Hacker News Reader

Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the powers that be have decided to make this extradition happen.

Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him.

Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" and "the magistrate ruled against him so that must be the law".

It's very disappointing, because the whole point of laws is that it shouldn't matter whether you're pretty or funny or sympathetic. And after thousands of years of civilisation, people still rely on their gut feelings.

View on HN

It's little events like these that expose the inner workings of the system. For all of our lip service to due process and blind justice, governments are still made up of people and the people at the top have the ability to do whatever they want with the system when they are motivated.

The sad part is that recently everyone seems to be ok with this, as long as it's working in their favor in whatever particular instance.

> The sad part is that recently everyone seems to be ok with this

Or they feel like they can't do anything about it, because if they even try, they'll end up getting their lives either ruined or completely turned around, like Assange or Snowden.

Isn't that the whole point of ruining someone's life? To intimidate others.

Yes, and it's working.

I mean, this sort of shit happens in our court systems all the time. This just raises the visibility to where we all see it.

> Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" and "the magistrate ruled against him so that must be the law".

This means that the countries involved (in this case, in order: Australia, Sweden, the UK, and the US) don't have the rule of law. It means that the law is theater, always potentially subordinate to dictatorial control should it ever be exercised to overrule it.

It's okay to say it, despite it feeling silly. Identifying one of the problems allows us to address it.

These countries only pretend to have the rule of law, insofar as the law doesn't contradict what the dictatorial authority wants to happen.

It's weird to think of the US or UK or Sweden or Australia, supposedly "free countries", as top-down military dictatorships, because it goes against every fiber of branding they've spent billions to explicitly promote.

There's lots of evidence for it, however: what mainstream party in the US wants to reign in the US military's insane overfunding, or illegal US military bulk surveillance, for example?

Once you see it, it's hard to unsee.

These countries place state security far above almost every other value, including equal protection of the law. Any attempts to change this priority by those with any semblance of power will be frustrated, by force if necessary.

Great point, though its not only branding. All the things are in open. Its we who think democracy can be real at national level.

If you want to name a country that has rule of law, in your opinion, it works make your point stronger. The US isn't a particularly good example of the rule of law right now, true, but I think you would be hard pressed to come up with an example that passes your apparently stringent purity test.

If you can't point to such examples, your point comes off as trivially weak.

I don't understand how finding a more democratic country would change the fact that the countries above have no rule of law.

ugh, *rein in. Edit window closed. :(

Don’t comment pre-caffeine, kids.

whether you're sympathetic to assange or not, the critical, core problem is the US government acting illegally, immorally, and dishonorably, and using our collective might to hide that and actively obstruct its discovery, rather than the opposite. this is shameful to say the least. and this trial is a crucial part of that misdirection campaign, to place our attention on anything other than that shamefulness.

to refute this charade of a trial is also to resist this misdirection.

I’m not sure I parse things the way you do. Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. If he was not only the distributor of classified material, but actively participated in expropriating it, he’s on the wrong side of the law.

Folks had been willing to overlook that, because they viewed him as sympathetic. But he’s undermined that with his connections to Russia. Moreover, Russian attempts to manipulate the 2016 election showed a lot of people that radical transparency isn’t cost free—hostile governments can use this information to jeopardize American national security, including by manipulating otherwise well meaning leakers.

If you’re neither sympathetic nor on the right side of the law, you’ve got a problem.

I believe that is incorrect. Assange is accused of helping Manning cover her tracks rather than extract the information in the first place. I.e. he was trying to protect his source.

In addition, multiple journalists have spoken out to the effect that encouraging sources to leak is standard journalistic practice.

“Protecting your source” means that you don’t disclose your source. It doesn’t mean you help your source cover up a crime.

This is not a difficult line drawing exercise. Lawyers do it all the time: you’re protected from disclosing client confidences. But it’s highly illegal to actually assist your client in obstructing an investigation!

Journalists have already testified in this case to the contrary of what you said. I.e. They do help sources stay undetected, providing advice and sometimes help where appropriate.

Journalistic practice doesn’t define what is and isn’t illegal in connection with collaborating with a source.

