[HN Gopher] USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment
___________________________________________________________________
USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment
Author : yuriko
Score : 683 points
Date : 2021-01-04 11:03 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.judiciary.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.judiciary.uk)
| choeger wrote:
| So basically the UK tells the US that they don't need to punish
| him any further because the UK already broke him.
| djsumdog wrote:
| That is kinda the hidden message isn't it? He was practically
| imprisoned in the embassy. Now even if he is free, he's
| returning to a world of lock-downs and stay-at-home orders.
| Released from his private hell into collective human rights
| violations in the name of a virus. Welcome to 2084. Everything
| old is Orwell again.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| I actually don't think this is such great news for him.
|
| Extradition was specifically blocked on the grounds of a
| particular regime he might be subjected to (to be fair, probably
| the only legal grounds on which he had any chance of succeeding).
| That leaves the US with a way out if they want to proceed with
| the extradition - guarantee a different set of circumstances.
|
| If the judge had found on more substantive grounds, those would
| have been much more resistant to that. For instance, all the
| claims based on language in the extradition treaty and other
| international agreements failed and they failed for pretty
| fundamental legal reasons. English courts only have regard for
| domestic law and it is for parliament to pass laws consistent
| with the treaties that have been signed, therefore claims based
| on treaty language won't work.
|
| That means that none of the claims on the political nature of his
| activities were upheld and those would have provided a much more
| robust and durable bar to extradition.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Extradition was specifically blocked on the grounds of a
| particular regime he might be subjected to (to be fair,
| probably the only legal grounds on which he had any chance of
| succeeding). That leaves the US with a way out if they want to
| proceed with the extradition - guarantee a different set of
| circumstances.
|
| And isn't that actually done on a fairly regular basis? IIRC,
| the US has pledged not to pursue the death penalty in certain
| cases in order to get cooperation on an extradition.
| knodi wrote:
| Right ruling for the wrong person. I hope Assange can be brought
| to justices before he flees to Russia.
| pyb wrote:
| Where we find out that extradition from the UK for political
| offences is actually largely permitted. Some protection from
| extradition remains, but it is very narrow. It only stands if the
| person is being prosecuted "on the basis of their political
| opinions" :
|
| "53. The EA 2003 created a new extradition regime, described in
| Norris as a "wide-ranging reform of the law" (SS45). As the US
| points out, it is a prescriptive regime, setting out the sole
| statutory basis on which a court is obliged to deal with matters,
| and does so in a series of imperative steps the court must
| follow. These steps no longer include a consideration of the
| political character of an offence, and there is no opportunity,
| within the scheme of the EA 2003, to raise this as an objection
| to extradition. The EA 2003 retained the bar to extradition where
| the request is made for the purpose of prosecuting the requested
| person on the basis of their political opinions, pursuant to
| section 81 (the political opinion bar), but removed the
| protection for offences which have the character of a political
| offence."
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| If the judge's interpretation is correct, then it seems that
| the UK is in breach of its treaty obligations, which bar
| extradition for political offenses.
| xenonite wrote:
| This happens on the first day that UK is no EU member anymore. Is
| this somehow connected?
| Tomte wrote:
| Look at the calendar. January 31st is almost a year behind us.
|
| Even the transition period ended multiple days ago.
| vidarh wrote:
| No. The discussions in the judgement are all focused on UK law,
| and the ECHR as embedded in UK law, and UK membership of the
| ECHR remains (it's not an EU organ, but related to the Council
| of Europe, which while confusingly similar to EU's European
| Council has nothing to do with the EU).
| rsynnott wrote:
| No. If anything, this is more down to the Human Rights Act (the
| UK implementation of the ECHR). Some particularly extreme
| Brexiters have advocated revoking the Human Rights Act (as a
| member of the EU the UK was required to actually implement the
| ECHR, but as a non-member it could just pay lip-service, like
| Russia does), but that hasn't happened as yet (and hopefully
| never will).
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I think this is an oversimplification of the political
| dialogue and interaction of the EU, ECHR and HRA.
|
| The passage of the Human Rights Act (which brings Convention
| rights into domestic law) was not a requirement of EU
| membership and we could have repealed it while still an EU
| member (this would be separate from leaving the ECHR itself).
| Moreover, reducing the impact of the convention and
| repealing/"reforming" the HRA was most notably proposed in
| the past by Theresa May as Home Secretary, who campaigned for
| Remain.
|
| I don't think the ECHR/HRA is particularly likely to go away
| here any time soon. However the government may attempt to
| reform the way judicial reviews can be brought to limit their
| impact or remove the ability to bring "last minute"
| challenges which could have been brought in a more timely way
| (theoretically this is already supposed to be the case but in
| practice the politically controversial cases aren't often
| dismissed for lack of timeliness).
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| This is an oversimplification but accurate - I don't think
| it's credible to stay in the EU while not having the ECHR
| implemented in statute.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I'm not sure this is true really, as long as a state
| remained a party to the ECHR itself. The UK didn't
| incorporate into domestic law until 1998 and RoI (which
| has a similarly "dualist" legal system of international
| and domestic law) 2003 - so it was possible to be a
| member of the EU before 2003 without doing this for sure.
|
| Also to add to the confusion, many EU member states have
| "monist" systems of international and domestic law and
| never have incorporated via statute because their legal
| systems allow enforcement of convention rights directly.
| But in some of these countries the practical effect and
| applicability of the ECHR is actually less than in the UK
| via the HRA.
| agd wrote:
| This is fantastic news, however I'm sure there will be a lengthy
| appeal.
|
| In summary:
|
| - the judge did not agree with the defence that this was an
| improper extradition request
|
| - however she blocked extradition on the grounds that Assange
| would likely commit suicide due to the extreme prison conditions
| he would face
| ur-whale wrote:
| Well, color me _very_ surprised.
|
| Very happy with the outcome (assuming it stands), but I would
| have bet the farm on the opposite outcome.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I don't quite understand this case. It's not really US vs
| Assange. This is either US vs GB, or Assange vs GB, but the
| claims don't seem to have anything to do with allegations of
| damages between third parties under GB law and jurisdiction. The
| interpretation of US law by a GB judge seems extraneous. The US
| indictment is settled. The only relevant question is whether the
| extradition treaty applies. I don't know if any of this is
| relevant, but, to recap from a layperson's understanding, this is
| a US case against a non-US person residing in a foreign country,
| and accused of a US conspiracy to commit a crime with a US person
| who was incidentally pardoned by a US president. GB and AUS both
| have direct standing and jurisdiction under their own law through
| NATO, so why is he not being tried this way?
|
| My guess is that the US wants nothing to do with this case. The
| military would be watching proto-Obama crucify Prof after
| pardoning Chelsea.
|
| Side note: I'm pretty sure at this point he wishes he'd not had
| anything to do with any of this hacking stuff. Being a
| professional dog-walker in a small village probably sounds great.
| gsnedders wrote:
| > The interpretation of US law by a GB judge seems extraneous.
|
| For the extradition treaty to apply, it must be alleged that
| the defendant has committed actions which amount to a criminal
| offence in both countries. If his alleged actions are not a
| criminal offence in both countries, then the extradition treaty
| does not apply.
|
| Therefore, you can challenge extradition on dual criminality by
| arguing that the act is not a crime in one or both countries.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| The US wants to extradite Assange.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| funny how usa can do such barbaric shit to humans in the name of
| "upholding the constitution" but let someone else kill a person
| for breaking their own laws and usa gets its panties in a bunch.
| good bigotry.
| dafty4 wrote:
| TLDR?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Honestly I'm amazed. I called the whole process a farce a few
| weeks ago. I'm pleased and a little embarrassed.
| [deleted]
| gvv wrote:
| I'd 100% donate to support his bail fund.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| A system of "mass incarceration" should have no impact on any
| individual case. That's beyond stupid.
| kjakm wrote:
| It's a human rights issue. The US doesn't have a very good
| record. The most usual scenario in which this comes up is in
| extradition cases where the person involved could face the
| death penalty (of life imprisonment I think too). It wouldn't
| make sense for the UK (where there is no death penalty) to
| extradite a person to somewhere they no longer have that right
| to life. This is just a natural extension of that policy.
| rsynnott wrote:
| "Mass incarceration" may not be the best phrasing, but the
| particularly inhumane (for a developed country) nature of the
| US criminal justice system does lose it a lot of extradition
| cases. In particular, punitive long-term solitary confinement
| is commonly used in the US but is not generally permitted in
| most European countries.
| detaro wrote:
| It should, if its properties have material impact on the
| individual case. Which is what the judge argued here.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| agreed this sounds like political activism judging. how can one
| judge say we can't extradite to the us because the system isn't
| good enough when other extraditions are ok?
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Not really. s91 of the Extradition Act requires that "the
| physical or mental condition of the person is such that it
| would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him", the judge
| must "order the person's discharge".
|
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/91
|
| There have been extraditions of other people charged with
| computer hacking offences like Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon
| where there was a similar concern. In both Love and
| McKinnon's cases, both were on the autistic spectrum.
| jlokier wrote:
| It's not activism, it's the law in the UK.
|
| The judge interprets how the law applies to the specific
| facts of this case. The law says extradition is not allowed
| in some circumstances. Those circumstances include how the
| prisoner is likely to be treated, and the health of the
| prisoner. Some other extraditions are ok according to the law
| because those factors vary in each case.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I find the timing for this news extremely amusing.
|
| Currently, there's a lot of criticism towards China for arresting
| journalists investigating controversial topics.
|
| OTOH, the US is doing literally the same thing, with little to no
| backlash.
| chejazi wrote:
| What is the possibility that the USA was aware of the verdict in
| advance and perhaps gave it tacit approval?
| cormacrelf wrote:
| What?
|
| ...
|
| What?
| chejazi wrote:
| The Assange case has been the most political trial in my
| lifetime. The plaintiff was the United States.
|
| It seems possible.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Practically speaking a good outcome for Assange, but a bad
| outcome for our rights to free speech and free reporting in a
| liberal democracy. The US have killed millions in the Middle East
| since 9/11, yet no one is ever held to account for their brutal
| war crimes. Blair, Bush, Rumsfeld and their associates should be
| the ones prosecuted, not Assange.
| mrkramer wrote:
| European colonial empires killed millions as well and faced no
| prosecution. Never forget what Hitler said; he said that
| concentration camps were not his idea instead he learnt about
| it from reading about British concentration camps during the
| Second Boer War in which thousands of Boers died.
| frenchy wrote:
| Not to mention there was Hitler's quote about how no-one
| remembers the Armenian genocide. He wasn't even wrong about
| that, as few remember the brutality that the Nazis exacted on
| the Poles.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The comparison is silly. While the Boer War concentration
| camps were brutal, they were nothing on par with the Nazis.
|
| In fact "concentration camp" is largely a misnomer. The
| sizable majority of Holocaust victims were killed in
| extermination camps, like Treblinka. These never even
| purported to hold any prisoner population, and simply
| murdered all prisoners immediately upon arrival.
|
| The British have no shortage of problems. But nothing in
| their history is even remotely comparable to Hitler.
| smcl wrote:
| I mean we did have a pretty brutal occupation of many other
| countries and were directly responsible for the deaths of
| millions of people in the process. We even had our own fair
| share of racist leaders - take a look at what Churchill had
| to say about Indian people for example. The timescales were
| different - Britain committed its crimes over the course of
| centuries rather than a decade or so - but it's not
| accurate to say "nothing in their history is even remotely
| comparable" to Nazi Germany.
|
| The main visible difference _nowadays_ is that Germans of
| today are hyper-aware of the atrocities committed in the
| past by their ancestors. Britons are often either ignorant
| of theirs or are _proud_ of them.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| You're right - Hitler was overt, while British still
| pretend that they are the "good guys" and literally blame
| the Irish for not joining them in WW2.
|
| No wait! The British are worse, because majority have not
| accepted the horrors that British empire has brought to
| many people... Not the least being be Bengal Famine of
| 1943. There's no question that Nazis were evil. Time to
| realize that many other empires were/are "not benevolent".
| mrkramer wrote:
| There is no difference between starved Boer children[1] and
| starved Jewish children[2].
|
| Warning: Disturbing images
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentrat
| ion_...
|
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Holocaust#
| /med...
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Well, there is a _slight_ difference between 26,000 and 7
| million.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Murder is a murder and it is wrong in both views of the
| law and the god if you are religious.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| And I absolutely agree with that. Earl Kitchener is an
| evil man. But he acted independently to convert
| humanitarian refugee camps into punitive concentration
| camps. The British government itself investigated the
| allegations, and explicitly put an end to Kitchener's
| abuses after they came to light. The opposition party and
| subsequent prime minister vehemently denounced his
| actions.
|
| In contrast, Nazi leadership sat in a seaside resort and
| meticulously planned out the industrial mass execution of
| millions of people. The entire regime from Hitler down
| was involved. So while, I'd agree there's a moral
| equivalence between Kitchener and Heydrich, the Nazi
| regime itself is far more guilty than the British Empire.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I agree and it all comes down to power and monetary gain
| in both cases of Third Reich and British Empire. I didn't
| know that trigger for Second Boear War was the discovery
| of diamonds and gold in the Boer states. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/boer-war-
| begins-...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And the inspiration for the gas chambers came from US border
| posts with Mexico, where anyone coming in from Mexico had to
| have their clothes fumigated with Zyklon-B and themselves
| bathed in gasoline (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story
| .php?storyId=517617...).
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| There's a big difference between using chemicals to prevent
| disease from entering your country (However misguided) and
| using it as a tool for mass murder and genocide.
| tootie wrote:
| That seems improbable given that German colonizers committed
| a genocide in Africa in the years following the Boer War.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| US soldiers did not kill millions of people, Iraq is somewhere
| between 100000 and 650000 excess deaths to Oct 2006.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas...
|
| The criticisms in the Wikipedia are very detailed and imply
| there are problems with the 650000 figure of which 186000 are
| due to US troops direct actions. That still seems high, but you
| know being caught in the middle of a civil war is challenging.
| capableweb wrote:
| Lancet indeed gives those numbers, other sources gives other
| numbers. Who's right? Probably we'll never know, but just for
| having the other numbers out there, here they are:
|
| - Lancet survey (March 2003 - July 2006): 654,965 (95% CI:
| 392,979-942,636)
|
| - Opinion Research Business (March 2003 - August 2007):
| 1,033,000 (95% CI: 946,258-1,120,000)
|
| - Iraq Family Health Survey (March 2003 - July 2006): 151,000
| (95% CI: 104,000-223,000)
|
| - PLOS Medicine Study (March 2003 - June 2011): 405,000 (95%
| CI: 48,000-751,000)
|
| Only Opinion Research Business[1] seems to put the upper
| bound above 1 million.
|
| Rather than going for the "Lancet Surveys" page on Wikipedia,
| you'll probably get a better view when reading through the
| general page of "Casualties of the Iraq War" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
|
| Also, hestefisk (which you're replying to) are talking about
| Middle East, not just Iraq. US sure has killed a lot more
| people in Middle East than just the ones that died in Iraq.
|
| > being caught in the middle of a civil war is challenging
|
| Not sure we're talking about the same war here. As far as I
| know, the US invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq in recent
| times (so no civil war), pretty sure we're referring to those
| events (post 9/11), not the civil wars that were happening
| there before that.
| jjgreen wrote:
| I recall Iraq being more of an invasion than a civil war.
| austincheney wrote:
| Iraq began as an invasion in March 2003. The invasion was
| exceedingly well planned and executed with minimal cost in
| a very short time frame, but the planning did not account
| for the resulting occupation that followed.
|
| Key figures in Iraq, such as Ali Al Sistani, pressed US
| civilian authorities to stand up an interim government
| until a permanent government could be drafted. The interim
| government stood up in May 2004. But by that time Iraq had
| become a political vacuum with disastrous results. Various
| external political factions from terrorist groups and
| nation states were massively importing arms and radicalized
| youth to instigate internal tribal warfare and acts of
| terrorism.
|
| Shortly after the interim government stood up GEN Casey
| took over command of coalition forces in Iraq and promoted
| a hand's off policy and letting the Iraqis clean up the
| mess, which further compounded the internal problems when
| Iraq really needed a strong occupation force to stabilize
| conditions until conditions allowed the capabilities for
| self governance. GEN Casey was replaced two years later in
| 2006.
|
| In mid-2006 it really looked like Iraq was on the verge of
| civil war and the US completely reversed policy by late
| 2006 announcing a troop surge in 2007. The successful
| command policies of COL HR McMaster were given some credit
| for exemplifying a successful approach. GEN Petraeus took
| command of coalition forces in Iraq and advocated a policy
| of counter-insurgency (COIN) that made significant advances
| at reducing internal violence and building trust in
| internal institutions. Over the next two years the surge
| declined to prior troop levels with forces more engaged in
| peace keeping and stability missions.
|
| In 2009 coalition forces were drastically reduced in what
| was called a withdrawal. By that time Iraq was no longer on
| the verge of civil war. Conditions were improving and
| permanent government institutions were coming online.
| Unfortunately, the withdrawal was too early. Newly
| established Iraqi military forces were still conducting
| peace keeping and stability missions and had not matured
| enough yet to focus on national defense. This became
| apparent with the ISIS invasion of Mosul.
