Julian Assange and visitors were spied on by security firm for US intelligence • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange and visitors were spied on by security firm for US intelligence

#141

Post by raxxorrax » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #137

raxxorrax wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and part of the game is if you get caught you get into serious trouble. Ignoring it is a complete wrong approach. Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be angry at Russia? They just did their job, did they?

> Yes, and part of the game is if you get caught you get into serious trouble. Only if there are consequences. If you get caught killing another country's spies or otherwise behaving badly, they may retaliate and kill yours. They may invoke treaties or launch ICJ cases. If they have leverage, they may use it. Ecuador has no leverage. > Assassinating political dissidents is also part of that game, so shouldn't we be a…

Then we must do something wrong, since we seem to get both.

I don't know how many people the CIA and MI6 kills, but I am very certain that it is the end of a career of a spy if caught with extrajudicial killings. Even in Russia. Otherwise you quickly have imitators.

But why waste our time with a story then?

Re: Julian Assange and visitors were spied on by security firm for US intelligence

#142

Post by matthewheath » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #2

This is just sick. Why do we even have international laws if they are so blatantly violated? And of course no one will be held accountable.

There is no institution to enforce them - the best we have is the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, the latter of which will only arbitrate disputes between consenting States.

No State is going to hold each other accountable when they're all doing the same thing, and nobody would ever sign up to some sort of supranational authority.

Re: Julian Assange and visitors were spied on by security firm for US intelligence

#143

Post by atmosx » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #122

atmosx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikileaks schooled the entire western world mainstream media by releasing more material than they ever could hope. I love the NYTimes, I consider them the best there is, but when it comes to US national matters or a specific Wall Street breed of Democrats, they are just as ridiculous as Fox News :-)

Have you ever read NYTimes coverage on a matter where you were personally an expert? In those cases I personally found their coverage ranged from meh and mildly misleading to extremely poor and outright the opposite of the truth. Most other big name venues appear to do better.

Hm, interesting. Can you share specific examples? I reckon that they suffer heavily in the topics I mentioned before for obvious reasons.

Re: Julian Assange and visitors were spied on by security firm for US intelligence

#144

Post by matthewheath » Thu, Nov 21, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

stickfigure wrote: post #25

I too am curious about the legal issues involved here. While I agree "this is what intelligence services are for", this was not inside the United States and the CIA doesn't automatically get free pass to break the laws of other countries. Surely some laws in the UK were broken? Or was all this sanctioned by the UK government? Or does the fact that it's an embassy mean that Ecuadorian law is applicable? How does this…

> Surely some laws in the UK were broken? This was almost certainly done by American embassy staff under cover. It’s thus a state, not criminal, issue. If Britain wanted to eject American diplomats for spying, it could do that, but...why?

It's still a criminal issue under UK law, in that the law was broken. Obviously, diplomatic staff cannot be prosecuted but that does not negate the fact the law was broken.