Similarly, military and political practice don't define what is and isn't illegal in connection to launching and justifying wars, frequently and repeatedly killing innocents and journalists, setting up a highly illegal system of secret sites and covert armies explicitly for the purpose of abducting people globally (including random innocent members of the general public) and torturing and killing them, conspiring to lie about it all to the general public, then phoning up your cronies and launching a transparent international extra-legal persecution of someone who has embarrassed you.

But it should. The law should follow morality, ethics, and common practice. If the US law is beyond that, then it is overreaching and tyrannical. But of course, especially with these leaks, we already knew that.

> The law should follow morality, ethics, and common practice

Whose morality, ethics, and common practice? The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision. They want the government to have wide latitude to protect them from terrorism, and they care more about that than prosecuting this purported wrongdoing.

>The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision.

Most people have made the decision that the government is corrupt, Assange is an asshole, and there's nothing they can do about any of it because their elected officials are also corrupt.

That is hardly an endorsement of all the horrible things that the US government has been secretly doing in their name.

Yes, two things can be true at the same time: The US does some bad things, and Assange was trying to break a supposed hash to help Chelsea Manning steal more stuff.

Morality and ethics are not universally shared among people within a country. Consider debates in the US about abortion, same sex marriage, imprisonment of illegal immigrants... The list could go on for a while.

That may not be the case when the first amendment is applied. Consider Heller vs DC, in which the Supreme Court ruled that firearms in common use for lawful purposes couldn't be banned under the second amendment. Standard practice can be a factor when constitutional protections are at issue.

The only crime being committed that matters is what he uncovered. If a Journalist walked on to private property to find an officer peeing on evidence or torturing an innocent person and then took that to the press, you wouldn't charge the journalist for trespassing.

Even, torturing a guilty person.

The US executed people for torture after WWII. (None of its own people, though. That is acknowledged as an unfortunate failing.)

Assange is accused of more than that. Manning gave him something they thought was a hashed password. Assange tried to crack it so that Manning could use it to steal more data.

A journalist can receive information from a thief, but if the journalist starts helping the thief cracks safes to steal more stuff, that is a whole other story.

>Assange tried to crack it so that Manning could use it to steal more data.

*so Manning could steal the same amount of data with a bit more secrecy. The account in question was a generic Windows account that only had access to thing Manning had clearance for.

It doesn't need to have been successful or useful or practical. Assange stepped over the line of receiving leaked data into providing assistance for the person leaking that data break into more things.

Please note that I'm not saying Assange deserves to be prosecuted for any of this by the US government. Saying he stepped over the line (or may have stepped, since he's not proven guilty) is only step 1.

The next step to ask is "is that a crime?" Yes, in the US it is.

But then comes the next question: "Was Assange subject to US law when he did this?" That is much less clear. I don't know where he was physically located when he was involved with this, or international law to know where jurisdictional issues land on this. Personally, I don't think he should be subject to US when he's not a US citizen and wasn't located in the US when he did this. I don't like the idea that countries could prosecute someone for doing something illegal when what they did was legal in their location. To take a simple example, within, within the US that would be like saying that Utah could charge & extradite someone who smoked weed in Colorado, where it's legal, to Utah, where it is not legal.

And more questions after this too, like "Did crossing the line actually provide significant material aid?" In this, I don't think it did.

>Assange stepped over the line of receiving leaked data into providing assistance for the person leaking that data break into more things

I can understand your point, but Assange never provided assistance that allowed Manning to break into more things. The assistance provided, if successful, would only let Manning access the data she already had access to, just not leave a log saying she was the one who accessed it.

To use a physical analogy, Manning already had access to a file cabinet and was committed to leaking every document inside, and Assange gave her a pair of gloves to hide her fingerprints. His actions in no way enabled her act, but was an attempt to prevent retaliation.

This posits that it should be illegal to expose classified war crimes.

Sometimes, the law is wrong, and should be broken. Nonviolent disobedience of the law is a moral obligation in many instances. There is a long and glorious history of this happening throughout modern history.

This is why we have juries: to make that instance not illegal.

No it doesn’t. It posits that the purpose of “exposing classified war crimes” shouldn’t immunize conduct that’s otherwise illegal.