| pydry wrote:
| The Iraq invasion was well planned? What the hell kind of
| revisionist are you?
|
| Check out the Rumsfeld "war by PowerPoint" if you want to
| see how that sausage eas made.
| dang wrote:
| Hey, comments like this and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25634382 break the
| site guidelines and are the sort of thing we end up
| banning accounts for. Would you mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? The
| idea is thoughtful, curious conversation, which is not
| exactly internet default as you know.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| It's complicated, because it started out as "smash the
| state and let democracy reassert itself". Everyone involved
| in the room had such a _broken_ mental model of what the
| Iraqi population was like. American politicians have been
| getting drunk off the rhetoric of democracy for some time,
| and we typically forget that most governments are
| precariously balanced between multiple competing
| socioeconomic elements with eternal and unending grudges
| between one another. In the case of Iraq, what started as
| "invade and impose democracy" quickly progressed into
| policing sectarian violence as America inherited Saddam's
| problems.
| capableweb wrote:
| > America inherited Saddam's problems
|
| Sounds like not only the American politicians were drunk
| on something, what the hell are you talking about? In no
| way have the US been through the same pile of shit that
| Iraq has been through, and neither have any of those
| problems suddenly walked over the ocean home to the US.
| Sure, the US has their nose wet in Iraqi and Afghan
| blood, but let's not pretend and say that US takes any
| sort of responsibility for the bloodshed they've caused.
|
| Otherwise I agree with your comment.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| "The criticisms in the Wikipedia are very detailed and imply
| there are problems with the 650000 figure of which 186000 are
| due to US troops direct actions. That still seems high, but
| you know being caught in the middle of a civil war is
| challenging."
|
| I am not sure you can honestly characterize US as being
| caught in the middle of the war. US caused it. Everything
| that follows is its responsibility. That is why you don't
| start wars willy nilly.
| cutitout wrote:
| > War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are
| not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect
| the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression,
| therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the
| supreme international crime differing only from other war
| crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated
| evil of the whole.
|
| from the judgement of the International Military Tribunal
| for Germany,
| http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judnazi.asp#common
| JAlexoid wrote:
| US literally started the damn civil war. And not in 2003...
| think '79.
|
| The only thing that makes Amercians forget - lack of
| conscription and relatively small army(as % of population).
| erfgh wrote:
| whataboutism is a logical fallacy.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Being a hypocrite isn't a logical fallacy, but it isn't a
| good rhetorical stance for convincing others.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| Not necessarily in this area. Wikileaks has exposed a number
| of US war crimes that went completely unpunished, while a
| person who was working on behalf of Wikileaks is being
| prosecuted on grounds that are fairly constructed and far-
| fetched even by US standards. Morally speaking, even if some
| of Assange's actions were immoral they might be considered
| excusable because the perils were outweighed by the benefits
| of these actions. It's not uncommon to reason that way. The
| same kind of reasoning is used to justify the means by the
| ends, e.g. purporters of the US drone strike program argue
| that the many civilian bystanders that are killed by those
| strikes are justifiable by the end, which is the
| extrajudicial killing of the alleged terrorist targets.
|
| It's called a balance of consideration argument, sometimes
| also "conductive argument".
|
| Obviously, the legal question is different from this, IANAL
| and I don't even know if lawyers use conductive arguments in
| this way. The judge in this extradition case certainly
| didn't, but that's not surprising since her job wasn't to
| judge Assange's actions.
| jboog wrote:
| Assange literally encouraged people to infiltrate US
| intelligence agencies and "leak" classified intel.
|
| Let's not even get into his work laundering Russian hacked
| docs to damage the US, and then repeatedly lying about it.
|
| He also is credibly accused of being a rapist.
|
| The US has done some bad shit, no doubt, but that doesn't
| make Assange some saint. He's a bad dude.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| CIA literally funded drug cartels. Obama literally
| authorized a drone strike on a "suspected terrorist US
| citizen" in Yemen.
|
| While the rape accusation was retracted.
|
| There's no equivalence of a proven fact vs accusation.
| Assange is unquestionably on a moral high ground here.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If I encourage people to leak Chinese classified
| documents, would that make me a bad dude too? I don't
| think your reasoning is sound here.
| swebs wrote:
| Its a deflection, not a fallacy.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Referencing the US war crimes that Assange helped expose is
| important though. I'm not denying Assange committed crimes by
| leaking or helping to leak secret documents, but it was the
| moral thing to do to expose war crimes that would otherwise
| be (and which are being) covered up.
|
| In this case, the UK should not only consider the extradition
| request itself, but how they stand with regards to the US and
| their war crimes. And when it comes to war crimes, for the UK
| to be silent is to be complicit.
| konjin wrote:
| Calling out logical fallacies is a logical fallacy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
|
| It comes from not understanding the difference between
| logical entailment and logical equivalence when given a set
| of premises and a conclusion. I'd've hoped programmers would
| have taken enough discrete maths to know this.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > I'd've hoped programmers would have taken enough discrete
| maths to know this.
|
| It's not that I haven't - but I'm 8 years out of uni and
| have completely forgotten how to apply Modus tollens and I
| suspect I'm not alone.
| tedk-42 wrote:
| You forgot Obama
| https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/01/18/commentary/w...
| tootie wrote:
| That article is grossly inaccurate. It's one thing to say
| "Obama applied hard power more than was expected" as opposed
| to "He was worse than Bush" which is completely unjustified.
| There is absolute no equivalence between drone usage and the
| two ground wars engaged by Bush. The 2 week Shock and Awe
| campaign in Iraq dropped more ordinance and killed more
| people than 8 years of drones. And the drone campaigns were
| mostly carried out with the private consent of the nations
| with targets. And saying the Libyan Civil War was "US-led" is
| just a complete lie. It was most directly lead by Libyans,
| but the air campaign was led by France.
| hestefisk wrote:
| I did say other associates.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| What's particularly disappointing is that Obama was elected
| after promising to end US military operations in the Middle
| East, and did much the opposite. Bush could at least be said
| to be doing what was expected of him, in continuing the
| legacy of his father.
|
| Voters should really be holding their leaders to account the
| fiscal and moral costs of these wars, especially given their
| strategic objectives haven't been met. OTOH, one could argue
| it's kept a lot of people employed, and those people vote
| too.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > in continuing the legacy of his father.
|
| And retaliating for the 9/11 attacks, of course.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's possible to make this argument about Afghanistan,
| but Iraq was completely unrelated to 9/11.
| bagacrap wrote:
| there certainly was a connection, if not a logical one
| op03 wrote:
| Well Obama like Trump is a celeb more than a leader. Celebs
| spend all day pandering to their fan clubs to survive.
| Leaders dont. And the US is celeb obsessed. So thats a big
| bug in the code.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, but it's true. Obama ushered in
| the age of the political personality cult. Pretty much
| every election from here on out is going to hinge on how
| well you can sell the politician's personality, and
| brushing aside his platform, all his shady connections
| and people he's aligned with. This is very much a
| byproduct of all the private money in election
| campaigning.
| pintxo wrote:
| How's this different from Kennedy + Reagan?
| reallydontask wrote:
| I find it hard to square your statement with the election
| of Joe Biden, is he an outlier? I guess only time will
| tell.
| parineum wrote:
| Biden's political personality is not Trump.
|
| I think that invalidates the theory a bit but the
| personality cult that got Biden elected was anti-Trump,
| not pro-Biden.
| devpbrilius wrote:
| It's hacking case, but it's a corporate espionage related
| searches.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Can't help but suspect the british security establishment decided
| it didn't want to extradite him because there was real risk he
| would be pardoned in the U.S. In their estimation, if they wait
| just 16 more days (post inauguration), that's no longer a risk,
| and even if something unprecedented in the U.S. happens, the
| british govt still has him.
|
| Assange humiliated a generation of spies and officials and
| discredited the institutions they controlled at a key strategic
| moment, just as they were consolidating a lifetime of work toward
| their international alignment and control. It's zero sum for
| them, where if he survives, he's proven right. Historically,
| Wikileaks (among a few other projects) is how Gen-X unmoored the
| new establishment of the Boomer generation, and inspired
| Millennials like Snowden to surge into the breach.
|
| It doesn't matter what they do to him now, he won.
| sgt101 wrote:
| " However, I am satisfied that,in these harsh conditions,Mr.
| Assange's mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit
| suicide with the "single minded determination" of his autism
| spectrum disorder.
|
| 363.I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that
| it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of
| America"
|
| Seems to be the reason why the case is rejected.
| young_unixer wrote:
| If there's anything to learn from Assange and Snowden:
|
| 1. Our western "liberal" democracies stop being liberal when the
| government gets angry at you at a personal level.
|
| 2. With enough propaganda, you can make people believe anything,
| even that Snowden is a "traitor" to the US.
|
| 3. Politically vociferous people (the mob) don't give a shit
| about you unless you're instrumental to support the _cause du
| jour_
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Our western "liberal" democracies stop being liberal when the
| government gets angry at you at a personal level.
|
| That's a fairly weak observation both because liberal
| democracies still punish criminals and many people do take
| serious issue with what Assange is and has done - it's just not
| a common thing to say on hackernews.
| iaw wrote:
| > it's just not a common thing to say on hackernews.
|
| It's a heavily penalized sentiment in this portion of the
| internet.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > Our western "liberal" democracies
|
| ....are by far not all like the United States.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > With enough propaganda, you can make people believe anything,
| even that Snowden is a "traitor" to the US.
|
| When you do things like
| https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1266892/exclusive-
| ns..., no propaganda is necessary.
| Talanes wrote:
| That is horrible. Wasting tax dollars spying on schools.
| season2episode3 wrote:
| A country's premier research university seems like a pretty
| normal espionage target.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| Quite unexpected! Like many HNers who followed Craig Murray's
| reporting of the trial (see below), I thought Judge Baraitser was
| a compliant puppet and the extradition to the US was preordained.
| Will be interesting to see his take on this.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Craig Murray's reporting
|
| The first two words explain any surprise here. It's still
| usable data but the HN-groupthink is still wilfully blind to
| Craig Murray's habits.
| kjakm wrote:
| >> I thought Judge Baraitser was a compliant puppet
|
| Maybe this judgement will make people think a bit more deeply
| before jumping to ludicrous conspiracy theories in future. In
| the UK at least judge's are for the most part demonstrably non-
| political.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > In the UK at least judge's are for the most part
| demonstrably non-political.
|
| This is not about UK judges being political, but rather about
| judges being pressured by governments to do what's convenient
| for the government.
|
| In this particular case, the outcome is surprising.
| kjakm wrote:
| If a judge can be pressured by the government they're
| political. Judges (in the UK) have nothing to gain by being
| political. They aren't elected politically, the roles are
| based on merit.
| chalst wrote:
| Do you mean that the career of judges is never affected
| by politics? I think, e.g., that appointments to SCOTUS
| are an obvious counterexample.
| rafram wrote:
| How's the US Supreme Court relevant to whether UK judges
| are political?
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Appointment to senior judicial roles in the UK is done
| through a process that's kept at quite some distance from
| politics precisely because people aren't keen on having
| SCOTUS-style politicking. It isn't perfect, but it is a
| hell of a lot better.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Appointments_Commi
| ssi...
|
| (The JAC handles judicial appointments for England and
| Wales. There are JAC equivalents for Scotland and
| Northern Ireland. When there's a Supreme Court vacancy, a
| process starts up where members of the three JACs appoint
| people to a committee to recommend new SC justices.)
|
| There are Supreme Court justices in the UK who have
| discernible political views (the retired Lady Hale was
| left of the average, and the retired Lord Sumption is
| more to the right) but their political affiliation has a
| comparatively small role in deciding whether they get a
| senior judicial appointment.
|
| Nobody talks about justices having been appointed by a
| particular prime minister, for instance, because it is
| irrelevant. Nor does their political affiliation give you
| much of a clue how they are going to decide cases. This
| is also because in most cases, the Supreme Court sits as
| panels--unlike in the US, most cases are decided by a
| panel of five of the twelve judges, usually picked based
| on subject matter expertise (those with, say, family law
| experience will get picked for family cases, while those
| with more commercial experience are likely to be picked
| for commercial or financial disputes).
| chalst wrote:
| Thanks, that was an interesting summary.
|
| I don't think the involvement of parliament necessarily
| causes polarisation: Germany has a quite similar system
| to the US, the most relevant difference being that the
| election is by secret ballot. Germany has relatively
| apolitical judges.
|
| Instead, I think the spectacle seen in the US has more to
| do with the role the Federalist Society has played
| polarising the legal profession, making the politics of
| judicial candidates interesting to career politicians.
|
| Relevant to the Assange case is not that judges benefit
| from showing overt political affiliation, but that
| ambitious judges want to be seen as safe non-boat-rockers
| - establishment friendly, if you like - because there is
| the possibility of having appointments nixed by, e.g.,
| the Lord Chancellor.
| kjakm wrote:
| The case is being heard in the UK so I'm only talking
| about the UK. Unlike the US, court appointments in the UK
| are not political and not for a life long term. Even the
| public image of a judge as being conservative/liberal is
| not something really seen here.
| chalst wrote:
| The politics of appointments in the UK is less obvious
| than that of the US, but it is there. The Secretary of
| State for Justice, a member of the cabinet appointed by
| the PM, has veto power over appointments to the UK
| Supreme Court.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United
| _Ki...
| kjakm wrote:
| Good point although I think that mechanism is rarely used
| and highly scrutinised when it is. The government has
| lost several high profile court cases in the last few
| years which I doubt would happen in a more politicised
| system.
| tt433 wrote:
| Given the apartment disconnect between the reality Murray
| describes in his reports and the reality we can observe today,
| do you think you'll read his content with a higher degree of
| skepticism in the future? His headlines are all calibrated for
| maximum outrage, that alone turns me off from reading them.
| Edit to eat crow: only one article has a sensational headline
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Honestly, his articles where so overwhelmingly obviously
| biased and lacking any sense of journalism that it was
| actually painful to watch the number of people on this very
| site enthusiastically promote him as some kind of truth-
| seeking hero.
|
| It's valid to oppose the Assange extradition, be concerned
| about the impact on free speech, and any number of other
| things; Murray is not a reliable narrator on any of these
| issues, so if you do want to examine his content remember to
| do so with an extremely heavy dose of skepticism.
| mantap wrote:
| What specific incompatibility do you find between his
| reporting and the ruling? It seems to match quite well?
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| People on here have already made up their minds about
| Assange/Snowden etc, even if damning evidence came out
| against them, they would still find a way to spin it one
| way or another.
|
| Cases like these I doubt the truth will ever be known/come
| out. There is too much political BS surrounding it.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| It was blatantly obvious where his sympathies lay, so I read
| them with a grain of salt from day one. But florid (and
| occasionally hilarious) writing style aside, I have no reason
| to doubt the factual content of his reports, which repeatedly
| demonstrated that the whole process was a mockery of justice
| and the scales were stacked against Assange.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The reality that we read today confirms Murray in that the
| Judge agreed with the US Government in pretty much every area
| of the extradition request.
|
| it does not harm Murray nor encourage people to be more
| sceptical of him.
| jules-jules wrote:
| Mind drawing out these differences for the rest of us?
| agd wrote:
| Not really. If you read his coverage it does mostly accord
| with the final judgement. I.e. the judge rejected all defence
| claims on whether the extradition request was proper.
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| Who would guessed Epstein's suicide would be Assanges saving
| grace? Not I.
| djsumdog wrote:
| The only suicide ever in that prison.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's good to see that the inhumane prison system in the US is
| beginning to become a problem for those who actually implemented
| it. Regardless how you feel about Assange, and I'm ambivalent
| about him, the US facing consequences for what we've done with
| our criminal justice system is something to be applauded.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They do have an appeal. I wouldn't be surprised if they
| extricate him on appeal. The higher up you go, the more
| politics get involved in these international incidents (even in
| the "impartial" courts).
| vidarh wrote:
| The entire US prison system feels abusive to me. I've said before
| that if I somehow magically were to find myself on a US jury
| (can't happen - I'm not resident in or a citizen of the US; this
| is a pure hypothetical), I'd be hard pressed to be able to
| justify voting "guilty" on a moral basis even for quite serious
| crimes.
|
| It feels designed for vengeance and inducing harm rather than for
| safety for society and rehabilitation.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I 'd be hard pressed to be able to justify voting "guilty"
| on a moral basis even for quite serious crimes. It feels
| designed for vengeance and inducing harm rather than for safety
| for society and rehabilitation. _
|
| If you lived your entire life in the US, and everyday felt the
| "Me or you" and "I'll get mine" mentality, you'd have a
| different approach.
|
| It is a VERY strong dog eat dog country, and the feeling is
| palpable for people who live in countries with a lot more
| equality and sharing.
| andrewzah wrote:
| ...Let's not stereotype a country of 380+ million people.
| C'mon.
|
| There are many Americans who feel the justice system is too
| punitive, and fails to uphold justice for the average
| American. Especially for people of color.
|
| The problem is what can one realistically do? Besides voting
| (both parties adore punitive instead of rehabilitative
| punishment) and contacting our representatives (yeah, that'll
| help...).
