UN expert says "collective persecution" of Julian Assange must end | Hacker News Reader

UN expert says "collective persecution" of Julian Assange must end

ohchr.org

175 pointsjules-jules58 comments

This is a better link than the earlier post about this today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060252), but it's likely to suffer from the same problem: all threads about Assange have become the same. They all angrily relitigate the whole story from scratch. Receptivity, curiosity, and information exchange—what HN exists for—are low; indignation and repetition—the two most fatal qualities—are high. If this continues, we're going to start moderating these threads more heavily, not for or against Assange, but to protect HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

To wax philosophically on this topic:

From a systems perspective, the observed phenomenon is that the system enters a state where agents no longer meaningfully exchange information and further attempts at information exchange paradoxically result in reduced consensus.

This isn't a problem unique to HN, but is one that HN has systematically tried to avoid. I have no answer, but am taking time to frame and pose the question properly, so that we can consciously acknowledge the phenomenon and address it properly.

One might speculate that if people could systematically avoid entering such a state things such as war wouldn't be possible, I imagine PG would agree.

A weaker and perhaps more achievable goal would be to back out of that state, a little, once we get into it.

I'm not PG but have had the same thought about war, and mentioned it recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994991. Sometimes I think that the patterns of behavior we're trying to work out in this trivial internet forum are not, in the end, so trivial.

> all threads about Assange have become the same

This is what I have observed in all threads marginally related to 'censorship'/'freedom of speech'. The exact same ideologically charged opinions, often mixed with a dose of middle school level name calling., get reiterated every one or two days, usually by the same set of users. I use to find those flame wars boring, but now I have learned to appreciate the beauty in the amount of efforts people throw into this dumpster fire. It’s the Sisyphus of our time.

And now Assange has also joined the club.

In all seriousness, I wonder what would happen if submissions get penalized more heavily by flagging. I guess there are lots of people how visit HN for the general tech-related interesting stuff, who have shut up due to the immense heat from those flame wars, and would happily click the 'Flag' button if it would bring back a less combative environment for discussion.

I have a fairly long internal list of topics where the comments are generally a rehash of past discussions. To mention a somewhat top 10:

Affirmative action.

Privilege.

Piracy.

Gender segregation.

Ad blockers.

Permissive vs GPL license.

Trump.

Fake news.

Diet and climate change.

Weight loss.

Static vs. dynamic types?

I'd think exceptions can be made for exceptional cases. Like it or not, this is a subject that has implications for very fundamental freedoms that most free citizens consider necessary for a positive future. While it may be tiring to hear the repetition and indignation, I think certain subjects should allow it. If not, you are possibly censoring the voices for liberty and humanity.

The propaganda machines are too big and too well oiled. Stopping their dissidents, even if it's just on HN for the sake of a better HN experience, IMHO is too far. As long as the front page isn't bombarded constantly, people can scroll past to another article if they know the dialogue will be repetitive. I don't think that's too much to ask in dire situations, although maybe you're saying HN doesn't consider this situation dire...

EDIT: Lmao 10 mins in, multiple down votes but no responses. Good work HN.

The trouble with that argument is that everyone has their different idea of what the exception should be. If we accommodate them all, that's the same as anything goes.

I personally found a lot of new information and/or well-argued arguments on the linked comment thread.

I'd be curious to see links.

This is a direct result of the disinformation regarding this story by both supporters and detractors of Assange.

Details are repeatedly argued because low-info headlines kept being released by media conglomerates, and, even the readers here have relied on those.

Quite possibly. And likely equally true of most other divisive topics. The question is, how do we handle that here? If we leave it to run its course untrammeled, that amounts to letting this place shatter.

I think if you post a reminder such as you did here, to be civil and in pursuit of understanding (instead of flames) on this topic, and perhaps of the intricacies that I mentioned, you'll end up trending the comments towards your desired range.

Thanks for caring, and discussing, sir.

It would be cool if there were a way to see how "repeated" the content of a given comment is across similar stories so users could make their own judgement on the value of novel views. Similarly, penalizing comments (display-order wise) for being "mere" repetition would be a neat way of nudging discussion towards novelty without applying the "strong" censorship of deletion.

Novelty has diminishing returns when you don't optimize for something else; there are many more ways to be wrong than there are to be right, after all.

it's useful to be reminded of where the argument stands, and to get people unfamiliar with the state of argument up to speed.

a quick, factual recitation of basic arguments could be helpful, if boring, to direct the novelty toward the edges of the argument where it can hopefully push toward insightful territory?

it should be ok to be wrong (if hard to identify and harder to internalize); the problem seems to be obstinacy (e.g., shouting the same things over and over).

