Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Assange in Court

craigmurray.org.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 173 posts

Re: Assange in Court

#131

Post by oliwarner »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #121
FireBeyond wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a process crime than doing anything material. Allegedly actively assisting a US military member to a) crack other military passwords, and b) work with them on covering said attempts is a mere "flimsy pretext, [not] material"?

Telling someone to Google a publicly available tool is hardly assisting in any criminal way

And if he stopped resisting, he'd have the opportunity to test that view in a court.

Re: Assange in Court

#132

Post by oliwarner »

roenxi wrote: post #87
oliwarner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Innocent until proven guilty And for that to hold, you have to let him be tried. Justice isn't automatic. But people (maybe not you) seem far too quick to start muddying up the due process. It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that. From here, it seems perfectly plausible that he actively helped Manning leak. If the US have evidence to that end, they have a case. Can we just let that case be hear…

> It seems that if he is found guilty, nobody will accept that. It depends what they find him guilty of and what the sentence is. It is unacceptable to have someone on trial for openly telling the truth about what a foreign country is doing. He went into the Ecuadorian embassy saying that the Swedish case against him was basically trumped up and that he was going to be extradited to the United States. His justificati…

Well it seems there's always something else. He's a journalist. He's committed a political crime and that rules out extradition. He's being targeted by a state entity so this isn't fair. The only crime he may have committed is only a minor felony. He probably didn't know that it was a minor felony. Sweden weren't going to treat him fairly. She was a CIA plant. Uruguay didn't treat him fairly. The US won't treat him fairly. They'll torture and execute him.

All I've seen is a man dodging the law, over and over and over again, exploiting means and influence that most people could only dream of, while those friends point out the toll this self-inflicted purgatory is having on him as another form of "this isn't fair!" excuse.

It's all tosh. Negotiate your extradition, get to court, get this sorted. The time he takes to get there is all on him.

Re: Assange in Court

#133

Post by matthewheath »

ur-whale wrote: post #129
matthewheath wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is illegal to record proceedings in a court within the UK under S41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 (no photography or drawings) and S9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (no sound recordings or public playing of recordings). Courts may choose to televise their own proceedings (for example, the Supreme Court in the UK televises its hearings) but they are not obliged to. This happens under S32 of the Crime and Cour…

Wow. I didn't know that. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. I thought England self-styled itself a "democracy", but it looks like putting together kangaroo courts is ridiculously easy over there.

Respectfully, I disagree. This case was heard by a magistrate, the "Tier 1" of the judicial system. There are multiple levels of appeal available after the initial hearing is concluded.

Magistrates in this scenario (dealing with extradition matters) sit alone so yes, it is theoretically possible to have a "kangaroo court" at first instance, however if the judge was unreasonable or erred in law or fact, it would be swiftly corrected by the High Court (Queen's Bench Division - Criminal) or the Supreme Court by way of appeal.

These two courts sit as a panel. The High Court typically has three judges on the bench, while the Supreme Court has 11. It is theoretically easy to influence a single judge; it is much harder to inappropriately influence three or 11 to get a majority verdict in your favour.

There are no suggestions that the judge here was improperly influenced and if they were, they would be subject to disciplinary proceedings by the Office for Judicial Conduct. It goes without saying that the case would also be ruled a mistrial and another judge would handle it all over again.

As a future British lawyer, I don't see what filming the proceedings would bring to the judicial system in terms of legitimacy.

Court transcripts are publicly available, anyone can come to the hearings (unless it's a closed session which is rare) and report on the events. Justice is seen to be done, and filming appears largely inappropriate for the vast majority of cases proceeding through the judicial system in my opinion.

Re: Assange in Court

#134

Post by Nicksil »

thefounder wrote: post #88
sschueller wrote: post #21

There is a double standard. I doubt that the wife of the US diplomat will ever be extradited to the UK after killing a UK citizens. [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-usa-crash-parents...

Well is not the first time a US citizen kills an european one in an accident and gets away with it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter

Non-mobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teo_Peter

Re: Assange in Court

#135

Post by FireBeyond »

roenxi wrote: post #104
FireBeyond wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is reaching out and nabbing him on the flimsiest of pretexts; more a process crime than doing anything material. Allegedly actively assisting a US military member to a) crack other military passwords, and b) work with them on covering said attempts is a mere "flimsy pretext, [not] material"?