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It's impossible to stereotype a country full of people that
| have little in common.
|
| Most justice in US is served on state and local levels. You
| don't need 700k votes to get into your state assembly(in
| most cases) and try to change laws that affect your day-to-
| day.
|
| But I must correct myself - most Americans are completely
| ignorant of their own legal/justice system. How many know
| what Civil Forefeiture is?
| vidarh wrote:
| Maybe, but it's irrational also from a perspective of wanting
| to maximise your own pie. You don't need to favour equality
| and sharing to acknowledge that a more humane treatment of
| prisoners leads to drastically lower re-offending for
| example.
| tremon wrote:
| nvm, misread your post
| vidarh wrote:
| How is that in any way relevant to what I wrote?
| [deleted]
| 0x445442 wrote:
| In your scenario, the good news would be that you'd be within
| you're rights as a juror to vote not guilty on the grounds you
| did not think the law was just; it's called Jury Nullification.
| The bad news is, the "justice system" goes out of it's way to
| hide the existence of this right from U.S. citizens.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| You're not within your rights as a juror to nullify. You
| _can_ do so as a matter of practice.
|
| Jury nullification looks great for laws _you_ disagree with.
| It 's not so great when it's used to let people off the hook
| for lynchings.1
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
| rjbwork wrote:
| And they weed you out of the jury pool if you admit to
| knowing of its existence. And of course you can't lie when
| asked, as that's perjury.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Right, I've actually used this before when I wanted to get
| out of Jury Duty.
| aleclarsoniv wrote:
| What's the reason for allowing judges to remove jurors who
| admit their intent to acquit a guilty defendant?
|
| If they can't convince other jurors, no "harm" done. If
| they can, then perhaps the law _is_ overkill. The judge
| seems to be overpowered here.
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| Is this a sincere question?
|
| It's a mistrial to have a juror voting based on ideology
| rather than the facts of the trial.
|
| A juror who wouldn't convict under any conditions is a
| bad juror and subverts defendant protections like
| requiring high juror consensus by making such measure
| impractical.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| > What's the reason for allowing judges to remove jurors
| who admit their intent to acquit a guilty defendant?
|
| Arguably, the same reason judges should be allowed to
| remove jurors who admit their intent to convict an
| innocent defendant: jurors must apply the law
| impartially. The LII has a pretty decent primer on all
| this entails[1].
|
| And almost all state laws require a jury to unanimously
| vote to convict, so empaneling a jury that has someone
| who will always acquit means that the jury's decision has
| been set from the beginning.
|
| Personally, I live in a state that requires a unanimous
| vote to convict or acquit, and prohibits the judge from
| "poking at" a deadlocked jury[2]. In the few times I've
| been selected for a jury I haven't gone far enough to be
| asked if I would be impartial, and I'm glad because I've
| yet to decide where my personal ethics take me.
|
| [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-
| conan/amendment-6/i...
|
| [2]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/allen_charge
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm of two minds of this. On one hand I do agree with you
| that it has the potential to be an important safety valve
| (not least because I think the US prison system is
| immoral and unjust...). On the other hand, historically
| it has a history of severe abuse, e.g. to let people go
| free for lynchings and the like.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| yeah, but when you say guilty or not guilty you don't have
| to explain why.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| You lie, if they accuse you of perjury then you say "I
| googled it after I was asked".
| jimmydorry wrote:
| Then what, for every other jury duty?
| Uberphallus wrote:
| > Majority verdicts are not allowed in criminal cases in
| the United States, and so a hung jury results in a
| mistrial.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_jury
| rjbwork wrote:
| But that's not how they ask. It's usually something like
| "would you have a problem convicting the defendant of the
| crime they are accused of if you were convinced beyond
| all reasonable doubt that they had, in fact, committed
| said crime?" They don't say "Do you know what jury
| nullification is?"
| mindslight wrote:
| I agree on the general indirection they use. However my
| answer to the specific question you posed is "no, I'd
| have no problem". But if it were eg a drug charge, then I
| wouldn't consider the relevant criminal law to be
| constitutional (life, liberty, and the pursuit of
| happiness, for starters), and thus the defendant is
| innocent because there is no crime to have been
| committed. My judgment wouldn't be to save one
| sympathetic person from being convicted of what is
| otherwise a legitimate crime, but rather over the
| validity of the law itself.
|
| In general they will ask you a bunch of questions to trip
| up anyone who might be too clever, but they can't ask
| about jury nullification directly (lest they give anyone
| else ideas). If you answer in the expected common sense
| way, and don't boast about your reasoning, it's going to
| be very hard for them to claim perjury.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Keyword: would (not will). No perjury.
|
| And if they use "will", it's perfectly normal to wonder
| why one would ask such a strange question. It would
| totally read as "we're gonna find a case to test you on
| that teehee".
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| Uh, people playing games with the court by pretending
| they don't understand a basic question scares me.
|
| I hope you're never on a jury: you don't seem like you
| take it seriously and you should when it impacts other
| people's lives.
|
| "Would" is a form of "will", and haggling tense to
| "avoid" perjury is deeply dishonest -- and probably still
| perjury.
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/would
| chongli wrote:
| But if you don't know what it is then are you not made
| aware of it merely by their asking? How exactly do they
| weed people out without making them aware of it?
| rjbwork wrote:
| See my response to Uberphallus above.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629935.
| 93po wrote:
| Astonished to see this but hopeful for Julian. Very sad state for
| journalism and prison conditions
| willis936 wrote:
| Assange is not a journalist. He wrote software until he started
| leaking documents. That isn't journalism.
| jonny383 wrote:
| And I suppose anyone with a journalism degree isn't a
| journalist because they were a student until they started
| working?
| willis936 wrote:
| If they haven't investigated and written in search of the
| truth, they are not journalists.
|
| Just as I wasn't an engineer until I started designing and
| making things.
| jcbrand wrote:
| Interesting to see how programmers have turned into
| "engineers" the last decade or so.
|
| Do you have an engineering degree?
|
| Used to be that you'd have to be registered as a
| professional engineer before calling yourself one.
| willis936 wrote:
| I have an MSEE, worked in a test house during school, and
| currently work on a very physically real machine with a
| title of "engineer"; not that any of that is relevant.
|
| Are you agreeing with my point? Not everyone who calls
| themself something is that thing. Assange is certainly
| not a journalist.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Assange has done journalistic work, but he isn't a
| journalist, not because of some technicality but because
| Wikileaks have a very flexible relationship with basic
| principles of good journalism and are clearly prepared to
| play politics when it suits them.
|
| If Assange is a mere journalist, he and his organisations
| are hypocrites because of their use of NDAs and either
| malicious or deeply incompetent in their complete disregard
| for the privacy of people (bystanders) mentioned in their
| dumps. For example, dumping the credit card numbers and
| addresses of donors to the Democratic Party is unnecessary
| and clearly intended to do harm.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Promotion_of_conspi
| r... and downwards is a good place to start - the idea that
| Wikileaks are some kind of bastion of good journalism is
| pretty naff
| chmod775 wrote:
| > not because of some technicality but because Wikileaks
| have a very flexible relationship with basic principles
| of good journalism and are clearly prepared to play
| politics when it suits them.
|
| By that definition there's hardly anyone who could be
| called a journalist.
|
| It's also a textbook example of a "no true scotsman"
| fallacy.
|
| A journalist is someone who does journalistic work, so
| he's a journalist, _even if_ he 's a bad one.
| the-dude wrote:
| TLDR; No extradiction.
| [deleted]
| Erikun wrote:
| TLDR+; No extradition due to Assange's mental health.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| TLDR++: No extradition because Assange's mental health makes
| him a suicide risk in the conditions of US prisons.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| k1m wrote:
| Kevin Gosztola: "The United States government's mass
| incarceration system just lost them their case against WikiLeaks
| founder Julian Assange" -
| https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1346048531249958914
|
| Matt Kennard, investigative journalist: "Brilliant news, but be
| in no doubt. This ruling is utterly chilling for investigative
| journalism. Baraitser sided with US prosecutors on pretty much
| all of their arguments. It was the barbaric nature of the US
| penal system that saved Assange." -
| https://twitter.com/kennardmatt/status/1346051928011235328
|
| Rebecca Vincent from Reports Without Borders responding to the
| judgment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm3JMUREH8A
| tomp wrote:
| *> Baraitser sided with US prosecutors on pretty much all of
| their arguments. It was the barbaric nature of the US penal
| system that saved Assange.
|
| Another interpretation is, the judge tried as much as s/he
| could to prevent extradition while "saving face" (either
| preventing a political conflict, or even saving themselves from
| assassination!)
| baud147258 wrote:
| Are you really calling what Assange did "investigative
| journalism"?
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| Funny how everyone's opinion about Assange changed after
| 2016.
| [deleted]
| colordrops wrote:
| One of the main activities of the CIA is to shape public
| opinion. They already proved that they hated him enough to
| hire contractors to destroy him, and the leaked
| HBGary/Palantir proposal from _2011_ even talks about
| smearing him on social media:
|
| https://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf
| tootie wrote:
| I've been a pretty consistent believer that Assange is a
| narcissist and an ass on personal level. His public
| statements about his work always seemed childish and
| petulant. It probably does bias me somewhat against his
| work. I'm generally supportive of bringing information to
| light, but Assange himself doesn't seem to do much besides
| host the data and he doesn't even do that well since he
| leaked the unredacted cablegate. And given that MSM sources
| have exposed far more and it don't more responsibly and
| faced courts over their actions, it makes me think that
| he's not much of a hero. I'm not sold that his actions wrt
| to cablegate were espionage, but I'd very much like to hear
| about what he discussed with Roger Stone and Guccifer 2.0.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I don't think my opinion much changed since I heard about
| wikileak
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Irrelevant pendantry is boring.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I wasn't trying to be pedant, I just don't think what
| Assange did is investigative journalism, which was an
| important part of the comment I was replying to.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It doesn't matter what you think is investigative journalism.
|
| What Assange did is investigative journalism... as proven by
| Bellingcat, that literally bought private phone, flight, bank
| and train ticket data on private individuals to show how FSB
| tried to kill Navalny.
| baud147258 wrote:
| well bellingcat went (and still goes) looking for
| information, sources and then publishes article on those
| stories, which is not exactly what Assange did, which was
| mostly making confidential documents (sent by a variety of
| sources) available to the wider public
| JAlexoid wrote:
| They also publish their source materials and how they
| obtained them.
|
| Writing summary articles is not the definition of
| journalism.
| baud147258 wrote:
| that still doesn't make what Assange did "investigative
| journalism", unlike what Bellingcat does
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Assange first provided the cables to newspapers like The
| Guardian, Der Spiegel and El Pais, so that they could
| write articles about them. After they had had time to
| work through the material and write up a series of
| articles, WikiLeaks published redacted versions of the
| cables.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > "Brilliant news, but be in no doubt. This ruling is utterly
| chilling for investigative journalism. Baraitser sided with US
| prosecutors on pretty much all of their arguments. It was the
| barbaric nature of the US penal system that saved Assange."
|
| A barbarical nature of US penal system it is, but they did not
| even note a prima fascie political nature of the prosecution
| when the defence was slashing it left, and right.
|
| They omitted it very deliberately.
| lmg643 wrote:
| Are we sure that Assange is better off in the UK? Reports
| from other sources suggest he is being kept in terrible
| conditions in UK as well.
|
| https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/julian-assange-is-
| kept-u...
|
| >> "Each day Julian is woken at 5 am, handcuffed, put in
| holding cells, stripped naked, and x-rayed. He is transported
| 1.5 hours each way in what feels like a vertical coffin in a
| claustrophobic van," Morris said.
|
| >> The lawyer pointed out that during the criminal hearings
| Assange is kept in a glass box at the back of court from
| where he cannot his lawyers properly.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| on what charges is he being held in the UK?
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Arrested in 2019 when his Ecuadorian asylum was revoked,
| charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,
| maximum 5y sentence. Was changed a month later to be the
| Espionage Act charges.
|
| Those all stem from the US though, I think he's only
| detained by the UK for extradition?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Ju
| lia...
| handelaar wrote:
| And for breaking the terms of his bail conditions by
| legging it to the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yes. We prosecuted him for jumping bail by going to the
| embassy, but he's served his sentence for that. He's only
| being held for possible extradition.
| occamrazor wrote:
| For skipping bail
| agd wrote:
| Certainly better in the UK than the US. He gets to see
| family and has contact with support including calls with
| e.g. the Samaritans.
| [deleted]
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Each day Julian is ... x-rayed
|
| Wait, what? This can't be true - daily x-rays would
| guarantee cell/DNA damage.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I think they meant put through a metal detector? Assange
| was put on suicide watch (whether justifiedly or not I do
| not know) so presumably they're checking for weapons he
| could harm himself with, still seems like overkill
| though.
| handelaar wrote:
| This is not a description of how he's being treated as a
| prisoner, but rather specifically as a prisoner _who is
| being transported between a prison and a courthouse_
| during a trial or hearing.
|
| So... _somewhat_ disingenuous.
| randylahey wrote:
| Could just be sloppy, inaccurate writing. But yeah that
| would be pretty bad.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a direct quote from his fiance, who is also a lawyer
| and part of his defense team: https://twitter.com/StellaM
| oris1/status/1306205472521891840?...
|
| I can't vouch for the analysis here, but this is
| interesting. It's an FOIA request that seems to show the
| equipment being used.
| https://wiseupaction.info/2020/10/15/julian-assange-was-
| x-ra...
| hunter2_ wrote:
| That second link says "each full body scan of an
| individual would generate 6 Micro Sieverts (uSv)" so 2
| scans per day would be 12 uSv, and a dose chart [0] shows
| the average daily background dose to be 10 uSv while a
| flight from NY to LA is 40 uSv. So it's a bit like taking
| that flight every 3.3 days. So maybe it's no worse than
| being a pilot / flight attendant?
|
| [0] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/the-daily-
| need/how-muc...
| [deleted]
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Pilots get a lot of radiation exposure though! It's not
| to be casually dismissed.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Do they ever get pulled off of flights to reduce their
| cumulative radiation exposure?
| [deleted]
| cormacrelf wrote:
| This fell into a broader question of whether the Extradition
| Act 2003 has to be enforced notwithstanding the terms of the
| extradition treaty. The treaty refers to political offences;
| the Act does not. The answer to this question was yes, the
| Act is self-contained. Therefore the judge did not need to
| decide the question of whether it was a political offence. So
| she did not discuss it or decide the question.
|
| You are correct in a way -- judges do not decide issues that
| do not need to be decided, and things they do say about those
| issues are ignored, so yes, she omitted to discuss it.
|
| But you couldn't say she "sided with US prosecutors" on
| whether it was a political offence or not. If you put that
| language in the Extradition Act, then you would get a
| decision on it. It's not so much "chilling for investigative
| journalism" as a deficiency in the Act itself not accounting
| for the particular US-UK treaty language or the US'
| categorisation under the Act that should reflect its recent
| anti-democratic bent.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It's just bizarre that the terms of the extradition treaty,
| which explicitly bars extradition for political offenses,
| would be irrelevant. If the terms of the treaty don't
| matter, then what's the basis for extraditing Assange in
| the first place?
| cormacrelf wrote:
| The basis is the Extradition Act, which according to the
| judgment is a self-contained implementation of a bunch of
| different extradition treaties.
|
| Hypothetically, let's say the statute actually had a
| section with "no extraditions for unsavoury offences" in
| it. That's pretty weird and ambiguous, so you might,
| subject to UK law on statutory interpretation, look to
| the treaty/treaties the Act is implementing to figure out
| what the legislature meant by unsavoury when they wrote
| it. Maybe a bunch of treaties had similar provisions
| using the word unsavoury, but the US one changed it, and
| you would analyse why they didn't use the language again,
| or whether political offences as referred to by the US
| treaty would fit the bill... But according to the
| judgment, the Act is not ambiguous. There is nothing to
| look to the treaty for.
|
| Still, the basis for the extradition is not the treaty.
| Treaties bind States (ie countries) against each other.
| The remedy for a treaty law breach is stern words from
| the UN, maybe a fine, whatever. But treaty law cannot
| establish domestic laws that govern things like
| extradition. The only requirement imposed by the treaty
| is on the UK as a State to implement the treaty in
| domestic law, which is how countries like the UK comply
| with the terms of the treaty. International law does not
| bind local decision makers who decide whether the
| extradition goes ahead. It also does not bind parliament,
| which can refuse to implement a treaty or decide to
| deviate from it. It should also be quite plain that
| Assange is not a State party to the extradition
| agreement, being neither the literal United States nor
| Kingdom, so he does not have standing to object to the
| UK's implementation, and of course, is in utterly the
| wrong court for that :)
|
| (That the UK is bound to comply makes for a strong
| suggestion that parliament actually intended to be true
| to the treaty when they implemented it, but this is only
| relevant where there is ambiguity in the domestic law
| requiring resolution, because of the primacy of
| legislative power and its ability to write laws in clear
| terms that can't be wriggled out of.)
