Assange case: Key witness admits he lied
thewire.in
thewire.in
> But if Assange wants freedom, all he needs to do is leave the embassy.
> But if Assange wants to get out of jail, he just needs to go through the UK courts.
> But if Assange didn’t commit any cyber-crimes, the evidence will show that.
> But if the evidence was made up, it probably wasn’t important to the case.
>>> YOU ARE HERE
> But if Assange dies in jail, that’s life.
> But if Assange had fought his case in the American legal system, we could have had a real discussion in this country about the relationship between journalism and the regime, before it was too late.
This is not true. Wikileaks leaked material regardless of the materials country of origin.
He never "singled out" the US, they just got the most upset out of any of the countries who had material that leaked because it was a substantial amount of data that made them look bad.
But aside from that I also think the report isn't truthful for that matter, it is framed like Wikileaks turned it down.
Michael Parenti also published a book on this subject a few years before Chomsky. Inventing Reality: The Politics Of the Mass Media [3]
Parenti also has plenty of talks on YouTube [4]
[1] https://youtu.be/tTBWfkE7BXU
[2] https://youtu.be/EuwmWnphqII
[3] https://archive.org/details/inventingrealit000pare
[4] https://youtu.be/1jwliZ1YoCs
EDIT: I’m seeing downvotes. I consider these to be genuinely valuable resources on media literacy but if you disagree I’d love to know what aspects of Chomsky or Parenti’s theories you disagree with.
It doesn't help the author that they repeat tired old accusations about the judge being biased.
Two points here.
He has skipped bail, which is most definitely illegal. Why he skipped bail is a different issue, but it cannot be denied that he has skipped bail.
Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited. That's the whole point of extradition. If you commit a crime abroad, you are almost certainly not guilty of it at home, because you are out of your home country's jurisdiction.
Also I've never understood the whole Sweden is a stepping stone to the US. in my little understanding, I don't see why the US would seek to only issue an extradition order when he was in Sweden. They won't grant extradition to a place where there is a material risk of the death penalty (well, unless you're an asylum seeker, but that's a different issue.)
Assange has beeen charged with a misdeamonor and with violating the Espionage Act, which has never before been used against a journalist. It's a huge attack on the 1st amendment.
I personally also think it's unjust to extradite someone to a country without them actually have commiting crimes in that country (has Assange even been to the US)? It's like a US citizen being extradited to Saudia Arabia for watching porn on US soil.
Its not the same.
Regardless of your feelings on Assange, and regardless of your feelings on what the US had been doing in those cables, had this been a russian/chinese/british/french spy, they would have been treated far more aggressively.
Again, this isn't a justification, or indeed an endorsement of either Assange, or the US & UK.
but, it's clear by UK standards, Assange has a case to answer.
The moral case is entirely different, on that I am not equipped to answer.
The US want their laws to apply beyond the US to non-US citizens. They can fuck off.
Because actual espionage is working to undermine one government at the behest of another. That's not what journalists do, so the espionage charges against Assange are bullshit.
The issue isn't one of jurisdiction, it's whether his actions would have been illegal in the UK _if_ they occurred in the UK. If not, why would the UK extradite? He wasn't in the US at the time and wasn't under US jurisdiction.
That is really not how extradition works. But even if it was, illegally sourcing, publishing, and continuing to host secret documents is still very much illegal in the UK.
The other important thing to note is that the UK extradited a number of British citizens to the US for computer hacking charges, even though they were on UK soil at the time. The issue is not where the person physically is, but where they were doing the damage. The crime happened in the USA, not on UK soil.
It is not - as seen by the many papers doing the same.
> The judge must be satisfied that the conduct amounts to an extradition offence (dual criminality)
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/extradition-processes-and-review...
That is from the section discussing extradition to the US. Clearly you are wrong.
That said, out of your example only “illegally sourcing” the information is potentially illegal. The information I read previously released by the US supporting this claim was extremely weak. I personally would never have supported the extradition on the evidence I saw were I on a grand jury tasked with it. That said, the UK of course needs to decide that it is extraditable on their end as well. You have argued this isn’t the case for a few posts now. Clearly you’re incorrect. That is the point I intended to make.
Your link says the United States (and many other countries) "are not required to provide prima facie evidence in support of their requests for extradition".
That said, I was more replying to the claims that dual criminality were not required. The UK still needs to find the acts themselves as illegal under UK law. I don't remember it being clearly so. Frankly, the released information I read coming from grand jury didn't even seem illegal to me according to US law.
If this was even vaguely true then it would be what he is being extradited for. It's not, because it's not.
If you'd read the article, you'd know this. The USA is literally making crimes up, accusing Assange of them, and then finding "evidence" from a dodgy Icelandic criminal to support their case. Said criminal has now admitted that he lied about that evidence.
What should happen now is that the entire case collapses and Assange is released. That's not happening because the system is corrupt. This is important and we need to be making more noise about such a blatant abuse of justice.
Most countries won't extradite you if the thing you did isn't also illegal there. The reasoning being that you wouldn't want to extradite someone for being for instance a homosexual and that is illegal in the target country, but you would do so if they committed murder.
He has served the sentence for that crime, so it is no longer relevant.
> Secondly and more importantly, you don't need to be guilty of something under UK law to be extradited.
You misunderstand the point: extradition requires dual criminality: the offense that the US is seeking extradition for must be an offense recognized by the UK as well. If Saudi Arabia were to ask for the extradition of Stephen Fry to stand trial of his crime of being gay, the UK would not be able to extradite because there is no dual criminality - the UK does not find being gay a criminal offense today.