Maybe you feel that is worth thousands to millions of dollars spent hunting down a man for 10 years. I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality and it is highly likely that something else would have been fabricated if they didn't have that as an excuse. From memory he didn't even succeed on the password front. The 'crime' here is an incidental non-issue compared to why the US has been hounding…

> I doubt Assange would have been aware of that sort of technicality

Wait, elsewhere, and repeatedly, it's been noted just how intelligent Assange is, and (hence) how out of character the disheveled, slow person who appeared in court is. And I have zero doubt - he has repeatedly showed in interviews that for whatever potential personality flaws he may have, or personal opinion of him, he is, indeed, very well educated, intelligent, and smart.

So this? Fails the smell test. Fails the reasonable person test.

Someone as intelligent that - you believe it is "doubt[ful]" that he would be aware that aiding an active US military personnel in cracking passwords for accounts on classified systems, and encouraging them to use/try other credentials for covering tracks on the access of classified documents and their removal from external systems... it's doubtful that he would realize that that was possibly going to be viewed as a serious crime by the US?

I don't buy _that_ for a moment - throughout those chat logs there is multiple references to covering tracks, to covering bases on how to act, react, what to say or do when questioned, etc. - that is not someone who is blissfully unaware of the crime which they are (allegedly) committing, or aiding and abetting.

Re: Assange in Court

#136

Post by rimliu »

peltier wrote: post #105
rimliu wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strong argument.

Against what exactly? 0 evidence and what i suspect is from the same source that said tulsi gubbard was a Russian asset? The unverifiable bullshit that Americans eat like its kosher. Jesus fucking christ is all i got to that ridicilous propganda. If you need to think of him as a Russian operative for you to live with the treatment hes getting, so be it. Im done.

Russian tool is not the same as a Russian operative. All you need to publish stuff that makes US look bad and withhold the information that makes Russia bad. And maybe manipulate some stuff to make it more dramatic.

Re: Assange in Court

#138

Post by rimliu »

ndury wrote: post #111
rimliu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He will be forgotten in ten years. And for a good reason.

The founder of wiki leaks forgotten in ten years? With all due respect but the chances of that happening are quite slim.. Julian Assange will end up in multiple history books whether you like it or not.

Well, history books are full of shitty humans, so maybe you are right.

Re: Assange in Court

#139

Post by enriquto »

rimliu wrote: post #136
peltier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against what exactly? 0 evidence and what i suspect is from the same source that said tulsi gubbard was a Russian asset? The unverifiable bullshit that Americans eat like its kosher. Jesus fucking christ is all i got to that ridicilous propganda. If you need to think of him as a Russian operative for you to live with the treatment hes getting, so be it. Im done.

Russian tool is not the same as a Russian operative. All you need to publish stuff that makes US look bad and withhold the information that makes Russia bad. And maybe manipulate some stuff to make it more dramatic.

according to this argument, anyone whose main activiy consists in criticizing the US, is a Russian tool. Alright, then.

Re: Assange in Court

#140

Post by ben_w »

roenxi wrote: post #97
ben_w wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was in the UK when he was arrested for extradition to Sweden. He was in the UK [1] when he was arrested for extradition to the USA. As I have said before, the very fact that the USA is having essentially zero difficulty with extraditing him from the UK even thought the rape case preceded the USA case and is ongoing and is nearly facing the statute of limitations demonstrates that his claim “going to Sweden will ca…

> demonstrates that his claim “going to Sweden will cause me to be face the death penalty in the USA” is bogus Doesn't matter; what matters is what Assange thought would happen. He clearly thought that if he left the Embassy he would be promptly sent to the US. And lo and behold, it is shaping up that he was right. Did he know the exact legal mechanisms that would be employed - apparently not. But his overall read of…

It most certainly does matter, as he only went into that embassy in the first place to avoid going to Sweden. He would have been at least as safe in Sweden as in the UK, even if convicted.
Post reply on HN