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Comment by yostrovs | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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

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.

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