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Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

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Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#171

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

emmelaich wrote: post #157
DevKoala wrote: post #135

Is there any way to vote against the current way the FBI/CIA operates? They are straight up coercing witnesses with fake testimonies to get a man prison, whose only crime was sharing the truth about the shameful inner workings of our American government.

Vote for the party which is most critical on them. Currently Republicans though it used to be the Democrats. Embedding undercover agitators in radical groups goes on all the time I'm sure. It's valuable but very easily abused, too.

>Vote for the party which is most critical on them.

>Currently Republicans though it used to be the Democrats.

This statement shows the absurdity of a two-party political system. Voting for either party will not change anything. You need to vote for particular politicians, and if that's not possible, then there is no way at all for reform or change.

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#172

Post by freeflight »

Not really surprising considering the many other blatant lies in the Assange case.

For example to this day barely anybody seems aware about the fact how Swedish police changed witness testimonies to create rape accusations that were never even made by the two women, to have these nasty accusations leaked to the press only hours later, in the middle of the night.

That's only one of the many findings by the UN rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer. His investigation into the Assange case is probably one of the best and most neutral takes on it, but if true also a really scary one [0]

[0] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#173

Post by res0nat0r »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #61
daenz wrote: post #9

For someone who has not followed Assange news for a long time, what is the general accusation of his crimes? Is it just that he published secret material that he received from other sources?

>what is the general accusation of his crimes? Realistically, he simply pissed off members of the ruling class of the US. Their presence has become significantly more obvious in recent years. Other than that, I'd say it's mostly a 'show me the man, I'll show you the crime' sort of thing.

In reality he laundered hacked materials he knowingly received from an adversarial to the USA nation state actor, and released it deliberately to interfere with the US election process to damage a POTUS candidate he didn't like.

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#174

Post by freeflight »

FireBeyond wrote: post #168
gonehome wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s not illegal for somebody without a clearance. The crime he’s charged with is that he was willing to (and I think did?) assist in breaking into a computer system to get the docs. I think under the CFAA. They have communication records of this because the person he was talking to was working for the USG. Had he just been accepting docs as he was initially that would have been fine. It’s hard to know the trut…

> It’s hard to know the truth here though when nation state interests are at play. To what extent were the sex related charges against him political or flared up by nation state meddling? I think that, even in and of itself, if a nation state intelligence agency is attempting a smear campaign or outright character assassination, and the very best they can manage is "may have had sex that was consensual but unprotecte…

> I can't fathom that being the line they'd go for.

That's literally the line they went for, thanks to Snowden we do know Five Eyes runs programs exactly for these kinds of character assassinations [0].

Or why do you think we had all these amazing headlines about how badly Assange allegedly treats his cat and how dirty his bathroom is? How is that of relevance to anybody on a global scale?

It's all pure ad-hominem to keep the narrative about him as a person, and not what he actually did and blew the whistle on.

[0] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#175

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

mywacaday wrote: post #140
Miner49er wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much, he's been indicted for 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, which yeah, is just for seeking/leaking confidential info. It's a huge attack on freedom of the press. The press has always been allowed to cover leaked stuff, the Espionage act has only been used against sources in the past, not reporters. He's also facing a very minor charge (max 5 years in prison) for conspiracy to commit computer intrus…

Are there any whistleblower protections in the US or why would they not apply to Assange?

The Espionage Act of 1917 is an extremely broad - and almost certainly unconstitutional - law passed during WWI, which gives the government broad power to go after anyone who publishes government secrets, including journalists. WWI was a low point in the history of freedom of expression in the US, and this law is a holdover from that era.

It's bad enough that there's a law on the books that allows the US government to go after American journalists, but in this case, the US government is asserting the right to prosecute a foreign journalist who operated from outside the US. As far as I understand it, if Julian Assange is extradited, he will not be able to argue in court that WikiLeaks' publications were in the public interest.

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#176

Post by commoner »

DevKoala wrote: post #165
pope_meat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this comment gave me anxiety. Liberty is unchecked authority. That's a take.

