Assange: US rule of law suffering 'calamitous collapse' | Hacker News Reader

Assange: US rule of law suffering 'calamitous collapse'

france24.com

179 pointsstfu61 comments

One has to wonder how the world's governments will react to this, especially since they won't be publishing blog posts in a similar manner to Google et al.

There are two major trade agreements[1][2] that are written and negotiated in absolute secrecy, and we can only speculate what will be on them. The world's governments may quietly support the surveillance systems the USG operates, and the USG may use it to appease her opponents by adding stipulations to the trade agreements that will grant them unfettered access (putting an end to any and all state-sponsored opposition) just as the UK receives access.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAFTA

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Strategic_Economi...

Probably the same way governments all over the world do to inconvenient facts: be silent and pretend it doesn't exist.

All three branches of government agreed that the surveillance we found out about this week was lawful. "Rule of law" is a feature of a just society, but does not define it. "Rule of law" is also the vehicle we use to course-correct society back towards justice.

Society gets to decide the rules though, and we can't all do that when only a tiny fraction know what the rules are, and anyone that tries to talks gets prosecuted under the espionage act.

Obama really needed to keep his transparency promise, mission failed on that one.

If it were true that "anyone that tries to talk gets prosecuted under the espionage act" then thousands of people and a very large share of HN would already be facing prosecution under the espionage act, since we seem to talk about nothing OTHER than NSA these days...

"Rule of law" is also not closed to debate; it's somewhat difficult to define a precedent for checks and balances when those checks and balances have been iterated so frequently.

While Assange could have been more precise with his diction, what would occur were it not for people questioning the integrity of the branches of government themselves -- barring the true definition of a rule of law? If the rule itself is unable to effect positive change, why would it be relevant in a just society at all?

It's questions like these that make government, and law in general, incredibly complex to break down, bit by bit. Everything is tightly integrated and there's no true definition of what is right or wrong. Theological morality doesn't, at least in a modern society, have any bearing whatsoever on law, and the morals perpetuated by anyone can be debated by anyone.

There is no clear line that divides the justness of any such law. The only way that we can decide if law is just is through majority versus the minority -- but what if the majority drowns out the minority's cries? What if the minority is trying to convey a sensible solution to x problem?

It's happened throughout history, and it will happen again. It's a fundamental flaw of a partially broken system -- but it's all we have.

"In a rare public filing in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the Justice Department today urged continued secrecy for a 2011 FISC opinion that found the National Security Agency's surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act to be unconstitutional. Significantly, the surveillance at issue was carried out under the same controversial legal authority that underlies the NSA’s recently-revealed PRISM program." [1]

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...

By all three branches, do you mean:

1. A handful of the most senior (see also: most gerrymandered) members of the intelligence committee informed of this.

2. A secret ruling from a secret FISA court.

3. Obama.

There is no such thing as a gerrymandered Senator.

And there are no senators in the House intelligence committee.

But there obviously are on the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence.

You are wrong. Rule of law is a judiciary state or institutional system in which every actor respects the same set of rules, from individuals to the very institutions that creates the rules, those rules usually imply separation of powers and always respect to fundamental rights (privacy is one of them!!)

> All three branches of government agreed that the surveillance we found out about this week was lawful

Turns out that three branches are not enough :(

I liked _THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW_

"I believe that, much as Orwell suggested, it is the public's ability to engage in this type of doublethink, to be aware that the law is inherently political in character and yet believe it to be an objective embodiment of justice, that accounts for the amazing degree to which the federal government is able to exert its control over a supposedly free people. I would argue that this ability to maintain the belief that the law is a body of consistent, politically neutral rules that can be objectively applied by judges in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, goes a long way toward explaining citizens' acquiescence in the steady erosion of their fundamental freedoms. To show that this is, in fact, the case, I would like to direct your attention to the fiction which resides at the heart of this incongruity and allows the public to engage in the requisite doublethink without cognitive discomfort: the myth of the rule of law."

http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm

And the crux of it all…

"Our long-standing love affair with the myth of the rule of law has made us blind to the latter possibility (We can continue the ideological power struggle for control of the law in which the group that gains dominance is empowered to impose its will on the rest of society, or we can end the monopoly.). Like the Monosizeans, who after centuries of state control cannot imagine a society in which people can buy whatever size shoes they wish, we cannot conceive of a society in which individuals may purchase the legal services they desire. The very idea of a free market in law makes us uncomfortable. But it is time for us to overcome this discomfort and consider adopting Socrates' approach. We must recognize that our love for the rule of law is unrequited, and that, as so often happens in such cases, we have become enslaved to the object of our desire. No clearer example of this exists than the legal process by which our Constitution was transformed from a document creating a government of limited powers and guaranteed rights into one which provides the justification for the activities of the all-encompassing super-state of today. However heart-wrenching it may be, we must break off this one-sided affair. The time has come for those committed to individual liberty to realize that the establishment of a truly free society requires the abandonment of the myth of the rule of law."