Similarly, the offenses Assange is accused of are mostly not recognizable as UK offenses (the espionage act) or they have very low quality evidence. The direct hacking that Thordarson was a witness for would have been much stronger than the main case.
He has served his sentence for skipping bail. That is also not a justification for extradition, as skipping bail in the UK is not a crime in the US. As such it has no relevance.
Secondly, the point is that the extradition treaty requires "dual criminality". That is, the charge needs to be over something which would have been a crime in the UK to if UK jurisdiction applied.
The comment above is clearly making the argument that what Assange is accused of did not meet the test of dual criminality.
correct. Hes in jail because hes a flight risk, whilst he is await the outcome of extradition. This extradition is _different_ to the one he was originally hiding from.
> Assange is accused of did not meet the test of dual criminality.
knowingly publishing government secrets is certainly going to be a specific crime under the heaps of crap thats in the official secrets act.
Yes, and this has no relevance to the claim you first replied to, and no relevance to the correction I made.
> knowingly publishing government secrets is certainly going to be a specific crime under the heaps of crap thats in the official secrets act.
That would be relevant if the US made allegations to that effect, but they can't because merely publishing government secrets is not a crime in the US. See e.g. the Pentagon Papers publication. So figuring out whether it meets the standard in the UK is irrelevant.
This is not how dual criminality works - you can't say "this is illegal in the US, and this other bit over here is illegal in the UK". The same alleged action must be illegal both places.
He will be held for 3-5 years before his trial begins.
The trial will last a month and he will be found guilty of at least 1 charge, enough to receive a sentence of 8 years.
I'm not saying they couldn't get consent for the UK for a superseding indictment, but it's certainly not as straightforward as dropping one they've prepared earlier and laughing manically.
Seriously only a few journalists like Craig Murray even covered the court case.
Truth lights the path to enlightenment and its a hard yes that that journey should be allowed for everyone, not just the few. I believe that path is the only way for humanity to live with itself when making the tough decisions that lie in the not too distant future. People are manipulated just as we manipulate computers, to have an output we need input, and those who view the world in these terms and have talent in these areas have use manipulation tactics to control society's inputs. I wont get into sides, there are power mad megalomaniacs everywhere you care to look, as I'm sure Assange is no angel, he is human like the rest of us, but I will talk about what I know, our western world has banned books orchestrated people and imprisioned speech when these power structures are threatened. As they did with Orwell, Miller, Huxley and now Assange.... the choice is simple, truth and hope or deceit and misery, because we will produce an output that directly correlates with our input.
" Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselfs as others see us" Robbie Burns, This gift burns would realish for himself and all, not a curse for an enemy but a call for transparacncy which is the only way forward. I think the press,the journalists, very much see themselfs as we see them, which is powerless to the manipulation they are experiencing, and its funny that the institutions that he sacrificed himself for are the ones who have been silenced and told to bow, this is no accident, this is a sign to all, a show of power of their manipulation and control.
Can you substatiate that "forbidden access" claim?
Why are you that concerned about something getting misrepresented? Your position sound extremely dishonest, because misrepresentation is the primary tool of those that accuse Assange of crimes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/julian-assange-e...
> In the indictment, Thordarson’s claims are used not as the basis for charges but as background for what Assange told Chelsea Manning, who as an Army soldier exposed classified information through WikiLeaks in 2010.
> Thordarson in the article also does not deny involvement in the hacking of U.S. targets, and tells the publication his activities were “something Assange was aware of or that he had interpreted it so that this was expected of him.”
And here's the full quote that the article took one line from
>Stundin cannot find any evidence that Thordarson was ever instructed to make those requests by anyone inside WikiLeaks. Thordarson himself is not even claiming that, although he explains this as something Assange was aware of or that he had interpreted it so that this was expected of him. How this supposed non-verbal communication took place he cannot explain.
edit oh, and the Washington Post article is from July 8th. The original article claims the media ignored the report as of July 2nd.
> ...as of Friday, July 2, there has been literally zero coverage of it in corporate media; not one word in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Fox News or NPR. A search online for either “Assange” or “Thordarson” will elicit zero relevant articles from establishment sources, either US or elsewhere in the Anglosphere, even in tech-focused platforms like the Verge, Wired or Gizmodo,” FAIR says.
The Post mainly sides with the US and only mentions the Sundin reporting in passing, diminishing its importance and omitting important parts, as the other replies here point out. A great example of power-friendly reporting when it comes to Assange.
Ever since then regular media has been unwilling to work with him, because they’ve rightly judged him to be unreliable and have barely covered his personal issues from anymore than an arm’s length (the Guardian has been the most active in covering him from what I can tell, but US media has shunned him since then).
Let me help: wrongly so. That's the point and the disgrace.
> Ever since then regular media has been unwilling to work with him, because they’ve rightly judged him to be unreliable
I can think of so much worse adjectives for journalists who think this serves as an excuse to ignore something like this. If someone shows up drunk at the police station and says "hey you assholes, person X murdered someone, do your job already and don't just eat donuts" that may not be super polite, but it's not an excuse to not investigate.
That's not what happened.
The Guardian, through its own incompetence, made the full unredacted cables publicly available in February 2011, by publishing the decryption key. People online realized that the cables were available, and a German magazine published an article explaining that the cables were now available. Only after that happened did WikiLeaks put the unredacted cables on its website, under the rationale that since the cables were already public, they might as well be hosted on WikiLeaks.
