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

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

#381

Post by abiogenesis »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #305
anm89 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The sad part is that recently everyone seems to be ok with this Or they feel like they can't do anything about it, because if they even try, they'll end up getting their lives either ruined or completely turned around, like Assange or Snowden.

Isn't that the whole point of ruining someone's life? To intimidate others.

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

#382

Post by ineedasername »

nitrogen wrote: post #264
cmiles74 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password. To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism. In my…

Journalists will themselves sneak into physical venues if they can. The example I can recall is of a reporter crashing a meeting/party of a financial fraternity in NYC.

What you describe isn't necessarily a crime. But if the physical venue happened to be a secured area on a military base or intelligence installation, there's a good chance they'd go to jail. And even if the didn't, it would still be a crime.

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

#383

Post by ineedasername »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #297
cmiles74 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password. To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism. In my…

This sounds like an extremely weak and contrived excuse to go after someone who reported something that embarrassed the government.

Just because the government pushes harder due to being embarrassed doesn't mean it wasn't a criminal act.

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

#384

Post by ineedasername »

agd wrote: post #178
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…

I believe that is incorrect. Assange is accused of helping Manning cover her tracks rather than extract the information in the first place. I.e. he was trying to protect his source. In addition, multiple journalists have spoken out to the effect that encouraging sources to leak is standard journalistic practice.

Assange is accused of more than that. Manning gave him something they thought was a hashed password. Assange tried to crack it so that Manning could use it to steal more data.

A journalist can receive information from a thief, but if the journalist starts helping the thief cracks safes to steal more stuff, that is a whole other story.

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

#385

Post by ineedasername »

kazagistar wrote: post #242
rayiner wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalistic practice doesn’t define what is and isn’t illegal in connection with collaborating with a source.

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.

Morality and ethics are not universally shared among people within a country. Consider debates in the US about abortion, same sex marriage, imprisonment of illegal immigrants... The list could go on for a while.

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

#386

Post by ineedasername »

torified wrote: post #366
rayiner wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, two things can be true at the same time: The US does some bad things, and Assange was trying to break a supposed hash to help Chelsea Manning steal more stuff.

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

#387

Post by trevelyan »

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…

Ah yes, the insinuation that Assange was hacking stuff because he supposedly sent a message saying, "no luck with that."

If there was evidence they wouldn't have fabricated it. You should be ashamed of being an apologist for tyranny.

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

#388

Post by Canada »

ineedasername wrote: post #379
Canada wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allege…

It's there on page 6: something they thought might be a hash was handed over. Assange represented they had resources to throw at it, and did so. It doesn't need to actually have been a hash, Assange doesn't need to actually have succeeded. He provided assistance, however ineffective, to help break into and exfiltrate classified systems and data. At that point he stopped being a passive recipient of leaked data and st…

> something they thought might be a hash was handed over.

What? Was handed over by who? Manning gave it to Assange, we have no evidence to suggest Assange did anything with it. By this logic you might as well argue that Assange was actively conspiring because he provided an SFTP server for Manning to upload stuff to.

Think of it this way: You're sitting at a bar and I'm selling you drinks. You're drinking and talking about how you want to steal some cars. You ask me, "Do you know much about defeating car locks?"

I say, truthfully, "Sure, I have a huge collection of dealer keys"

Then you pull out a picture of a Telsa, show me, and say "I want to steal one of these!"

And so I say, "Right, well I'll ask a friend about that. How about another drink?"

Then a couple of days later you come to the bar and I ask you, "Have you stolen a Tesla yet? No luck with my friend". You don't reply and we never speak of it again.

Did I actually help you try to steal the Tesla? Did I conspire with you to do it? Did I take any active steps to help you? I don't think so. If you disagree I'm curious why you think I'm wrong, either in this analogy or in what the chat logs actually say.

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

#389

Post by ineedasername »

ArchD wrote: post #337
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…

If you have war criminal suspects not being prosecuted but only Assange, your 'democracy' has a bigger (fairness) problem. If your citizens are so easily swayed by Russian manipulation that you have to make it such a big deal, your 'democracy' has a bigger (fragility) problem. If you are OK with MNCs swaying votes with money but not with nations doing the same, your 'democracy' has double-standards and has a bigger (…

"so easily swayed"

You say that as though propaganda was not a real thing with a proven track record. Blaming the victim.

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

#390

Post by trevelyan »

cmiles74 wrote: post #190
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…

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…

It's self-evident bullcrap. The Adrian Lamo logs (published by Wired and available online) show very clearly that Manning contacted Assange with intent to leak.
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