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The political offenses exception is not ambiguous. It's
| well understood what the exception means, and the treaty
| explicitly bars it. It's just very strange to me that the
| US and UK explicitly agreed to arrange for extradition on
| certain terms, but that those terms are now deemed by
| this judge not to apply in the UK.
|
| > But treaty law cannot establish domestic laws that
| govern things like extradition
|
| In the US, treaties are law. The political offense
| exception absolutely applies when extraditing people from
| the US to the UK.
|
| There are enough other problems in this ruling to make me
| very skeptical of the judge's reasoning here. A few of
| them:
|
| * The judge says that it's an open question whether or
| not a journalist from The Guardian was the person who
| first published unredacted cables with informants' names.
| As was established beyond any doubt, it was The
| Guardian's journalist who first published the cables. The
| decryption key was the title of a chapter in his book,
| for crying out loud, and the encrypted archive was
| available online. Yet Baraitser treats this as an open
| question. Doing so allows Baraitser to argue that Assange
| put people's lives at risk.
|
| * The judge asserts that Pompeo's statements about going
| after Assange do not represent the views of the US
| government, and therefore cannot be used to argue that
| the prosecution is politically motivated. Pompeo is the
| former director of the CIA and the current Secretary of
| State. He's one of the most senior members of the
| government, and he gave an entire speech devoted to
| arguing that the government should go after Assange.
|
| To me, these are just unbelievable statements by the
| judge. The bottom line, though, is that the judge's
| ruling makes it possible for the US to go after
| investigative journalists in the UK who publish about the
| US military or intelligence apparatus. All the
| protections that journalists thought they had do not
| exist.
| comex wrote:
| > In the US, treaties are law. The political offense
| exception absolutely applies when extraditing people from
| the US to the UK.
|
| Sure, in the US they are. The judge explicitly contrasts
| the US's "monist" system with the UK's "dualist" system
| where treaties are not law. Correspondingly, in the US
| treaties require Congressional approval to be ratified.
| In the UK, at least prior to 2010, treaties could be
| ratified by the executive branch alone, but Parliament's
| approval was required to incorporate the terms into
| national law. (As of 2010, Parliament has a greater role
| in treaty ratification [1], but AFAICT that still doesn't
| make them automatically national law. Anyway, the treaty
| in question was ratified prior to 2010.)
|
| [1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/sn05...
| thisrod wrote:
| > In the US, treaties are law.
|
| In Britain and Australia, they're not. (Except for the
| Tasmanian Dams Case.) Parliament has to, in effect, cut
| and paste the treaty into legislation, and only then will
| courts enforce it. Sometimes parliament refuses to do
| that, and sometimes they try but slip up.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > You are correct in a way -- judges do not decide issues
| that do not need to be decided, and things they do say
| about those issues are ignored, so yes, she omitted to
| discuss it.
|
| And that's a bad thing as it leaves the case more or less
| open to US side coming up with "We promise to put him in
| some VIP jail with blackjack, and hookers," and more
| opportunities for retrials for state attorney to attack
| weaker defense arguments one at a time.
|
| Having the extradition flopped as political, would've
| closed the door on it for good.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Are you saying she should have discussed it anyway? Just
| lob up an opinion from the magi court on a searing hot
| political issue regarding which according to her own
| reasoning anything she says isn't binding whatsoever?
| Yeah, she totally could have "flopped" the extradition by
| doing that lol
|
| There's a difference, as I'm sure you're now aware having
| stopped accusing her of being extremely suspect, between
| judgments that are simply annoying for your team, and
| producing utterly biased, pre-decided results that match
| the tie of the President that nominated you. You'll find
| that the former happened here, and the latter isn't
| nearly as big a problem in the UK as you seem to have
| assumed to be the case.
| Bodell wrote:
| To be fair there was quite a lot of lobbing of opinions
| as it pertained to his guilt and ability to be
| prosecuted. Including: "This conduct would amount to
| offences in English law" and many , many other statements
| outlining exactly why she thought asking for information
| and publishing it would be considered aiding and abetting
| in espionage. I only got about 40 pages of skimming in,
| the documents is 130+ pages, but the vast majority of it
| was related to way the charges are felt to be appropriate
| in his case and very little evidence from the defense
| other than their broad objections.
| [deleted]
| Triv888 wrote:
| "This tweet is not available to you" error is still happening to
| this day. (a reload was required)
| NietTim wrote:
| Weird, both load for me
| Triv888 wrote:
| I've read that it happens to a lot more people... not sure
| what the conditions need to be, but yes, it is really weird.
| It almost looks like some kind of censoring.
| Trias11 wrote:
| Why didn't he wear a wig during his in-embassy venture and
| escape?
|
| He had plenty of time to plot something like that
| tedeh wrote:
| So is Julian Assange going to be released now or what?
| andylynch wrote:
| Looks like the judge has ordered his discharge in the case - I
| guess it depends on where he is in serving his uk sentence.
| [deleted]
| gsnedders wrote:
| He is currently imprisoned pending a USA appeal (which they
| have stated, to the court, they will make); his lawyer told the
| court that he would submit an application for bail on Wednesday
| (and not to the court today).
| djsumdog wrote:
| Appeals are not a right in the UK and rarely granted. This is
| a highly political case, so it might get herd. I hope he goes
| free. Assange is a true Australian hero, even though his own
| government abandoned him.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Right; to be pedantic, he is being held in custody until
| such point that the High Court decide to grant leave to
| appeal.
|
| I would be frankly _amazed_ if in this case the High Court
| doesn't allow an appeal. And I'd be surprised if the
| Supreme Court didn't too. It's such a high profile and
| politicised case that it's incredibly likely to be viewed
| to be in the public interest.
| supergirl wrote:
| he should be, if he served his time. not a lawyer but it
| doesn't sound right to jail him until appeal is resolved. he is
| in jail only for skipping bail I think, not for being
| extradited
| supergirl wrote:
| he might. he better fly to russia the same day
| tsjq wrote:
| If released , will he be safe?
| gadders wrote:
| If Hillary Clinton gets a role under Biden, then probably
| not.
| ramijames wrote:
| I'm genuinely concerned. What is wrong with you?
| gadders wrote:
| Nice ad-hominem attack. Good skills.
|
| Wikileaks leaks about the Democrat Party corruption prior
| to the 2016 election certainly hurt her. And there are
| unconfirmed reports she joked about hitting him with a
| drone.
|
| https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/hillary-clinton-
| drone-s...
| rvz wrote:
| If true, it already sounds like 'exposing the truth'
| really does hurt some people so badly that they would
| take pleasure in jokingly drone-striking them at full
| force to shut them up; if they could.
|
| An insult to injury I guess.
| djsumdog wrote:
| It's not really a joke either. The Clitnon's have been
| corrupt for years. The entire Hunter/Biden censorship of
| the Post by Facebook and Twitter show the interests of
| big tech align with that of the Bush/Clinton dynasty.
|
| Biden could have him killed. He's an empty husk of a
| president, and will be controlled by the big interests,
| the Clinton and anyone else who he's been compromised by.
|
| We've been living in 1984 for decades and most of
| American won't acknowledge it.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The dictatorship is hidden so well none of us can
| actually feel its effects.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Triv888 wrote:
| "Can't we just drone this guy?"
|
| "It would have been a joke if I ever said that."
|
| - HC
| gadders wrote:
| "Mr Assange was jailed for 50 weeks in May 2019 for breaching
| his bail conditions after going into hiding in the Ecuadorian
| embassy in London."
|
| Given that the US Government is appealing and he has a record
| of skipping bail, I'd guess no. I suppose they might possibly
| let him out with an ankle bracelet, but no idea for sure.
| pmyteh wrote:
| (Most) English prisoners only serve half the given sentence
| in prison before being released on license, so he won't go
| back to prison for that. I don't know if he can be held
| pending a US appeal on the extradition case, given his
| history of skipping bail.
| [deleted]
| supergirl wrote:
| doesn't make sense to jail him until appeal is resolved. he
| is only in jail for skipping bail.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Time served; it's already more than 50 weeks after May 2019,
| much though it may seem like it's still March 2020.
| raverbashing wrote:
| So, didn't the 50wks go by already (or due to other factors)
| or he remains in custody due to the extradition proceedings?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Is he out already? Be good to hear it's going okay... must be
| feeling very relieved but I would have convinced myself I was
| ending up in a high-max. Emotional disorientating I'd say.
| gadders wrote:
| Quite surprised by that verdict. Reading the commentary from
| Craig Murray [1] I thought it likely he would be extradited.
|
| Maybe Trump will pardon him and Snowdon on his way out as well.
|
| [1] EG: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/your-man-
| in-...
| DanBC wrote:
| Some of us did try to say that Murray is a fucking idiot and
| should not be listened to.
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Assange supporting bloggers/writers including Murray have
| been alleging extreme bias on the part of the judge for the
| entirety of the extradition trial.
|
| Pretty standard things that happen in a criminal trial in
| England (putting defendants in the dock etc.) have been
| interpreted as unique forms of victimisation reserved solely
| for Assange.
|
| I won't hold my breath for a mea culpa.
| gadders wrote:
| It will be interesting to say what his next update is.
|
| And Amnesty and others weren't positive on the trial process
| either.
| DanBC wrote:
| Amnesty at least have some credibility.
| vidarh wrote:
| And yet the judgement in general seems to match his
| assessment of the judges reaction to most of the issues
| raised by the defence.
|
| She only refused the extradition because of his mental health
| and likely prison conditions.
| rory_isAdonk wrote:
| Agreed.
| harry8 wrote:
| What a terrible comment. It adds nothing whatsoever to the
| discussion. Make your case. Link evidence.
|
| Or appear to be nothing more than the poorest and purest
| smear.
|
| Maybe that appearance is deceptive and it was just really,
| really lazy?
| mmkos wrote:
| The UK is in a precarious situation, with COVID and Brexit in
| full effect. I think that for the sake of the UK-US relationship
| and future trade talks, the government wants to appear aligned
| with the US as much as possible on this issue, while not actually
| extraditing Julian Assange.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| This is nonsense conspiracy theorism. There is unlikely to be
| any possibility of the judicial decision in this case being
| influenced by the UK government's policies on UK-US trade
| deals.
| PoachedSausage wrote:
| Maybe not trade deals but the Anne Sacoolas[0] case of using
| diplomatic immunity of dubious legality to flee from justice
| probably tends to irritate the British judiciary.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
| northamptonshire-52630...
| mmkos wrote:
| It is pretty far reaching, but I wouldn't say that it is
| 'unlikely to be any possibility' that the UK government would
| want to influence a high profile case, which is highly likely
| to impact the UK-US relationship.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| Which is why there is absolute separation between the
| fiercely independent judiciary and the government in the
| UK. No influence is possible, consider the case of the MP
| convicted of rape and the fiercely independent judiciary
| pushing back on character references.
| toyg wrote:
| There is no "absolute" separation of the judiciary in the
| UK. _Parliament sovereignty_ is absolute, which includes
| the power of rearranging the justice system as it sees
| fit - as indeed was done when the Supreme Court was
| established a few years ago. Before the SC was created,
| the highest court in the land was composed of members of
| the House of Lords, and the Lord Chancellor (a member of
| cabinet) was a judge - effectively making the High Court
| an offshoot of Parliament.
|
| The new Supreme Court is still composed of judges that
| must be approved by the Secretary of State for Justice
| (i.e. a government minister, a politician). Technically
| the appointment is made by the Queen, but overruling an
| elected minister would be considered an infringement of
| constitutional prerogatives of Parliament. That means a
| government can veto high-justices it doesn't like.
|
| Downstream of that, the judiciary cannot invalidate or
| overrule primary legislation. Parliament comes first.
|
| What we have in UK is fundamentally a degree of
| _protection_ of most judiciary elements from the
| otherwise-supreme power of Parliament. That's not
| absolute separation, but rather a partial one - if very
| extended.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Also recall the high-profile, politically-charged cases
| which the Government has lost (to its considerable
| embarrassment) in recent memory.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Government isn't the parliament.
|
| No court in the UK has ever overruled the parliament.
| pydry wrote:
| This is more than a little naive I think.
|
| The UK needs more bargaining chips. Trade negotiations are
| heavily weighted against them right now.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Okay, but how do you think this works? Boris Johnson having
| a word with the judge? The judiciary haven't exactly shown
| much interest in pandering to Boris; see Brexit judgements
| over the last couple of years.
| pydry wrote:
| I think the judges are probably more interested in the
| global standing, power and leverage of the UK than Boris
| is and the Brexit rulings arguably reflect that too.
|
| The UK government is about more than just Boris's ego.
|
| I wouldn't speculate as to the exact mechanism as to how
| this ruling came about but to assume it came divorced
| from politics is naive, especially given the nature of
| the ruling.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I think the judges are probably more interested in the
| global standing, power and leverage of the UK than Boris
| is
|
| Really? I wouldn't assume that at all; it's very much not
| their job, and it's not unusual for the courts to cause
| the government significant trouble and embarrassment. A
| judge's job is to uphold the law, not to be a political
| actor. And the UK's judges, by and large, have a
| reasonably good reputation for sticking to it.
| pydry wrote:
| Whether it's their "job" or not it's exactly in line with
| their rulings. Whether it's taking gold from Venezuela,
| trying to prevent the Brexit train from going off the
| cliff or this, realpolitik is clearly never far from
| their mind.
|
| If their job were to give out fair rulings they wouldn't
| pretend that Assange was a spy not a journalist and they
| wouldnt try to hold Venezuelan gold hostage by picking
| winners in a foreign election.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25629990.
| sradman wrote:
| In my mind, what distinguishes the Snowden case from the
| Assange/Manning cases is the distinction between whistleblowing
| [1] and a fishing expedition [2]:
|
| > A fishing expedition is an informal, pejorative term for a non-
| specific search for information, especially incriminating
| information. It is most frequently organized by policing
| authorities.
|
| The question is whether it is lawful for any group to mine a
| corpus of private documents searching for a crime or misdeed.
| Individuals or small activist organizations now have this ability
| and it is not exactly the same as a whistleblower leaking
| documents associated with a known crime.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_expedition
| djbebs wrote:
| The point is moot since these were documents belonging to the
| government.
| sradman wrote:
| These were government documents leaked to a service designed
| to protect whistleblowers.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| The crime is not by the journalist who reports it, but on the
| person who breaks classification.
|
| In this sense, Snowden is more guilty than Assange.
| chippiewill wrote:
| FWIW Edward Snowden is slightly guilty of fishing in a way.
|
| He didn't just collect relevant documents, he collected a
| massive cache of documents and instead of vetting them himself
| (someone who is at least vaguely cleared to read the documents)
| he turned all of it over to the press to review instead.
| sradman wrote:
| Right, Snowden and Manning sit on a similar spectrum in terms
| of unauthorized copying of classified documents. Snowden,
| seemed to have foreknowledge of an actual crime or at least
| the government failing to follow a reasonable person's
| expectation of it following a given law.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wish Snowden didn't flee the country. I'd have a completely
| different opinion if he stood trial.
| jarbus wrote:
| I doubt he'd receive a fair trial; No way the government
| would let an unbiased judge rule over him
| Miner49er wrote:
| He didn't already sacrifice enough of his life? You aren't
| satisfied unless he gave all of it?
| sradman wrote:
| It doesn't have to be about just deserts, it can be about
| ethics. This argument is the main thrust of Plato's
| dialogue _Crito_ [1]:
|
| > In Crito, Socrates believes injustice may not be
| answered with injustice, personifies the Laws of Athens
| to prove this, and refuses Crito's offer to finance his
| escape from prison. The dialogue contains an ancient
| statement of the social contract theory of government.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crito
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I think he didn't care much about your opinion of him so
| much as he did about what would happen to him and where
| he'd end up. Given what was being kept from the American
| people and what he knew, it's impossible to call him
| paranoid or to even pass judgement on his character. He may
| not have been willing to give his literal life for the sake
| of blowing the whistle, but there really can be no question
| that he did give up his life to do so.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| He didn't follow whistleblower procedure and fled to an
| adversary. If he believes he is being noble then he
| should stand trial in good faith. Best case he wins and
| gets off, worst case he does jail and is proven right.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| US literally forced Snowden to stay in Russia. He wen to
| HK, then was supposed to fly to Chile or Argentina
| through Moscow... But US government decided to disallow
| that.
|
| So no - he didn't "flee to an adversary", as much as he
| was "forced to stay at advesary's".
|
| PS: US "justice" system would have granted him no
| justice. So you can stick that "good faith" argument in
| the same location where I tell people to stick their "go
| march in Pakistan with your PRIDE flag" arguments.
| monocasa wrote:
| Hes afforded almost no whistleblower protections since he
| was a contractor.
|
| https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2016/09/busting-myth-of-
| whistl...
|
| The espionage act under which he'd be charged doesn't
| allow a public good defense to be used in court.
|
| https://www.justiceinitiative.org/voices/why-snowden-won-
| t-g...
|
| What you're asking for structurally can't happen in the
| US legal system.
| stevespang wrote:
| J.ORDERS410. I order the discharge of Julian Paul
| Assange,pursuant to section 91(3) of the EA 2003.
| kpsnow wrote:
| So aspergers is a get out of jail free card?
| mrkramer wrote:
| How will this affect US and UK relations? They are brother/sister
| countries. Snowden and Assange are 2 Americans most wanted, US
| would do anything to get them.