The Guardian has consistently obfuscated this issue, and tried to blame Assange for the Guardian's decision to publish the decryption key. The Guardian's excuse is that they thought the decryption key was only temporary, whatever that's supposed to mean.
This shifts the question to whether Assange is trustworthy or not, which isn’t the main one.
The main question is why Assange was able to get hold of those documents at all. The security is appalling.
The proof has been repeated by Snowden: Again, a single guy, limited resources, not even startup resources, just sole-trader resources, could access half of USA’s secrets at will and most of Americans’ personal information.
Think what enemy state agencies have access to, with resources and spies.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-26/guardian-assan...
> The Guardian book let the cat out of the bag. Once it gave away Assange's password, the Old Bailey hearings have heard, there was no going back.
> Any security service in the world could now unlock the file containing the cables. And as they homed in on where the file was hidden at the end of the summer, Assange was forced into a desperate damage limitation operation. In September 2011 he published the unredacted cables so that anyone named in them would have advance warning and could go into hiding – before any hostile security services came looking for them.
> Yes, Assange published the cables unredacted but he did so – was forced to do so – by the unforgivable actions of Leigh and the Guardian.
Here's another Jonathan Cook article citing people intimately involved with the redaction process which contradicts your version of events:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-22/guardian-silen...
> ...Goetz [Der Spiegel], as well as Nicky Hager, an investigative journalist from New Zealand, and Professor John Sloboda, of Iraq Body Count, all of whom worked with Wikileaks to redact names at different times, have testified that Assange was meticulous about the redaction process. Goetz admitted that he had been personally exasperated by the delays imposed by Assange to carry out redactions:
>> At that time, I remember being very, very irritated by the constant, unending reminders by Assange that we needed to be secure, that we needed to encrypt things, that we needed to use encrypted chats. … The amount of precautions around the safety of the material were enormous. I thought it was paranoid and crazy but it later became standard journalistic practice.
> Prof Sloboda noted that, as Goetz had implied in his testimony, the pressure to cut corners on redaction came not from Assange but from Wikileaks' "media partners", who were desperate to get on with publication. One of the most prominent of those partners, of course, was the Guardian. According to the account of proceedings at the Old Bailey by former UK ambassador Craig Murray:
>> Goetz [of Der Spiegel] recalled an email from David Leigh of The Guardian stating that publication of some stories was delayed because of the amount of time WikiLeaks were devoting to the redaction process to get rid of the "bad stuff."
> When confronted by US counsel with Leigh's [Guardian] claim in the book about the restaurant conversation, Hager observed witheringly: "I would not regard that [Leigh and Harding's book] as a reliable source." Under oath, he ascribed Leigh's account of the events of that time to "animosity".
But how many people have heard this version of events from the NYT, The Washington Post, the Guardian or all the other corporate media outlets that have been all to happy to pour scorn on Assange?
Thanks for correcting this. It's frustrating how many people get this, and many other so called facts in his case, wrong.
People have no hope of having an accurate picture of events unless they invest a significant amount of time into something that will not benefit them.
Journalists at major outlets are more concerned about the Assange case than their papers, but still have zero chance of getting accurate stories published about it.
There have been 20 articles in print and on the web mentioning Assange in the NY Times since 2021 began, avidly covering the details of his trial and extradition, but now nothing. If their search features are any indication, CNN doesn't believe you should seek out news as much as passively accept it-same pattern and then no recent mention.
Reuters' latest article from 25 June in a break from the style of their previous coverage leaves out mention of the trial details entirely in favor of a human element story petitioning Biden free Assange "to show the US has changed". This narrative does little to exculpate Assange or share why the trial may be over for good while preempting any credit for what follows to the mercy and wisdom of Biden. Whether Biden ignores or denies, well, them's the laws, you know.
That is NOT what happened.
The misernable excuse for a journalist Luke Harding, who works for The Guardian, was given (in confidence) the password to an encrypted online dump of an unredacted version Assange's documents. He then published a book, in which he included this password. Harding was therefore blowing the identities of many vulnerable informants - not Assange.
Assange first tried to engage with the State Department to mitigate the damage that The Guardian's employee had caused. He then published the unredacted documents in full, so that those people that were identified could see that they had been exposed, and take suitable remdial action.
Harding is close to the UK security services.
1. Sure the Washington Post covered it, but it didn't cover it soon enough. 2. Sure the Washington Post covered it, but it's coverage wasn't favorable to Assange
As the ruling was appealed, Assange is still in prison over all of this. The now discredited evidence is still part of the case against him.
https://stundin.is/grein/13627/
WaPo finally put out that article on July 8, 2021 after criticism of western media.
These search still get zero hits for anything related to this news:
site:cnn.com assange witness lie
site:nbcnews.com assange witness lie
site:nytimes.com assange witness lie
site:apnews.com assange witness lie
site:msnbc.com assange witness lie
This was an interesting case when he was trapped in the embassy, police waited outside, and stories came out about his cat pooping everywhere. Easy to understand and fascinating to read about.
Now it is a mundane series of legal events with no final conclusion as of yet.
Even these articles that are upvoted to the front page about Assange consistently have to attack the US media to get traction on HN. It's not interesting by itself to people without them getting to be mad at the media.
And the msm deserves every last drop of vitriol they get over this. Their deliberate and abject failure to put this into context for people results in comments like yours.
Why is it undeserved if they haven't changed their partisan tactics and misleading reporting despite all hate levelled at them for exactly these things?
It causes "harm" to call out their lies? Get real, they've fanned the flames for riots and other political violence for years now and that's far more harmful than calling them terrible for doing so.