My gut feeling is that software techniques are still too crude to capture just the kind of repetition that we'd want to downweight. But it would be interesting if that were wrong.

Sentiment analysis would be possible to run on either or both of articles and individual comments - I've done it before on a forum that had far less activity than HN does and gotten at least some usable data. You could then track individual features (e.g. "Julian Assange", "Uber" or "free speech") over time, I'd assume that both how frequently it appears in comments and how the sentiment towards it changes over time are both interesting if you were thinking of some sort of metrics.

Forums are also quite good sources for intent and emotional analysis along with just sentiment, you could probably get to see what topics are (5, Flamebait) in the old Slashdot sense :)

https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/08/emotion-sentiment-analysis...

Do you have the ability to allow the link to stand but suppress the discuss link?

I’m still interested in following this issue, but agree further discussions here serve no productive purpose.

My take on that idea is that it would be running away from the hard problem of having an internet forum that doesn't suck.

I can appreciate that position and the fortitude behind it.

Nationalism does not represent receptivity, curiosity, and information exchange. Assange does.

I'm not sure I understand your comment, but we're only interested in those qualities in how they manifest in HN threads. They're not absolute values—they're simply ways to achieve the goal of the site, which is to be interesting. Assange may be interesting and Assange may represent information exchange, but empirically, the arguments people are having about him here are falling below the minimal substance line.

I flagged this in the hope that other moderators will review and retract or at least refine this statement. I do hope that moderator posts that are flagged are reviewed by a different moderator?

We are surely not supposed to be here to reach consensus but to discuss issue.

This is a deep topic and people disagree on fundamental levels. In order to express themselves clearly they have to start from the beginning.

There are two HN moderators, dang and sctb, and I'm sure the two are in agreement when dang speaks in the plural.

dang didn't say the problem was the failure to reach a consensus, but that there is no discussion, only angry dissension.

I agree that it's a deep topic and that people disagree on fundamental levels. Unfortunately, that's not enough to make for minimally acceptable discussion, i.e. something better than repetitive flamewar. In managing this site, that's one of the main things we have to watch out for. The topics may be incredibly important but what good is that if we blow ourselves up trying to deal with them?

> relitigate the whole story from scratch

that's what most of the articles do, though! The earlier post today is about how journalists consistently distort the facts in the story. And pretty much every MSM article about him dutifully refrains "escaped sweden, holed-up in the embasy, rape charge".

I agree this story is tiresome, but please acknowledge that news stories recite the narrative excessively. (and the article today suggest perhaps there's a reason for that)

I'm happy to acknowledge that. But how does it change how we should manage HN?

I just think if the articles are about X, don't be surprised when the audience talks about X. But I understand your frustration. I'm currently reading the comments on _today's_ 737 max article and feels just like Groundhog Day.

"“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”"

Sad how democratic values are tossed out the window when it doesn't suite them.

Technically the democratic process is when the larger number gang tells the smaller number gang what to do.

That technicality is a poison.

When people say democracy they generally don't mean it. They mean instead a system that protects the few from the overmighty many just as much as it protects the many from the overmighty few.

I honestly wish people would quit hanging this ideal on the merely mechanical idea of democracy. Since that mechanism is incompatible with it in many edge cases.

The serious decline of Assange's health is worrisome. Even Belmarsh prison (where Assange is currently) does not have the best record when it comes to human rights violations [1, pp. 21]. However, it seems the main concern at the moment is his lack of proper access to case files and lawyers, his health, and the relentless, ongoing public statements against him at the highest levels.

I can accept the Rapporteur's assessment that his current condition is the result of very high level "collective persecution", e.g. the British Prime Minister stating "no one is above the law", the Australian Government stating "he won't receive special treatment", statements by Ecuador that he smeared faeces on the wall of the embassy and hacked the president's phone, and US politicians and pundits alike calling for him to be extrajudicially executed, for example.

There has been a very high level campaign to get Assange and make an example of him at all costs, even though opinion is clearly divided on whether most of the actions he is charged with were protected under the First Amendment or even commonplace amongst media organisations, e.g. encouraging leaks of secured information and publishing them, and the remaining acts seem to be de minimis, e.g. offering to, but not actually, cracking a password (all counts of the indictment fall under one of the two categories, the summary wording being almost identical in all of them).

In related news Chelsea Manning is back in prison for refusing to testify in a grand jury against Assange. She has now made the case that they didn't need her testimony for indictments [2], and has apparently written an eloquent letter explaining the history of abuse of the Grand Jury process, after seventy something days in prison to coerce her testimony.

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/76000/eur45004200... [2] https://www.sparrowmedia.net/2019/05/chelsea-mannings-lawyer...