According to the indictment, Assange was running a whole operation where he was recruiting hackers to get sensitive data from protected computer systems. You’re positing that we should basically have vigilante hackers that expropriate and publish confidential data so long as they purport to be acting in the public interest. That’s an intriguing idea. Maybe that should be the law. But that definitely isn’t the law now. (And when it comes to a jury—we are still in the extradition stage, so the jury will come later—I suspect they won’t agree either.)

> According to the indictment, Assange was running a whole operation where he was recruiting hackers to get sensitive data from protected computer systems.

This is an accusation, and is not fact. You'd be wise not to treat it as such until it's proven.

The main issue with the course that you seem to suggest is that by the time he might obtain a jury trial in the US, he will already be subject to US imprisonment, and thus, torture (which is precisely what happened to Manning). Countries that purport to be free (such as the UK) should prevent extradition to countries that torture suspects prior to trial, such as the US.

> This is an accusation, and is not fact. You'd be wise not to treat it as such until it's proven.

Sure. But extradition hearings necessarily operate on allegations because they come before a jury trial that will determine the facts.

Extrafition hearings must consider whether the charges are bogus and politically motivated. Thats why we don't extradite Putin's enemies to Russia.

I presume we don't have a treaty with Russia, otherwise we might indeed. And Snowden would be rotting in a US prison right now.

To be fair, it also seems like Putin doesn't much need the help anyway. He has no problem taking care of the supposed "criminal" in situ

> You’re positing that we should basically have vigilante hackers that expropriate and publish confidential data so long as they purport to be acting in the public interest.

That's not what they said at all. That's just a straw-man you created. What they said is that Juries are the law, they're part of the English tradition because a Jury is the law.

That's not what the commenter said. They outlined a classic stance on the concept of civil disobedience which is that one way of fighting unjust laws is to refuse to obey them. (the corollary to that is to be ready to face the consequences)

The US Department of Justice issued a press release in June that tries to summarize the charges in the superseding indictment.[0] For most of the document it's hard to tell what is part of the idictment and what may be simply a recap of other things the US DOJ believes he may have done.

In regards to Chelsea Manning, that bit is quite short:

"In addition, the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense computer. "

Forbes spent some time on this[1] and they believe that this really is the important part, this is the act that elevates Assange's actions to conspiracy. According to Forbes no password was ever derived from the hash and it never led to the collection of any documents.

[0]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-sup...

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/04/16/unpac...

Here is the superseding indictment itself: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl...

Assange is alleged to have actively recruited hackers and directed them to find particular information from particular sources. Among other things, agreed to assist Manning in deriving a password from a hash file. (It is irrelevant whether he succeeded or not—the crime of conspiracy is complete upon taking the first substantial step toward achieving the goal of the conspiracy, such as passing the hash to someone else for cracking.)

According to the indictment, he was closer to running an operation to expropriate sensitive data from all over the world than being a journalist neutrally publishing documents that people sent him.

This logic would render all national security reporting illegal. The job of national security reporters is to convince people in government to divulge information they're legally barred from divulging.

I'm sure there is a joke there somewhere as to how it was meant for them not us

In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password.

To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism.

In my opinion I'm not sure how much or how heavy a book should be thrown at someone trying to decode a hashed password, but that's not really what is at issue. Perhaps the issue is, "is this a crime in the UK".

Journalists will themselves sneak into physical venues if they can. The example I can recall is of a reporter crashing a meeting/party of a financial fraternity in NYC.

And trespassing is a crime and those people could probably press charges if they want

What you describe isn't necessarily a crime. But if the physical venue happened to be a secured area on a military base or intelligence installation, there's a good chance they'd go to jail. And even if the didn't, it would still be a crime.

This sounds like an extremely weak and contrived excuse to go after someone who reported something that embarrassed the government.

Just because the government pushes harder due to being embarrassed doesn't mean it wasn't a criminal act.

If you're okay with politically motivated persecution of journalists, using extremely contrived charges...

Hitler did nothing illegal!

Convincing people to leak stolen information to you is one thing. (And legal). Attempting to use your own tools to help that person steal more stuff is another thing entirely. (And illegal)

He didn't do the latter.