I don't think that Assange has much credibility on this issue. He's shown repeatedly that he believes himself to be above scrutiny in both his personal behavior and in the way that he operates WikiLeaks. I don't see how he can demand that other people in power behave transparently when he refuses to be transparent about how he uses his own power.

> I don't see how he can demand that other people in power behave transparently when he refuses to be transparent about how he uses his own power.

You don't know how he uses his power?

Here is how it works: People anonymously send him information, and he releases it.

> I don't think that Assange has much credibility on this issue.

As I see it, he has more credibility than most on the issue. It's one he has being fighting for all of his adult life, and what he and his sources have risked their lives for.

How has Assange, credibly, risked his life for this issue? There hasn't been any documented attempt upon his life, and very few on his livelihood (what serious attempts have been made to shut down Wikileaks)?

Hyperbole does nothing to help someone who, in the eyes of many, appears to be increasingly a victim of his own ego.

> (what serious attempts have been made to shut down Wikileaks)?

Shutting down payments was a serious attempt [1]

[1] http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-lieberman-king-mastercard-visa-...

> Here is how it works: People anonymously send him information, and he releases it.

Not true. It used to be that way. Then he decided to start releasing information according to his own political agenda.

> Then he decided to start releasing information according to his own political agenda.

What is his political agenda, and what information has he released that is in line with it?

Are you saying that he releases fake/forged documents, or that he gets sent all sorts of documents and only releases those that suit his agenda?

If the latter, do you have evidence to back up this serious allegation? Care to share it with us?

What sort of documents/information would he receive but refuse to release?

His political agenda is anti American foreign policy, and he has chosen to highlight leaks that support this agenda.

I don't think tu quoque is a valid criticism here. He can be a hypocrite and still be right.

It bears mentioning not just for the hypocrisy (though I don't certainly like hypocrites) but rather because it may indicate bias.

The title might as well have been "Bill O'Reilly Says Fox News is the Best Network and MSNBC Are Poopyheads", what else did we think Assange would say?

As it stands it's really hard for me to take "COMPLETE BREAKDOWN OF RULE OF LAW" very seriously so he's probably actually wrong too!

I don't think he's a hypocrite. He may run his organization in an authoritarian, despotic, and un-transparent way, but in the end, the people working for him are there voluntarily. While some of his actions may put people at risk, in general, wikileaks doesn't directly put people in jail, assassinate people, or otherwise impinge on people's civil liberties. So the moral responsibilities of Assange are fundamentally different from that of the United States government.

It would, however, be hypocrisy, for example, if the president of Ecuador, for example, saw fit to criticize the US (unless Ecuador is a saintly state, which, I doubt).

Fundamentally, both Assange and the US government face the same issue: how to balance the privacy of individuals with some greater need. In the case of the United States, it's national security, in the case of Assange, it's his feeling that government needs to be held to account. The people who helped American forces in Afghanistan or talked to American diplomats have the right to have their personal conversations kept private. Wikileaks violated that right in the name of a greater good. If Assange wants to criticize the United States government for violating the rights of Verizon customers to the privacy of their calling information without due process and the rule of law, he should seriously consider whether his own organization did a good job of protecting the privacy of thousands of people because either through conscious decisions (releasing the Afghan war logs unredacted) or negligence (leaving copies of the unredacted cables on publicly-accessible servers, allowing seriously dodgy people like Israel Shamir access to unredacted cables) that information got out. What due process did Wikileaks give people named in leaked documents? When the cables were being released it wasn't even possible for me to contact Wikileaks to get them to redact names on a cable that were accidentally left unredacted.

"The people who helped American forces in Afghanistan or talked to American diplomats have the right to have their personal conversations kept private."

Then their privacy had already been violated, because the state department diplomat had already forwarded those conversations to others within the state department.