I don't know where you are from, but in every country I ever lived it was readily apparent that their mainstream media is tasked with pushing the status quo, muzzle dissenting points of view and opinions, and persecute inconvenient political targets.
It boggles the mind the amount of cognitive dissonance that is rewired to simultaneously acknowledge private companies can easily manipulate the media to further their propaganda goals, but somehow deny political regimes do the same.
In Assange's case, it was readily apparent from the start that the accusations were a ruse to persecute and punish inconvenient voices under the excuse of a carefully fabricated accusation that was intended to be hard to defend on moral grounds.
It's also rather thin gruel. It generally relies on a sort of sleight-of-hand where you imply the media (or the mainstream media) is a single entity and define away counterexamples.
I'm ashamed of a lot of things my country (UK) has done. But this is the latest. We should be better than this.
And supporting the prosecution because of this is also quite an apt reason to not vote for her in the first place. And I think that was made clear before the election.
At first they said the most damning thing in there was recipes.
Then they said it cost them the election.
But they refused to say which leaks were responsible.
Then they claimed the swing voters they lost believed in pizzagate as if it were a mainstream conspiracy theory believed by many and that all the swing voters were therefore complete idiots.
Also if you're going to blame a conspiracy theory that was conjured out of thin air the leaks really didnt actually matter. An equally stupid pretext could have been invented, so why say they cost you the election?
So, according to them the leaks both cost them the election and didnt matter in the slightest.
If you think about all this for just a second it logically doesnt make any goddamn sense but people still parrot it. Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.
I read your message waiting, line after line, for the dumb statement that got you downvoted. How do people still claim that there's no politically motivated mass-flagging going on on HN?
Don't even have to go very deep. Just look at these tweets [0] for example. Why is some "non-profit" organization started by an Australian trying to influence an American election?
[0] https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12929262/wikileaks-hillary-cli...
I have not seen any evidence of Russian interference, but they probably tried. I don't think they got any talking points across to be honest.
This non profit had proof of war crimes and maybe that influenced their disposition? Understandable in my opinion.
In general I am suspect of anyone pointing fingers at others to build a profile. Trump could do that and some people understood that it was holding up a mirror. That is no Trump endorsement and the Russian story an excuse. I believe internal leaks are much more likely.
I'm assuming you mean wikileaks?
> contrast to many media outlets
American media outlets, they're not not foreign nation trying to influence another country's elections. Assange isn't American.
> I have not seen any evidence of Russian interference
So just because you haven't seen it, they don't exist? There's ample proof [0]. 13 people and 3 russian entities were charged.
"How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?" [1]
"We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously." [2]
[0] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clin...
[1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348
[2] (PDF) https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251
Is it a crime to subvert democracy? Apparently not when it’s your side doing it.
There were claims that Assange sat on Trumps mails, but genuinely I don’t think that’s the case and if it was then people likely would still vote for him as he is openly horrible: the emails proved Hilary was calculated.
Honestly if your biggest gripe with Assange is that he caused your person to lose then you have to ask yourself: did you just not want to know that your candidate was trying to subvert democracy?
The Sanders stuff was enough to put me off the DNC (actively hampering his chances of being a presidential candidate by removing him from ballots for instance), but learning that Hillary was the one with media contacts and pushing Cruz and Trump to be president is the ultimate backfire.
Should this man go to prison, for life, because your person didn’t get 4 years in office? Because of things she herself said?
Both parties do this. Pointing it out isn't whataboutism. Pointing it out is showing that Assange is the one who made political moves. He targeted specific politicians to leak negative information at opportune times. He didn't do this out of a sense of bringing the truth to light, he did this to further a political agenda. Where are his leaks on the republican party?
Did you provide him with some leaks? As he can't publish what he doesn't have. Though there is some evidence that the same group that leaked the DNC emails had access to RNC data, there is no evidence that shows Assange had any knowledge of or access to RNC data.
In the end, Assange is just a scapegoat. Although, he wouldn't be the first or the last. When WikiLeaks was being used to disclose information about other countries, US citizens and even the Government saw them as a positive force in the world. But, once the info focused on US affairs, especially around a Presidential election, Assange was public enemy number one (tied with Snowden).
[Citation needed]
Astroturfing is when you specifically skip the convincing part
That's exactly what journalists do - newspaper editors are senior journalists.
"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising."
I've seen a lot of them. On some topics especially when audience don't have access to the ground truth, they(zesty activists disguised as objective journalists) are majority. This lead to a big gap between the perceptions on the same topic among different groups of audience and each group consider the other one are brainwashed.
The difference between activists and advertisers is: the later are knowingly try to sell something while the former thought they are telling truth which make the hidden activists more deceptive.
It is likely that the attacks on Assange were all in good faith. Still baseless though, the fellow has all but secured his place in the history books as a hero at this point.
Then we got the Snowden leaks and that prior had to be updated...
I don't know. Not astroturfing though, that has implications that the people arguing don't believe what they are saying and are just in it for a cheque.
1. In it for the cheque. 2. Believe the people who are in it for the cheque.
Given that there's very rarely an easy way to tell them apart and 2 follows 1?
Honest question.
I would lean towards calling it a wave of astroturfing given that 2 doesnt happen without 1 and 2 and 1 are inseparable, but I can potentially see the argument for using different terminology if there is something more precise.
What, though?
Slight rant: People just get enamored with the story of the dark horse "journalist" fighting against the odds to expose corruption. In reality, the NY Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Pro Publica have all exposed vastly more salient information and done it all ethically and faced down all legal challenges in US courts and won.
