Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment
justice.gov
justice.gov
This is almost certainly sabu/Hector Monsegur. [1]
This guy put Jeremy Hammond [2] behind bars, and now he's being used to bring down Julian Freaking Assange. More lives ruined than you can count on one hand.
I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that has been proven false. Not once. Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in a prison on bullshit charges, and this is just another one.
Stand up for journalists. Real journalists.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond
edit: as pointed out below, Assange was moved from solitary confinement in February.
Having said that, I once went to wikileaks and found a PDF of Steve Job's supposed STD test which claimed he was HIV positive. That was a surprise to me as my understanding was that he died of cancer. I looked into it and no one could corroborate the story and the general consensus seemed to be that it was faked.
Even if it was real, I struggle to see why it's important to leak the private medical records of someone with a deadly STD, although I'm sure there are multiple perspectives on this.
HIPAA (1994) enshrined legally what is one of the few moral absolutes in healthcare - your health issues are nobody else's business with few caveats. HIV is reported to the government. Knowingly infecting someone with HIV is a crime. The reasonable safeguards are there and dumping someone's records does nothing to make anyone safer.
> Due to the contradictory dates, possible evidence of forgery, strong motivations for fabrication, and few motivations for a legitimate revelation, the images should not be taken at face value.
And I found this reddit thread/comment from 11 years ago (when Wikileaks released it) that contains the same text, so it's not as though they released the document and then corrected themselves after the fact -- they published it alongside a warning that it's probably bogus. [2]
[1]: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs_purported_HIV_medical_...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7qo8n/steve_job...
Next thing you know, I'll hear that Wikileaks posted private emails of a government official talking about pizza. Emails which spawned ridiculous conspiracies about satanic child abuse cults headquartered in the basement of a pizza shop that doesn't have a basement.
That would never happen. Not at an august, hard-hitting journalistic outlet like Wikileaks. /s
For another conspiracy theory, what about the idea that if a conspiracy was uncovered, instead of denying it those with something to lose would double down on the most exaggerated parts of the conspiracy to down out the less insane and more likely parts. Get the public to focus on the pizza shop and not on the (since deceased) billionaire.
One is a conspiracy about a pedophile ring in a pizzaria basement when no such basement exists. The other is a conspiracy that has dozens if not hundreds of convictions and at least a tacit admission from the institution that it's a problem.
> For another conspiracy theory, what about the idea that if a conspiracy was uncovered, instead of denying it those with something to lose would double down on the most exaggerated parts of the conspiracy to down out the less insane and more likely parts. Get the public to focus on the pizza shop and not on the (since deceased) billionaire.
The mastermind (Ailes) behind the news network responsible for pushing the former conspiracy and distracting from the latter admitted to starting the network for the express purpose of running political interference. It's not really a conspiracy when the conspirators are blatantly open about it - at least not in the colloquial sense. Political interference they're running now against SDNY in order to obstruct the investigation.
The difference in circumstance should be apparent - it's the existence of actual evidence and reliable first hand accounts.
Leaking Podesta's email spawned a conspiracy theory that high-ranking Democrats were a part of a satanic child abuse and traffic ring. It was specifically partisan.
Meanwhile there are multiple layers to the Epstein case. Yes, Epstein was a nexus of child abuse. He was a terrible human being who got away with years of child abuse because of his money and powerful connections. Yes, he died under mysterious circumstances. And Epstein's close friends and confidants included both Democrats and Republicans.
Conflating Pizzagate with Epstein is just moving the goalposts to exonerate Wikileak's publishing of private emails. Are some of the people involved in the email dump known associates of Epstein? Yes. But that's not what Pizzagate is, nor was Epstein associated with the email dump.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32795
> Subject: You left something at the Field house > Susan & Herb > I just came from checking the Field house and I have a square cloth handkerchief (white w/ black) that was left on the kitchen island. > Happy to send it via the mail if you let me know where I should send it.
> I also meant to inquire yesterday about the pillows you purchased. I can send them as well, if you let me know where they are in the house.
> Safe travels to all > Kate
> Hi John,
> The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yorus? They can send it if you want. > I know you're busy, so feel free not to respond if it's not yours or you don't want it.
> Susaner
I mean, they're talking about a handkerchief with a pattern of a map, with various food items on it, like pizza. I have never seen such a handkerchief, but this is almost certainly some sort of a novelty handkerchief with a map of Italy, featuring various types of cuisine common to the region. Which kind of makes sense, since it's a napkin.
Why would you assume it is coded? The realtor emails and says, hey, you forgot your handkerchief. Podesta's friend, who was with him, emails him and says, hey, I think that's your handkerchief, the one with the map and pizza and stuff.
And this is supposed to be unusual? This is just how people talk.
I too was confused by the use of what appears to be coded language, but then thought to myself: wait, is what I am reading authentic?
I’m honestly upset that this sort of information was released
EDIT: It seems any effort to seek clarification is discouraged here. My apologies.
The context you are missing is that there are some sibling comments here claiming that wikileaks has never posted info with questionable veracity. I believe the Steve Jobs leak is one such case.
I also was pointing out that sometimes certain types of information don't need to be leaked at all. I personally believe medical info should be very private unless perhaps you are running for the office of the President. But, as I said, there are probably multiple perspectives on the issue (particularly perspectives of people who would want Apple's stock price to go down, or might think of Steve Jobs as evil for the Foxconn scandals, for instance).
Hope that helps.
