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Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

It's also illegal in Singapore to proceed with any investigation of government activity. There are no checks and balances. There is no investigative journalism or allowed points of view that are not approved by the state. There is conflict of interest within the government, and no ability to dig into it without prosecution.

Imagine Obama suing a college student for something they wrote on their blog. Now, Trump might have done something like that.. which is the main parallel to draw with the current leadership in Singapore.

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US policy regarding prosecution of leaks, suppression of journalists, etc is mostly independent of which President sits in the White House. The fact that you believe otherwise shows that you have massive blinkers on - propaganda has successfully done its job.

> US policy regarding prosecution of leaks, etc is mostly independent of which President sits in the White House. The fact that you believe otherwise shows that you have massive blinkers on - propaganda has successfully done its job.

As my other comment mentioned, this is not about leaks. This is about open questions being raised by citizens of a government, who wish to see more investigation into the activities of the government. I said nothing about prosecution for leaks, nor is this discussion even about that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30176959

The line drawn is a bit thin there since investigative journalism necessarily involves whistleblowers or asking pointed questions based on tips. Trump had Obama to show him the true way of suppression and merrily followed in his footsteps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/if-donald-...

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-invoked-espionage-act-i...

Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, added: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory. The moral obstacles have been cleared for Trump’s attorney general to go even further, to forget that it’s a free press that has distinguished us from other countries, and to try to silence dissent by silencing an institution whose job is to give voice to dissent.”

https://www.cato.org/commentary/vendetta-how-obama-administr... Fast and Furious involved a sting operation that the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives concocted to infiltrate and weaken Mexican drug cartels. The scheme entailed shipping traceable guns to the drug trafficking gangs and then following the trail to identify and neutralize those organizations and the kingpins who ran them. But Operation Fast and Furious backfired badly. Law enforcement personnel assigned to maintain the traces lost track of where the weapons ultimately ended up. The cartels received more than 1,700 additional weapons at the expense of US taxpayers. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration sought to conceal the nature and extent of the fiasco. Invoking “executive privilege,” Attorney General Eric Holder even defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify before a House committee investigating the Fast and Furious scheme.

But yes, Obama==GOOD, Trump==BAD

I don't think the overton window is very far from the worst case for the US, but it is documented that Obama specifically did not want to charge Assange because of press freedom concerns. Of course in the long term it didn't matter because every 4-8 years everyone has global amnesia and decides to swap for a completely different kind of head of state.

The american state is a large behemoth that moves on its own for much (and almost always in the wrong direction), but it's not like there are absolutely zero differences between who sits in the chair (and there is a lot of potential for someone who has the will to effect change).

The persecution of Assange continued for several years under Obama.

Actually, what am I saying? The Obama Administration started the persecution of Assange. Obama took office at the beginning of 02009, and the Assange affair started in 02010.

Getting it out that Obama did not want Assange prosecuted is typical of American style politics. When you are on both sides of the fence you can address criticism by pointing out that you did not want to take the action or pointing to the action that you did take to get him extradited. It is a win no matter which way the wind blows.

The picture you’re painting doesn’t reflect the reality of the country. Singapore is consistently rated as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

This Wikipedia section paints it the best, in my admittedly unqualified opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Singapore#Politica...

I don't think the comment was about corruption but about an oppressive political climate

Even Hitler's Germany was considered well-governed by some, until it wasn't.

> The picture you’re painting doesn’t reflect the reality of the country

As someone who has spent much of my life in that country, yes it does. However, I think that you are conflating orthogonal concepts.

I’m surprised to hear that as that hasn’t been my experience living there (I’m not Singaporean though).

It’s actually a very nice country for an Expat to live in. Much of the gain with little of the negatives, and usually a limit on your overall exposure to these things. And most expats are much more focused on their individual experiences than the long-term effects of a government.

You got that last comparison backwards: https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/obama-used-espionage-act... I don't believe Trump jailed any reporters, unlike the record achieved by Obama.

You are referring to something different, a government attack on leaks of classified info. I don't have an opinion on that.

What Singapore's PM has done is personally sue people, such as college students, for speculation on their blogs. Not at all the same thing -- no leaks of government information, instead, open questions attempting to investigate and raise awareness of conflicts of interest. Some students have gone bankrupt by these attacks.

Trump is also that petty.

No comparison is ever perfect. No, Obama didn't jail a college student blogger. He did go after Assange, Manning, and many others. He attacked more people willing to uncover government activities than any other president. But you're right, it's not an exact same thing as suing speculating college students. It's much worse. We live in a democratic republic supposedly.

It was Trump who actually went against Assange at the end of the day. The extradition was started under his administration. Obama's administration did decide not to go forward with it.

Obama couldn't extradite a man out of an embassy of a country that was not cooperating.

According to all records on this, the reason he was not charged by Obama was that his administration was afraid the case would not hold up in court. If they felt differently, I don't see why the extradition request wouldn't have been made, whether he was still held up in the Ecuadorian embassy or not. After all, Ecuador and the US have had an extradition treaty since 1872 and all that the US had to do is pressure Ecuador and wait/influence them till a new government was in place.

It was Trump's administration that according to all information simply felt differently about the case entirely. This is why his Justice Department went forward.

>President Barack Obama’s Justice Department had extensive internal debates about whether to charge Assange amid concerns the case might not hold up in court and would be viewed as an attack on journalism by an administration already taking heat for leak prosecutions.

>But senior Trump administration officials seemed to make clear early on that they held a different view, dialing up the rhetoric on the anti-secrecy organization shortly after it made damaging disclosures about the CIA’s cyberespionage tools.

AP(1)

I mean if you have sources to the contrary, please share them. But all that was available so far doesn't really help your assumption there. Also, is this really surprising? Trump promised (but thankfully failed) to "open up Libel laws" after all.(2)

_____

(1) https://apnews.com/article/north-america-ap-top-news-barack-...

(2) https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpomete...

It sounds like people are arguing about which President to blame for the jailing of journalists when both parties in the US hold the same position on the matter. The details are circumstantial.

Also, during the unrest of 2020 dozens of credentialed journalists were assaulted by government forces, including in many places by state and local police that were backstopped with federal agents.

> Attorney General Eric Holder directed the Department of Justice to aggressively prosecute government employees who discussed classified information with reporters. In 2012, after news organizations reported on U.S. drone strikes and attempts to disable Iranian nuclear reactors, Holder assigned two U.S. attorneys to track down the journalists’ sources.

I've found some talk about a Fox News reporter being investigated, but I don't see anything anywhere (yet) about any reporters being arrested. Can you cite your sources, please?

> jailed any reporters, unlike the record achieved by Obama

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