|
| Btw I'm not in favor of US Gov. spying but what Snowden and
| Assange did (leak state secrets) is criminal and they need to
| face justice.
| ArchD wrote:
| Justice for thee but not justice for me. - Some US politician,
| probably
| djsumdog wrote:
| > Assange did (leak state secrets)
|
| Assange is a journalist and an Australian. He has no ties or
| obligations to the US. His organization also rededicated almost
| all published documents to prevent doxing. He is no different
| than the New York Post.
|
| Snowden was an NSA contractor. Personally I still think he's a
| disinformation campaign similar to Operation Mockingbird or
| COINTELPRO and likely still works for either the CIA or State
| Dept (look up "Limited Hangouts")
|
| Manning swore and oath as a soldier and broke it; releasing
| information that was not filtered or screened.
|
| Three entirely different cases.
| fogihujy wrote:
| Last time I checked, the charges are related to Assange's
| alleged involvement in one or more accounts of hacking, not
| regarding the subsequent public release of the obtained
| documents.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's quite common for EU countries to refuse extradition to the
| US on these sorts of grounds; can't see it having much effect.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| So, she basically dismissed all other arguments of Assange team
| except the mental health argument/risk of suicide, and blocked
| extradition based on that.
|
| That's really interesting.
| stefan_ wrote:
| That seems like the line of argument you could employ to deny
| every extradition to the US then. I might be overly cynical but
| that seems to be little more than a ploy of appearing impartial
| by denying on something you are certain it is going to be
| reversed on appeal.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| You actually make a good point in a way. It's because the
| autism argument has been _used before_ is why it was employed
| in this case and why it became the strongest argument.
|
| Lauri Love https://news.sky.com/story/lauri-love-autistic-
| hacking-suspe...
| sabertoothed wrote:
| > That seems like the line of argument you could employ to
| deny every extradition to the US then.
|
| Appears to be a very valid reason. The US prison system is a
| disgrace.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| They even cited Jeffrey Epstein suicide in the judgement
| (paragraph 299, page 95)
| bitcharmer wrote:
| "suicide". FTFY
| rsynnott wrote:
| > That seems like the line of argument you could employ to
| deny every extradition to the US then.
|
| While it doesn't quite go that far, it is pretty common for
| extradition from Europe to the US to be blocked for this
| reason.
|
| Arguably, given how common solitary confinement is in the US,
| all extradition to the US should be abandoned.
|
| > denying on something you are certain it is going to be
| reversed on appeal
|
| Why would you think it would be reversed? It's fairly common
| to refuse extradition where the subject would be at
| significant risk of being abused/tortured/executed.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The point of an extradition treaty is surely that lawmakers
| have concluded the two systems participating are reasonably
| close to allow for extradition in the first place. It is
| then not the place of a judge to decide otherwise.
|
| There are exemptions such as no extradition when the
| conduct isn't illegal in the extraditing country, but as
| you mention: if you consider solitary confinement torture,
| there is no reason to approve of any extradition to the US
| anymore.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'It is then not the place of a judge to decide otherwise'
|
| It is precisely role of the Judge to uphold the law and
| rights, they take precedence over any agreements
| Talanes wrote:
| It's not the place of the judge to consider the treaty
| one way or another. Judges judge based on the actual laws
| put in place in their court.
|
| If the current state really isn't what the lawmakers had
| intended with their treaties, then they need to update
| the domestic laws that go along with them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The US will sometimes promise to not use solitary
| confinement (or various other forms of inhumane
| treatment/torture) to secure extradition, and some
| countries will sometime accept that.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Likewise capital punishment.
| justincormack wrote:
| All potential death sentence extraditions are automatically
| refused (not just from UK). A fair number of other ones
| are, not sure what proprtion.
| croes wrote:
| Yes, as soon his health gets better they can go on with the
| extradition.
| EvaK_de wrote:
| Except his autism spectrum disorder isn't going to get
| better.
| africanboy wrote:
| But the symptoms could.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| He'll be released to some kind of house arrest (or whatever the
| UK equivalent is), and be found dead the next day.
|
| It will be ruled a suicide.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| lol768 wrote:
| Reading the judgement the key points are on pages 116 onwards and
| the extradition is denied under section 91(3) of the EA 2003
| which reads:
|
| > The condition is that the physical or mental condition of the
| person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite
| him.
|
| The judge states:
|
| > it is my judgment that there is a real risk that he will be
| kept in the near isolated conditions imposed by the harshest SAMs
| (special administrative measures) regime, both pre-trial and
| post-trial
|
| And goes on to contrast with the conditions at HMP Belmarsh:
|
| > many of the protective factors currently in place at HMP
| Belmarsh would be removed by these conditions. Mr. Assange's
| health improved on being removed from relative isolation in
| healthcare. He has been able to access the support of family and
| friends. He has had access to a Samaritans phone line. He has
| benefited from a trusting relationship with the prison In-Reach
| psychologist. By contrast, a SAMs regime would severely restrict
| his contact with all other human beings, including other
| prisoners, staff and his family. In detention subject to SAMs, he
| would have absolutely no communication with other prisoners, even
| through the walls of his cell, and time out of his cell would be
| spent alone.
|
| These conditions sound barbaric to me and I'd go as far to
| describe them as torture. Amnesty International do a better job
| of outlining the problems with this regime than I can:
| https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/entombed-isolation-in-the...
|
| Frankly I don't understand why the UK continues to maintain an
| extradition treaty with a country which clearly has a poor record
| on human rights and fails to maintain a justice system that meets
| the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
|
| She concludes:
|
| > I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange's
| mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide
| with the "single minded determination" of his autism spectrum
| disorder.
|
| > I order the discharge of Julian Paul Assange, pursuant to
| section 91(3) of the EA 2003
|
| Whilst a victory nonetheless for Assange, it is unfortunate that
| the entire judgement seems to come down to this point alone.
| Let's hope it is not overturned.
| tda wrote:
| I have never come across the use of satisfied for "persuaded by
| argument or evidence" before. (yes, I had to look it up, not a
| native speaker) Is this usage common or just some kind of
| legalese?
| ajb wrote:
| Its normal - its even used in Computer Science, eg
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem
| sneak wrote:
| I don't think it's common, but it certainly isn't legalese.
| dempseye wrote:
| It is normal usage.
| DanBC wrote:
| It's not legalese, but it is frequently used in judgments.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Relatively common in the UK but fairly formal; can be
| substituted for 'fulfill' pretty much everywhere it's used
|
| "You have satisfied the requirements of a degree and have
| been granted the award of BSc Physics"
| eutectic wrote:
| I guess it's more common in British English (and maybe a bit
| old-fashioned?).
|
| Edit: google ngrams seems to agree.
| afandian wrote:
| As in sentences like "I'm satisfied that you did your best"
| and "I'm satisfied that it contains no gluten". Do those
| not work in American or other international English?
| eutectic wrote:
| According to google ngrams the frequency of 'satisfied
| that' is 0.00026% in British English and 0.00012% in
| American English. So only a factor of 2 difference.
| Interestingly the peak of American usage was in the 1860s
| (~0.001%), followed by a slow decline, but in Britain
| there was a small peak around 1920 (~0.00127%), then a
| higher peak in the 1940s (~0.002%), followed by a rapid
| decline to the present day.
| Talanes wrote:
| No, that's the definition that does track perfectly in
| American English: where it can be substituted by
| "pleased."
| Sharlin wrote:
| But those sentences are also perfectly meaningful
| assuming the other sense of "satisfied", which may be
| what GP meant. Ie. "I am convinced that you did your
| best" and "I am convinced that it contains no gluten".
| Talanes wrote:
| Oh, I definitely agree that those example exist on the
| fuzzy line, but the question was whether they didn't read
| to Americans.
|
| The more I think about it, the harder the actual barrier
| between "pleased" and "convinced" is hard to draw.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's not that hard to draw it: 'I am satisfied that this
| man is the one who killed my dog'. Whether you are
| convinced that this is the man, or whether you are
| pleased that this particular man killed your dog are
| clearly different senses.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Interestingly, the BBC asked the question: "is HMP Belmarsh the
| British Guantanamo Bay?" [0]
|
| By the transitive properties of anglo-american fascist thought,
| does that make the US prison system better or worse than the US
| extrajudicial prison in Cuba??
|
| [0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3714864.stm
| [deleted]
| alisonkisk wrote:
| There are better and worse parts in each system. Not everyone
| is in solitary confinement or 22hr per day in cell. The worst
| parts of all 3 are bad.
| dalbasal wrote:
| If you take an absolutist, principled or binary view, then most
| imprisonment is a torture of some sort. It causes severe
| psychological distress. That's what a prison is. The
| differences are in the nuance, and you might call those
| subjective.
|
| This was an extradition hearing, not a trial. This seems to
| have given the judge room to justify a nuanced conclusion that
| doesn't extend far past this case. IDK if there's much
| precedent. If there is, it relates to espionage-adjacent cases.
| That kind of makes sense. Espionage is different to other
| crimes. The imprisonment is different, and so is the standard
| for justice. Closed trials & such. This was also true of these
| extradition hearings.
|
| I have to wonder though, did all the other stuff relating to
| this saga affect her decision. The odd charges in Sweden. The
| party-politic aspects to the US' pursuit of him. Also the "time
| served" aspect. If he's found guilty, the sentence is unlikely
| to be longer than the 8 years he has spent imprisoned already.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I can't agree. I doubt many people on HN are "absolutist" a
| lot of us do realize that the US prison system is horrible if
| you're not in a white collar minimal security prison (and he
| would not be, he is headed for a federal prison with probably
| 23.5 hours solitary confinement a day in a room and 30
| minutes of exercise) and probably some time with his lawyers.
| I can't say I wouldn't side with the English judge in this
| case, he's just calling it like he sees it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Pretty sure the judge is "she", not "he".
| arcticbull wrote:
| > If you take an absolutist, principled or binary view, then
| most imprisonment is a torture of some sort. It causes severe
| psychological distress. That's what a prison is. The
| differences are in the nuance, and you might call those
| subjective.
|
| That's what prison in America is, but that's not what prison
| either has to be, or is everywhere else in the world.
|
| If your goal is to torture people, America's system is very
| effective. If your goal is to rehabilitate people and make
| sure they don't go on to commit more crimes, America's system
| is an abject failure.
|
| Recidivism in the US is 55% after 5 years, as compared to
| Norway's 20%. Apparently not treating people inhumanely is a
| great way of getting them not to commit more crimes. [1] Who
| would have thought?
|
| [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/recidivis...
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| > it causes severe psychological distress. That's what prison
| is.
|
| Depends. Some penal systems are there for "retribution" or
| punishment, and those match your definition. Other concepts
| available are rehabilitation and simply separating proven
| dangerous elements from society at large. Apart from the loss
| of freedom of movement (which I would not describe as "severe
| psychological distress"), there is no hard requirement for a
| prison system to be even unpleasant.
| dalbasal wrote:
| The philosophy of imprisonment is fairly vast, I believe.
|
| But hard/philosophical requirements notwithstanding,
| prisons tend to be what they are. The famous moral
| philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed some a "modern" prison
| system with some of these goals in mind, especially reform.
| The result was quite horrific.
| Talanes wrote:
| You've chosen to ignore any of the cases of actually
| modern reform-based prison systems and instead bring up
| the late 18th century? Odd choice.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Note that the exaggerated theoretical horrors of
| Bentham's panopticon are the mundane reality of modern
| non-prison life under camera and cell phone surveillance.
|
| Being watched by guards isn't one of the top 10 worst
| aspects of living in prison.
| jariel wrote:
| "Mr. Assange's mental health would deteriorate causing him to
| commit suicide with the "single minded determination" of his
| autism spectrum disorder."
|
| This would be entirely speculative for an MD let alone a Judge
| who doesn't really know what 'autism' is.
|
| So it's possibly a good outcome but based on bad legal
| proceedings.
|
| We're supposed to be 'advanced countries' why can't we get
| simple things right?
| seniorivn wrote:
| >We're supposed to be 'advanced countries' why can't we get
| simple things right?
|
| for the same reason old projects tend to suffer from old
| unfixed bugs and a burden of backwards compatibility
| DanBC wrote:
| It's not speculative, it's literally what he and his lawyers
| said. The judge was persuaded on the balance of probability
| (more likely than not) that it was true.
| jariel wrote:
| "It's not speculative, it's literally what he and his
| lawyers said. "
|
| Then it's the most absolutely biased possible thing upon
| which to rule.
|
| Assange's isolation was a) self imposed and b) considerably
| better than any 'prison' than he would face in Sweden, the
| UK or the USA. You don't get to 'not go to jail' because
| 'it will be depressing'.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I find this to be an odd statement as well (as someone who
| did not know Assange had autism until I read that sentence)
|
| Although I think the ruling is reasonable if the
| justification is simply that US prisons are inhumane
|
| Vaguely related: I heard about a thought experiment from
| Amanda Askell (in one of her podcast interviews), but it's
| kind of interesting: what would you give up in order to not
| go to jail for 5 years. What amount of money would you pay?
| Would you be willing to lose a finger instead?
|
| This does not immediately imply that we should abolish jails,
| but at the very least we should consider just how serious the
| punishment is. (And then repeat the experiment for a federal
| prison Assange would be in)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Frankly I don't understand why the UK continues to maintain
| an extradition treaty with a country which clearly has a poor
| record on human rights and fails to maintain a justice system
| that meets the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
| Prisoners.
|
| It's because the US is a powerful ally and the UK does not want
| to displease them. The British call this their "special
| relation" to the Americans. I don't know what the Americans
| call it.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| What do all the other countries with an extradition treaty
| with the US call their own relationship? They can't all be
| special ... can they?
| thisrod wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g
|
| There was an amusing twist after this was published. The
| creators got in trouble with the Australian Government, who
| were concerned about their use of the Australian coat of
| arms: it might confuse viewers into thinking the video was an
| official government one.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Probably "useful idiots".
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Alternatively:
|
| * 51st State
|
| * Airstrip One
|
| * The next market for chlorinated chicken
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| In reality the relationship is quite the opposite of this
| framing, but carry on I suppose.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| That's my fault- I should have left that last sentence
| out. Reading it again it begs a reply like Sharlin's. I
| should have known better than to post it.
| sampo wrote:
| While cynical and snarky towards US government, the
| comment is substantive if you're familiar with the term:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
| arcticbull wrote:
| Relatedly, Canada has struck down America's status as a safe
| third country for refugees as "U.S. immigration detention
| violates their human rights." [1]
|
| "Nedira Jemal Mustefa, among the refugees turned back and on
| whose behalf a challenge was launched, described her time in
| solitary confinement in the United States as 'a terrifying,
| isolating and psychologically traumatic experience,' according
| to the court ruling."
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-refugee-
| safethird/...
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| That court ruling is not yet final and is on hold during
| appeals: https://www.immigration.ca/decision-to-strike-down-
| safe-thir...
| Findeton wrote:
| I am incredibly happy for this ruling, I really hope it stands
| after the appeals. Freedom of expression and the right to know
| what oppresive governments are doing are too important to lose.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's an awful ruling overall, from what I can tell from
| skimming it. It's great Assange won, but this ruling is not at
| all support for freedom of expression. This is the one part the
| judge agreed with the defense on as far as I can tell:
|
| > 363. I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such
| that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United
| States of America.
|
| For _anyone_ not suffering from severe mental health problems
| that want to expose secrets this ruling in scary as hell.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Yes, the fact that the extradition wasn't rejected on press
| freedom grounds makes me think maybe it's just a way for the
| judge to shake it off so that it's not HER who goes down in
| history books as to have made the decision to extradite.
|
| But having sided with the U.S. on pretty much all of the
| counts concerning press freedom, an appeals court may well
| 'find' that the heath condition is not enough.
|
| I REALLY hope am wrong here.
|
| But it goes to show the West is again only concerned with
| 'press freedom' when it's our strategic competitors violating
| it.
| Veen wrote:
| Are you claiming the judge's decision was made on political
| grounds rather than on legal grounds under UK law? It seems
| to me she looked at the appropriate laws and made a
| reasonable decision. That's her job and it has nothing to
| to do with "siding with the US". Whether they are good laws
| or not is a matter for the UK Parliament and people.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > It seems to me she looked at the appropriate laws and
| made a reasonable decision.
|
| It is true that the UK technically doesn't guarantee
| 'freedom of the press' per se, it does have laws however
| that protect the freedom of expression, not as strongly
| as the 1st Amendment but still.
|
| Further, there's a long precedent of British newspapers
| doing what WikiLeaks does and even collaborating with
| WikiLeaks without being prosecuted.
|
| It's clear Assange is someone who the intelligence
| community views as an individual who crossed them and
| needs to be used to deter others. Reading the judgment it
| is hard not to come to the conclusion she agrees with
| this view.
