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Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#101

Post by philwelch »

vidarh wrote: post #35
jusben1369 wrote: post #28

I know it's very contrarian to not be 100% pro Assange on this board but all I ever see are the pro Assange interpretation of the facts. Some things to consider: - "Sometime during Wilen's questioning the police announced to Ardin and Wilen that Assange was to be arrested and questioned about possible rape and molestation." This was the initial questioning by local authorities. So unless every police station in every…

> "Sometime during Wilen's questioning the police announced to Ardin and Wilen that Assange was to be arrested and questioned about possible rape and molestation." This was the initial questioning by local authorities. So unless every police station in every part of Sweden had been told to get Assange no matter what at any opportunity it's unlikely this was some conspiracy. Perhaps the local police station over react…

> So indeed, if there is a conspiracy, the conspirators stepped in at this point, and the very fact a prosecutor stepped in like this is strange. It is not a common occurrence, and certainly not to have a prosecutor so publicly pretty much totally reversing the decision of another.

The exact same type of about-face happened in the case of George Zimmerman's alleged murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida. In both cases, the Occam's Razor explanation is this: the public notoriety of the case led a senior prosecutor to pay closer attention and countermand the decision of junior prosecutors not to pursue it.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#102

Post by pitiburi »

Please note that yesterday the USA went public saying they DO NOT recognize the concept of diplomatic asylum. Here my post on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401902 Of course the story is huge, and of course it was immediately flagged to death, but I think that it says a lot about the intentions of the US government: they are willing to take that kind of embarrassing and dangerous step just to put pressure on UK and Assange.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#103

Post by glesica »

magoon wrote: post #86
glesica wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a meaningless difference to me. You're saying that if Wikileaks had carefully summarized each document instead of releasing the actual documents then it would be journalism? Wikileaks presented information, just because that information wasn't in a form that you are comfortable and familiar with doesn't make it not journalism. No one had ever seen a journalist who published exclusively online until a few y…

> You're saying that if Wikileaks had carefully summarized each document instead of releasing the actual documents then it would be journalism? Um...yeah

But what's the difference? We're big kids, we can read the documents for ourselves. Or we can wait and let another news outlet read them and interpret them for us. I just don't see this as being a meaningful difference.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#105

Post by philwelch »

zyb09 wrote: post #37
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #4

I don't think Julian jumping bail and fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy will do him any favours. Now the UK and Sweden are angry at him and Ecuador and Australia's embarrassed. Sure, the US does want to question him. But they haven't issued an extradition request, and by the looks of things getting him out of Sweden would be just as difficult as getting him out of the UK, if not more so. I highly suspect Assange is a…

No please don't think like that. Assange even said today he would agree to go to Sweden, if they promise to not send him to the U.S. He's terrible afraid of being send to the U.S, and rightly so. The U.S. repeatedly demonstrated, that when it comes to political prisoners they don't care much about human rights, the law, or habeas corpus. Look how Bradley Manning is being treated or may I just remind you of Guantanamo…

> Assange even said today he would agree to go to Sweden, if they promise to not send him to the U.S.

It's impossible to unconditionally promise something like that.

> The U.S. repeatedly demonstrated, that when it comes to political prisoners they don't care much about human rights, the law, or habeas corpus. Look how Bradley Manning is being treated

Bradley Manning's treatment might seem excessive to you, but it satisfies every legal and constitutional requirement for the detention and treatment of soldiers accused of violating the UCMJ.

> or may I just remind you of Guantanamo Bay?

If the US wanted Assange in Guantanamo Bay, he would have been in Guantanamo Bay for awhile now. There's absolutely no way a promise from the Swedish government would protect Assange from extraordinary rendition in the first place.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#106

Post by philwelch »

ForrestN wrote: post #45
tome wrote: post #30

This is partisan politics, not Hacker News. Flagged.