Well, it depends on which public person we are talking about.
A random nobody? Yeah, privacy is important for them.
Someone running for president, or someone who is a CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world? I don't really care much about their privacy, in either circumstance.
Who will get justice or recompense by knowing that?
What future benefits or change of course will this bring for you, or me, or society?
Don't get me wrong, I don't care about this guy's privacy either -- plus he's dead, so privacy is mostly moot -- but it's hard to see what anyone stands to gain from airing inconsequential medical history.
Agreed.
> As an officer of a public corporation, how much privacy can one expect?
So we should violate his rights without repercussion? Lost me.
"(...) These specimens are significant not only because they are the oldest specimens of the virus known to cause AIDS, but because they show that the virus already had an extensive amount of genetic diversity in 1960.[10] This suggests the virus had either undergone recombination or been circulating for years or perhaps decades in the Kinshasa population. (...)"
Additionally,
Richard Edwin Graves Jr., a 28-year-old World War II veteran who had been stationed in the Solomon Islands, died on 26 July 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee with pneumocystis pneumonia, CMV and what some authors suggest are a sufficient number of opportunistic infections for a clinical course suggestive of an AIDS diagnosis.[8][9]
Sadayo Fujisawa, a sixty-year-old Japanese-Canadian woman, died in Montreal on 28 June 1945 of pneumocystis pneumonia with Human cytomegalovirus (CMV), diarrhea, and wasting, a group of symptoms which some authors conclude would have led to an automatic diagnosis of AIDS in the early 1980s.[6][7]
The virus was already circulating globally in the early 1900s.
The genetic diversity might be indicative of widerspread infection in sub-saharan Africa, and then two immuno-comprimised cases, are not specifically indicative of HIV.
...and then this statement has absolutely no basis in evidence: "The virus was already circulating globally in the early 1900s."
I am against hacking in general.
I see no good reason for him to have targeted a newspaper.
I do see good reason to target secretive government agencies.
I see good reason for those agencies to have a problem with this and go after anyone who does it.
I am against government agencies having bad enough security that they can be so targeted.
Assange isn’t in prison right now for any of this, he’s in prison because he skipped bail to avoid extradition for a completely different charge to a completely different country to face his accusers for a potential maximum penalty less than the time he spent in the embassy he got kicked out of for breaking their rules, and which he fled to because for some reason that never made sense to me he claimed that going from the UK to Sweden put him in danger of the thing which actually happened in the UK.
This was not really the reason.
> and which he fled to because for some reason that never made sense to me he claimed that going from the UK to Sweden put him in danger of the thing which actually happened in the UK.
He feared that either the UK or Sweden would send him to the US.
While I am not naïve enough to ignore the possibility of dishonesty, the official statement was:
“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a center for spying, … This activity violates asylum conditions. Our decision is not arbitrary but is based on international law.”
and also accusations of blocking security cameras at the embassy.
> He feared that either the UK or Sweden would send him to the US.
And yet, he initially submitted to the UK authorities while trying to deny access to the Swedish ones. That never looked sensible to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I paid attention when the UN accused the UK of torturing him, and the fact that the UK told the US about arresting him at the embassy before it told Sweden even though the latter had an outstanding warrant stinks — but thinking poorly of how governments treat a (very unusual) investigator who showed the world a whole bunch of the skeletons in their closets does not mean I have to think the investigator was doing anything other than fleeing justice in 2011.
A lifetime ban seems completely inappropriate. Which specific technology did you have in mind?
And it should not be
> that results in the disclosure of information that the hacker does not own
Good thing I do not believe in intellectual property/owning numbers.
> This is theft of information
Copying is not theft.
> Anyone engaging is nefarious hacking should be
...given a monetary reward if they publish how they were able to gain unauthorized access.
Having a bigger hammer means nothing as long as it's always selective with criminal interests, protecting some and not others. Just means they have a bigger hammer to use against anyone threatening those interests, criminals or not.
https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/757599082928082944?lang=en
Also: why would I care that Hammond was prosecuted? Hammond was caught dead to rights.
Indiscriminate doxing to accomplish a radical agenda is not journalism. My view-- which I admit is broader than the point you made-- is that he is a criminal and should be tried and convicted. It makes me sick to my stomach that he cloaks his actions in the hard work and bravery of our free press.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37165230 "Human rights groups have asked Wikileaks many times to do more to censor information found in documents. They fear reprisals against aid workers, activists and civilians named in the leaked data."
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51616077 "Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at 'risk of serious harm, torture or even death". The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people' around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them."
What specifically are you invoking here as the "free press" ? There is very little free press in the United States. The overwhelming majority of what is called the press consists of mouthpieces for the ruling power structure, analogous to state media in the USSR.
I agree it would have been better for documents to be reviewed before publication rather than dumped. But I just don't see how that was possible given the limited resources of the non-corrupt press, and the tendency of the government to go after anyone in possession of leaks. Assange being considered a journalist has much to do with the rot of the institution itself.
It certainly seems like when the de facto government has an agenda (eg attacking Iraq), they all broadcast that message simultaneously. It certainly seems like they choose which presidential candidates are "electable" and then downplay the others (Sanders, Paul, Dean). It certainly seems like they suppress narratives that are unfavorable to the shared business interests of their owners. It certainly seems like they all cooperate with the government to get easy access (embedded reporters, etc) rather than doing the hard work of adversarial investigation.
