Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's a quite long and sordid affair, but I'll do my best to summarize:

Craig has been a thorn in the side of the government for some time, first for exposing corruption in the Scottish seats of power, the too-cozy relationships between the judicial and executive branches, and the biased and tainted prosecutions of anyone who gets in their way (including MPs).

The accusations against him hinge on the "jigsaw identification" theory, whereby people could piece together persons from the material he published. The problem is that it's so vague that it could be used against *anyone* who publishes *anything* about a case such as this (and in fact many publications DID publish information that could easily lead to the identification of the accuser, but they were given a pass). This is why he's calling it retribution.

Furthermore, he's been reporting on the Assange case, and that has angered the British government, which is why his appeal was rejected, and why he was not allowed to travel to Spain to give testimony in a case where the Americans were spying on Assange and his lawyer via UC Global.

At this point, Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.

>The accusations against him hinge on the "jigsaw identification" theory, whereby people could piece together persons from the material he published. The problem is that it's so vague that it could be used against anyone who publishes anything about a case such as this

Have you read the court ruling on the matter? I looked through it, and it sounds like that's not at all what's going on here. The court went through each individual accusation of jigsaw identification he was accused of, and in cases where jigsaw identification was unlikely, said so. On top of that, it seems Murray himself was trying to hint to his readers that he was indeed trying to give information out for the purpose of helping people figure out who the accusers were.

>Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.

Perhaps. Or perhaps he just doesn't have a very strong case.

> Furthermore, he's been reporting on the Assange case, and that has angered the British government, which is why his appeal was rejected

Whilst not impossible, this is entirely speculation.

What do you think evidence of this would look like, if it existed? They're hardly going to write a press release on it.

I think the honest truth is that the government could not give less of a shit about coverage on Assange. It's such a hilariously marginal story, and doesn't play badly with their base. That's ignoring the fact that 99.9% of news is covid related anyway far outshining any really bad press.

You're responding with an argument that says "he pissed off the government so he was sent to prison" - but he actually was convicted of violating a court injunction (in India, that would be contempt of the court).

It's hard to connect contempt of the court proceedings with pissing off the government without also alleging that courts are in the pocket of the government... which is a very serious connection to draw here. This happened in UK!

The alleged means of the so called beach are the nub of the issue here. 'Jigsaw identification' was a contrivance to specifically target Mr Murray, and notably is not a mechanism that has been used against any other entities, though it could have been.

For me, it's far too loosely defined and requires supposition of Intenet (mind reading) , to be used as a means of conviction.

Jigsaw identification is a real thing, and real journalists are taught about it as part of defamation awareness.

Related story: when I was the deputy editor of a paper in a large UK city I was read in on the approximate locations of people known to be on our patch who were subjects of injunctions protecting their identities, just so that we didn’t accidentally reveal anything that could expose their whereabouts when reporting seemingly unconnected events such as house fires etc.

Indeed, it seems like the newspapers were already publishing things at the time with far more detail to point at Alex Salmond, but nothing happened to them.

Isn't the "jigsaw identification" essentially similar to the 'personally identifiable information' addressed by GDPR? It seems to me that both constructs stand and fall together.

PII is precisely defined, not pulled out of thin air, and nobody's going to jail because of it. Rich corporations like Amazon are fined for fucking with it though.

All of the data that can be used to identify a person are precisely defined?

Or is it that all of the identity data that someone can be held legally accounted for are precisely defined?

Well, that's not a hard connection to make, when you know about the role of the First Minister of Scotland in the prosecution of her predecessor, Alex Salmond. If you were also to know the identity of one of the accusers, which cannot be reported, but is well known in Scotland, you would find the connection even easier.

The idea is clearly that he pissed off the government in other matters, and so in this particular case, effort might have been made behind the scenes to throw the book at him.

I believe that he has shown that to be the case in advance.

There are so many serious connections to draw these days that it's no longer such an argument against it.

The courts are the government. A separate branch from the executive and legislative, sure, but it's still a government entity.

In British English this is not the case, "Government" is use more like "Administration" is used in the US.

What do Brits use to refer to British courts, Parliament and executive considered as a whole?

Those are the three branches of the state. We consider government to be the executive only. The judiciary does not govern.

Ah. Americans use "state" to mean one of the 50 provinces of the US, leaving the word unavailable for what Brits use it for.

What about the state department?

That is our term for what the Brits call the Foreign Office.

Yes. I think the GP's point was that this shows how US usage also, still, to some extent reflects that of the rest of the world: Your State Department is called that because it is the organ that deals with other sovereign states.

Pointless word semantics aside, the point here is that they are branches of one thing; if you piss off one branch, strings can be pulled so that another branch treats you severely in court. This is plausible.

Golly. Of course the courts and the state are in collusion.

The interests of the state and those of the courts almost completely align. Class interests in the UK really matter and the rulers (not the members of parliament, the actual rulers) and the judges all went to the same schools, they are all cousins essentially.

There is no need for explicit corruption and collusion but there is plenty of that too.

> At this point, Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case

Does the EU Court of Human Rights care whar Americans think about him?

This is not in fact an EU court. It's the court that interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. It's part of the Council of Europe where the U.S has observer status and Russia as well as the UK are members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights

The member states care about America's friendship and cooperation on many things. You have to follow the power to see what the results will be.

Personally, I think he's just doing it to have a record for posterity once it's rejected, to turn common knowledge about EU-USA corrupting power relationships into public knowledge (although I don't share his hope that this will ever become public knowledge - but then again it takes an idealist to fight these kinds of battles).

The courts deciding against his argument would only be probative on the question of corruption if you start from the presumption that his position is correct. Your post is entirely circular in its reasoning.

In the world of realpolitik which do you think matters more?

A. The opinion of a world superpower with a military to match

B. Ideals

It depends on the question.

Only as a side effect of which ideals a superpower happens to be espousing at that moment.

Furthermore, he's been reporting on the Assange case, and that has angered the British government, which is why his appeal was rejected

Appeals aren’t rejected by the government.

For those who downvoted me, they aren’t. They are rejected by the judiciary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com