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| _> there 's a long precedent of British newspapers doing
| what WikiLeaks does and even collaborating with WikiLeaks
| without being prosecuted_
|
| The judge discusses that in the opinion. The difference
| she notes is that the newspapers carefully choose what
| they publish in order to avoid harm--for example, they
| don't publish the names of government informants even if
| those names are contained in the materials they obtain,
| since that would put the lives of those informants at
| risk. Wikileaks did not do that with the information
| obtained from Manning; they just released it all. The
| judge quotes the newspapers themselves condemning
| Wikileaks for doing that.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Except of course she fails to note that Assange tried[1]
| to do that and was rejected.
|
| She cites the Guardian who has a history of questionable
| reporting on Assange and WikiLeaks because they didn't do
| a good job[1][2].
|
| In fact WikiLeaks made a point of going via the
| newspapers after being blamed.
|
| 1 - https://www.salon.com/2010/08/20/wikileaks_5
|
| 2 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51633303
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Assange tried to do that and was rejected._
|
| Assange tried (at least he claims he tried) to get the US
| government to help him remove names that it felt should
| not be released. The US government refused. Which is
| perfectly understandable: why should the US government
| tell Wikileaks exactly which names in some leaked
| documents are the names of actual US government
| informants? That would be stupid.
|
| Assange then chose to release all the material anyway,
| putting the life of anyone whose names were in that
| material potentially at risk. Newspapers, in the same
| position, did not publish the names. Whether you agree or
| not with either action, the fact remains that they are
| clearly _different_ actions, and that one involves
| publishing people 's names and potentially putting their
| lives at risk and the other does not.
| himinlomax wrote:
| He was right to publish it, I as a non-American care less
| about US operatives than about knowing the truth, esp.
| considering what was revealed. We're talking about people
| who were complicit in the organization that claimed there
| were WMDs in Iraq, among other bs.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I as a non-American care less about US operatives_
|
| What if you lived in an oppressive regime and believed,
| rightly or wrongly, that the US was trying to help
| improve the situation in your country, and you gave the
| US information? Would you still be OK with your name
| being published and your life being put at risk?
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Assange tried (at least he claims he tried) to get the
| US government to help him remove names that it felt
| should not be released. The US government refused. Which
| is perfectly understandable: why should the US government
| tell Wikileaks exactly which names in some leaked
| documents are the names of actual US government
| informants? That would be stupid.
|
| If that's stupid then complaining asking him to redact
| names without telling him which ones is even more stupid
| and gives the U.S. no right to complain. Especially when
| top secret is used to conceal war crimes.
|
| > Assange then chose to release all the material anyway
|
| Not publishing war crimes because those who commited them
| refuse to cooperate in redacting names would be a great
| way for the Pentagon to make sure their crimes stay
| hidden. In fact it appears that was their goal in not
| cooperating.
|
| > Newspapers, in the same position, did not publish the
| names.
|
| Newspapers were NOT in the same position. They published
| the leaks but Pentagon started cooperating with them by
| then.
|
| It's remarkable that people exposing war criminals get
| more blame that actual war criminals who did not face any
| consequences and laughed about while murdering civilians
| including journalists.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> asking him to redact names without telling him which
| ones is even more stupid_
|
| He should have had the good judgment to redact _all_
| names even without being asked to. (Or at least all names
| that he didn 't know belonged to people whose lives would
| not be put at risk by their publication.) He didn't.
|
| _> Newspapers were NOT in the same position._
|
| It is true that newspapers (and other "mainstream" media
| organizations) have a special relationship with
| governments (and note that I'm not saying it's right that
| they do, only that as a matter of fact they do), so they
| aren't in exactly the same position as Wikileaks. That
| still does not excuse Wikileaks putting people's lives at
| risk by publishing their names.
|
| _> people exposing war criminals get more blame that
| actual war criminals_
|
| I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding
| anyone other than Assange, so you have no basis for even
| making any such comparison.
|
| Also, I'm not blaming Assange for publishing the material
| itself. I'm blaming him for publishing people's names and
| putting their lives at risk. As I've already said, he
| could have published the material without publishing the
| names. He chose not to.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > He should have had the good judgment to redact all
| names
|
| So how exactly are you supposed to hold officials
| accountable if you don't have any names to go on?
|
| > I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding
| anyone other than Assange
|
| Right. That is exactly my problem. When we're talking
| about war criminals I'd hope the person who exposed it
| would be the last to get some blame in the matter.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Leave the names of officials. Redact names your don't
| know, as was already suggested. Newspapers seem to have
| managed to do this just fine for ages.
|
| If there issue is that high ranking officials aren't
| being held accountable, there's no reason to publish the
| names of some random agent.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Leave the names of officials. Redact names your don't
| know
|
| That's not as easy as it sounds. Many of the names you'd
| want to leave up would be of smaller generals whom you
| may not be familiar with. The actual shooters should
| perhaps also not be redacted. At least not fully.
|
| > Newspapers seem to have managed to do this just fine
| for ages.
|
| They do this by being cozy with the Pentagon and asking
| them exactly for what WikiLeaks has asked them for. The
| difference is the Pentagon's not going to ignore an email
| from the NYT. It did ignore WikiLeaks.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Many of the names you'd want to leave up would be of
| smaller generals whom you may not be familiar with
|
| Investigative journalism is a difficult profession. Yet
| people manage. Throwing your hands up is a disservice to
| the profession. Calling someone who does so a journalist
| is a disservice to actual investigative journalists.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I did address this above but you ignored it.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> how exactly are you supposed to hold officials
| accountable if you don 't have any names to go on?_
|
| Manning could have told Assange which names were the
| names of US government officials. (In fact, I'd be
| surprised if Manning didn't actually do just that; on
| your own theory of who should be held accountable it
| would be irresponsible not to.)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> When we 're talking about war criminals_
|
| We're not. We're talking about Assange. He can still be
| at fault and worthy of blame for some things he did, even
| if the US government is also worthy of blame for some
| things it did.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > We're not.
|
| And that's exactly the problem. No wonder they're still
| free today while Julian's not.
| Veen wrote:
| This just proves the point. Wikileaks is not a
| journalistic organisation because it lacks the editorial
| expertise, ethics, and resources essential to carry out
| responsible journalism. They have to rely on real
| newspapers or the pentagon (!) to do it for them. It's no
| defence to say: we tried to get other people to help us
| do the right thing, but we couldn't, so we knowingly did
| the wrong thing instead.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Wikileaks is not a journalistic organisation because it
| lacks the editorial expertise, ethics, and resources
| essential to carry out responsible journalism.
|
| There's (luckily) no exams (yet) for what makes a
| journalist. Someone who has a blog is no less a
| journalist than anyone at a national newspaper.
|
| > They have to rely on real newspapers or the pentagon
| (!) to do it for them. It's no defence to say: we tried
| to get other people to help us do the right thing
|
| Actually it is. That's why intention is regularly taken
| into account in court cases and it shows WikiLeaks had
| the intention to redact and if needed even via the
| Pentagon.
|
| > but we couldn't, so we did the wrong thing instead.
|
| They did no 'wrong' thing _instead_. They tried to
| consult the U.S. Government about any needed redactions
| and then published vital information to inform the public
| that the government is committing war crimes of foreign
| soil in their name.
|
| Not publishing that would've been wrong and was most
| likely the goal of the Pentagon in not cooperating.
|
| Is similar with zero days, researchers publish them if
| the vendor doesn't cooperate because not doing so and
| letting black hats exploit a known bug is way more
| 'wrong' than publishing the 0day widely is.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it shows WikiLeaks had the intention to redact_
|
| No, it shows that Wikileaks can be just as disingenuous
| as any other "journalistic" organization. Wikileaks made
| a request to the US government that it had to know the US
| government would refuse (for the reason I gave in my
| other post in response to you upthread). It did that so
| it could disingenuously claim that it gave the US
| government a chance to protect people's names and the US
| government refused, making it seem like it's the US
| government's fault, not Wikileaks's fault, that the names
| got published. That's not "responsible journalism"; it's
| Wikileaks playing power politics just like governments
| and the media do.
|
| _> published vital information to inform the public that
| the government is committing war crimes of foreign soil
| in their name_
|
| Wikileaks could have published that information without
| publishing anyone's name. They chose not to do it that
| way.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Wikileaks made a request to the US government that it
| had to know the US government would refuse (for the
| reason I gave in my other post in response to you
| upthread). It did that so it could disingenuously claim
| that it gave the US government a chance to protect
| people's names and the US government refused, making it
| seem like it's the US government's fault
|
| It's the U.S. government who committed war crimes here
| and used secrecy to conceal their crimes. Of course it's
| the U.S. government's fault. The option to not commit war
| crimes and use the secrets act to conceal it was there.
| They didn't take it.
|
| The U.S. Government proved it will use 'top secret' to
| hide not only information that is actually top secret but
| also information that is embarrassing. This would be a
| pretty clear motivator for the Pentagon not to respond
| and for WikiLeaks to go ahead with the publication.
|
| > Wikileaks could have published that information without
| publishing anyone's name.
|
| No. Names as such are vital. It lets you know WHO needs
| to be held accountable. Most leaks are published with
| names in them. There are names that the U.S. government
| could have _suggested_ (not demand) to be redacted and
| WikiLeaks could have agreed to either some or all of the
| requests. They refused to cooperate. It 's pretty clearly
| on them.
|
| I also love how the people exposing war crimes are
| getting more heat that the actual war criminals who never
| spent a day behind bars. Speaks volumes.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> it 's the U.S. government's fault_
|
| Even if the US government is at fault, that still doesn't
| mean Wikileaks can't also be at fault. Two wrongs don't
| make a right.
|
| _> Names as such are vital. It lets you know WHO needs
| to be held accountable._
|
| Names of US government officials who made decisions that
| are being questioned, perhaps.
|
| Names of people in other countries with oppressive
| regimes, who passed on information on the understanding
| that their names would be kept confidential, no.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Even if the US government is at fault, that still
| doesn't mean Wikileaks can't also be at fault. Two wrongs
| don't make a right.
|
| Between the two wrongs, am going to focus on the one
| where the most powerful military on Earth guns down
| civilians & journalists. Especially given Julian has
| already paid dearly for exposing what we should have
| known. The war criminals themselves haven't spent a day
| behind bars.
|
| > Names of people in other countries with oppressive
| regimes, who passed on information on the understanding
| that their names would be kept confidential, no.
|
| WikiLeaks asked for these names so they can redact them.
| The Pentagon refused. This is on them, as are the war
| crimes themselves.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> WikiLeaks asked for these names so they can redact
| them._
|
| No, they asked for those names knowing that the US
| government couldn't possibly give them since that would
| expose the identities of people who would then be put at
| risk of their lives. In other words, they purposely put
| the US government in a "heads I win, tails you lose"
| situation. As I've already said upthread.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Julian has already paid dearly_
|
| IMO this would actually be a valid argument--Assange has
| already effectively served a sentence even though he
| hasn't been officially tried--but Assange's defense
| apparently did not make it.\
|
| I note, btw, that this kind of consideration (as well as
| other considerations you have raised) is also one that a
| US President could take into account in deciding whether
| or not to pardon Assange. Do you think the President
| should do that?
| gsnedders wrote:
| > But having sided with the U.S. on pretty much all of the
| counts concerning press freedom, an appeals court may well
| 'find' that the heath condition is not enough.
|
| It is highly likely that the High Court will be asked to
| re-examine pretty much the whole judgment; it's highly
| unlikely that the defence won't question the holdings that
| they lost.
|
| (It is also pretty likely that this will then be appealed
| to the Supreme Court, and relatively likely the case will
| be heard there too.)
| HotHotLava wrote:
| If this case is indeed politically motivated, one would
| expect the US to lose interest on January 21 and drop the
| case instead of appealing to the Supreme Court.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Most of the people in the intelligence community and
| beyond who hate being challenged will stay at their posts
| way past that date, not that Biden has a different take
| here.
| HotHotLava wrote:
| Why would the intelligence community be involved with
| decision-making inside the department of justice?
|
| And Obama's DoJ apparently decided not to pursue the
| case, why would we expect Biden's DoJ to come to a
| different conclusion?
|
| It's also interesting that this case has so many
| overlapping conspiracy theories that I don't even know if
| my initial comment is downvoted by US patriots for
| suggesting that the case might be politically motivated
| (which is the assertion made by Assanges defence team and
| many human rights groups), or by Assange supporters for
| suggesting that there was no ongoing investigation in
| 2010 and the Swedish allegations were not a plot by the
| DoJ :)
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > Why would the intelligence community be involved with
| decision-making inside the department of justice?
|
| Because the intelligence community hates Assange and what
| he represents. They spied on US lawmakers, tortured,
| manufactured evidence... I find it hard to believe they
| WOULDN'T meddle in this case.
|
| > Obama's DoJ apparently decided not to pursue the case,
| why would we expect Biden's DoJ to come to a different
| conclusion?
|
| Because post 2016 election the Democrats are no friends
| of Assange and WiliLeaks, regardless of the implications
| for press freedom.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| "Political motivation" does not mean that the motivation
| must be associated with only 1 political party. There are
| many political decisions taken in the US that both
| parties agree on, especially in this area of the
| intelligence state.
|
| If anything, as the judge notes, the current
| administration was likely somewhat more "friendly" to
| Assange than the Biden administration will be.
| HotHotLava wrote:
| I'm confused: The Assange defense team literally argues
| that the Obama DoJ decided not to prosecute the case, and
| that the Trump administration resurrected it in 2017 for
| political reasons. (The judge rejects the premise and
| argues that since there is no sufficient evidence that
| the Obama DoJ decided not to prosecute, the Trump
| administration couldn't have made a political decision to
| resurrect, since the case was always ongoing.)
|
| Your position seems to be that the defense is mistaken,
| but that the case is still political because it was
| already started as that under Obama and continues to be
| politically motivated throughout the Trump and Biden
| administrations?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Exactly. The case against Assange has always been
| political - it is not to the benefit of Justice or the
| American People, it is a case for protection of the
| surveillance state, and a case designed to scare away
| anyone who might emulate Assange. Same as the case
| against Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| To my understanding, the judge found that Assange's rights
| will be sufficiently upheld by the US courts, based on the
| US constitution and precedent - so, she is willing to allow
| the US judicial system to conduct their trial (if it
| weren't for the abhorrent conditions in which he would be
| kept, which she found too likely to be detrimental to his
| well being).
|
| It is not really a matter for an extradition judge to rule
| on whether what Assange did falls under press freedom. The
| US courts would have to decide that. If however the case
| had been identical but coming from China, the judge would
| still not have ruled on press freedom, but would have
| likely considered that the Chinese constitution and court
| precedents do not offer sufficient guarantees that there
| would actually be a fair trial, unlike in the US system.
|
| Whether you agree with this point or not is another matter,
| but I don't see the ruling as being either for or against
| press freedom, by my understanding.
| runarberg wrote:
| Don't the charges at least need to be credible?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| IFF the legal system of the country seeking extradition
| is trust-worthy and offers the same guarantees of human
| rights as the UK one, why would the charges need to be
| credible at all? The accused could be sent to that
| country, with the expectation that the trial would
| quickly go in the accused's favor.
|
| Of course, they do have to be charges for something which
| would be illegal in some way in the UK as well. If the US
| criminalized ice cream consumption, you would not be able
| to extradite someone in the UK for having consumed ice
| cream in the USA, of course. But this is not the same as,
| say, extraditing someone accused of murder in the USA who
| is not known to have been physically there - the
| extradition judge may be ok in not looking at the
| evidence that the charges are based on (except maybe to
| ascertain whether they may be a sign of a politically-
| motivated trial).