There are differences of course, like how we get to hear two similar options and pick between them. And how this simple act of choosing makes the population absorb the propaganda better. But I'd call those internal differences in structure, with the overall result being similar.
If you're happy within the Overton window, then of course it looks like Wikileaks is some crazy actor that came out of nowhere. But if you see mainstream media repeatedly acting in concert, then Wikileaks is a predictable reaction.
> Zeynep isn’t concerned with accuracy either
But your link says
> Zeynep Tufekci never lied, exaggerated or retracted her article (which was accurate).
So I don't see how one explains the other.
In any case it’s quite clear that Zeynep wasn’t correct when she claimed that WL dumped this data. WL only tweeted a link to the dump shared by Emma Best, who now operates a “competitor” to WL, DDoSecrets.
I’m not trying to suggest that WL has an amazing track record. I just think that if Zeynep wanted to do the right thing she’d have retracted her claim that WL dumped this data.
In fact following the huffpost link it appears as if wikileaks pointed to private (and not of public interest) information published by a third party:
> WikiLeaks has not taken down its social media links to the now dead link.
If that is all you got, then I have to believe gp that wikileaks doesn’t spread false information.
As you note, it’s irrelevant but also, if true, illustrates how selectively showing true info is deceptive.
[0]https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/9/9/12864328/wiki...
If you don't believe that Assange has done truthful hard-hitting journalism, or you believe that he isn't a journalist at all, then you can maintain the belief that we don't put journalists in prison while sitting idle as he rots in prison, because he is not a True Journalist. "We wouldn't do that to True Journalists. Assange is different."
Example, as a journalist you cannot just walk into a US Army base and start reporting.
I don't know if that meets your definition of public oversight.
> Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is no longer being kept in solitary confinement and his health is improving, his spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told reporters on Tuesday.
- Feb. 2020 [1]
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-assange/wikileaks...
Here is the UN (Nils Melzer) saying he is not, in May 2019 [0]
> "Although Assange is not held in solitary confinement..."
There were photo leaks early on showing Assange interacting with other prisoners, with the leaker saying he was popular.
I believe what Wikileaks refer to as "solitary confinement" is being put on the medical wing, and not in his normal cell. Obviously Wikileaks are interested in making his imprisonment seem as harsh as possible.
[0] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/9/9/12864328/wiki...
That is a very odd misdirection given the context. He's not accused of lying, he's accused of computer crimes.
I mean, your medical records and browsing history may be 100% true and verifiably copied from original sources, but if I steal and distribute them I'm still going to jail.
Are you trying to imply that assange is a journalist?
If this knowledge was disclosed sooner (Because, lets face it, they've loved to spurt out claims about bad things Assange has done,) I would expect a non-negligible number of Wikileaks supporters to stop.
It's one thing to have leaks fed to you, it's another to actively encourage people to do so and name targets.
So... Why are we only hearing about this -now-?
Of which Assange isn't
He was more than happy to support the current administration in the electoral process, with heavy editorializing and biases
So, I guess sorry they renegued on their promises? Oh but he should have guessed it.
This talking point is frankly irrelevant. Actually it itself illustrates how only cherry picking info to reveal is as deceptive as out right lies, but even more difficult to combat.
Want a clear example of how showing only true information is deceptive? Google Mormon bubbling. Yes the example is distasteful but it’s a very clear illustration of how easy it is to use selective information to deceive perception and make people appear to be doing something they are not, potentially hurting them.
Not really relevant. Assange was acting directly against the interests of the United States. He was indiscriminately dumping large quantities of classified (or otherwise secret) information on the internet for the world to see.
You need an edit for that incorrect statement as well, as many comments have already pointed out.
Are you trying to claim Assange is a journalist? How many credible journalists do you know that provide lists of targets with the intent to illegally hack?
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760
He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in the past. That is one instance, should I find more?
I think it says something that this is the best you can come up with.
Assange censors whistleblowers against the Russian government who he openly collaborated with. Do you think this is ethical behavior?
Hi I can basically see you sneering with a "gotcha" face through that text. Sorry but Assange's history of leak revisionism, favoring Russia specifically, is deep.
When Assange was working with "Anon" who was really an FBI snitch, he accepted files hacked from Syria. When they were released they were missing information about Russia including bank transfers of billions of dollars. Assange's selective leaking based on his biases has been documented for years:
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r...
>The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.
>But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.
We know this because the courts showed the data that Assange personally held back.
Selectively releasing documents is not the same as releasing something later proven to be false, which is what the GP asserted.
FWIW you could play devils advocate here and say that wikileaks could not independently verify the omitted things; but I'm not going to go there because it's conjecture. Just as your suggestion that it's collusion with Russia, however likely, is also conjecture.
Assange helping Guccifer 2.0 distribute manipulated Hillary leaks: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/764256561539735552
How the leaks were taken from other sources and manipulated: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkjevd/guccifer-2-is-bull...
>Guccifer 2.0 — believed to be a misinformation campaign operated by Russian intelligence — posted an 860-megabyte file on Tuesday afternoon that he claimed was donor information he hacked from Clinton Foundation servers.
>A sampling of the posted documents include a spreadsheet of big bank donations, a list of primarily California donors, an outdated spreadsheet of some Republican House members — and a screenshot of files he claimed to have obtained, one of which was titled “Pay to Play.”
>But there are a number of red flags that suggest the documents are in fact from a previous hack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), not a new hack on the Clinton Foundation.
>A spot check of some of the people on the donor list against FEC filings found that they all lined up with DCCC contributions.