If you talk to the agent of an organization in their capacity as agent, then you're talking to the organization.

I think most sane people disagree that the right to privacy is paramount when it comes to who is setting and influencing US military policy.

That said, it is worth remembering that more people had access to those records than are members of the Chinese Communist Party. So if the information was particularly sensitive (and it does not seem sensitive, raising the question of why so much was classified) the question is why it was classified for general distribution.

I think the fundamental problem is that "rule of law" is a convenient fiction, which is basically a way of encouraging people to believe that we have more limits on governmental abuses than we do. The problem though is that all decisions have to be made by individuals, not laws, and laws are subject to selective enforcement and so forth.

For example, mandatory sentencing takes power out of the hands of judges to adjust sentences. It is argued that this makes the system more predictable and fair, but what it really does is transfers that power to the hands of prosecutors, and thus makes the system less predictable and fair.

What is happening right now is that this illusion is being ripped apart.

I wouldn't say the rule of law is an illusion - it's a social construct or a social tradition. The rule of law has had real power in the past, and has often given the minority power over the majority.

The problem is that as a social construct, it will break down if too few people believe in it. And that's what is starting to happen here.

The rule of law is pretty similar to money actually - it only has power if people believe it has power.

I don't think it merely a social construct, or that the problem is that too few people believe in it. My point is that sometimes efforts to fulfil its promises have resulted in the promises being further out of reach.

The thing about a convenient fiction or illusion of this sort is that the duty to preserve it constrains abuses. In this way it is very different from, say, the value of a US dollar. So I think you are discussing the rhetorical norm (which is a social construct) while I am discussing the promise which is forever out of reach.

The Democratic-Republican party rules the US, there are no other parties to oppose them.

There are a couple of points worth highlighting here.

The first is that yes, the rule of law is illusory. It exists only because people believe in it.

This is the major problem with imposing democracy on any other country and why it seems doomed to failure: other countries don't have a citizenry that believe in the rule of law. Many such countries are dictatorships and/or corrupt so "democracy" means nothing. Elections only mean something if the officials in charge of them respect the process and the outcome. Otherwise they're just a charade.

There are actually two problems with the US that I see and they're probably inter-related.

The first is that historically the US citizenry has distrusted its (or any) government. It's why things like the Second Amendment exist (debate how you like the exact meaning of "militia"; it's irrelevant to this point). It's why the Constitution is enshrined in a form hard to modify. It's why there is a dual-sovereignty system to hopefully balance the Federal government (originally limited with enumerated powers) and the states. It's why there are three branches of government.

But increasingly the government of the US has grown to distrust its citizens. Perhaps this was always the way. Perhaps because I'm a foreigner here but I feel the presumption of guilt in almost everything government related (eg just look at ill-defined laws with potentially huge penalties like FBAR).

I see that same distrust behind mass surveillance efforts like these (whatever form PRISM, etc ultimately takes).

But there's another aspect: politically and culturally the US is two nations under one roof. That division seems to grow wider and more bitter with each passing day. Nothing seems sacred in these scorched earth partisan battles to the point where the belief has set in that the ends justify the means.

This is what I see as so dangerous about the "living document" judicial philosophy in constitutional law. The idea is that the Constitution basically says whatever you want it to say if you twist it far enough under the guise of "the founders if they were here today would've intended..."

As important as, say, the right to privacy is there is no such right enumerated in the Constitution. If you want one, there is a legislative process for getting one (ie a constitutional amendment) but deciding one was intended (by a judge or panel of judges) seems like a slippery slope no matter how well-intended. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Take elections as an example of this. In the US elections are largely organized by the states. Redistricting is a politically driven fiasco based on maps of household political views.

The Republicans seem intent of disqualifying likely Democrat voters in the guise of scrubbing electoral rolls of "felons".

The Democrats aren't above bribing the homeless to vote.

Both sides seek to make voting difficult in areas that traditionally vote the other way by limiting polling places and times.

Now compare this to Australia, which has the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission). The AEC is a Federal agency that doesn't seem subject to the same partisan politics that US election agencies are.

Part of this I'm sure is because voting in Australia is (technically) mandatory. This system means the AEC's ambit is how to give everyone access to the ability to vote (a process that has never taken me more than 5-10 minutes) rather than the partisan pull of getting the "right" people to vote (depending on the particular leaning of its appointed leadership).

