Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjgreen | Hacker News Reader

"Counsel for the US government also argued that the famous Pentagon Papers supreme court judgement on the New York Times only referred to pre-publication injunction and specifically did not preclude prosecution under the Espionage Act."

Wow

View on HN

The Supreme Court's ruling in the case said exactly this and the opinions of some justices implied the government should pursue such charges post publication.

The shock and pearl clutching by people who obviously have never read the relevant opinions and have nothing but second or third-hand understanding of the major points of the majority and concurring opinions. Ellsberg _should have gone to jail_ for what he did, he knew it, he was prepared for that outcome, and he would have spent years in prison if not for a completely bungled and borderline incompetent prosecution aided by criminal breakins by Liddy, Hunt, and the Whitehouse plumbers.

While the law hasn't changed, the prosecution policy has. USG had not charged the NYT, WP etc. with criminal publication of the Pentagon Papers, and of the many leaked classified data published before and since. A consistent change in the policy (prosecuting the NYT and its individual journalists and editors, and not just Assange) would have a huge impact on politics. An inconsistent change, successfully prosecuting but only charging the journalists that the current government finds inconvenient, would have a different but also huge impact.

This argument does not address the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge. Please provide examples of the NYT, WP et al sending reporters out to do this and not being charged.

That's a separate matter, which shouldn't affect what I wrote.

The USG has threatened to prosecute both the NYT, WP and others in the past under both Democrat and Republican administrations. What has prevented it in the past has been the potential political fallout.

I imagine that Assange taking active steps to help gather the classified information instead of just publishing material gathered independently and leaked is what changed the math in this case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com