These are Americans who state that this Australian is a traitor who should be prosecuted and executed for treason over the collateral murder video. It is the same exact moral and ethical rot that has corrupted our police forces.
Edit: These downvotes are enlightening.
Ask yourself this: why is it so important to leak information that is being held in secrecy by a state that is committing war crimes at an alarming rate?
The answer is: because the 5-eyes War Coalition is committing war crimes at an alarming rate. It literally started what it hoped to conflagration into World War 3, by invading Iraq illegally and on false pretences in 2003. And every day since that invasion, the world has been on fire.
The world has not forgotten the victims of these wars. Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration. The sheer SCALE of the war, of which the Western public are indeed extremely ignorant, is staggering.
If you had two criminals in the room, one of them was thieving the cutlery and the other was burning a pile of dead bodies in the corner, which would you want to deal with, first?
The USA and its War Coalition has a lot of criminal activity going on. Like, a lot. And every twenty minutes for twenty years, it has been dropping bombs - mostly on innocent people - for its own economic purposes.
That is a fire that the leaks will put out.
(The leaks will continue, because the crimes are huge.)
Obviously things were peacable around the world beforehand, and every conflict or human rights violation since then can be blamed on the Iraq invasion.
Never mind that civilian casualties by coalition forces are absolutely dwarfed by those by the opposition, or that US in general gets an extremely high degree of scrutiny and commits relatively few war crimes / civilian casualties.
This is a brilliant attempt at distraction from the incredible corruption and human rights violations from other countries such as Russia. Should the US get a free pass? Of course not, but it's rather tiresome to hear Chinese and Russian agitators say "but what about the 10k civilian casualties over 10 years" while asking the world to please ignore the Uighur genocide or the invasions of Ukraine.
The fact is that Wikileaks has a well established bias. They publish things that are true when it harms the US, and often leave out as much exonerating context as possible. Collateral murder for instance specifically tried to downplay the aspects where the gunner provided a rationale for engaging and sought approval, instead using voiceovers and editing to imply a lack of ROE.
>Millions of innocent people have been massacred by the USA and its War Coalition in an utterly dire conflagration.
I'd love to see a source on this. The most critical estimate I've seen (Iraq Body Count) has coalition innocents killed around 30k, Over 15 years. While opposition are over 300k. Please source your facts.
What is the point of raising this in the context of a criminal indictment? I haven’t even examined what you are raising for accuracy, I’m merely asking, what does this have to do with throwing someone in prison?
You know, even if you were right, you are not helping your case?
Its not just my opinion, its the UN opinion. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
From the article you linked:
Mr Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; is part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
>they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
The theory you're promoting is that Assange leaked a huge trove of emails on Syria, a Russian ally, including large numbers of emails detailing Syria's relationship to Russia. But then, because Assange is secretly a Russian agent, he removed one particular set of emails.
The obvious question is: why did he publish the emails in the first place?
>A few hours later, the assessment worsened: a friendly source from CNAIPIC was telling them that some of the documents had been forged. One document number, when checked against CNAIPIC’s system, reportedly corresponded to a wholly unrelated matter. The remaining real documents didn’t seem to have come from CNAIPIC either. Instead, police were apparently investigating “a small IT company that has worked for CNAIPIC in the past and that apparently some of the stolen data were on a machine they took to repair in Rome.” There was an immediate suspicion that it was “a giant op by the police to [discredit] anonymous and to tarnish our reputation and credibility.”
B) Why do we trust the CNAIPIC to tell the truth that they weren't their docs?
Are you going to change your stance or are you going to stand by your incorrect, if not slanderous, claim?
https://imgur.com/gallery/XubrM3g
Despite the Pentagon and Navy’s recent actions, Julian was right — all of this is a sophisticated operation that uses bad actors to perpetuate disinformation. It is probably illegal but concerns national security with China.
Did you create that throwaway account in anticipation of yesterday's release of this story, or do you keep a stack to pick from?
That you cannot address any of the comments and only wish to speak of my account age says volumes about where you are coming from.
There are others in this thread arguing both sides of this debate respectfully and within the guidelines, so you needn't look far for good examples.
If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.
You are spreading lies.
James Comey knew this just as well as Senator McCarthy did. They didn't even need to change the protagonist.
Tell that to Adrian Chen or anyone that has actually investigated Russia's meddling in foreign affairs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
This was reported before the election detailing the agency that would go on to be fingered by the state department and others in their role in US election meddling.
This involved actual reported places, actual employees. Same with with "Guccifer 2.0" and "CyberBerkut" or any of the other Russian fronts Assange worked with.
>You are spreading lies.
You'll be able to find specific things I've said and detail how they are lies right? Because you have factual information about this yes?
> The thing is, I don't really want to be an expert on the Internet Research Agency and Russian online propaganda. I agree with my colleague Masha Gessen that the whole issue has been blown out of proportion. In the Times Magazine article that supposedly made me an authority, I detailed some of the Agency's disturbing activities, including its attempts to spread false reports of a terrorist attack in Louisiana and to smear me as a neo-Nazi sympathizer. But, if I could do it all over again, I would have highlighted just how inept and haphazard those attempts were.
Adrian Chen also gave an interview with Chris Hayes on the Internet Research Agency, in which he made the point that it was an unsophisticated marketing campaign, staffed by around 90 people with a poor grasp of the English language, American politics and culture.[2]
1. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-so-cal...