I suppose as a starter, can we redefine journalist to be more of that? Wikileaks is a rare source of information that is both international and relevant to me; more news like that would be very welcome.

Secondly > It is irrelevant whether he succeeded or not...

I mean, that is sort of the complaint. He annoyed powerful people doing something that isn't a crime (the leaking) and then they're combing through hitting him with random charges that nobody cares about. We haven't been watching an 8 year circus because of a failed password crack. None of the response is proportionate to that bullshit crime. They've made everything around leaking illegal so they have fig-leaf excuses to prosecute whistleblowers and journalists.

Furthermore, the security apparatus could probably just make something up if there were no crimes. They've lied to everyone else, why not the UK justice system?

The allegation is made in paragraph 26 of the first section of the document you linked to. The conversation I understand this allegation relies on is on page 6 & 10 here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html

Manning is the one who passed the hash, not Assange. If it even is a hash, Manning is unsure. Assange never agreed to crack the password. There is no evidence Assange communicated the alleged hash to anyone else let alone attempted to crack it. A couple of days later Assange asks manning about it again, and there's no response. Assange never inquires about how Manning got this 16 byte value, nor does he offer any instructions on how to extract password hashes.

If this had been a chat log from a legal pentest that was being conducted by Manning then nobody would claim that Assange helped or contributed to it in any way. If there was an actual conspiracy going on here the logs would look much different.

The rest of the allegations basically claim that putting out a general call for people in possession of state secrets leak them is conspiracy ipso facto, as is taking any step to follow up with anyone who is interested in leaking, or taking any step to prevent a source from getting caught. It's ridiculous.

Is there some additional evidence in support of the allegation that Assange conspired to crack a password that I've missed?

It's there on page 6: something they thought might be a hash was handed over. Assange represented they had resources to throw at it, and did so. It doesn't need to actually have been a hash, Assange doesn't need to actually have succeeded. He provided assistance, however ineffective, to help break into and exfiltrate classified systems and data. At that point he stopped being a passive recipient of leaked data and stepped over into helping steal it.

> something they thought might be a hash was handed over.

What? Was handed over by who? Manning gave it to Assange, we have no evidence to suggest Assange did anything with it. By this logic you might as well argue that Assange was actively conspiring because he provided an SFTP server for Manning to upload stuff to.

Think of it this way: You're sitting at a bar and I'm selling you drinks. You're drinking and talking about how you want to steal some cars. You ask me, "Do you know much about defeating car locks?"

I say, truthfully, "Sure, I have a huge collection of dealer keys"

Then you pull out a picture of a Telsa, show me, and say "I want to steal one of these!"

And so I say, "Right, well I'll ask a friend about that. How about another drink?"

Then a couple of days later you come to the bar and I ask you, "Have you stolen a Tesla yet? No luck with my friend". You don't reply and we never speak of it again.

Did I actually help you try to steal the Tesla? Did I conspire with you to do it? Did I take any active steps to help you? I don't think so. If you disagree I'm curious why you think I'm wrong, either in this analogy or in what the chat logs actually say.

We do have evidence Assange did something with it. Again, right there on page 6, he "passed it on to our lm guy".

I guess theoretically he might have been blowing smoke, but that doesn't matter: he said that he had done something with it. If he was lying, it's very unfortunate, because the lie claimed he committed a crime.

A server to send data to doesn't help Manning steal the data. She had to steal the data before she could leak it.

Don't go reading into what you think my logic is in the broader issue. I'm talking about the very narrow question of whether Assange crossed over from receiving data into trying to provide the ability to steal more of it. My opinion on this case as a whole is not at all reflected by analyzing my stance on that one specific legal question.

It's a lot more than theoretical that he was blowing smoke. It's almost certain that he was. Assange is personally aware of how to crack NTLM hashes. If there was any actual intent to crack that hash I'd expect to see a lot more follow up in the conversation... like "ok I'm running john/hashcat with the common word list... how about you upload the SAM/try mimikatz? What do you know about the local password complexity policy?", and stuff like that.. but there's none of it.

If "I'll ask a guy" is all that's required to make something into a conspiracy that is incredibly, mindblowingly flimsy.