Wikileaks just became a source you wouldn't quote anymore because Assange became an obvious and offensive puppet of a secret service.
He killed it himself. Before that WL was quoted by reputable journalists. They've taken the stuff serious. It's been part of the discussion.
Now it'll never be that again.
This is the result of astroturfing. You don't even need a reference, you can just say this, and people accept it.
By 2020 Greenwald was basically persona-non-grata for not pulling either US party lines and his strong support for people like Snowden. Despite his great work in Brazil on human rights and anti-corruption which is something that goes beyond partisan politics and should be lauded.
The problem is people trying to put him (or everybody) into convenient boxes - representing singular view points - without shades of grey, like the 24 hour news talking head guests pushing sound bites.
The type of pressure on any person who dares to enter political news for a living. Which to me seems like a never ending gauntlet.
If tomorrow Sanders starts spouting antivaxx stuff, and half the internet starts attacking him, you wouldn't go and say "there's a misinformation campaign astroturfing against Sanders".
There's no doubt that the US is acting vindictively here, but the pro-Assange camp does little for its credibility by using the same tactics.
Even the headline here has been massaged - originally this was a "key" witness but by the time it gets to HN, he's a "keystone" witness.
But the bigger problem is that he's neither. I've been vaguely following the case and this is the first mention of this guy I've seen. TFA asserts that the 2nd indictment rests on his bought testimony, but there's nothing about hacking Icelandic MPs or banks in that indictment. There's definitely stuff about hacking, but only about US targets, and Thordarson has nothing to say about that.
Unless I'm missing something, this is a minor story about the DoJ doing a deal with one criminal to convict another (hardly news in itself) in order to strengthen an already robust case, not the slam dunk people are making it out to be.
Revelations about an important witness lying about Assange to get immunity from the US is blanked by corporate media. How is reporting that this important story was blanked "acting vindictively"?
I do disagree that this is an important witness, though, for the reasons I have already outlined.
key: 1. Indispensable, supremely important. 2. Important, salient.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/key#Adjective
keystone: 1. (architecture) The top stone of an arch. 2. Something on which other things depend for support.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keystone
I grew up in the "keystone state". As far as I am concerned these words mean precisely the same thing in this context, and neither has stronger implications than the other. Are you sure you're not the one spinning here?
Tangentially, reading the indictment this witness seems to be neither. More to the point, OP felt the need to change the wording. That was a conscious act, not an accident.
What does indispensable mean to you? Do you think something that is indispensable can be dispensed?
A keystone is that. Keystones are key, take the keystone out of an arch and the arch collapses. Doesn't that make a keystone "important, salient"? I think it does. Both of those definitions support these words being synonyms. I quoted both definitions because I believe both support my point. (And I quoted both for 'keystone' because if I didn't, I figured you'd disingenuously attribute that omission to malfeasance.)
> As another poster has asked, why would you choose to change a shorter, more common word for a longer, less common one if they mean exactly the same?
My response to him applies to you as well. You would not be nitpicking such word choices if you were not looking for a crack to gain leverage in the conversation.
I'm not looking for a crack here and the "nitpicking" was a convenient example of how both sides are skewing reality to suit their ends.
Anyway, I notice that the title has now been changed to reflect the original headline so I guess somebody else thought they were different enough words to warrant changing it back again.
Or dang thought to cut this fruitless tangent off at the knees. I am perfectly happy with the new headline, because it means the same thing as the old. If I were dang I'd change it too, for that reason. The new headline is still a damning indictment of US media.
It might be if it actually mentioned the US... or is that bit implied?
You would not be defending title manipulation if you were not trying to defend your own perceived leverage.
Multiple people are telling you that it means something different in their experience. Personally, I have 3 keys to my house, but my house has only 1 keystone.
Why would you replace a 3-letter word with an 8-letter word that means the same thing? Especially when you have to type the entire word "key" to get to "keystone".
I'm not the OP, but you're assuming this was copied and pasted and the word changed deliberately. I can think of a number of reasons why the different word was used, that has nothing to do with an attempt to mislead: e.g. autocorrect if typing it on mobile, genuine error (thinking it was actually 'keystone' in the original).
A current example grabbed from google news:
"Two dams in Inner Mongolia collapse after heavy rain"
"Two dams in China's Inner Mongolia collapse after torrential rain"
"Heavy rain" and "torrential rain" mean basically the same thing. Why does one headline use one phrase, and the other another? Is this some sort of malicious attempt to propagandize at us? Or is it just an editor/writer who fancies the word 'torrential'? I think it's the second.
Arguing against Assange in 2018: Vaguely refer to the allegations against him while making sure to avoid linking any detailed articles or starting a facts-based discussion.
Arguing against Assange in 2021: Okay, I know the US government is trying to arrange a show trial, but is key the same word as keystone?
Sorry you got tangled up with the details.
There is plenty of distortion in the emotional affect created by phrasing, and plenty of ignorance in the abstract theory-of-policy level comment thread discourse, but fortunately there's nothing restraining us to operate on those once-removed levels.
Wikileaks never did that btw.
That I am not justifying anything and that the US is not my state. Apart from that I think you're up to speed.
Definition 2 of key, and definition 2 of keystone are in use here.
The witness is not indispensable nor something on which the case depends for support.
Therefore only definition 2 of key fits.
That is requesting and then participating in the theft of classified information.
Assange had no clearance and took no oaths regarding this information. Converting "working with a source" into "conspiracy to access an information system" because the files were on a computer instead of in a drawer should fail the smell test.