2. https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/inside-the-russian-troll-...
a) Widespread evidence not just from US but from UK and EU of efforts to interfere in elections and referenda e.g. Brexit.
b) State sponsored propaganda via social networks which even as recent as last week was having to be removed.
c) Continued meetings between Trump and Putin where only translators are present i.e. no State Dept representatives.
d) 20+ years of Trump Organization taking loans from Russian oligarchs via Bayrock.
Maybe he created his account two weeks ago? How old was your account two weeks after you created it?
It was made then. This was a very dumb question. One that tells more about where the person asking it is coming from than what could possibly be put into the answer itself.
What did you expect?
"Oh yes I made this account for the purposes of manipulating public opinion about Assange in this specific thread. Muahaha and I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for someone looking at my profile creation date."
Assuming what you said is true, don't you think that some things should be secret, at least for a while?
This and the new anti-encryption bills...
I am happy to know the existence such a lot of great American minds, mathematicians, scientists, visionaries, because, else, with only the kind of ugly news such as above, my image of US would have been tainted for good.
(*) I'm not American. I'm neutral about not being American, thanks to the existence of both plus and minus items. By the way of course you can say the same about pretty much any country.
Fortunately there are places like Germany where things like CCC.de can exist and the Chaos Communication Congress can happen.
From my time living in UK, Germany, Mexico (where I am from) and travelling every 3 months to the USA, my [subjective] appreciation is that Germany is "freer" that the USA can ever aspire to be.
By "American great minds", I was thinking about all the American mathematicians and scientists whose books I passionately devour, and the splendid futuristic projects of some tech corps, which bring sci-fi dreams to reality.
People should understand this. US is a stabilizing force in the world but they are not about universal human rights or world peace.
So, that's what personally I would have expected and hoped about Assange too.
The reality is different from what you present: it is not common that journalists opposing to US are (internationally) repressed at all. And, of course, because such repression is illegal, it is not expectable.
For example: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/27/business/hacker...
So, to answer your question: they do not try to extradite the foreign operators responsible to the leaks, and they do everything to strengthen their IT security. Also, they possibly build or reinforce their cyber-defense team to cyber-counter or cyber-retaliate.
This kind of response is just how it happens when abiding to the international law. Still, they are far from doing nothing, and they are efficient.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justificati...
the take away is this, when you're on the US Gov. shit list you're safe until you're not.
So he was totally not helping people know the truth, as a journalist would be, and instead he was totally trying to kill or help killing people and destroy civilizations.
Also, this was the context of war, on a war field (and with a terrorist organization).
This is why journalism is mainly about publishing information. The part where the writer gives their opinion is actually optional.
Also, this is why good news organizations (Reuters, etc) are doing investigations (this is investigative journalism). They do not just publish already available data, they go seeking the truth where it is.
Btw, the sheer existence of investigative journalism is also what makes difficult to believe all the conspiracy theories. If something fishy that huge was going on, there is an overwhelming likelihood that some news organization (also, some whistle-blower) would have revealed it. (that shows also the importance of the existence of whistle-blowers)
If you want to feel contempt strongly towards someone - the UK, Ecuador and Sweden governments are the ones to blame so far.
You're right that what's happening in UK with Assange is very disturbing... I followed Craig Murray's blog posts.
First of all, why had he to skip this bail at all.
All of his suspicions about the first sex offense case being a pretense to extradite him were confirmed.
And then, the way he is treated in the UK tribunal, like a slaughterer scum of the worst kind, denied all dignity, is revolting.
If you had not seen the Craig Murray reports, I would warmly advise you to give them a look, they are rich in details.
But once again - he hasn't been touched by US so far. There are numerous governments that could have given him asylum, and the EU court of human rights is suspiciously silent.
I think they did what they could given the circumstances.
Not a first amendment scholar but Assange is probably pretty safe on disseminating the information.
But they claim he committed felonies obtaining it.
“Julian Assange Charged...”
or the original
“Wikileaks Founder Charged...”
The current half-and-half is a little strange (who founded Julian Assange?).
I don't remember that detail at all, but I did see him at HAR 2009, at a panel discussion about censorship and how to fight it. Afterward we set up a mailinglist for sharing information about censorship-related issues, especially laws and protests against them. It was never terribly active, unfortunately.
There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away from the leak.
I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows whose network of power is going to get impacted so everyone does nothing.
Keep in mind the companies involved in these technological changes make up a huge portion of our economy, and their users affected by their app store changes, for example, touch every sector. These changes come due to social pressure--these companies aren't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. And particularly with regards to Facebook, political pressure is being placed on them to self-regulate with regard to user data to avoid government regulation.
I am not accusing you of being anti-leaking (or pro-leaking), but it does sound like you've fallen for an anti-leaking narrative here.
Who cares about "productivity" or outcomes? I am in for the truth. And WikiLeaks really helped.
There are two major issues here:
1. Assange actively participated in the acquisition of classified material. This came up in the Chelsea Manning. Pointing to tools that can be useful. Prompting action. That sort of thing; and
2. Assange was playing politics. This should've been clear from Assange's actions with respect to the DNC emails.
Think about (1) for a second. Imagine the Attorney General had committed a crime. Proof of that was in a safe in his house. Which of the following is acceptable conduct in obtaining that information?
