Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#341

Post by hilbertseries » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #339

rayiner wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I parse things the way you do. Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. If he was not only the distributor of classified material, but actively participated in expropriating it, he’s on the wrong side of the law. Folks had been willing to overlook that, because they viewed him as sympathetic. But he’s undermined that with his connections to Russ…

> Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. 1 out of the 18+ charges brought against him are for that. It's also a minor crime that would carry a 5 year penalty, which is hardly worth all this effort. The other 170 years of charges related to violations of the espionage act, and it's not at all clear that they would even apply to Assange who is not a U.S. cit…

> How so? Did he actively seek out Russian documents so he could release them?

Julian Assange hosted a show on RT, he was literally on the payroll of the Russian government. Also suspicious is that Wikileaks basically has only leaked documents that look bad for western democracy. There’s one leak of critical of Russia, but it has basically nothing of substance in it. When you claim to be for radical transparency and work for the country that regularly has reporters murdered, it strains belief.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#342

Post by andrewprock » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

jonnycomputer wrote: post #100

woah wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only think that journalists you agree with politically should be able to have free speech and practice journalism?

Non-sequitur. It is a non-sequitur because I was not expressing an opinion of the trial but of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. My post was a response to the parent post which expressed angst that no-one was supporting Julian Assange and Wikileaks; and I was stating my opinion about Assange's actions. I knew full well that a whole bunch of fanboys would start downvoting the hell out of me, or posting irrelevant response…

> Non-sequitur. It is a non-sequitur because I was not expressing an opinion of the trial but of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. My post was a response to the parent post which expressed angst that no-one was supporting Julian Assange and Wikileaks; and I was stating my opinion about Assange's actions. I knew full well that a whole bunch of fanboys would start downvoting the hell out of me, or posting irrelevant responses, like your own. Because that's what they do.

Since the article is about trial monitoring, it seems that your views about WikiLeaks may be the larger non sequitur.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#343

Post by vkou » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #300

chrisseaton wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state? ‘Country’ is an informal term. ‘Nation state’ is weirdly specific and doesn’t even apply!

>Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state? What would you use to refer to UK then? Because if Scotland is a country, and Scotland is a part of UK, that feels kinda weird to call an entity composed of multiple countries a country.

A group of united nation-states of the British isles.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#344

Post by boomboomsubban » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #341

akira2501 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. 1 out of the 18+ charges brought against him are for that. It's also a minor crime that would carry a 5 year penalty, which is hardly worth all this effort. The other 170 years of charges related to violations of the espionage act, and it's not at all clear that they would even apply to Assange who is not a U.S. cit…

> How so? Did he actively seek out Russian documents so he could release them? Julian Assange hosted a show on RT, he was literally on the payroll of the Russian government. Also suspicious is that Wikileaks basically has only leaked documents that look bad for western democracy. There’s one leak of critical of Russia, but it has basically nothing of substance in it. When you claim to be for radical transparency and…

>Julian Assange hosted a show on RT, he was literally on the payroll of the Russian governmen

Assange made a show and sold broadcast rights to RT. Small but distinct difference in that he was never under pressure to follow what Russia wanted, they just wanted to broadcast his point of biew.

>There’s one leak of critical of Russia, but it has basically nothing of substance in it.

Why would anyone with information damaging to Russia choose to leak data to a primarily English organization, with no Russian speaking employees, and mainly Western readers?

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#345

Post by linuxftw » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #340

Fjolsvith wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its too bad that a jury cannot be expected to determine Assange's innocence at trial.

Meh, let the jury determine if his conduct was illegal. Unless America is a fascist country where we don't have juries, of course.

There are no juries in Guantanamo bay. Assange will likely receive treatment as an enemy combatant. We'll hold him indefinitely with no due process.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#346

Post by vkou » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #107

cassepipe wrote: post #31

I am baffled to see that the majority of the comments here are at best showing no support for what Assange did and at worst are trying to find excuses not to be disturbed in their belief that since we are in a democracy hence everything that's happening is normal. I thought the people here had a sharper political view on what kind of society we could/should live in but I just read people that are always in a hurry to…

I know that talking about propaganda and shills on HN is frowned upon, but it seems relevant to this discussion. I believe that the negative opinions of Assange mostly consist of either propaganda by sock puppets, people that heard this propaganda and repeated themselves, or a bit of both. Assange was held in high esteem by the public until they finally got a foothold on how to bury him. Intelligence agencies and the…

> I know that talking about propaganda and shills on HN is frowned upon, but it seems relevant to this discussion. I believe that the negative opinions of Assange mostly consist of either propaganda by sock puppets, people that heard this propaganda and repeated themselves, or a bit of both.