Ellsberg's charges were dismissed because of gross government misconduct, that doesn't settle anything.
NYT vs US established that its totally OK to publish documents you receive. They're trying to make Assange a 'conspirator' in the exfiltration for working with Manning. Apparently the extent of his alleged direct involvement was receiving a password hash but not actually cracking or doing anything with it: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1153486/downl...
The idea that this is espionage (what he is being charged with) is ludicrous.
This is an uncomfortable topic for his detractors.
Even more uncomfortable given that Obama worried it was unconstitutional and criminalized journalism.
If this happened to a Russian citizen in Russia finding evidence of Russian war crimes not one of his detractors would argue that he was guilty.
I agree that the espionage charges are ridiculous and dangerous for actual investigative journalists.
If you say so.
i.e. what is the differentiator that makes Assange innocent of espionage and would make someone else guilty?
Whatever definition is used if it includes leaking war crimes to the public and youre ok with that you are signing up to putting the pieces in place for a fascist dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration.
Not particularly good, IMO: Knowledge of what resources you have where seems pretty damn important, and that's neither "tactics, techniques or technology" AFAICS.
> Whatever definition is used if it includes leaking war crimes to the public and youre ok with that you are signing up to putting the pieces in place for a fascist dictatorship.
This ever so conveniently ignores the crux of the matter, namely that he (at least according to his accusers) leaked so much more than just "war crimes".
> That is not an exaggeration.
Given the above, it's a huge exaggeration.
Sure, add that to the list. It doesnt change anything.
It was a definition I came up with on the spur of the moment. If you're picking minor holes in it then you missed my broader point: if your country's legal definition of aiding and abetting the enemy includes exposing war crimes to the world at large then it's deliberately not about espionage at all.
>This ever so conveniently ignores the crux of the matter, namely that he (at least according to his accusers) leaked so much more than just "war crimes".
It's not convenient in the slightest. Leaking evidence of American war crimes is all he is on trial for.
>Given the above, it's a huge exaggeration.
It's not an exaggeration in the slightest. This prosection is a giant klaxon warning bell signaling impeding fascism.
Not just the prosecution itself, but how little support there is for dropping the case.
To be clear, I have no problem with the publication part. But to frame investigative journalism as being dependent on criminal activity to survive is ignoring decades of groundbreaking, hard hitting reporting done completely within the bounds of the law.
That's a little hyperbolic. I'm certain it's possible to do so within the law, but when it comes to corruption or cover-ups at a government or corporate level, there's simply no other way for a journalist to do their work without leaks. This requires some protection by the law, and once such protection is taken away, it would be nigh-on impossible to get it back. There may be some legal peculiarities about JA's case that make him different from a journalist in some way - IANAL - but I worry that even a technical distinction would be unfair, as he has uncovered much that is of public interest.
This isn't about legal peculiarities. When Assange was offering help to crack passwords and encouraging Manning to access unauthorized material, he wasn't being a whistleblower or a journalist. He was conspiring to commit a crime. He knew that. He'd already been charged with hacking as a teenager. It was a choice he made having weighed up the risks and benefits.
Ellsberg only got off because the prosecution was bungled, but they sure wanted to imprison him, just like they really want to imprison Assange.
You are using this word as a taint, free of context. In the way people toss away drug users because after all possessing drugs is a crime. Therefore, they are a criminal.
You don't ask, why is this a crime? Should we respect this law? Forget all that, obviously someone made up this great law and people who don't follow it are bad.
Classification blocks real journalists from pursuing stories all the time. It works. It literally almost worked in Watergate. The fist hearings into Nixon's dirty money machine closed with little to show because of government secrecy. The government classifies millions of documents per year. It's not just state secrets. It's anything that could be embarrassing, anything that might undermine a government position, etc.
To be clear, I don't have a clear opinion on whether he committed those crimes or not. I do think there's enough evidence to support an indictment.
No such "offer" was extended, nor is there any evidence that cracked passwords were ever used to obtain any data. If you're suggesting that merely talking about password cracking is a crime, well then you've just criminalised a lot of discussions here on HN and reddit.
> encouraging further network intrusion is not a crime
Cite the transcript entries [1] where this alleged encouragement happened.
> I do think there's enough evidence to support an indictment
And you formed this opinion from actually reading the official transcripts [1]?
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html#d...
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 15 55:28 any good at lm hash cracking?
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:00:29 yes
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:02:23 we have rainbow tables for lm
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:04:14 80c11049faebf441d524fb3c4cd5351c
…
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:05:07 I think its lm + lmmnt
…
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:09:06 not even sure if thats the hash...l had to hexdump a SAM file,since I dont have the system file...
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:10:06 what makes you think its lm?
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:10:19 its from a SAM?
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:10:24 yeah
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:11:26 passed it onto our lm guy
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 16:11:40 thx
> Cite the transcript entries where this alleged encouragement happened.
dawgnetwork@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 08 06:31:42 after this upload,thats all I really have got left
pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de 2010 03 0806:32:15 curious eyes never run dry in my experience
Yes I'm familiar with the exchange. I ask again, where is the offer to crack the password exactly? Assange claims an ability to crack, and claims that he passed the hash on, but notice the complete absence of promises to attempt to crack, or statements of intent to use it to compromise computer systems, or corroborating evidence that Assange actually passed it on or actually attempted to crack the password. Assange could be lying or exaggerating or any number of other things.
And you think this constitutes sufficient evidence for an indictment? If so, you have really low standards of evidence.
> Cite the transcript entries where this alleged encouragement happened.