- Breaking into his house to get it;
- Destroying the safe to get at the contents;
- Holding him at gunpoint to open the safe;
- Holding his family hostage until he provides the information;
- Hiring someone to do any of the above;
- Someone offers the information to you without you knowing how it came to be in their possession;
- Someone notifies you of the information's existence and location. You pay them to acquire it. Or give them a gun. Or threaten them if they don't.
The point of these examples is to show that:
1. There is no absolute defense here and certainly not "journalism". The alternative is robbing banks as an expression of journalistic freedom; and
2. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and the authorities can prosecute you for that.
The other side of this is recent administrations seem to have adopted a disproportionate response approach to dealing with leaks and whistleblowers, likely as a deterrent (they hope).
Later they come after you.
I am not from US, but this kinda doesnt look right.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
e.g. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrew...
Maybe one of the items she provided to Assange was encrypted, and he worked to break the encryption, without consulting Manning.
Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress.
End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered.
Maybe he agreed because he didn't want to spook his source. Maybe he never even started hashcat. We'll never know.
edit:
source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html (middle of page 6)
> End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered.
That actually sounds like the crime of criminal conspiracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal)
> In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future....
> [US] Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act.
> Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime.[24]
You'd crack the hash as part of a plan (i.e. a conspiracy) to get unauthorized access to a computer system (a crime), and exchanging the hash is the actus reus.
There are very good reasons why conspiracy is a crime, and it's very similar to other crimes like attempted murder. If someone plans to kill you, but they're caught before taking their shot, should they go free because no harm was actually done?
People like Manning and Snowden expose nastiness, but, at the same time, we absolutely need to ensure military and espionage secrets (Full disclosure: my father was in the CIA, but quit on moral grounds - http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm).
People die when military secrets get exposed. That's often completely unintended, but it happens anyway.
My father had a post similar to that held by Valerie Plame. If he had been exposed (like she was), then all his contacts would have been murdered, along with, I am sure, folks he worked with legit.
Is the world worse off because of the Pentagon papers?
You bring up Plame, but I think you are doing your readers a disservice in not citing that she was exposed not by journalist, but by a people in power to silence the truth that her husband was speaking.
My father was quite liberal. You may have missed the part where I mentioned that he quit the CIA on moral grounds?
It's just that if he had been outed, there's a better than even chance that I would have been killed, so you might say that I have a right to my opinion.
But if we look at what did happen with Wikileaks esp relative to what Richard Armitage did to Valerie Plame and the CIA and that no known violence has occurred against [redacted] folks from the Wikileaks releases.
All leaks and all leakers are not the same. Wikileaks put great effort in working with journalists to carefully redact information and report the news, to shine light where it needed shining. And Dick Army outed an agent and her team and forced it to shut down to harm a political opponent.
If anyone belongs in jail it is Dick Army and not Julian Assange.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/02/13/news/few_documen...
https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-05-01/why-julia...
To complain that this report reveals the allegations as "complete fabrications" is in itself a complete fabrication, and you ruin your own credibility by saying it.
Among other things, he concluded that the investigation conducted by the Swedish government violated many of their own standard procedures in unprecedented ways, and also, at no point did the “accuser” accuse Assange of a crime or attempt to press charges.
Apparently, during consensual sex, a condom broke (I think there was slightly more to the story), and she wanted Assange to get an AIDS test. She asked the police if there was any way to compel him to get one.
That somehow then escalated (against her wishes) to a rape charge and an extradition battle.
So, “complete fabrication” is a slight exaggeration of the situation (the “accuser” exists, but didn’t accuse anyone of a crime).
I think the facts more than support the statement that it was a “politically-motivated, fabricated accusation”.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/13/sweden-reopens...
So no, the allegations were not "revealed as complete fabrications" by the UN rapporteur's report, and it is more than a mere exaggeration to say they were.
And an interview of the same Nils Melzer in a Swiss newspaper : https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...
Quote: ...A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden...
"Complete fabrication" seems fair enough to me.
I had not read his blog post, so thank you for providing this. Unfortunately, his claims about Assange's accusers are so totally unsubstantiated that it's hard to believe they were written by a law professor. One of Assange's accusers didn't appreciate Melzer's attempts to tar her as a fabricator. According to Der Spiegel [1]:
So he blames the victims, the woman writes; it was "a classic patriarchal technique to define the
conditions for how 'a real rape victim' should behave". It also accuses the lawyer of personally
slandering her and, in some cases, spreading the untruth about the investigation, such as Assange's
willingness to testify about the incidents. This is "completely unacceptable, shocking and a
reason to quit his job at the UN".
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/julian-assange-opfer-...
> Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the United States had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, Swedish prosecution informed the tabloid press that he was suspected of having raped two women. Strangely, however, the women themselves never claimed to have been raped, nor did they intend to report a criminal offence. Go figure. Moreover, the forensic examination of a condom submitted as evidence, supposedly worn and torn during intercourse with Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever — neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else’s. Go figure again. One woman even texted that she only wanted Assange to take an HIV test, but that the police were “keen on getting their hands on him”. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy.
https://medium.com/@njmelzer/demasking-the-torture-of-julian...