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Imo the problem is that the ruling accepts the premise
| that the case has merit i.e. is criminal in the UK, that
| itself is a threat to press freedom given the charges.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The _charges_ are of espionage and illegal access to
| computer systems. Those are also illegal in the UK.
|
| Whether the actions Assange took amount or not to
| espionage and illegal access to computer systems is a
| matter for a fair trial to decide, not the extradition
| judge. I happen to believe that they did not in any way,
| but it should be a jury trial that decides that, not an
| extradition judge in the UK.
| djsumdog wrote:
| There is no real right to appeal in the UK. It's very
| unlikely there would be an appeal.
|
| UK also doesn't really have freedom of speech or press in
| any meaningful way. I'm not surprised it failed on those
| grounds.
| lixtra wrote:
| Other sources[1] expect the US to appeal.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55528241
| implements wrote:
| > UK also doesn't really have freedom of speech or press
| in any meaningful way.
|
| Not in a way meaningful to libertarian extremists, no -
| thank goodness.
|
| Citizens and the press can say pretty much what they
| want, barring libel and what you might describe as
| "violence done through speech" ie threats, harassment or
| abuse.
|
| Consider that if I were to walk through London wearing a
| teeshirt emblazoned with "Atheist" I'd be perfectly safe.
| I suspect doing the same in many US towns or cities might
| result in assault - contrast "liberties" with "effective
| freedoms".
|
| Also, political free speech is pretty much absolute in
| the UK - it's citizens putting the boot in to each other
| in public that tends to attract Police interest in
| keeping the peace.
| vidarh wrote:
| > Consider that if I were to walk through London wearing
| a teeshirt emblazoned with "Atheist" I'd be perfectly
| safe. I suspect doing the same in many US towns or cities
| might result in assault - contrast "liberties" with
| "effective freedoms". > > Also, political free speech is
| pretty much absolute in the UK - it's citizens putting
| the boot in to each other in public that tends to attract
| Police interest in keeping the peace.
|
| While I have a lot of sympathy for your argument about
| effective freedoms vs. de jure liberties, someone _was_
| stopped and told to cover up her "fuck Boris" t-shirt by
| police in London not that long ago[1]. (Though, while I
| consider the stop ridiculous, at the same time at least
| the officers in question otherwise conducted themselves
| calmly)
|
| [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-
| news/boris-johnso...
| implements wrote:
| I take your point, but would suggest that the stop was
| motivated by legitimate Police concern over public
| decency rather than political content ("Fuck" is quite
| offensive) and I believe that the Officers concerned
| probably wouldn't have arrested her if she had refused to
| cover up.
|
| If an aggrieved third party had been present, and her
| refusal to cover up created a likelihood of imminent
| breach of the peace then - perhaps - a temporary arrest
| might be justified, would you accept?
|
| My point is our freedom of expression laws are aimed at
| creating an atmosphere where people don't feel violence
| is necessary to defend their position or sensibility -
| it's where we happen to draw the line in the paradox of
| tolerance.
| Talanes wrote:
| It sounds like you're saying that if someone wants to
| fight me over what I'm wearing, that I should be
| arrested. That feels backwards, and I don't think the
| specifics of the article of clothing change that.
| amaccuish wrote:
| The article of clothing was not called into question. The
| language "fuck" in terms of public decency, was. That is
| I believe a misreading of the OPs comment.
| Talanes wrote:
| I was referring to the third party example, where there
| is an "imminent breach to the peace." The point about
| indecency can stand as it is: not how I'd order a
| society, but I get it.
|
| However, I should not suddenly be in MORE trouble for
| wearing an indecent shirt because it made someone
| standing around me angry enough to get rowdy.
| tastroder wrote:
| https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/13460308521369
| 067... "this is a sitting of Westminster Magistrates'
| Court. It is not a trial. The losing side may appeal
| against the DJ's ruling."
|
| Later in the same thread it says they have 14 days to do
| so and already announced they will.
| lawtalkinghuman wrote:
| Either side can appeal in an extradition hearing. There's
| no guarantee that the High Court will grant leave to
| appeal.
|
| If the US seeks to appeal, it'd be under s105 of the
| Extradition Act.
|
| If the appeal is filed and accepted, Assange can be kept
| in remand pending appeal under s107.
|
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41
| nix23 wrote:
| I really don't get it why the UK is even allowed to extradite
| a citizen of Australia to the US. Shame on Australia too for
| not protecting it's citizens.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| Allowed by whom?
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| While I would prefer that Assange not be extradited to the
| USA on the specific circumstances of that case, extradition
| treaties in general seem reasonable?
|
| If a citizen of A commits murder in B and there is credible
| evidence, but the person has fled to C, should C not be
| able to extradite the person to B under any circumstances?
|
| Barring civil rights problems, corruption, etc (e.g., some
| very specific exceptions), it seems in general that we
| should want to allow extradition so that justice can be
| met. No?
| belorn wrote:
| There is a good rule when dealing with government
| enforcement of laws. Everyone must be equally treated
| under the law, it must be safe against misuse, and
| failure by the government must be punished harder than
| the offense itself.
|
| Extradition cases sadly fails all three of those. They
| are extremely selective enforced, there are few
| safeguards, and generally no punishment against officials
| that fails to uphold the few safeguards that exist. The
| whole ordeal is intertwined with diplomatic relations and
| politics of both national and international nature.
| nix23 wrote:
| True it's not a easy question, but for example in
| Switzerland you cannot extradite someone if the
| punishment is harder then in Switzerland, that prevents
| that someone is send to a country with death-sentence,
| let's say for murder. But yeah it's not that easy and
| contracts exist.
| detaro wrote:
| Ban on the death penalty is quite possibly true here too
| (it would have been under EU treaties, I didn't find a
| quick statement how the situation is now exactly).
| syshum wrote:
| The problem with your analogy is the extradition treaties
| extend far beyond the red herring of "surely you want a
| murder to get justice right"
|
| This is not far removed from "Think of the children"
| style rhetoric that is used in the US to pass all kinds
| of oppressive laws and regulations
|
| Everyone can generally agree that having a murderer stand
| trail is a good thing, but what about someone that
| illegal distributes a file to one nation thus committing
| a "crime" in that nation.
|
| What about other less extreme crimes, which is more often
| what extradition treaties are used for, not murder as
| your strawman desires it to be
| simonh wrote:
| That was simply a reply to a specific question asked in
| the previous comment.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| Some countries (France at least I think) have a
| constitutional bar on extradition of citizens from their
| own territory and instead allow citizens to be prosecuted
| domestically for crimes committed abroad (but according
| to the standards of domestic law). This is a logical
| alternative I think although it typically doesn't extend
| to a bar on the extradition of foreigners to either their
| home country or third countries so that system wouldn't
| have helped him here.
| toyg wrote:
| This is not the case with the European Arrest Warrant
| anymore. France only retained the right for the accused
| to spend the eventual sentence in France.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| European Arrest Warrant has a strong protective clause
| and a court that oversees European Justice. (ECHR)
| widforss wrote:
| Do you know what happens if a penalty doesn't exist in
| France? E.g. Sweden cannot sentence people to a 40 years
| prison sentence. Could a German court sentence me to
| something like that and send me home to Sweden for 40
| years?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The European arrest warrant, as other extradition
| agreements have a clause that they only work in cases
| where the offence is a criminal act in both countries. A
| famous recent case is Carles Puigdemont who was arrested
| in Germany by request on the Spanish government for
| "rebellion" but a German court decided that what he did
| (fight for Catalan independence) isn't a criminal offence
| in Germany and that he only could be indighted for misuse
| of public funds.
|
| """On 12 July 2018 the higher court in Schleswig-Holstein
| [Germany] confirmed that Puigdemont could not be
| extradited by the crime of rebellion, but may still be
| extradited based on charges of misuse of public funds.
| Puigdemont's legal team said they would appeal any
| decision to extradite him. Ultimately, though, Spain
| dropped its European arrest warrant, ending the
| extradition attempt. Puigdemont was once again free to
| travel, and chose to return to Belgium."""
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carles_Puigdemont
| qsort wrote:
| It depends on what type of crime you're talking about.
| For common criminals, then sure, but for example, most
| Western countries have laws or constitutional provisions
| against extradition for political offences.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Espionage is 100% a political offence, yet...
|
| A lot of things are political in nature.
|
| But extraditions are mostly issues of diplomacy, not
| justice.
| smichel17 wrote:
| This is my first time thinking through this deeply, so
| I'm open to changing my mind.
|
| > If a citizen of A commits murder in B and there is
| credible evidence, but the person has fled to C, should C
| not be able to extradite the person to B under any
| circumstances?
|
| Perhaps in certain circumstances. But in general, this is
| a dispute between A and B. C should let those two
| countries handle it. I.e., deport the citizen back to A,
| their home country. [edited: s/extradite/deport]
|
| Consider: in many countries, certain forms of speech are
| illegal. I shouldn't need to worry that I may have said
| something illegal in China in order to visit South Korea.
| It's hard enough to learn all the laws in the country I
| am visiting, let alone every country that directly or
| indirectly has an extraction treaty.
|
| The one scenario where I could see this being reasonable
| is within a bloc of countries that have free travel
| between and a somewhat unified set of laws, and only for
| breaking one of those bloc-level laws.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I don't think your ideas are unreasonable, though this
| would have to be governed by any existing treaties, of
| course. In practice, however, I think that, to use your
| example, South Korea will act based on its relationship
| with China rather than your relationship with China. So,
| if KOR agrees with you that free speech is more important
| than how China might react to non-extradition, then KOR
| may not extradite you. However, if KOR thinks that they
| must turn you over to preserve their relationship, then
| they might. Again, all of this is of course hypothetical
| and in the real world should be defined by treaties.
|
| I'll just note that in your example, if C is just trying
| to stay neutral and acting of its own accord, then the
| correct term would be that C would _deport_ the suspect
| to A rather than extradite the suspect to A, unless A is
| seeking extradition in its own right.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Yes, I am totally agreed that the real world is often
| very messy. It's oh-so-easy to say how things _should_
| work when we can conveniently ignore all the other
| complexities of international diplomacy. All of this is
| hypothetical. Including, I am not trying to come to a
| conclusion on Assange in particular, just form opinions
| on how things ought to work -- and from there, of course,
| there _will_ be compromises.
|
| ---
|
| I am imagining a scenario like the UN countries all
| agreeing on a common standard for extradition.
|
| The guiding principle I'm working off of is that if B and
| C share the same law against X, then extradition is
| reasonable. The fuzzy line is where B and C both outlaw
| X, but each have their own laws against it.
|
| On one hand, it is reasonable. If B and C both outlaw
| murder, then C should extradite the murderer, because the
| citizen can't claim ignorance, nor can they claim that
| "murder isn't illegal here in C."
|
| On the other hand, I have trouble seeing how you'd write
| a consistent standard here. Sure, it's easy to equivocate
| premeditated murder across different laws, but what about
| even manslaughter? Then it requires both countries to
| have the same definition of negligence, etc.
|
| So basically, the only form of extradition treaty that
| doesn't seem to pose an unreasonable burden on tourists
| is, "Here is a set of laws that are enforced in both B
| and C. If you break these laws in B and then flee to C
| (or vice versa), you are still under jurisdiction of the
| law you broke, so you may be extradited."
|
| In practice, that might look like CHN and KOR signing a
| treaty that unifies their libel law. Then, if you commit
| libel against someone in CHN while in KOR, you may be
| extradited. This is quite reasonable, since a tourist
| would be expected to learn KOR libel law before
| travelling there.
|
| > I'll just note that in your example, if C is just
| trying to stay neutral and acting of its own accord, then
| the correct term would be that C would deport the suspect
| to A rather than extradite the suspect to A, unless A is
| seeking extradition in its own right.
|
| Thanks, edited.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Did Julian Assange commit his alleged crimes while in the
| US?
|
| This scenario is more like person who's never left B gets
| shipped off to C because he said something C didn't like.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given the action (as I understand it [0]) involved
| communicating with Americans in America, the muder-
| analogy you replied to would be a person from country A,
| living in country B, firing a gun over a border and
| killing someone in country C, surely?
|
| [0] """conspiracy contrary to Title 18 of the US Code
| (the "U.S.C."), section 371. The offence alleged to be
| the object of the conspiracy was computer intrusion
| (Title 18 U.S.C. Section 1030)""" was the actual phrase
| used
| Uberphallus wrote:
| You don't need to be in a country to commit crimes in
| that country. A lot of financial crime wouldn't be a
| prosecuted in that case.
| worik wrote:
| A lot of financial crime does not get prosecuted
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Service related activities are treated a little
| different.
|
| Service is considered to be delivered in the country
| where the service beneficiary is.
|
| That's why financial services cannot be delivered cross
| border, without legal approval in the "destination"
| country.
|
| On the other hand sales of goods is something that
| happens in the seller's country - that's how companies in
| countries without consumer protection can just tell you
| to STFU on thing you bought from them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That seems incorrect, you can be prosecuted in your
| country of origin just fine for stealing from or hacking
| foreigners
| nix23 wrote:
| True, that Country can make a Penalty application and
| your getting prosecuted in your country.
| tw04 wrote:
| We'll set aside for a moment the fact that a country like
| Nigeria hasn't even HAD laws against hacking on their
| books:
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-nigerian-law-means-
| seven-y...
|
| There are countless examples of state sponsored hacking.
| There's no way the actor would be punished in the country
| of origin if their country of origin was not only OK with
| their actions but supporting them. Does that mean whoever
| did it should be free to travel anywhere they want
| without repercussions? You're essentially saying that
| countries are no longer allowed to enforce their laws on
| any foreign citizens... that seems EXTREMELY short
| sighted.
|
| Furthermore, how would the country of origin even
| prosecute when the victim wasn't one of their citizens.
| What are the mental gymnastics to say that your citizens
| can't be prosecuted anywhere but their country of
| origin...b ut the victims have to what? Travel to your
| country to get justice? If a nigerian scammer is caught,
| you expect a US citizen to fly to nigeria on their own
| dime to try make their case?
| buckminster wrote:
| Extradition requires dual criminality. If you can
| extradite you can prosecute the offence locally.
| detaro wrote:
| I don't think that's universally true? E.g. reading the
| judgement here, when evaluating the charges regarding the
| conspiracy to obtain national security documents, does
| not ask "is stealing US national security documents
| against UK law", but rather "if Manning had been a UK
| army member, targeting the UK, would this have been
| against UK law", finding that would be the case and thus
| accepting the conspiracy charges as fulfilling dual
| criminality.
|
| But you couldn't prosecute Assange in the UK for
| conspiracy to steal documents from the US and damage done
| to US national security, but at best for damage done to
| UK national security through that.
|
| (It's possible I am misunderstanding something?)
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What you are arguing is moral myopia.
|
| Countries are sovereign, a Nigerian person living in
| Nigeria is only beholden to laws of Nigeria.
|
| In your world, you can accuse someone who lives in
| Mongolia of a crime that doesn't even exist is Mongolian
| legal system, such as some peculiarities of US copyright
| or packaging of lobsters. You seem to think they should
| be flown to the US to be tried at your convenience to in
| a language they don't speak, in a legal system they don't
| understand at their expense?
|
| You could prosecute him in Australia for hacking in
| whatever form it broke Australian law. How can any non-US
| citizen be held responsible for some vague 'damage to US
| national security' if they have nothing to do with the
| US? Why should a hypothetical person living in Nigeria be
| responsible for US, UK, Russian, Saudi, Israeli and
| everyone else's national security?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| I mean, if I make war on a foreign country, I don't think
| "I'm don't live there" is a valid defense against
| retaliation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Laws and customs of war are not about justice,
| presumption of innocence, due process or fair trial. I
| have no idea why you would compare the two, to me this
| speak to lack of clarity you have on this issue.
|
| An individual can't 'make war', only countries can do
| that.
|
| We are talking about an allegation (not proven!) of a
| crime, highly political in nature to boot, not
| 'retaliation'
| xg15 wrote:
| I agree there a valid cases for such a rule: In a world
| that has global communication and logistics available for
| practically everyone, you can potentially cause a lot of
| harm in a country without ever stepping foot in it.
|
| On the other hand, this is also a very obvious slippery
| slope if now the jurisdiction of any country were to be
| applied globally.
|
| What if a country abuses this to get rid of political
| opponents, to gain an economic advantage or to cover up
| its own crimes? (See e.g. the recent threats from China
| about showing solidarity with the Hong Kong movement even
| outside of China. See the US covering up war crimes.)
|
| What happens if two countries have mutually exclusive
| laws? (e.g. at least for some time, it was a crime in
| Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian genocide while in
| France it was a crime to _not_ acknowledge it)
|
| If we don't want this to devolve simply to "rule of the
| strongest", more detailed rules are needed.
| nix23 wrote:
| That's why you should just make extradition contracts
| with country's that have a fair and ~humane justice
| system.
| zapdrive wrote:
| Bin Laden did not go to the USA to commit his crimes.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| And US presidents have been warm and fuzzy in the White
| House when ordering killing of thousands of completely
| innocent people...
|
| So you can stop with the "justice angle" on that one.
| nix23 wrote:
| Bin Laden had no court hearing. He was killed by a
| special commando. It really surprises me that anyone
| thinks that this has something todo with justice.
|
| BTW: No saying it's right or wrong, but it's definitely
| something else than justice or a Curt-order.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Well, Obama claimed he sent in a team to kill him and
| dump his body in the ocean, during an election year, even
| though the French intelligence agencies said he was
| probably dead for at least 7 years. That seal team also
| died in a helicopter crash later, but it wasn't "the same
| seal team."
|
| Honestly I don't understand how Americans still trust our
| news sources today.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > French intelligence agencies said he was probably dead
| for at least 7 years
|
| All I have been able to find was 1 French newspaper
| publishing what it claimed was a French intelligence
| report that simply noted that Saudi intelligence agencies
| believe bin Laden had died in 2006. The report seems to
| have been immediately noted by the French president as
| not being confirmed. Furhtermore, in 2010 a recording of
| bin Laden threatening France was confirmed as genuine by
| the French Foreign Ministry, showing that French
| intelligence services still considered it at least
| possible that he was still alive.
| [deleted]
| nix23 wrote:
| >dump his body in the ocean
|
| Yeah that's a bit crazy if you ask me.
| [deleted]
| djsumdog wrote:
| Crazy? That's literally what they did.