Julian Assange, love him or hate him, is certainly a hacker, and Wikileaks is potentially, depending on what turns out to be true, one of the most important technology stories this decade. It is a story about the Internet being told on the Internet, and has major implications for the future of the Internet. The fact that a technology story is also political, also has global ramifications, matters in other realms and…

Quoth the guidelines:

"Off-topic: Most stories about politics, or crime...unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

This is indeed off-topic.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#107

Post by ForrestN »

philwelch wrote: post #106
ForrestN wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julian Assange, love him or hate him, is certainly a hacker, and Wikileaks is potentially, depending on what turns out to be true, one of the most important technology stories this decade. It is a story about the Internet being told on the Internet, and has major implications for the future of the Internet. The fact that a technology story is also political, also has global ramifications, matters in other realms and…

Quoth the guidelines: "Off-topic: Most stories about politics, or crime...unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." This is indeed off-topic.

The video is part of an ongoing story: the wide-ranging political and diplomatic implications of decentralized leaks that can't be kept from the public once they're out. This story is certainly evidence of an entirely new, technology-centric phenomenon that I personally find highly interesting.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#108

Post by drone »

sillysaurus wrote: post #99
drone wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider the following quote from Assange as contextual when examining how in the world an organization so well-versed in protecting secrets would fail so miserably at basic security... "Well, they're informants, so if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." Of course, that bring to my mind as much conjecture as that which I would rally against.

Interesting. Could you source that quote? I don't disbelieve you, I'm just interested.

It was from the Leigh book which accidentally leaked the password. Purportedly, it was said in a meeting with people who were largely friendly towards him at the time.

Further, additional dumps were made unredacted after the fact, and some wikileaker's claimed that it was at Assange's sole bidding. [1] Furthermore, they also intimated that it was unlikely the original leak was anything but intentional, given the password which was used, hints that were given, and the fact that they had never done that sort of thing before. Remember 100,000 cables had accidentally released by the Guardian in Feb. '11, but another 250k were released unredacted in Sept. '11.

I'm not sure to trust anyone, but I'm not putting Assange on a pedestal in this case, and certainly I don't think such a statement would be outside of his character based on the many other interviews and writings of his. Of course, he does deny saying it[2], so take everything with a grain of salt.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/wikileaks-publis...

[2] http://www.itproportal.com/2011/05/25/assange-denies-informa...

EDIT: Just to make a point, and not be revisionist, my statement is largely incorrect about timing and numbers. My brain was temporarily jumbled digging through the articles. Guardian leaked the password, Der Spiegel added info on the file locations (purported to be planted by wikileaks in the linked article), and then wikileaks dumped it all in the open.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#109

Post by petitmiam »

magoon wrote: post #87
magoon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point, however I am having a hard time coming up with another journalist in this era who reports their findings by dumping information onto bit-torrent.

> Your entire objection to Wikileaks seems to be that it is unconventional in a literal sense I'm not objecting to Wikileaks, I'm objecting to Assange calling it journalism. I've gotten downvoted simply because people are emotional over this -- as if I'm attacking them.

I was glad you raised the question, as I had the same thought as you at first. That just cutting and pasting some documents is not journalism.

I then read a tonne of definitions of the word "journalism" and to me. They pretty much all just say journalism is getting the facts out there, in any form. There's no requirement for a journalist to make a "report", for it to be journalism.

I would be interested to see more examples of journalism where no report was written.

Re: Julian Assange urges US to end Wikileaks 'witch-hunt'

#110

Post by petitmiam »

jakeonthemove wrote: post #91

You know what's more interesting? The fact that the Australian government is nowhere to be found when it comes to this - or at least, there's no mention of their involvement. I still can't decide whether I like that or not - on the one hand, it's nice to see that citizens of a country who are passport holders (passports are gov. property and can be easily revoked) are free to do what they want around the world, on th…

Absolutely. After all the support they've given to their citizens acting very stupid in Indonesia, it's disappointing they are so quiet on this.
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