And where is the encouragement? All I see is you projecting an unjustified interpretation.
Even if I steelman your position and we both agree that Assange was encouraging further leaks, are you suggesting that a journalist cannot ask their sources to continue feeding them information? Because if so, you are suggesting we indict every journalist with a source.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Well of course, everybody knows for it to be a real extortion attempt first you have to fill out a 543B detailing payment options, severity of firebombing in case of failure to comply and ancillary terms & conditions. Otherwise it's just a couple of guys exploring some hypotheticals like they do on HN and Reddit all the time.
Honestly, if this is what the defense is going to look like it's not hard to see why they're reluctant to try it out in front of a judge.
1) That's what a court is for deciding.
2) If you and Assange are so sure of this, he should welcome and relish his chance to show so in court.
3) He obviously isn't, and neither are you. Why not?
I don't think this was a robust case at all. A couple of things to note here:
1. The witness from Iceland whose testimony against Assange has now revealed to have been lies wasn't part of the original case the US put forward. They added him much later into the proceedings. So if this was a "robust case" as you put it, why would they decide to add new accusations?
2. You might say, well, they didn't need to include him and shouldn't have. But you have the judge (Baraitser) citing these new accusations when siding with the US, as Stundin reported: "Baraitser sided with the arguments of the American legal team, including citing the specific samples from Iceland which are now seriously called into question." So clearly they were significant enough for the judge.
3. Craig Murray has written about why he thinks the witness was included late into the proceedings:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/06/fbi-fabricat...
> The hearings on the Assange extradition in January 2020 did not seem to be going well for the US government. The arguments that political extradition is specifically banned by the UK/US extradition treaty, and that the publisher was not responsible for Chelsea Manning's whistleblowing on war crimes, appeared to be strong. The US Justice Department had decided that it therefore needed a new tack and to discover some "crimes" by Assange that seemed less noble than the Manning revelations.
> To achieve this, the FBI turned to an informant in Iceland, Sigi Thordarson, who was willing to testify that Assange had been involved with him in, inter alia, hacking private banking information and tracking Icelandic police vehicles. This was of course much easier to portray as crime, as opposed to journalism, so the second superseding indictment was produced based on Thordarson's story, which was elaborated with Thordarson by an FBI team.
> The difficulty was that Thordarson was hardly a reliable witness. He had already been convicted in Iceland for stealing approximately $50,000 from Wikileaks and with impersonating Julian Assange online, not to mention the inconvenient fact he is a registered sex offender for online activities with under-age boys. The FBI team was in fact expelled from Iceland by the Icelandic government, who viewed what the FBI was doing with Thordarson as wholly illegitimate.
> [...] While Baraitser's eventual decision barred extradition on the grounds of Assange's health and US inhumane prison conditions, the second superseding indictment and Thordarson's accusations were accepted as a valid basis for extradition.
Given all that, I think it's fair to describe him as a key witness.
far from robust, more like a joke thats not funny
Sorry? Can you elaborate here? Do you think a justice department should use falsified evidence? This needs explanation because your country and party will be made responsible for such reactions and it might lead to people voting someone you couldn't imagine being president.
On one side we have a democratic government fabricating evidence in a legal case. Corruption by any definition, the break down of the building blocks of law and order. A government that knowingly fabricates evidence is not a government suited to hold power.
On the other side we have the pro-Assange camp.
Either the US government knowing fabricated evidence, or they did not. That all that matters. A government that fabricate evidence is corrupt beyond questioning, at which point the case itself it irrelevant.
Assange may not be a hero, but compared to the war-"heroes" he is one.
Of course nobody really dares to oppose the Imperium, the only real law in this society still is the law of the strongest
22 days ago (572pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27642660
19 days ago (14pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27673180
18 days ago (11pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27686753
16 days ago (1110pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710075
Media blackout after key witness against Assange admits lying - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710075 - July 2021 (637 comments)
Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27642660 - June 2021 (304 comments)
I'm starting to wonder if it's true :)
[1]: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
Anyway, the petition did have something about Assange in it, besides the sign. It also demanded an immediate end to Australia's involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan. It called the US imperialist, condemned the alliance, mentioned Israel, various global left wing causes, calls for resistance, etc. I'm not sure if it mentioned freedom of the press at all. I don't remember the details, but it was enough that I didn't sign.
The whole thing presented Assange and wikileaks totally as activists. Of course, that doesn't mean that it isn't a press freedom issue. It is. It also doesn't make the pursuit of Assange ok. In some senses, it's been worse than a Putinesque hit. Hits don't corrupt legal systems and establish precedents.
It's been much harder to think of Julian & Wikileaks as a journalist than it should have been. They present on a nexus of belligerent, activist and journalist. This technically shouldn't affect legal processes, but... reality.
I do think there's an imperative for journalism to remain journalistic, in both the hard and soft sense. Freedom of the press does, IMO, require a distinctive press, easily identified as such.
Was the petition organised by Asssange or people he approved? Or was it essentially a militant communist faction using it for their own purposes because, at most charitable reading, they're right about everything as you must agree as soon as you open your eyes.
As someone who is not leftist it appears to me to be prevalent and an extreme hindrance on genuine protest against the unconscionable.
>> Or was it essentially a militant communist faction
Best guess, it was mostly young radicals from University of Melbourne. But... I don't think this falls into the "other people using it for their own purposes" bucket either. Wikileaks & Assange are from this (specific) resistance clique themselves. It was their neighborhood. Both the organisation and the man have always represented themselves as hard left activists. Still do. This was back in the Bush-Howard days, or just after.