It's self-evident bullcrap. The Adrian Lamo logs (published by Wired and available online) show very clearly that Manning contacted Assange with intent to leak.

And if your trial won’t be subject to the oversight that other trials gets. In fact, just that one fact means you’ve got a problem.

Are we going to ignore the obviously extralegal illegalities required to even put him in the position to be subject to our laws as a foreigner including collaborating with a foreign jurisdiction to bring false rape charges?

Our misdeeds are far more troubling than his.

> but actively participated in expropriating

The difference here we're talking about is minuscule, and this is clearly just some technicality BS the highly paid US lawyers have come up with.

If you have war criminal suspects not being prosecuted but only Assange, your 'democracy' has a bigger (fairness) problem.

If your citizens are so easily swayed by Russian manipulation that you have to make it such a big deal, your 'democracy' has a bigger (fragility) problem.

If you are OK with MNCs swaying votes with money but not with nations doing the same, your 'democracy' has double-standards and has a bigger (integrity) problem.

You can 'law' all you want. Laws are written by people, who are sometimes just and sometimes not just. Laws are not all universal; they get changed all the time; different countries have different laws. Some laws are right and some are wrong.

"so easily swayed"

You say that as though propaganda was not a real thing with a proven track record. Blaming the victim.

> Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems.

1 out of the 18+ charges brought against him are for that. It's also a minor crime that would carry a 5 year penalty, which is hardly worth all this effort. The other 170 years of charges related to violations of the espionage act, and it's not at all clear that they would even apply to Assange who is not a U.S. citizen or military contractor.

> because they viewed him as sympathetic.

I've never viewed him as sympathetic. It takes a completely unrestrained ego to try to be the "public front-man" for Wikileaks. On the other hand, what's happening to him now is a clear abuse of the law and extradition process. Add to that the years of mistreatment he's been through, and I find it very easy to see him in a sympathetic light.

> But he’s undermined that with his connections to Russia.

How so? Did he actively seek out Russian documents so he could release them?

> hostile governments can use this information to jeopardize American national security

This misses the obvious. Hostile foreign governments _already_ had this information. How or why they were using it before is beyond us. Releasing it does serve their interests, but it's no longer possible for them to monopolize it either. The only difference is, after it was released, we all had it.

> If you’re neither sympathetic nor on the right side of the law, you’ve got a problem.

Yes, but that's _precisely_ the reason we invented courts in the first place, to ensure that even in these ambiguous circumstances that justice can be seen to. It's troubling that you see this as the exact reason he won't receive justice at all... and again, it's what makes it so easy for me to view him sympathetically again.

> How so? Did he actively seek out Russian documents so he could release them?

Julian Assange hosted a show on RT, he was literally on the payroll of the Russian government. Also suspicious is that Wikileaks basically has only leaked documents that look bad for western democracy. There’s one leak of critical of Russia, but it has basically nothing of substance in it. When you claim to be for radical transparency and work for the country that regularly has reporters murdered, it strains belief.

>Julian Assange hosted a show on RT, he was literally on the payroll of the Russian governmen

Assange made a show and sold broadcast rights to RT. Small but distinct difference in that he was never under pressure to follow what Russia wanted, they just wanted to broadcast his point of biew.

>There’s one leak of critical of Russia, but it has basically nothing of substance in it.

Why would anyone with information damaging to Russia choose to leak data to a primarily English organization, with no Russian speaking employees, and mainly Western readers?

And it was a pretty good show, too. Seriously, Assange is not a bad interviewer, and he managed to get some pretty difficult-to-book (to put it lightly) people on the show.

I thought the West is open to criticism, but it looks like I'm wrong. The West is open to criticism, if and only if the criticisizer also critisizes the West's enemy. How open minded it is.

> “ Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. If he was not only the distributor of classified material, but actively participated in expropriating it, he’s on the wrong side of the law.”

This is not actually true for whistleblowing. Manning’s conviction was an illegal conviction given that the exfiltrated evidence unequivocally shows criminal murder, among other crimes, on behalf of the United States.

It is not theft or illegal access or possession if it is indeed whistleblowing. You’d have to prove that the criminal murder was not in fact criminal before any action taken to exfiltrate it can be considered a crime.