There was also a 3 million dollar extortion attempt against Assange to not publish footage of him in the embassy. His lawyers filed court proceedings in Spain. I'm sorry I don't have a reliable source in English for that. [1]

[1] https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/04/26/actualidad/15562...

What is known about his health? On one hand, I am not surprised it has deteriorated, having stayed in a single location indoors for years. On the other hand, the health concerns could be yet another delay tactic of which he has used many in the past. I don't know what to believe.

The rapporteur has addressed that. He took medical professionals with him and their assessment is he is gravely ill. The specifics won't be made public, as that would violate his privacy, however they have been clear that he is suffering the effects of sustained psychological abuse amounting to torture and that this is most certainly not an act, in their opinion.

I believe that in the embassy he had a chronic cough and a lot of pain in a shoulder (both potentially signs of lung cancer). But that is all I know that has been publicly released.

One other piece of data is that he is said to be somewhat unable to hold a conversation.

Do you have a citation that rapporteur took medical professionals?

Yes, the NYT reported it for example [1]. Edit: ok, to be more clear, they were medically qualified to examine victims of torture, but they gave him a full medical evaluation.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/31/world/europe/ap-...

> the health concerns could be yet another delay tactic

He is currently incarcerated in prison in the UK. He's not personally choosing not to attend the hearing as part of some drama.

I have no direct experience of the prison system but, from what I understand, Belmarsh is for Category A prisoners, part of the deal is that they get a helicopter flying above from the court room to the prison.

In the UK we also have open prisons, where they have nice gardens and the prisoners agree to stay on the prison side of the fence. Open prisons are for white collar criminals that have behaved themselves in general population prisons.

Belmarsh is an institution with a name that goes before it like how Guantanamo or US SuperMax prisons have a reputation.

A suitcase full of cocaine will get a mostly harmless gentleman classed as Category A and escorted to Belmarsh, apart from people doing the wrong things in the drugs trade you have to have killed someone or sent someone to hospital to be 'Category A' - worst of the worse.

Admittedly Assange might just stroll off an open prison, however, Belmarsh is a bit extreme, apart from anything else it makes him into this super-villain whereas the British state should have not bothered giving him and his ego the 'benefit' of that. I blame the Tory government for not getting this call right, they should have used standard procedures to put him in custody in a standard prison, category B, not Belmarsh.

Historically countries have had special prisons such as the Tower of London which are reserved for high profile threats to the status quo, or a place to lock up a leader from another country. It seems this antique way still continues, anyone who messes with the Official Secrets Act is probably resigned to jail anyway, so this is probably why it has to be Belmarsh.

Remember that guy who murdered scores of young adults on that island somewhere in Scandinavia a few years back and how he ended up in quite a posh prison where everything was nice? The British government should have such a place for political enemies. There is no reason to put the likes of Assange - love him or hate him - in with people who are known murderers.

Apart from anything else the acting government run the risk of ending up in prison themselves. The former chair of the Tory party - Jeffrey Archer - had to be sent to jail a few years back. I think he too had a stint in Belmarsh. A lot of people would like to see Tny Blir in jail too - or just executed - and more recent Tory leaders have been in dubious legal territory with adventures in Libya. They could all be given the Belmarsh treatment as the situation currently stands, you would think they would have a Norway style nice prison just in case they end up there themselves.

US law enforcement agencies put a lot effort to prosecute Assange and put him in jail for over than hundred years. I wonder, do they investigate cases about torturing people in Guantanamo or about killing civilians in Vietnam and other countries or about lie about WMD in Iraq with similar level of efforts? Someone is more equal than others here.

The US law enforcement doesn’t typically have jurisdiction over the military. However internally the rights abuses at Guantanamo were investigated, people were tried in court-marshall and convicted. The Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam was prosecuted however punishment was a slap on the wrist.

The entire story highlights the double standards of governments and the people they serve.

Government tells us if we have nothing to hide we shouldn't worry about the invasive intrusions into our privacy but when government's privacy is intruded they want to imprison people for it.

I don't know what "Government" you're talking about, but I have never actually heard that argument.

European governments actually have passed a host of privacy regulations. The US Supreme Court has recognised a right to privacy etc. None of those things would make sense if privacy wasn't valuable.

The US Supreme Court, which by definition does not enact things, it only unenacts things by interpreting the US Constitution, is not what people are talking about when they say "the government". When people talk about "the government" here, they mean the Executive and Legislative branches (President+DOJ and Congress), but mostly they mean law enforcement and those who enable them. Local and federal law enforcement do not want you to have privacy.