But part of it is that culturally the election process itself is not something you politicize. That's simply way too dangerous.

So I see Assange's point: the rule of law is on shaky ground in the US.

I remember seeing an interview with Dick Morris (Clinton-era strategist) who allegedly asked Clinton at one point (regarding the then upcoming 1996 election) "what's the point of winning if you don't have a mandate?" to which Clinton replied "what's the point of having a mandate if you don't win?"

True or not, I think that sums up the problem: the ends now justify the means in the bitter battle between left and right.

The scary part is I don't know how you turn this around at this point with the citizenry largely complacent. If you gain enough support, the least you could do is have a "vote against the incumbent" strategy since getting booted out of office seems to be the only things politicians fear.

Obama I think should be a wake up call for many: there is a vast gulf between Obama the candidate (eloquent and compelling) and Obama the president (who seems to have doubled down on Bush-era policies and launched a war on "theft" at the behest of the intellectual property industry).

> But there's another aspect: politically and culturally the US is two nations under one roof. That division seems to grow wider and more bitter with each passing day. Nothing seems sacred in these scorched earth partisan battles to the point where the belief has set in that the ends justify the means.

The partisanship though is largely manufactured. The financial sector and a few others have bought off both parties. The Occupy Wall St and Tea Party groups have more in common than they do with the established parties. The people are remarkably united as to the huge issues but we are distracted by issues like SSM and abortion so the financial sector can take it all.

> The Occupy Wall St and Tea Party groups have more in common than they do with the established parties.

That maybe true objectively, but either camp would swear up and down and fight tooth and nail against any such comparisons. And propaganda is a science of perceptions. If people on either side believe they are on two different sides and the other side is evil then mission is accomplished.

Chomsky I believe made this point and used an example of how sports are a proxy or an instance of such mentality. The sports fans of opposing teams hate each other with passion but it turns out they have more in common between themselves than they have in common with the players they are rooting for. Players probably all like to gather in expensive country clubs and talk about yachts and sports cars they are planning on buying.

> Chomsky I believe made this point and used an example of how sports are a proxy or an instance of such mentality.

Yep. But Chomsky's points go further, in that this is a way of ensuring that any arguments over policy are remarkably narrow. This also makes the cultural variations remarkably narrow. We really have two nations, rural and urban, but this division strikes perhaps deeper within the Republican Party itself than it does so between higher levels of the two parties.

If the ends justify the means in the political struggle you describe, what exactly are the ends?

Staying at power?

> The first is that yes, the rule of law is illusory. It exists only because people believe in it.

And one of the most frustrating things about American politics as the populist level is that I find that a lot of people have no idea what "rule of law" even means. I don't know if it was in my curriculum, but I certainly didn't understand the concept until my late 20s. So I can excuse people for the ignorance, but it's still a problem.

> But increasingly the government of the US has grown to distrust its citizens.

It's not really a surprising reaction to a citizenry that distrusts its government. The kind of person that goes into a government job has been a kind of person that gets a fair amount of segregation in society. So while I agree with this statement,

> But there's another aspect: politically and culturally the US is two nations under one roof.

I suspect that it's not Republican v. Democrat. It's something more akin to public sector versus private sector. I'm not one to theorize about deep politics, so I can't draw the lines out less vaguely.

Is there really such a great divide? One of the main things that struck me during the primaries was was Obama's willingness to change his views based on arguments from other people, and his desire for compromises agreeable to all parties. So it seems straightforward that if you put him on top of a bureaucracy that's full of people convinced that all the Bush era policies were necessary, he wasn't going to rock the boat as much as many hoped.

I'd say that rule of law has mostly been damaged by the increasing number of every vaguer federal statutes that let prosecutors find a felony for any person they set their sites on. And all the tools prosecutors have to force persuade defendants to plea bargain, meaning that criminal cases very seldom come to trial any more.

Nation states have grown bigger for anybody's comfort. It is time to rethink the organization of states and go for alternate arrangements that will 1) Ensure individual freedom 2) Human Dignity 3) Sustainable Development - This is the big human challenge for the 21st century to solve.

I felt that was happening during the Bush election and recall Al Gore's voice cracking a little as he gave his speech about the rule of law.

Does anyone else find it darkly funny that an international fugitive hiding in a South American embassy to prevent his arrest and extradition thinks he can lecture people on the rule of law?

