Chinese authorities detain Bloomberg News staff member

Surely this depends on the contents of the information. I refuse to carte blanche trust a government to decide secrecy when every indication is that this is used to mislead citizens. This emphatically is true for both governments in question.

In the US it is perfectly legal for journalists to distribute classified information, as long as they don't hold a security clearance themselves. I think this strikes the right balance. Note that a journalist can still be prosecuted for breaking other laws like theft, computer abuse, or conspiracy if they use illegal means to obtain the information. But that's separate from publishing the information once they have it.

Do you believe that governments ever abuse classification power? If so, should there be any circumstances where classified material can be shared in the public domain?

It is one thing to enforce the oaths that government employees voluntarily swear while onboarding to their positions of trust.

Quite another when regular citizens / journalists are pressed into service to protect the state from embarrassment.

> ...should there be any punishment for taking something classified and putting it into public domain...

"something" is a word that goes to a core issues of the whole thing. For democracy to function, people need to be able to argue that things are bad ideas.

Say the military classifies a video because it would undermine public support for a war. There should be no punishment for leaking that, as it is information that is relevant to the public - if it would sway their decision making, then it shouldn't be kept from them.

Say the military classifies troop deployments that are irrelevant to all public decision making - leaking that should be punishable.

So to decide if something is punishable or not, we have to deal with a specific issue and make a judgement on whether that specific issue could reasonably have influenced public decision making.

I once looked into the Swedish law back a decade or so ago when Wikileaks did their first big publication.

As it happened there were a few court case back during the cold war where classified military information were published by news paper and the paper ended up in court. Recalling what I read, they made a few tests in order to confirm their conclusion.

1: Did the leaked information exist publicly before the publication. It make no sense to continue demand legal protection for information which is already public.

2: Did the leaked information cause any harm by being leaked. If it can not be demonstrated to have caused harm then the information should not have been classified from the start and thus do not deserve legal protection.

3: Was publicizing the information in the public interests?

This has made prosecuting news papers for publicizing classified information almost impossible.

Is this classification facilitating the harm of innocent individuals?

In China, documents can be re-classified as secret after they have been released.

There's no certification for being an Official Journalist and that's a good thing.

Of course he was, what makes you say that? It's not engineering where one can only call itself journalist with specific diploma.

Exposing State wide corruption, collusion and illegal activities... pretty much fit what "journalism" was meant to be.

True, he has done more than any "journalist" in mainstream media. No comparison possible.

> Why do people insist on calling Assange a journalist?

Because he directed Wikileaks, who report any number of facts in the public interest and helped in revealing a few substantial stories. Wikileaks involvement in the Snowden revelations springs to mind, that bought a conspiracy with global implications to light. Probably one of the most consequential pieces of journalism in history except maybe the Panama papers.

If your definition of journalism is something other than bringing important truths to the public eye, then it is weak and we can all do without it.

"... the WikiLeaks team has racked up numerous awards for journalism over the years, including the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011), the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011), the International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011), the Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011), the Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013), and the Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014).

The claim that Assange is “not a journalist” is both an irrelevant red herring and a self-evident falsehood. It is made not by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word journalism means, but by people who want to see Julian Assange imprisoned by the same government which tortured Chelsea Manning because he made them feel emotionally upset. It’s a fact-free argument made entirely in bad faith for inexcusable motives: the desire to see a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth.

When someone says “Assange isn’t a journalist”, they aren’t telling you what Assange is. They’re showing you what they are. "

- from https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/07/assange-is-not-a-jou...

Because the FBI accused him of being a hostile foreign intelligence agency and could skip a lot of restrictions in charging him. Assange argued he was a journalist and the USA law protects his actions in the US.

The Chinese, in practice, do not give the constitution almost any weight.

For example: The constitution promises freedom of religion. It doesn't take much search to find out how patently false this is...

Wikipedia: "Though technically the "supreme legal authority" and "fundamental law of the state", the ruling Communist Party of China has a documented history of violating many of the constitution's provisions and censoring calls for greater adherence to it. Furthermore, claims of violations of constitutional rights cannot be used in Chinese courts, and the National People's Congress Constitution and Law Committee, the legislative committee responsible for constitutional review, has never ruled a law or regulation unconstitutional."

As democracy is in N.Korea

Without separation of powers, even the best constitution is worthless.

The PRC constitution guarantees freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, etc. (articles 35 and 36), so... uh...

Chinese (Russian, Venezuelan) constitution does not worth paper it has been printed on. Authoritarian regime has any tools to override any statement of constitution, and face no consequences. Rights are for party bosses, responsibilities for the people.