I wish I had been able to read it before it got flagged. I do want to understand the perspective.

You can still read dead comments by turning on "showdead" on your user profile page.

For you: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DevKoala

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#177

Post by freeflight »

rendall wrote: post #48
johnchristopher wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this has not been presented. s/presented/investigated There's a lot of things to investigate https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helpe... but since the whole world saw what happened on the 6th and what did not after I don't think there'll ever be evidences extraordinary enough to act on any kind of claims.

Lots of "evidence" in the form of breathless articles quoting anonymous sources who say they really have a smoking gun. This evidence is convincing only to those who are inclined to believe it. What we need is extraordinary evidence that is unambiguously convincing to everyone. That we do not have

To this day most people are still in denial about US involvement in that whole Ukraine situation.

Even tho Euromaidan had US senators in person riling up protesters for regime change [0] and the new interim PM, after a bloody revolution, was sponsored by literally the US DoS and NATO [1].

Pointing this pretty blatant evidence out just gets one called a "Russian troll". While in the US some extremely obscure financial connections to Russia, are allegedly responsible for singlehandedly deciding a whole election and making the following one also a rather close call.

Maybe it's just me, but this seems like a pretty blatant double standard, one that also disfranchises a substantial part of the US population, as allegedly being nothing than "idiots" brainwashed by Russia.

It's no wonder how this kind of narrative keeps increasing the hostility and tribalism, even if Russia wouldn't do anything at all.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200328203654/https://openukrai...

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#178

Post by freeflight »

joshuamorton wrote: post #78
rendall wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect no evidence will meet your extraordinary standard because you’re only looking for evidence that supports an existing position based primarily Let's s start with even minimal evidence before we get to worrying about my cognitive biases. Read #8 in this article: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/aaugh-a-brief-list-of-official... "Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, testifying in secret to congress, ... saying there was…

You've already been provided and discarded more than minimal evidence. For example, in the muller report, a more extensive investigation, the specific hacking unit is identified. Whether or not crowdstrike knew in 2017 doesn't matter. Today we know APT-28 was responsible, and they're members of the GRU.

> For example, in the muller report, a more extensive investigation, the specific hacking unit is identified.

How exactly did they arrive at that attribution?

> Today we know APT-28 was responsible, and they're members of the GRU.

How do we know that? No offense, but out of all the places I thought at least people on HN should be aware about the massive caveats that modern-day cyber attribution comes with.

The vast majority of times it's just "educated guesses" based on identifiers that any smart adversary will know how to spoof and thus utilize as false leads.

It's something that feels like was generally recognized and agreed on circa a decade ago, but somehow got lost in the flood of sensationalist headlines trying to sell any nmap scan or somewhat noteworthy ransomware infestation as Russia/China/Iran starting cyber world war 3.

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#179

Post by lawnchair_larry »

neolog wrote: post #151
deadite wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a very anti-American sentiment. You don't get to air the dirty laundry of a country trying to keep a lid on chaos because they do something you don't like now and then. I want to know that the intelligence agencies, and the military that safe guard us, are able and willing to go to any length to preserve our way of living, even if it means they overstep. Not just one country, but all Five Eyes and th…

I have so many questions about your background and upbringing. Edit: honestly I'm curious. Do you have family in the military or something?

It would be of immense value to engage with folks of different backgrounds and upbringing to understand differences like this, but unfortunately the cancel culture HN downvote mob decided that you can’t have that discussion with him.

Re: Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment

#180

Post by thakoppno »

justnotworthit wrote: post #164
DevKoala wrote: post #135

Is there any way to vote against the current way the FBI/CIA operates? They are straight up coercing witnesses with fake testimonies to get a man prison, whose only crime was sharing the truth about the shameful inner workings of our American government.

Not even an uncontrollable, unencumbered, outsider (Trump) critical of the FBI/CIA could make dent in 4 years.

The current US Senate majority leader once said: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
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