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

One thing that many people don't realize about the Hierarchy of Disagreement is that going up the hierarchy takes more and more effort. If someone makes claims that are so hypocritical that they instantly fail the laugh test, there's no need to move up the hierarchy and develop more sophisticated arguments against their main points.

Now, the obvious rebuttal to this would be to claim that I'm only saying this because I can't rebut Assange's points on their own merits, so I have to attack his character. This is an appealing but dangerous line of reasoning, because it forces you to engage with trolls. The appropriate response to a troll is not to examine their argument and point out its weaknesses, but to classify them as a troll and ignore them. Is this ad hominem reasoning? Sure, but ad hominem reasoning isn't necessarily bad.

I can rebut Assange's points on their own merits, but I choose not to because I think doing so gives Assange attention and credibility that he does not deserve. Don't feed the trolls.

> I can rebut Assange's points on their own merits, but I choose not to

Yes. Instead, you chose an ad hominem attack, which is pretty much the definition of feeding the trolls.

> Is this ad hominem reasoning? Sure, but ad hominem reasoning isn't necessarily bad.

No, ad hominem reasoning is simply meritless. The opposite of engaging in a discussion is remaining silent, not scoffing and walking off stage.

>Yes. Instead, you chose an ad hominem attack, which is pretty much the definition of feeding the trolls.

Are you really claiming that saying "don't feed the trolls" is feeding the trolls?

And where did I say that?

Is Assange claiming this is a bad thing? He doesn't seem very fond of the the 'rule of law' himself, just ask Sweden.

Okay, I'll humour you and assume he's totally a rapist on the run. Yes, and? How is this relevant to adults talking about something that affects billions of people?

Did you seriously just tell me to keep my focus on the topic at hand while simultaneously throwing in a dig by calling me a child?

Also I'm not sure if you've been paying attention (I have, and have been talking about it, a lot), but the scope has been scaled significantly farther back from "billions of people" over the past couple of days, by all the companies and the NSA themselves, into the FISA courts that we've already known about that don't affect "billions of people".

You assume those people, like you, don't care about and are not affected by the world they live in. I'm not free until everybody is, I'm being spied on and tortured as long as just one innocent person is. I agree that this also applies to rape and everything else, but it's still a subject on its own.

I wasn't aware that I wasn't affected by the world I live in. I'll have to try that out next time I'm on the subway.

I'm being spied on and tortured as long as just one innocent person is

You're not really, any more than I'm being blown up by terrorists as long as one innocent person is. LEt's face it, 'X affects us all' is a stupid argument when it comes to justifying security theater in response to terrorism, and it's also a stupid argument when it comes to revolution theater in response to (entirely unsurprising) application of big-data analytics to surveillance.

What exactly did I argue for with my statement of solidarity and mutual responsibility (to which YOUR personal outlook and abilities are completely irrelevant), other than for the priority of caring about the work of Wikileaks, and not so much about the private life (and private crimes) of Assange?

And how does wether something is "surprising" enter into any of this? Oh, and big data, too, huh? What is this, bullshit bingo?

Nowhere. I'm just throwing out my own opinion, same as you are. I don't regard this as a zero-sum conversation in which only one of us can be right, but at the same I am also a bit skeptical about the emotional appeal of your argument (from solidarity) because that sentiment is rarely consistent enough to be relied upon.

People in the US have been constantly told that "we" were attacked. If applicable, the assertion that a person who doesn't live in NYC and/or didn't know anybody who died was not affected by 9-11 receives a chilly response.

Whether Assange is legally a rapist depends on two things. First, which country's legal definition of rape is relevant (e.g., Sweden's might not be the same as yours, e.g. if you think that it is not rape to get sex on some false premise but Sweden does). Second, what the facts of the case are - but Assange does not submit to the legal process in Sweden so this really hasn't been evaluated.

The issue isn't that people are assuming "he's totally a rapist on the run" but rather that he refuses to allow a legitimate judicial process to evaluate that. Well, OK, but simply avoiding judicial process does not mean you are already proven innocent.

That is not "the issue", that is "an issue". And to bring it up in this context is a red herring. Oh yeah, it technically has to do with the law so blah blah blah.... NO.

Oh, and I actually do think that was kind of fucked up, if the allegiations are true, I don't shrug that off at all; but this matters only for drinking beer or giving him the hand of my daughter in marriage or something, not for talking politics, where, to me, he clearly has "the heart in the right spot".

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