If an American journalist in UK is publishing Chinese military secrets, he will not be extradited to China.
If an Australian journalist in UK is publishing American military secrets, will he be extradited to America?
This is the question now...
That's absolutely correct as the UK doesn't have an extradition treaty with China.
And so that also is a factor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
And all extraditions have a degree of politicisation about them so it wouldn't be at all abnormal here.
The Australian Journalist should not be concerned about precedent set in a US court against a US citizen.
Don't kill the messenger.
Those sort of subtleties are important when you're going to be arguing in front of a judge.
No, it's the "just a blogger" thing - if you only publish on the internet and not in print then your journalistic credentials will always be slightly suspect.
(source: I ran a newspaper, and while 90% of our readers read our stories on our website or FB page, according to our market research the fact that we printed actual paper gave us way more credibility with our audience than competitors who just published on the internet)
They would never publish classified material without clearing it first with the UK government. And at minimum carefully redacting information that would put people in harm's way.
What odds might be put on them actual being uncivilised boors who'll publish anything that gets eyeballs?
More likely they wouldn't publish raw classified information because it is dry and boring.
It's not true that you have to limit harm to the government's taste in order to be considered a journalist, and it's not true that Assange did not try to limit harm either.
> Those sort of subtleties are important when you're going to be arguing in front of a judge.
Not in front of this judge. If there's one thing the case against Assange hasn't been, it's subtle!
However, I’m sure the judge will be influenced by her estimate of how likely Assange’s defense is to win their case.
The UK at least is a common law country with historical connections to the US and a common language. I would expect a UK judge to do a better job of applying US law than a judge from a civil law country.
Yes, the inconvenience of being extradited and spending time in jail should mean something, but in practice the courts don’t give that a lot of weight. They just say they’ve balanced the relevant factors and made a decision.