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?

#361

Post by YawningAngel » Mon, Sep 21, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

square_usual wrote: post #7

This makes me feel incredibly cynical. I genuinely want to know: would it matter if they did get to observe? I'm sure Amnesty has reported on tonnes of US/UK crimes and human rights violations, and a quick google search shows many such reports. How many of those actually changed anything? Sure, when Amnesty reports on, say, Syria, the US could use that as justification for intervention, but what use is reporting on t…

As a citizen of the UK, I would like to be able to reassure myself of my government's good faith and just conduct in this matter. I'm sure some of my fellows feel the same way.

The fact that this hearing looks crooked as all hell is concerning to me and will inform my politics to some extent.

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

#362

Post by sudoaza » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

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…

Judge also has conflict of interest and ties to the intelligence community.

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

#363

Post by Canada » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 12:28 AM 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…

The allegation is made in paragraph 26 of the first section of the document you linked to. The conversation I understand this allegation relies on is on page 6 & 10 here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html

Manning is the one who passed the hash, not Assange. If it even is a hash, Manning is unsure. Assange never agreed to crack the password. There is no evidence Assange communicated the alleged hash to anyone else let alone attempted to crack it. A couple of days later Assange asks manning about it again, and there's no response. Assange never inquires about how Manning got this 16 byte value, nor does he offer any instructions on how to extract password hashes.

If this had been a chat log from a legal pentest that was being conducted by Manning then nobody would claim that Assange helped or contributed to it in any way. If there was an actual conspiracy going on here the logs would look much different.

The rest of the allegations basically claim that putting out a general call for people in possession of state secrets leak them is conspiracy ipso facto, as is taking any step to follow up with anyone who is interested in leaking, or taking any step to prevent a source from getting caught. It's ridiculous.

Is there some additional evidence in support of the allegation that Assange conspired to crack a password that I've missed?

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

#364

Post by takeda » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 12:30 AM 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…

Yep, that was the case with me. I supported Assange and I stopped being sympathetic when these connections came out.

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

#365

Post by Canada » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #290

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point us more specifically in the indictment? Must the assertions of an indictment be based on collected evidence?

Assertions of an indictment must be based on evidence or things the prosecutor has reason to believe the evidence will prove. In the numbered paragraphs where the indictment refers to specific events with quoted statements, that means there are documents that support those allegations. I'd draw your attention to paragraph 4-6, where Assange recruited hackers to collect a "most wanted" list of confidential material an…

Given that we can plainly see from the chat logs that the allegations in 19-22 are baseless, why is it reasonable to believe that the allegations in 4-6 are supported by evidence?

It seems just as likely to me that Assange was advocating for hackers to spend some of their time looking for documents he feels are in the public interest. I'm just speculating here, but isn't it likely that the congressional records system was not hacked but rather documents posted on it were simply difficult to find, and that if Assange could convince hackers to spend their time researching this then more information could be reported to the public?

Given how badly the prosecution has outright lied and also twisted facts to fit its narrative in this case, and how it has abused process and procedure, why should we give it any benefit of the doubt? Who says this indictment is based on evidence? It's not as if the prosecutor is going to be punished at all when he turns out to be lying.

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

#366

Post by torified » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #294

kazagistar wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it should. The law should follow morality, ethics, and common practice. If the US law is beyond that, then it is overreaching and tyrannical. But of course, especially with these leaks, we already knew that.

> The law should follow morality, ethics, and common practice Whose morality, ethics, and common practice? The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision. They want the government to have wide latitude to protect them from terrorism, and they care more about that than prosecuting this purported wrongdoing.

>The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision.

Most people have made the decision that the government is corrupt, Assange is an asshole, and there's nothing they can do about any of it because their elected officials are also corrupt.

That is hardly an endorsement of all the horrible things that the US government has been secretly doing in their name.

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

#367

Post by wegs » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #136

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…

It's little events like these that expose the inner workings of the system. For all of our lip service to due process and blind justice, governments are still made up of people and the people at the top have the ability to do whatever they want with the system when they are motivated. The sad part is that recently everyone seems to be ok with this, as long as it's working in their favor in whatever particular instanc…

I mean, this sort of shit happens in our court systems all the time. This just raises the visibility to where we all see it.

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

#368

Post by ifmpx » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #215

Remember how US had European countries force the Bolivian president's plain to land in order to search it for Snowden? US and Europe ties can make European countries go low - very, very low.

I still have a hard time accepting this happened. Sovereignty doesn't seem to exist anymore: We have a single government, 10% privileged human beings that have some rights and say in what it does, and 90% who don't.

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

#369

Post by Canada » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 1:59 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #293

tehjoker wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which points do you find most troubling? It's a very long document and the beginning is filled with flim flam. It says he tried to crack a hash and didn't succeed and therefore didn't even give Manning anything useful. While cracking and giving info back could be problematic, getting info and cracking it is certainly not. In any case, it certainly does not rise to this level of indictment.

> It says he tried to crack a hash and didn't succeed and therefore didn't even give Manning anything useful. The indictment isn't clear whether he succeeded or not. But if you look at the March 10th communication, it's clear that Assange tried to crack the hash. If so, that constitutes an illegal conspiracy. Say your friend asks you to pick a lock so he can rob someone's house. You try to pick the lock and fail. Eve…

> Say your friend asks you to pick a lock so he can rob someone's house

If you looks at the logs, that is just not what happened. I see various discussions of it that sort of make up a story that isn't there. The actual chat is like this:

Bob> How big is that upload?

Alice> 440MB

Alice> It's a lot of scanned documents

Alice> How's your finances these days?

Alice> Hey are you any good at lock picking?

Bob> Yes [unclear if yes, scanned documents would account for that size, or yes, I'm good at lock picking, or something else]

Bob> Our finances are doing okay, but have trouble with some payments

Bob> We have extensive lock picking knowledge

Alice> [Sends photo of something, not clear what]

Alice> I think this is a lock, but I'm not sure. I pointed the camera at the door and took that photo.

Bob> What makes you think that's a lock?

Bob> Is it attached to a door?

Alice> Yeah

Bob> Sent the photo to someone who knows about locks

Alice> Thanks

[2 days later]

Bob> Any more hints about this picture you sent me?

Bob> No luck so far [not clear if luck with talking to the lock expert, or if the expert couldn't recognize this as a lock, or if tried to crack it... or if didn't send it anywhere at all and just mentioning it because he wants Alice to think he's helping her so that she keeps telling him what's going on]

In my view this is not even close to an overt act and that we can be sure of that given the context of all the other stuff they chat about. I'd expect some discussion of progress and technical details.

[PS. I think this is the third comment of yours I've replied to in this discussion. I don't mean to stalk you. Your points are well articulated even though I disagree with them]

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

#370

Post by jgwil2 » Tue, Sep 22, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #166

cassepipe wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what Chibber calls the "pluralist theory" which he argues is not entirely false but rather incomplete. I hope this will be of interest to you : https://youtu.be/R5R-9X_BtP4

I'd be more interested to hear what a local bartender might have to say about any of this than a marxist scholar. Hard pass. Also, naming a theory does not give it credence. So simply saying that a person said a thing and gave it a name tells me nothing if you don't tell me what they said. Linking to a hour long video is not a good substitution for defining your terms.

A very ill-mannered response. If you don't want to participate in the discussion anymore, you can show yourself the exit rather than insulting your interlocutor.