On top of all this, there is no evidence that Assange illegally exfiltrated it. It is illegal for charges to be brought based on the available evidence.

Of course, the fact the charges are illegal or that the conviction was illegal in Manning’s case unfortunately doesn’t matter in the United States where political actors will go unpunished for perpetrating such crimes.

Yep, that was the case with me. I supported Assange and I stopped being sympathetic when these connections came out.

>Moreover, Russian attempts to manipulate the 2016 election

As a non American, I always found this Russian manipulation stuff funny. America has no problem manipulating elections in other countries, overthrowing elected leaders with political coups and even assassinating foreign politicians within the borders of other nations, but Russia posting facebook ads to sway the people dumb enough to be swayed by them is oh so terrible.

> America has no problem manipulating elections in other countries

Yeah, but the targets always have a problem with it, except for the entities in the target nation that are in league with the Americans.

So it's not so surprising that Americans have a problem when the roles are reversed, except the ones in league with the attacker.

Well sure, I just mean, I dunno, I guess what i'm trying to say is, 'he who casts the first stone, 'pots calling the kettle black'...'don't dish it if you can't take it'...etc.

In this case, those in the US most alarmed by Russian interference in the US election are mostly the same people who oppose US interference in foreign elections too. The people who supported the invasion of Iraq, for example, are mostly happy to turn a blind eye to Russian interference now.

Remember in every country which does things you don't like, there are people who feel as you do. In this case those people are getting the shit end of the stick.

Ah yes, the insinuation that Assange was hacking stuff because he supposedly sent a message saying, "no luck with that."

If there was evidence they wouldn't have fabricated it. You should be ashamed of being an apologist for tyranny.

> Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him.

Sure, but this is how things have always been. Rosa Parks wasn't the first or only black person that was arrested for not giving up her bus seat.

> Most people don't care because they don't pay attention.

Are you sure it's not the other way round? Additionally, I don't think it matters whether they care or pay attention. Unless the media pays attention and publishes information, they won't get anywhere.

> It's very disappointing, because the whole point of laws is that it shouldn't matter whether you're pretty or funny or sympathetic.

A cynic might say that the whole point of laws is to give the impression of justice, not to provide it.

> A cynic might say that the whole point of laws is to give the impression of justice, not to provide it.

Is there one singular "point" to laws? I feel like justifying this statement inevitably ends up at some kind of secret cabal conspiracy theory. Otherwise you have to admit that there are many groups who have many competing points and goals for legal systems.

This is what Chibber calls the "pluralist theory" which he argues is not entirely false but rather incomplete. I hope this will be of interest to you : https://youtu.be/R5R-9X_BtP4

I'd be more interested to hear what a local bartender might have to say about any of this than a marxist scholar. Hard pass.

Also, naming a theory does not give it credence. So simply saying that a person said a thing and gave it a name tells me nothing if you don't tell me what they said. Linking to a hour long video is not a good substitution for defining your terms.

I'll take all the downvotes in the world on this one. Marxist's don't get a seat at the adults table. Same way neo nazis don't get a seat at the adults table.

Makes sense anyway. The communists have a higher death toll.

That explains the bartending bit above : I thought you were being provocative but you were just being simplistic. Counting the number of dead people does not explain anything. Did people die because of poor politics/administration that ended in a famine? Because they were in the middle of a conflict? Because somebody wanted to exploit their workforce? Were they sent to death directly? I think it actually matters. No nation or ideology has a monopoly on colonialism, slavery, child labor, massacres and other monstrosities. You seem to have very clear cut categories : The communists, The nazis, The adults. Although they must be quite comforting, I don't think they work very well.

A Marxist is not necessarily a Maoist, Stalinist, or even Leninist. Marxism is a philosophical, sociological, historical, and economic framework for analyzing reality. And much as one can make a great or terrible web application with a web framework, one can do the same with philosophical frameworks.

Your comment is unnecessarily dismissive and only harbors guilt by association. Can you attribute support for, say, gulags to Prof. Chibber? If not, then your comment is irrelevant. If you can, you have further to prove that this opinion is a defect in this particular theory of law.