The US Supreme Court absolutely does enact things. For example, "tests" to interpret some other law or policy, which then gain the force of law. Or sometimes directly, as in "it would be discriminatory not to do X", and then everyone needs to do X.

It would be more proper to say they can't enact something except in the furtherance of another compelling interest.

When EU legislators say "privacy" they usually mean data regulation (e.g. GDPR)

Data regulations like the GDPR are in fact anti-privacy: they interfere in the free data transactions between companies and users.

Doesn't this just mean that governments have plenty to hide?

Regardless of where you stand on this matter, I think there are quite a few questions we should all be seeking to answer. All the varying opinions and nuance have only served to leave me feeling confused about the whole matter, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

For one, were the actions Assange took to secure the "Collateral Murder" leaks illegal? If so, where is the line that distinguishes his methods from those regularly employed by investigative journalists? And how can he be charged in a way that doesn't threaten the future of investigative journalism and whistleblowing?

The DNC/Podesta leaks have turned Assange into an even more polarizing figure, and it seems that a lot of negative attitudes towards him originate there. Were these leaks more, less, or equally effective as all the Russian disinformation campaigns occurring on social media? If you're one of the people harboring an ill view of Assange for his role here, what is it that upsets you about it? Is it that he released information about Clinton? Or that he didn't release information on Trump? Was it that he released information at all? As far as I know, there was no disinformation in the DNC/Podesta leaks (unlike the Fancy Bear leaks.) So it's fair to say that voters who changed their stance after the leaks did so from a more knowledgeable place. I'm sure noone here is upset at the idea of more informed voters - however, do you believe there is a better way to inform voters of matters like these? What route do you think should have been taken to publish this information?

And with all that said, how much bearing should the DNC leaks have on the ruling of the charges being brought forth for Collateral Murder? Are these matters relevant to one another?

These are all genuine questions - I don't presume any answers. I'd certainly like to learn more from you all, but if past threads are anything to go off of, I'm expecting at least a few inflammatory responses.

No intention to flame, I genuinely find this case fascinating.

So Devils advocate - the dnc was polarized before assange leaked anything. It was straight up controlled by Hillarys camp. If Hillary were some grassroots candidate or hell, if the dnc had just not deliberately sided with one specific candidate when their bylaws are crystal clear that that is wrong (not to mention common sense agreeing) - then yeah I'd say assange was playing presidential chess (though we don't know his actual impact) and that's bad. But that said - the dnc was corrupt as hell. I see assange having a metric fuck ton of moral wiggle room here. Personally it didn't matter what candidate did what Hillary got away with in that election - whoever it was deserved to be exposed and too bad if other incriminating shit came out too. My two cents.

Further, what I've seen is that ppl who dislike assange seem to base it on "well he did something illegal" (giving Manning instructions for hacking). Well, Manning then chose to hack and was pardoned after way less than assange has been through, so how can assange possibly be so bad?

I'm still awaiting more details. I have no problems changing my views. But as everything stands now, I cannot help but think this whole anti assange business is fueled by the exact same propaganda machines that were running on behalf of Hillary in 2016. The ones that mysteriously shut off or slowed down the moment she lost. The ones that insisted that she didn't receive debate questions ahead of time. The ones that convinced so many that there was no server hacking. The ones that made trump look like an incompetent loser with no chance of winning.

The DNC supported the candidate that won the primary, that's true. I've yet to hear what actual wrong=doing was exposed by the leaked emails though, what bylaws are you referring to?

> Well, Manning then chose to hack and was pardoned after way less than assange has been through, so how can assange possibly be so bad?

Maybe if Assange hadn't have been in hiding for the last seven years he would already have been through the same process of trial, conviction, prison and pardon that Manning has. He made the choice to do what he did, so you can't really compare the outcome of his situation with Manning's at all; I agree that his crime seems less serious than Manning's was, maybe it would all be over now had he not entered the embassy? It's entirely possible he would never have been charged with any crimes at all.

On one level this is obvious. I mean Assanges fears of getting deported are well founded. Does anyone expect the US govt to just shrug its shoulders and say "meh"? When you kick a hornets nest, you're going to get stung.

On the other hand, I'm surprised the UN is saying it.

I'm not sure how much political power the UN has in all this, I would guess the US has more though?

> I'm not sure how much political power the UN has in all this, I would guess the US has more though?

Not sure, but I would think they couldn't do much in regard to veto members.

General Assembly and other UN organs have zero vetoes, only Security Council have them IIRC. Of course the UNSC is the most important UN organ in international politics and diplomacy...

Oh yeah, UNSC veto-possessing members can also veto UN Secretary-general election in secret.

I don’t agree with a lot of what has happened over the past several years but Julian’s manifesto remains a must-read.

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