> On 20 August 2010, two women, a 26-year-old living in Enköping and a 31-year-old living in Stockholm,[6][7] reported to the Swedish police that Assange had engaged in unprotected sexual activity with them that violated the scope of their consent, also because one woman was asleep in one case.[8][9] The police told them that they could not simply tell Assange to take an STD test, but that their statements would be passed to a prosecutor.[10]
> The next day, the case was transferred to Chefsåklagare (Chief Public Prosecutor) Eva Finné. In answer to questions surrounding the incidents, the following day, Finné declared, "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape". However, Karin Rosander from the Swedish Prosecution Authority, said Assange remained suspected of molestation. Police gave no further comment at the time, but continued the investigation.[11]
> After learning of the investigation, Assange said, "The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing".[12]
> The preliminary investigation concerning suspected rape was discontinued by Finné on 25 August,[13] but two days later Claes Borgström, the attorney representing the two women, requested a review of the prosecutor's decision to terminate part of the investigation.[13][14]
> On 30 August, Assange was questioned by the Stockholm police regarding the allegations of sexual molestation.[15] He denied the allegations, saying he had consensual sexual encounters with the two women.[12][16][17]
The Armoured Glass Box is an Instrument of Torture
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-armoured...
If you are up for a deep (and biased) dive, the rest of Craig Murray's daily blog posts from that trial give many more reasons that his treatment might be considered unjust:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-...
Murray is definitely a partisan in the camp of Assange, but I think his factual reporting is accurate.
Moment US raised its charges, the Sweden rape case is nowhere to be found.
Not to mention, Assanage agreed to that investigation if they could guarantee not to be extradited to US.
2017-05-19: Suspended investigation, revoked arrest warrant. Statement that the investigation can be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020.
2019-04-11: Case re-opened following his arrest. In September of this year 7 new witnesses were revealed.
2019-11-19: Investigation discontinued, stating "the evidence is not strong enough to form the basis for filing an indictment", adding that "the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed", but the prosecutor was still confident in the complainant.
I personally believe that he's guilty due to the sheer amount of witnesses, but that circumstances around it will result in the victims never achieving justice.
Yeah because the Swedish police is totally credible at this point.
So this is what we know of the first woman who went to the police, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, starting this whole charade:
- There were no rape allegations. She described the sexual intercourse as consensual. Instead she was worried Assange may have HIV and asked whether the police could force him to take a test.
- Instead, and for no apparent reason, police try to pressure her into accusing Assange of rape. She refuses. She also refuses to sign the interrogation transcript created by the police.
- Finally, and emotionally exhausted, she goes home and writes one of her friends a SMS: "I don't want to report him. I just want him to take a test, but police want to get him for rape." and the next day: "Police is fabricating this."
- Then, that very next night, newspaper are already calling Assange a rapist.
Another fun tidbit:
- Some time later Swedish police was ready to come to the UK to interrogate Assange, but was asked not to by the UK.
- Also Swedish police was worried because their highest court wanted them to either charge him or drop the case, and was told by the UK: "Don't get cold feet now."
The ones that were curiously dropped late last year when extradition from Sweden was no longer needed?
I don't know Assange, and don't find him a likeable character from the reports I've read, and don't think much of wikileaks and its lack of filtering, but the whole Assange sexual assault allegations case stinks.
You can be a criminal and a journalist, a thief and a journalist, a horrible person and a journalist.
Do those acts of extortion render those individuals and their supporting editors not-journalists too? I don’t think so. Ethical lapses, deplorable though they may be, are perfectly compatible with still fulfilling the role of a profession.
[1] YouTube adpocalypse effort led by Carlos Maza
[2] NBC’s repetitive naming of Google Ads and brands alongside cherry picked comments on Zero Hedge and The Federalist to delist those competitors.
[3] NYT recent threat to doxx the Scott Alexander blog
This is a federal court finding that people that revealed the war crimes its government perpetrated "did so illegally". Meanwhile they of course don't file charges against the war criminals.
That does not make it untrue - but it's not like it's evidence weighed by a jury in a fair trial - it's very much one side of the story?
"As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom" by Glenn Greenwald
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-conclud...
https://thenextweb.com/world/2017/01/18/assange-backtracks-o...
The issues at stake are greater than the dumb things the overconfident and sometimes assholish Julian Assange says.
I'm not really criticizing their actions (well, I'm calling them naive, which, in retrospect, seems like a bad choice of words). If I'm criticizing anyone, it would be our society in general, which only engages with information in a very shallow fashion.
Dropping charges entirely would send the wrong signal to the world. Hopefully the UK just holds him indefinitely and treats him with respect. A US trial would turn into a political shitshow.
Can you imagine the euphoria in the moment they cracked the hash? Feels like something out of a Nicolas Cage movie.
Meanwhile, Julian Assanage has a television show on RT[1], the state-sponsored media for the Russian government [2], meaning he's literally paid by a Russian propaganda organization.
[1] https://www.rt.com/news/456280-julian-assange-rt-show/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Assessments_an...
You've created an HN account for the sole purpose of astroturfing this thread to apologize for Assange against Russian allegations - Why is that?
[1] https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/assange-tv-pres...
No, it wasn't produced specifically for RT and nowhere does it say so in your source, but RT were the only one of around 12 media outlets he offered it to buy the rights of his show, so it did premiere there.
>You've created an HN account for the sole purpose of astroturfing this thread to apologize for Assange against Russian allegations - Why is that?
I'm not astroturfing. I'm a HN reader since many years but never bothered to make an account since I'm not knowledgable on most topics here anyways and just read comments. But since I follow the case of Assange for a long time and know a lot about it I made an account to correct people.
Incidentally, since Assange technically helped current president win, I am surprised he is not getting more lenient treatment. With Hillary I fully expected a vendetta.
“Hi Don if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do."
These are the words of a political actor, not a journalist.