The people who actually don't belong at the table are flat and young earthers, single-issue voters like anti-abortion voters, or people so partisan and without principles they'll say things like "I'd vote for Biden if he boiled babies and ate them." Instead it's funny that all of these people will constantly try to attack Marx. Yet none of them know the first thing about anything. Much less Materialism, fun fact, materialism is the reason you have pottery in Museums rather than religious texts. Here's a 6th grade level video on Marx for the uneducated or ignorant. youtu.be/fSQgCy_iIcc

I'd be interested if it came from a Marxist scholar that is a critic of Marxist scholars and university politics :) I was not naming a theory of his but the name he uses to refer to a group of theories that basically see society as a mere product of the efforts of social groups to advance their interests.

Otherwise you have to admit that there are many groups who have many competing points and goals for legal systems.

I thought it was pretty clear that "pluralist theory" was referring to that last bit so I did not feel the need to define but I guess it was not so sorry about that.

The hour long video was for the purpose of investigating further the matter rather than providing a definition.

I do understand that you are wary of scholars, I am myself. A title is not a guarantee of truth and knowledge is valuable when it is the product of good research and good method, something an academic title cannot guarantee alas.

I guess that now I should add that being a barman is how I currently sustain myself while learning to code. :)

A very ill-mannered response. If you don't want to participate in the discussion anymore, you can show yourself the exit rather than insulting your interlocutor.

> Is there one singular "point" to laws?

On a high level view probably "to make it work", but that just shifts the problem to what "it" is and what "work" means.

It's easier to look for a priority, I think. When two interests clash (e.g. a fundamental interest of the state and the law), which one is given priority? Since it's the state that enforces the law, I believe the answer is obvious.

> Are you sure it's not the other way round?

I agree it's the other way around. People trust the government (conceptually, they may or may not trust any given administration). I can't even get most of my friends worked up about the TSA. My wife is one of the most libertarian people I know IRL (to be fair, I live in DC and not SV) and she hates Assange and thinks he's a Russian puppet.

Judge also has conflict of interest and ties to the intelligence community.

> Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" and "the magistrate ruled against him so that must be the law".

This is a theme that Bridge of Spies carries off pretty well.

I think people care, but the "powers that be" are aware of our lack of power.

You realize that by thinking of yourself as powerless you 've actually done so? Maybe you should adopt a different set of beliefs. Maybe that you're less powerful than others, but more powerful than some. You can call your Senator, that already means you're more powerful than Assange.

> a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable

Or they decided that Assange and WikiLeaks are malicious actors not worth siding with.

The powers that be are right to throw Assange in prison.

I looked through your post history and found this: "Freedom of speech and rule of law is not conditioned on reciprocity." I'd like to remind you that the Trump administration asked Assange for the DNC email leaker as a way to discredit the media tying Trump to Russia. Assange is on trial because he wouldn't give the Trump administration that source. Do you still believe what you said?

Of course, what we're really saying here is that we can censor people we don't like. Free speech is conditional on you only saying things that no one minds you saying anyway...

Leaking classified documents is not a free speech issue.

Publishing them most certainly is (more free press technically)

Yes, it is actually. It sounds counter intuitive right? But all classified means if that the president (or someone under him) does NOT want something published. So if publishing something classified is not free speech then what is? You don't need the first ammendment to publish things the government does not mind you publishing, you already have their permission. The whole point of the first amendment is to protect publishing things the government doesn't want published.

If the government could actually prevent publishing of anything it classified, the US would still be fighting the Vietnam war and we would all consider Nixon to be a stand up guy who fairly won re-election...

I can’t help but feel the media doesn’t seem to pay attention because Assange doesn’t have anything damaging against “persona non grata”.

It’s a shame really. Assange and Wikileaks has done a lot for government transparency and paid for it. Way more than the martyrs who go to rallies and complain that they’re called fake news. Who cares? Do something that gets you exiled into indefinite solitary confinement then you can have my sympathy.

In the meantime, his defenders really are motley crew. You have people from all sides, from the WWG1WGA people to amnesty internal and reporters without borders. We'll see if that's enough to pierce the walled garden of coastal and mainstream media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com