats. I can see from some of the other comments that we're headed that way in a hurry. It's just a bad topic area right now, no matter what your opinion is about it.

For civility's sake, let it go for a while. Please.

In this case, I disagree. The reasons for the right and wrong of it are better expressed by The Atlantic than I'm able.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the...

Not to mention, there are plenty of people who might question plenty of the recent stories you've shared yourself as off-topic and political. For example posting the Ron Paul story about scanners, or telling HN to vote. It's one thing to flag "great political fodder" but another to post political fodder yourself while flagging that posted by others, methinks!

"I am flagging any new posts I see"

I agree with you that this particular story is somewhat inappropriate. The Swedish prosecution obviously have done a terrible job, but "who did what and when" is pure gossip.

On the other hand this is the one of the biggest technology related stories of the year. Of the Swedish cables only 1% have been released publicly and newspapers have been running "front page" stories about the leaks for a week [1]. A majority of which is about the actual content of the leaks and not meta. Swedish national television also ran a program about the content of the leaks earlier tonight. I would imagine it's the same in many other countries. In short: This story is huge.

What I don't get is why you have to post so many comments on a subject you don't like or are interested in. You've been here long enough to know that this is a community driven site and the posting guidelines are very loose. Sometimes events like this creates a snowballing of votes. You yourself posted a political story about the TSA just weeks ago for instance. I personally not very interested or affected by the whole TSA deal. But guess what, I just ignore those stories and read the other ones instead. Because if everyone would start commenting on stories they didn't like or didn't feel was suited for HN, almost every story would feature that kind of complaint.

So if you feel it's truly inappropriate for HN then flag it. If you disagree, are not interested or feel you have read to many similar stories; then just ignore it and maybe someone will return the favor when something you are interested in goes into a vote "snowball".

[1] Biggest newspapers: http://www.svd.se/ http://www.dn.se/ http://aftonbladet.se/ http://www.expressen.se/

What I don't get is why you have to post so many comments on a subject you don't like or are interested in.

I'm not going to play the game where you start questioning me personally, then the whole conversation becomes about me. Let's agree that we don't need to go there. If you'd like answers to your question, I'm more than happy to provide them offline.

I think we actually agree. This IS the biggest tech story of the year, perhaps the decade. I'm just asking folks to do a bit of self-censorship and cut back on the activism and gossip posts. Like I said, if something truly breaks, I'm all for posting and discussing it. But stuff like "take your PayPal business elsewhere!" and "Wikileaks lawyers watched!" and others have this breathless quality that's just a bit over the top. The only thing it invites -- the only purpose it has that I can see -- is a bunch of guys to pile on with "hell yeah!" posts and comments.

You guys want to keep posting them, I'll keep responding and flagging. Fair enough. I just wanted to explain myself, because in the several years I've been on here, I've probably flagged less than 20 stories. I hate flagging.

Seems HN has turned into TMZ.

Every weekend, the balance of stories shifts, with more fluffy stories being upvoted. Come monday, it will all go back to normal again.

Hardly, this story is about the means by which established institutions and government agencies will stretch the law to try to thwart the impact of technological change. This is not about sex. It's about the disintermediation of the traditional media and irreversible transparency of government and the exposure of truth being enabled by distributed technology. Every hacker should care deeply about what is happening to this particular hacker, and the manipulative techniques being used to smash the technologically-driven freedom of speech impact that the organization for which he has become a personification represents.

Or the charges could be totally right...and he is a douche.

He may well be a douche, or a bit creepy or strange, or any of the other accusations smeared on him. But the point is that he isn't being pursued because he's a douche. He's being pursued because of his involvement in wikileaks and the technological disruption it represents. There is a deep nexus between the changes being enabled by technology and issues of personal liberty. That's why hackers on here care about technology and transparency - whether it's the transparency of your body through a backscatter imaging device, or the transparency of governments through wikileaks. Hackers are at the vanguard of the changes in technology and freedom. And they care about the liberty of their fellow citizens and democratic institutions. Technology holds both the greatest threat to and the greatest promise for liberty and democracy. How we handle it will determine if it's Big Brother keeping an eye on the people, or the people keeping an eye on Big Brother.

PS all of this is not to say there aren't plenty of legitimate criticisms of what wikileaks is doing. Clearly there is some stuff on there that does need discretion if it's genuinely endangering lives and there are parts that should be redacted for the public interest. But the coverage from The New York Times and other traditional media as well as across the web shows there is genuine public interest and public good served in exposure of where there is wrong doing. There is clearly scope for sensible discourse about it. But I don't believe in government assassination hit-lists or smear campaigns and trumped up sex crime charges as a replacement for honest discourse over matters of genuine and valid fourth estate purview.

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