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/05/osama-bin-
| laden-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The post was claiming that the raid never happened and
| articles like the one you read are propaganda.
| acct776 wrote:
| Succinct..agreed.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It would seem more logical for the person to be
| extradited from C to A, and then A to B.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because Julian Assange was on UK territory, not Australian.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yes and? Australia should have asked the UK that he is
| extradited to them (and prosecuted under Australian Law)
| and not to a third party (with a possible death
| sentence).
|
| Espionage:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_U
| nit...
| microtherion wrote:
| That's not how extradition works, ever. Yes, many
| countries have extra protections against extraditing
| their own citizens, but those only apply while those
| citizens reside there.
|
| Otherwise there would be a booming naturalization
| business for some less-scrupulous nations.
| nix23 wrote:
| In France it often does, and in other country's too, like
| a trade...China and the US trade allot of "bad boys".
|
| >some less-scrupulous nations
|
| Like the US, where you can buy your "out of prison" Card?
| microtherion wrote:
| Do you have an example of country A asking France for
| permission before extraditing a French citizen who was
| not wanted for crimes in France to country B?
| nix23 wrote:
| It's written in German, a bit different and even more
| complex:
|
| https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/auslieferungs-gesuch/2803478
|
| Argentina asked Switzerland to extradite Jean Bernard
| Lasnaud for smuggling Weapons to Ecuador and Croatia
| (he's French), and why Argentinia? Because the former
| President Carlos Menem and other Politicians where
| involved in it.
|
| As an example, France would ask A if he can extradited to
| France and prosecuted there, even when let's say the
| crime was in Country B. The US did something like that
| with Otto Warmbier:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier
|
| That whole thing is often not National or International
| Law but Diplomatic (especially with someone like Assange)
| microtherion wrote:
| > Argentina asked Switzerland to extradite Jean Bernard
| Lasnaud
|
| That's Argentina asking Switzerland to extradite a French
| citizen to Argentina for crimes committed under
| Argentinian law. The article does not say that France was
| asked for their opinion or permission.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier
|
| That's the US asking North Korea to release a US citizen
| jailed there for a crime against North Korean law.
| Extradition does not enter the picture at all.
| NewLogic wrote:
| As an Aussie, sadly our politicians are a bunch of
| cowards.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Far cry from just years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYbY45rHj8w
| jand wrote:
| [deleted]
| DanBC wrote:
| This is incoherent.
|
| How would this work in the context of English courts?
| Closi wrote:
| You might be able to argue that Assange crossed the line
| between "journalism" and "hacking", for example when he
| attempted to assist with cracking a hash.
|
| The UK has other history about journalists hacking (see the
| phone hacking scandal).
|
| It's one thing to receive the contents of a hack, and quite
| another to offer active assistance to exploit systems.
| agd wrote:
| I'm not convinced by your implied equivalence of, on the
| one hand, phone hacking celebrities and murder victims to
| generate tabloid clickbait, and on the other, helping
| protect an intelligence source whose leaked material shows
| human rights abuses and the death of innocent civilians.
| Closi wrote:
| Unfortunately the law usually legislates against acts
| rather than outcomes.
|
| Additionally in the eyes of the law, hacking a celebrity
| does not bring a higher punishment than hacking a nation
| state, despite its good intentions and the public
| interest of the released information.
|
| And he isn't accused of "helping to protect an
| intelligence source", because that's not a crime. One
| claim raised by the prosecution is that Assange was sent
| hashes and ran them against a rainbow table in an attempt
| to provide assistance to manning in order to grant
| further access to confidential government systems.
|
| If this claim is true or not, we don't know because it
| hasn't gone to court yet, but the accusation is more than
| "just protecting a source".
|
| And personally I think there _should_ be an exception to
| releasing documents that show government wrongdoing which
| means it isn 't illegal - however this is not codified in
| law.
| pydry wrote:
| If he hacked a celebrity's account and used it to uncover
| a killing spree by said celebrity it might be equivalent.
|
| And, no doubt the celebrity's supporters would argue that
| he'd crossed the line from journalism to hacking as well.
|
| If Assange were a Russian holed up in Belarus being
| extradited to Russia for uncovering Russian war crimes by
| cracking password hashes I really wonder how many people
| here would still be arguing that he "crossed the line".
|
| My guess is precisely zero, and any Russians who did so
| would be mocked and accused of being shills.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Some people are still into the idea of "national unity"
| and "collective insult" things.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| You're certainly right that there are other charges
| related to Assange's crimes.
| e12e wrote:
| > when he attempted to assist with cracking a hash
|
| Was it ever proved that he did? There was some non-
| committal talk quoted, but nothing beyond that?
|
| You also say "for example" - are there any other credible
| allegations that Assange "crossed the line"?
| pera wrote:
| > Was it ever proved that he did?
|
| No, which is why in the judgment every reference to a
| supposed attempt of "cracking a hash" is preceded by
| "alleged".
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This is a little bit disingenuous.
|
| There is no proven accusation because Assange hasn't gone
| to trial, which is the part of the process where that
| standard applies.
|
| The credible allegation part is the indictment handed
| down from a federal grand jury; this is the 'probable
| cause' standard.
| e12e wrote:
| I should've worded that differently - we obviously do not
| expect accusations to be proven before a trial.
|
| What I meant was rather: has there been made any
| credible/sensible accusation for him being involved in
| hacking? Because while the drivel made it through the
| grand jury, it's still a vague answer without any
| allegations of follow-up. Could I help you crack a
| password hash? Sure, maybe I could. Am I now conspiring
| to hack into a military network? I rather think not. And
| that's even though you have my offer in writing.
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| That was, in fact, the judgement of the court in this case;
| that he allegedly participated in the alleged crime and did
| not just receive the data resulting from it.
|
| edit: added 'allegedly' as his guilt or innocence is not
| evaluated
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| This was coverered in point #117 in the summary. N.B. I
| should have said 'allegedly participated in the alleged
| crime'.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If you imagine Assange's "hacking" taking place with
| physical objects, the charge looks ridiculous.
|
| In short, Manning told Assange she could access a military
| filing cabinet, and was going to go remove all the
| documents in them to leak to Assange. Before leaving, she
| asked Assange if he had some gloves to hide her
| fingerprints. He said he'd check, and Manning left to grab
| the documents.
|
| Would you consider Assange's actions there to cross the
| line of journalism?
| africanboy wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The journalist in your example should not be accessory to
| a crime.
|
| If Manning asked for gloves to hide her fingerprints,
| Assange should have answered "send me the documents when
| you have them, but I can't help you hiding your
| fingerprints"
|
| If you imagine the hack being another crime, maybe it's
| clearer.
|
| Imagine Manning told Assange she could get the files but
| in order to get them she had to kill the guards at the
| door and asked Assange if he had a gun.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'she had to kill the guards at the door' .
|
| Why stop there, while we are at it, imagine she had to
| commit a terrorist attack and a genocide at once and
| Assange volunteered to help
| africanboy wrote:
| A crime is a crime, justice doesn't care.
|
| A journalist should not be accessory to a crime when
| receiving infornations.
|
| I made that example to make it clearer, but if you don't
| like it I can make another one: to get the documents she
| needed to open the door, so she Asked Assange if he had a
| crowbar.
|
| The simple fact that he didn't say "no, I can't help you
| with that" is the problem.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >crime is a crime, justice doesn't care.
|
| Which is why all the war crimes detailed in Manning's
| leaks have been prosecuted with the criminals behind
| bars.
|
| Further, a crime isn't just a crime. A journalist
| attempting to protect their source is an essential part
| of their freedom of the press. Prosecuting them for that
| action infringes on their rights, making it
| unconstitutional. Even if you disagree with my assessment
| of Assange's actions, it should be clear that justice
| does care about the context.
| africanboy wrote:
| > Further, a crime isn't just a crime. A journalist
| attempting to protect their source is an essential part
| of their freedom of the press
|
| What Assange is accused of is not that.
|
| > Even if you disagree with my assessment of Assange's
| actions, it should be clear that justice does care about
| the context.
|
| It doesn't.
|
| Protecting a source is not a crime, hence a journalist
| cannot be prosecuted for that.
|
| Nobody is forced to reveal a criminal activity, people
| have the right to remain silent.
|
| Another thing entirely is if someone actively
| participated in committing the crime (for example helping
| a thief to hide their fingerprints)
|
| Also, I don't believe Assange should be extradited, but
| from a legal point it doesn't matter if he looked for
| gloves because Manning wanted to hide her fingerprints or
| a gun, if (and it's a big if) he said "I'll help you"
| that's a problem.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Assange is accused of basically running hashcat. I am
| sure that a fair percentage of HN would be criminals
| under this logic.
| africanboy wrote:
| I'm very sad to say this, but HN as a Place to discuss is
| not up to the standards people say it is.
|
| I'm being downvoted for basically stating the obvious
| and, worse than that, by people that do not stop a second
| to think about what other people wrote.
|
| I'm not putting Assange on trial, I'm not a judge, this
| is not a tribunal, I was just clarifying what he's been
| accused of!
|
| Having said that: yes, if you are the driver in a Bank
| robbery, you can get arrested for "basically driving a
| car"
|
| The crime is not driving, is helping other criminals to
| commit the crime.
|
| Which is what Assange is accused of. He's not accused of
| running hashcat.
|
| Even if he did the decryption with pen and paper and
| failed he would be an "accessory to the crime"
| (allegedly, because he's only accused of doing it)
|
| To put it in other words, he is accused of being
|
| > _a person who knowingly and voluntarily participates in
| the commission of a crime._
|
| Regardless of the crime, the simple fact that he
| (allegedly) helped is a crime.
| Talanes wrote:
| >I'm being downvoted for basically stating the obvious
|
| Because "stating the obvious" is rarely a productive mode
| of discussion. People are trying to discuss the nuance of
| the topic, but you have a very hard-lined view that
| leaves little room to actually discuss anything.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Sure but I don't know how this is relevant to what I
| said.
|
| > Having said that: yes, if you are the driver in a Bank
| robbery, you can get arrested for "basically driving a
| car"
|
| Driving in a bank robbery is different to basically just
| doing some calculations. It might be a crime but it
| should not be one. Regardless though I would claim that
| even if he tried to physically get into buildings and
| steal documents in order to expose warcrimes I would say
| that they should let him free.
| detaro wrote:
| I doubt a fair percentage of HN has used hashcat to break
| passwords to attempt to steal US government documents.
| The tool is not the point of the charge.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I don't want to try and change your opinion on Assange's
| actions, many journalist have said the "I'll help" you
| see as a problem is a routine procedure, but you clearly
| disagree.
|
| A crime still isn't just a crime though. A less ambiguous
| example, unauthorized possession's of classified
| information is a crime, yet no journalist has been
| charged for it.
| africanboy wrote:
| I'm honestly expressing no opinion on Assange's actions.
|
| "I'll help" is not a problem, if they are not helping
| someone to commit a crime (clarification: when I say
| "it's a problem" I mean it's a problem for whoever says
| "I'll help" because they are being accessory to a crime).
|
| What routinely escapes from the prosecution of the law is
| irrelevant.
|
| The fact that I have downloaded copyrighted material
| without any consequence doesn't make it legal.
|
| A crime is a crime by the law, the court has to decide if
| you either committed it or not (regardless if you did it
| for real, if the court can prove you did it, you did it).
|
| That doesn't mean that killing a baby and downloading an
| episode of a TV show illegally is the same thing, it
| means that if I helped you to download the content and
| you are accused of downloading that content and the court
| can prove it, I am accessory to the crime even if people
| routinely get by.
|
| > unauthorized possession's of classified information is
| a crime
|
| Are you referring to this?
|
| > _Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or
| consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his
| office, employment, position, or contract, becomes
| possessed of documents or materials containing classified
| information of the United States, knowingly removes such
| documents or materials without authority and with the
| intent to retain such documents or materials at an
| unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or
| imprisoned for not more than five years, or both._
|
| What journalists do is not retain them, it's publish
| them, which AFAIK is not illegal.
| Talanes wrote:
| >What journalists do is not retain them, it's publish
| them, which AFAIK is not illegal.
|
| Unless you are just immediately releasing all documents
| you receive unedited, you will have to retain them for a
| period first.
|
| Would a journalist raided the second before he could
| click publish be committing a crime, while a second later
| he would not be committing a crime and have never been
| committing a crime.
| Closi wrote:
| Don't get too downhearted by the downvotes.
|
| I get the feeling people in this thread are getting mixed
| up between the difference of _what people think is right
| or should be right_ and what the _courts and laws say_.
|
| I think Assange was a hero. At the same time, the claim
| that he tried to help crack a US military hash to assist
| with extracting files does sound pretty illegal on the
| face of it, despite its good intentions and positive
| outcomes for truth and journalism.
|
| Just because you did good by breaking the law, or that
| you broke the law in the name of journalism, doesn't
| provide you protection from the courts in the eyes of the
| law (And particularly not at a magistrates court!).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The statement is factually false, the reason we have
| judges is to consider individual circumstances and to
| make the tradeoffs between conflicting rights and laws.
| Cutting a person open without their consent could be
| murder or a lifesaving surgery depending on context.
| Breaking and entering is justified if you did it to save
| a child out of a burning building, breaking someone's
| bones is OK if it happens during CPR (varies by country).
|
| Your right to privacy conflicts with the State's desire
| for surveillance, your right for self-defence can clear
| your of charges of manslaughter, and depending on exact
| circumstances the judge will decide if your actions were
| justified or if you belong in jail.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Is he a journalist or an intelligence asset? In my mind,
| he can't be both. Once you pick a side, you lose the
| right to press protection.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| How scandalous, he hacked someone... Of course that is far
| worse than killing hundreds of thousands of people in the
| middle east which he put the finger on.
|
| Hacking and computer sabotage.... really? You call that
| justice? It is not and the UK jurisdiction remains a joke.
| A posh joke, but a joke nonetheless.
|
| Please... as if there would have been alternative to
| leaking hunan rights violations.
| Closi wrote:
| Unfortunately nowhere in the law does it state "you can
| break any law if it helps human rights causes".
|
| I fully support Assange FYI, but at the same time I think
| he _possibly_ broke laws while doing his (incredibly
| important) work, or at least there would be enough
| ambiguity around law to bring a case to the crown court
| (remember this is the magistrates).
| raxxorrax wrote:
| But a judiciary should be careful to synchronize laws and
| justice to the best degree possible. Otherwise they end
| up as the joke that they are. There is room to the bottom
| of course, but I don't think trust is available in excess
| in western nations.
| frereubu wrote:
| > Of course that is far worse than killing hundreds of
| thousands of people in the middle east which he put the
| finger on.
|
| > as if there would have been alternative to leaking
| hunan rights violations.
|
| The comment you're responding to did not make either of
| these claims.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| It is a magistrate court judgment, so as a precedent, it only
| has persuasive authority at best (or at worst, depending on
| your perspective) when deciding future cases.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm more worried about why the judge acted like this in the
| first place.
| croes wrote:
| The ruling has nothing to do with freedom of expression. If the
| judge wouldn't think Assange is suicidal, he would be
| extradicted.
| jonny383 wrote:
| Time for Australia to step up and own this one. Take your citizen
| home.
| docdeek wrote:
| Would that solve anything? Surely the US could seek extradition
| from Australia if he returned there?
| jonny383 wrote:
| Given the ruling, probably the best outcome for his mental
| health.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Arguably the safest place for him is Russia
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Is this a reference to Snowden?
| microtherion wrote:
| With a nice cup of tea, served to him by Putin personally,
| presumably...
| mhh__ wrote:
| No reason to do it, he's been useful to them and will
| remain useful to them alive.
| rory_isAdonk wrote:
| No way, let the lad go to France. He'll be protected there.
| niea_11 wrote:
| Asasnge is not a french citizen, so France will refuse to
| extradite him for the same reasons as the UK : health
| problems.
|
| _The extradition treaty between France and the United States
| allows France to deny extradition when the extradited party
| faces serious consequences related to health or age._ https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mastro#Attempted_extra...
| rory_isAdonk wrote:
| A French minister has called for him to be given asylum.
| niea_11 wrote:
| If you're talking about Marine Le Pen, she's not a french
| minister (as in government minister, she's (or was) a
| member of the european parliament)
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/video/20190412-wikileaks-
| fouder-...
|
| The last public stance of the french government (that I
| could find) on the matter was that they don't "offer
| asylum to someone who's not asking for it"
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/julian-
| assan...
|
| And he made a request in 2015 but was denied.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-assange/france-
| rej...
|
| Plus, I'm not sure if he qualifies for the status of
| refugee (asylum seeker) as defined here : https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...
|
| _As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951
| and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for
| reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
| particular social group or political opinion, is outside
| the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to
| such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the
| protection of that country; or who, not having a
| nationality and being outside the country of his former
| habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable
| or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it._
|
| From the US point view at least (and the UK according to
| the latest judgment), he's being extradited for a _crime_
| not a political opinion.
| fdeage wrote:
| I think the parent was referring to M. Eric Dupond-
| Moretti, who, a few months before becoming France's
| current Garde des Sceaux (Minister of Justice), joined
| the Assange defense team [0] and sent Macron an asylum
| request for Assange [1].
|
| [0] https://www.europe1.fr/international/eric-dupond-
| moretti-va-...
|
| [1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/faits-
| divers/affaire/assange/eri...
|
| The irony is that, now that he belongs to Macron's
| government, he seems not to be allowed to issue asylum
| requests :/
| ostenning wrote:
| What I learnt over the past year is that Australia doesn't
| really care about it's citizens abroad.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| The CCP has a strong influence on AU: I fear AU law more than
| US law.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Well, I think that's generally more to do with the particular
| political party in power than anything, but unfortunately on
| Assange both sides have been rubbish. Only a few Greens and
| Andrew Wilkie are really pushing for him in Parliament...
| djhaskin987 wrote:
| I find it interesting that on nearly the last page we see that
| the defense argued that it was an abuse of power of the courts to
| deny extradition. I wonder how happy he will be rotting in a UK
| prison instead of a US one.
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