A month after the election, Wikileaks requested an extraordinary favor from Trump: to ask the Australian government for Assange's appointment as ambassador to the U.S.
“Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well! In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to [Washington,] DC.”
With requests like these, it becomes clear why Assange was helping Trump win the election. It was to improve his chances to escape detention in the UK. It had little to do with exposing the truth.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
Assange leaked the DNC emails, hacked by Russian-controlled Guccifer 2.0, in weekly bundles as an effort to manipulate news headlines leading up to the November 2016 election.
As far as I can tell there is nothing left of Wikileaks, its just Assange now.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt6BBwBXcAEL-Fj?format=jpg&name=...
>"if you have anything hillary related we (Wikileaks) want it in the next tweo(sic) days prefable(sic) because the Democratic National Convention is approaching.."
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
>WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68 gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry, according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.
>“As far as we recall these are already public,” WikiLeaks wrote at the time.
>By June 2016, Assange had threatened to dump files on Clinton that would be damaging to her campaign prospects. A month later, on July 22, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails out of the Democratic National Committee — preceding the massive dumps in October of emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
>In late August 2016, when WikiLeaks’s Clinton disclosures were in full swing, Assange said he had information on Trump but that it wasn’t worth publishing. (In a message to FP, WikiLeaks now says the organization “received no original documents on the campaign that did not turn out to be already public.”)
Weird that data "already being public" didn't stop Wikileaks from forwarding the content before when it came from Russian backed fronts:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760
>@wikileaks
>Pro-Russia hacker site (or front) "Cyber Berkut" publishes alleged links between Ukraine and Clinton
Facts are facts. As long as they are printing true facts, they can only be doing good, even if they are only printing the truth about one particular country. Even if they were only printing leaks from a single policital party in one country (which is not the case), as long as all that they are printing is true, they are helping much more than they are hurting.
If you know that Russianoor Chinese or whatever else leaks exist, and if you have enough access to know that they are also true and that WikiLeaks refused to print them, why don't you print them yourself?
This is obviously not true. Releasing a fact has a tangible effect on the world, usually a slight change of opinion in the minds of those who learn the fact. Sometimes the effect is more dramatic, for example a government changing policy or someone being killed.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could go very wrong very quickly, which is why the entire journalistic profession, counted among whom are many moral and intelligent individuals, decided not to simply release facts as they received them.
I happen to believe Assange affected the world negatively by releasing the facts he did. I’m not asking you to agree with me, but to suggest that he not only did not but could not is perfectly ridiculous.
>Facts are facts.
No. Facts are never enough. "The Sun sets in the west" is a true fact ... that is compatible with both the heliocentric and geocentric models of our solar system. Facts always need to be contextualized in some narrative or ideology before they are useful (for a specific purpose). True facts can be used to lie about the greater context. That's why objectivity and fairness is so important for news organizations. WikiLeaks is a dishonest organization.
> Facts always need to be contextualized in some narrative or ideology
Like we contextualized Covid19 in Republican ideology to refuse to wear masks? Facts stand for themselves, ideology is harfull.
When the George Floyd protests were ramping up 3 weeks ago, the media and many public health officials made statements in support of them and minimized (or outright dismissed) the risks of breaking bans on large public gatherings. Apparently the facts around COVID infection rates couldn't be taken at face-value but needed to be balanced with the righteous intent of the protests. So don't pretend one side is different from another. That one politicizes the pandemic, and the other doesn't.
You missed the salient point though. Facts do not imply policy. They can inform policy, but policy comes out of ideology. You can state a fact about poverty rates, but you will get radically different answers about how to solve it from a Marxist and a Libertarian.
We have a moral obligation to have policy that makes best use of available facts. And for most areas of policy we have a lot of knowledge: we know that 'broken windows policing' delivers terrible results, we know that rehabilitation services deliver better ones. We know that advocating abstinence is worse that contraception at reducing teenage pregnancies, and we know "trickle down economics" is a joke, and a thousand other things.
Sure there are areas that are largely unknown, but even there the people of relevant expertise are not described as "a Marxist and a Libertarian"
All humans are deeply flawed, but just some of them get to change the world for the better. That is certainly the case for Julian Assange.
And you moan about character flaws of someone who helped get evidence of misbehavior to the public? Seriously? No other problems?
edit: You know that intelligence agencies try to discredit dissidents and make up fake evidence, do you?
His support in the US was only ever on the fringes (because they liked anything damaging to the then-current war efforts regardless of methodology) and ,because of the partisan affiliation of the President, that was mostly on the left fringes, and the reason they supported it was partisan politics.
Naturally, even without the Russia connection, the “Trump business” destroyed that. But it's not “hypocrisy” the lost him support.
If you're referring to her "cozying up" to Assad... a) he's also Muslim, b) [EDIT:] why tell lies? When Tulsi joined the diplomatic mission to Syria, it was entirely appropriate given her service on the House Armed Services Committee. She never said anything to support him. She just said she wasn't afraid to talk with him. Furthermore, the international inspectors who actually inspected the supposed gas attacks [0] determined they were obvious false flags. Then the OPCW home office threw out their analyses and just had bellincat write some bullshit. Of course it's easy to pretend one doesn't know about this because NYT etc. will never retract their cheerleading for war.
[0] https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/22/ian-henderson-opcw-whistl...
Let’s hope those around President Trump encourage him to pardon Julian on principle. If it’s not him, a future President will pardon him.