I have no issue with Wikileaks, and frankly, don't care whether or not they are being funded by Joe Bob, Putin, or the Antichrist.

Assange, however, is a somewhat unpleasant individual, and the allegations against him (the hacking conspiracy) have teeth.

It's rather telling that most of the posts in his defense in this thread believe that his means should not be criminal, because his ends justified them.

Yes, that appeals to a rather popular understanding of justice. But no, that's not how the law works. No, the law isn't fair.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#347

Post by roenxi » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #207

cmiles74 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Department of Justice issued a press release in June that tries to summarize the charges in the superseding indictment.[0] For most of the document it's hard to tell what is part of the idictment and what may be simply a recap of other things the US DOJ believes he may have done. In regards to Chelsea Manning, that bit is quite short: "In addition, the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assa…

Here is the superseding indictment itself: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl... Assange is alleged to have actively recruited hackers and directed them to find particular information from particular sources. Among other things, agreed to assist Manning in deriving a password from a hash file. (It is irrelevant whether he succeeded or not—the crime of conspiracy is complete upon taking the f…

I suppose as a starter, can we redefine journalist to be more of that? Wikileaks is a rare source of information that is both international and relevant to me; more news like that would be very welcome.

Secondly > It is irrelevant whether he succeeded or not...

I mean, that is sort of the complaint. He annoyed powerful people doing something that isn't a crime (the leaking) and then they're combing through hitting him with random charges that nobody cares about. We haven't been watching an 8 year circus because of a failed password crack. None of the response is proportionate to that bullshit crime. They've made everything around leaking illegal so they have fig-leaf excuses to prosecute whistleblowers and journalists.

Furthermore, the security apparatus could probably just make something up if there were no crimes. They've lied to everyone else, why not the UK justice system?

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#348

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #175

LatteLazy wrote: post #85

I feel like the powers that be have decided to make this extradition happen. Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him. Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" a…

I’m not sure I parse things the way you do. Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. If he was not only the distributor of classified material, but actively participated in expropriating it, he’s on the wrong side of the law. Folks had been willing to overlook that, because they viewed him as sympathetic. But he’s undermined that with his connections to Russ…

> “ Assange is accused of going beyond leaking into assisting Chelsea Manning get pass security systems. If he was not only the distributor of classified material, but actively participated in expropriating it, he’s on the wrong side of the law.”

This is not actually true for whistleblowing. Manning’s conviction was an illegal conviction given that the exfiltrated evidence unequivocally shows criminal murder, among other crimes, on behalf of the United States.

It is not theft or illegal access or possession if it is indeed whistleblowing. You’d have to prove that the criminal murder was not in fact criminal before any action taken to exfiltrate it can be considered a crime.

On top of all this, there is no evidence that Assange illegally exfiltrated it. It is illegal for charges to be brought based on the available evidence.

Of course, the fact the charges are illegal or that the conviction was illegal in Manning’s case unfortunately doesn’t matter in the United States where political actors will go unpunished for perpetrating such crimes.

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#349

Post by jonnycomputer » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

andrewprock wrote: post #342

jonnycomputer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-sequitur. It is a non-sequitur because I was not expressing an opinion of the trial but of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. My post was a response to the parent post which expressed angst that no-one was supporting Julian Assange and Wikileaks; and I was stating my opinion about Assange's actions. I knew full well that a whole bunch of fanboys would start downvoting the hell out of me, or posting irrelevant response…

> Non-sequitur. It is a non-sequitur because I was not expressing an opinion of the trial but of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. My post was a response to the parent post which expressed angst that no-one was supporting Julian Assange and Wikileaks; and I was stating my opinion about Assange's actions. I knew full well that a whole bunch of fanboys would start downvoting the hell out of me, or posting irrelevant respon…

I was posting a reply to a comment complaining about the lack of support for Assange on this list. here is a link to the comment I replied to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24543604

"I am baffled to see that the majority of the comments here are at best showing no support for what Assange did ..."

Re: Why are Amnesty International monitors not able to observe the Assange hearing?

#350

Post by jonnycomputer » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #134

jonnycomputer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not have a good opinion of Julian Assange or of Wikileaks, and I am not afraid to say it. At best it has been an unwitting tool of Russian disinformation campaigns; just as likely it is complicit. One must also wonder why Assange spends so much time talking to folks like Sean Hannity, Dana Rohrbacher, and Charles C. Johnson. https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/09/19/wherein-wikileaks-brag...

> At best it has been an unwitting tool of Russian disinformation campaigns; just as likely it is complicit. Aaaand there’s your reason, grandparent poster. Once the media started floating out rumors of WikiLeaks helping Orange Man, he lost all his fans on the left.

Read the Mueller report.