As with Garret's Nuclear Disarmament Party (I assume) there's a dynamic between progressive and radical thought that often leaves them in no man's land... or radical land.
Like I said, being politically weird doesn't mean you lose rights or can't be a journalist. So, I'm justifying anything. I'm noting that journalists and journalistic organisations, especially those reporting on war, should not blur lines between press and "not press" themselves. Press freedom is premised on you being press. Make that unchallengeable, and obvious at first sight.
Contrast this with Snowden, who knows what he is, what categories he falls into. As such, he always expected to face trial or exile. He wants to return and face trial, just with open proceedings. His was an act of civil disobedience. Meanwhile, not protected like the journalists he leaked to. They never blurred the lines between them.
The NDP went from that base to became a front for the pro-soviet communist party while the cold war was still very much on, thus completely undermining its original purpose and relegating it to useless and disillusioning its founders including Garret. If you were tasked with trying to destroy it as a political force given they had a fair amount of support you couldn't have done it more effectively.
Seems advertising a protest in favour of journalistic freedom then flipping it to be about a bunch of other unadvertised issues and bundling it up in a petition is /exactly/ what I'm talking about. Assange's PR skills suck but I somehow doubt they suck that badly given how scared he evidently has been about what he is still facing. Being persecution by the USA in a supermax prison.
"Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
I was watching the 60 minutes rewind playlist on YouTube and happened to come across the original 60 minutes interview with JA. It was amazing to see him walking around outside during his initial house arrest and to see him so young. And it was a strange feeling to watch it knowing the outcome for the first time.
In that interview they make mention of a “poison pill” where JA was threatening the US government with disclosing explosive classified secrets if he were to be arrested or assassinated. I wonder if that poison pill is still in play?
Julian Assange just isn't going to drive enough clicks.
There is no conspiracy here, this is a side effect of the internet destroying the media's business model.
Julian Assange would have been a really interesting Sunday morning discussion in the 90s. The media can't really afford interesting discussion at this point though.
Rape is serious accusation, but if you look at this case you can clearly see she got paid to go to court. They had sex, he left the sweeden and months after that she changed her mind and decided it was a rape.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange...
Do you have a link to the original UN report, because the newspapers reporting on the report are very obviously engaging in a game of telephone with what it actually says. I don’t know which newspapers are closer to the truth, but they’re sufficiently dissimilar that some of the claims I have encountered must be outright false.
https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublic...
In particular, section 3 - Reported arbitrariness of the preliminary investigation - raises 11 ways the judicial proceedings were highly problematic, each with numerous instances of such behavior. Quoting a few of the more egregious ones, an order for his arrest was issued a few hours after two women first contacted the police about the possibility of compelling an HIV test for Assange; an official statement hadn't even been collected from one of the women yet; no statement from Assange had been requested or collected before emitting the arrest warrant; official statements made by the accusers were modified post factum in the police databases; and that both the investigating officer and an attorney for the two accusers (who sought to reopen the case after it was first closed) were both friends of a former Swedish minister of justice "at the time when Swedish security police unlawfully kidnapped and handed over two persons to CIA-custody and subsequent torture".
This final collaboration may be exactly one of the reasons why Sweden would have been preferred as the extraditing state vs the UK. It's also important to note that, unlike Swededn, the UK is a common law country where the mechanisms for protecting individual rights are significantly different from the civil law system in Sweden.
The style and the first three pages definitely explains the differing reports, in particular the beginning of page 3.
Guys like this are free candy for foreign intelligence agencies and vital tools in waging war against the United States. It would be useless to create them as spies and saboteurs out of whole cloth, when it's so much more effective to find guys with a grievance… a REAL grievance… and turn them, own them, use them to full advantage.
Assange is a pawn and, like so many of us, not a good person. Doesn't mean he can't have had good motivations and goals. Doesn't mean those goals can't have proven useful to others.
It's complicated. So much is.
"Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
I think this whole case demonstrates what a nightmare the authorities can put you through in a supposedly Liberal, Democratic, Law abiding set of nations, just because they want to. That should scare us all.
There has been a very long time exception for murder, rape and piracy (with boats not file sharing). Recently terrorism has been added to that.
But as far as I'm aware the US is the only major country that tries to enforce its laws on people not there. Who else has been trying this?
Edit
Wikipedia lists some
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction
Looks like some places have added planes from/to/through their airspace, sex crimes against minors and space craft to the list of extraterritorial coverage. No one else is doing espionage, computer crimes, fraud, etc like the USA...
https://diem25.org/exactly-10-years-ago-wikileaks-released-a...
My point (that I think you're referring to?) is that US law shouldn't apply to people not in the US. There are a few well established exceptions (Murder, Rape, Piracy (with boats) and terrorism), but aside from those most nations accept that things happening outside their borders aren't subject to their laws...
So, which of UK laws Assange broke?
Maybe Ransomware attacks should meet that standard? Maybe Assanges acts should too.
But now you have to be careful. Who decides which crimes? What if they get it wrong? Should I face prosecution for legally drinking at 18 in the UK when the US sets a higher age limit?
I think there are a lot of crimes that US takes no interest in, that are much MORE arguably worthy of extraterritorial prosecution.
So at best this is very selective prosecution. And that's unjust by definition.
I wonder if he would have started Wikileaks if he had understood human nature. What's the point of helping society if it's a steaming pile of crap?
This is a lawless dog-eat-dog world. The laws only serve criminals who are able to disregard them and not get caught. These are the real beneficiaries of our system.