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US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

theguardian.com

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Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#171

Post by chrisseaton »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #142
chrisseaton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a basket with soap and socks Does this have some cultural significance? It a symbolic snub of some kind? The speaker in the video says that they sent him this care package and then pauses and stares into space like it's the most obviously terrible thing they could have done and needs no further comment. I don't get it?

Assange is riding the edge of what is considered permissible in society, where this line effectively divides the state and consolidated power, and the public. These are matters of life and death for Assange, victims of the war crimes of which he's published, and future potential victims if journalistic freedom is further restricted and thus even less accountability for war criminals. The Guardian has elected not to b…

> The Guardian has elected not to bring their clout and lawyers to bear on these matters.

Isn't it correct that the journalists stay out of the news themselves? They should be reporting, not becoming the story by 'bringing their clout' to anything.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#172

Post by lordlimecat »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #13

Better late than never. The appropriate time for an article like this and coming to his defense would have been last month when Assange moved from the Ecuadorian embassy to a UK prison. Especially considering that they benefited from collaborating with Assange and wikileaks for the very same things he's currently being held prison (and lets not get started on the BS. charges from Sweden). The Guardian would do well t…

Assange isn't in a UK prison because of leaking documents, but because he jumped bail.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#173

Post by LMYahooTFY »

chrisseaton wrote: post #171
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assange is riding the edge of what is considered permissible in society, where this line effectively divides the state and consolidated power, and the public. These are matters of life and death for Assange, victims of the war crimes of which he's published, and future potential victims if journalistic freedom is further restricted and thus even less accountability for war criminals. The Guardian has elected not to b…

> The Guardian has elected not to bring their clout and lawyers to bear on these matters. Isn't it correct that the journalists stay out of the news themselves? They should be reporting, not becoming the story by 'bringing their clout' to anything.

I disagree entirely.

If it were possible to be apolitical, I would agree. I don't think it's possible for any one person or entity to be apolitical, thus I think they should simply be as honest as humanly possible.

Claiming any sort of neutrality merely serves to mask agendas.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#174

Post by cyphar »

teachrdan wrote: post #156
umeshunni wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you mention Appelbaum - he is another person who upset some powerful entities and had a smear campaign against him.

I have never myself heard that narrative about Appelbaum. It seems clear that, while some of the allegations against him were unfounded, others were made by women who publicly identified themselves and their experiences of being sexually harassed or sexually assaulted by Jacob Appelbaum.[0] Is there really a narrative that these women fabricated stories of sexual abuse by Jacob Appelbaum because he upset some powerfu…

This was brought up in discussions at the time as being a potential smear campaign against him. I personally didn't really buy this as being the most plausible explanation -- though I will say that the US government has definitely done things like this before (the FBI tried to manipulate MLK into committing suicide by threatening him with "evidence" of sexual misconduct[1]). And if I was a spook, it's probably the first course of action I would take to discredit someone.

Personally though, I think the more obvious issue in the Appelbaum case is that he was held to "trial by social media", which is a very common pattern these days. In the end, there was no legal action taken by ether Appelbaum or the women accusing him (and the veracity of some -- though not all -- of the stories was challenged by other women in the Tor community). He's now back to doing crypto-related research as a student of Bernstein and Lange (recently publishing a paper about improving WireGuard's security).

So I don't think we'll ever know if the allegations were true or not, but it probably means he won't work as a journalist (or for the Tor Project) again.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#175

Post by eeZah7Ux »

chrisseaton wrote: post #97
cyphar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a friend who broke their ankle and is in hospital overnight, you send a basket with soap and socks (or more likely, flowers). If you are the head of a news organisation and have a fellow journalist (who you've worked with in the past and gave you "the biggest scoop in 30 years") and is currently facing political persecution by the most powerful government on earth, you send lawyers to help him get out of…

All these activities seem wildly beyond the scope of what I’d consider journalism. Why don’t they just write about it rather than getting mixed up in it like this?

All these activities are exactly what investigative journalism is supposed to be.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#176

Post by cyphar »

josefresco wrote: post #4

Just because Assange did one (or more) good things (Collateral Murder) does not make everything else he does, also good. Assange is not a journalist, and ceased being a journalist when he decided to enforce personal agendas and arguably work with nation-states to harm other nation-states. Even if you believe he's a journalist, journalists should not be above the law even if part of their work is for the good of the p…

> arguably work with nation-states to harm other nation-states

The claim by Mueller that the emails were stolen by Russian operatives is an incredible stretch of the imagination given the following:

* The public audit logs during the leaks provides clear evidence that the transfer must have happened locally using a USB drive because the transfer speed was too fast to happen over the internet -- Bill Binney and some other ex-NSA whistleblowers did tests to verify this[1]. Which makes it seem quite likely it was leaked by an insider of the DNC.

* Where did the data provided by the report (such as "XYZ searched for 'russia' on the DNC servers") come from? You might think the NSA, but all NSA intel is classified and so the President must have declassified it (which we would've heard about). It seems incredibly likely that this "evidence" was provided by the third-party "cyber threat intelligence" company which the DNC gave their email server to instead of the FBI when they broke the chain of custody.

Now, it is still possible that it happened -- but it is at the very least an incredibly suspicious claim.

[1]: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#177

Post by cyphar »

threatofrain wrote: post #139
cyphar wrote: post #35

I find it incredible that it took the Guardian 7 years to decide to write this article. EDIT: In fact, it's not even by the Guardian -- it's an opinion piece by an ex-Guardian editor who was (at least implicitly) part of the smear campaign against Julian Assange "back in the day". Let's not forget that the Guardian sent Julian Assange a basket with soap and socks when he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy[1]. What…

Instead of blaming the press like they failed you as your life mentor, I’d also argue the actions of the media imply the disinterest of the people. The press is largely a mirror, just like marketing — it’s all based on what people think will sell to you. More articles on math? That doesn’t sell.

I would suggest you read "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky. The media has an enormous amount of power in shaping public opinion, and in particular also has a massive amount of control over the Overton window. There are countless examples of this happening very publicly -- just in the past decade.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#178

Post by sschueller »

levelist_com wrote: post #80
maxheadroom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any American "standards" for what a journalist is or isn't isn't really applicable to an international defendent, which Assange is, yeah? If so, then you must admit that America is imposing it's own (subjective and ever-changing, depending on the parties in power) view on the international theatre and that's where the concern starts to get exacerbated.

Assange broke US law, encouraging the theft of classified intel belonging to the US and then publishing it. It doesnt matter where Assange was geographically when he did so. Example if I were to hack a foreign gov't or company's computers while residing in the US and being on US soil at the time, I would still be breaking that country's laws and could be arrested and extradited to that country. This is an agreement m…

I could make you a huge list of US persons that have broken international laws and laws in other countries that have not been extradited and never will.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#179

Post by jillesvangurp »

lordlimecat wrote: post #172
jillesvangurp wrote: post #13

Better late than never. The appropriate time for an article like this and coming to his defense would have been last month when Assange moved from the Ecuadorian embassy to a UK prison. Especially considering that they benefited from collaborating with Assange and wikileaks for the very same things he's currently being held prison (and lets not get started on the BS. charges from Sweden). The Guardian would do well t…

Assange isn't in a UK prison because of leaking documents, but because he jumped bail.

Pretending this has nothing to do with Wikileaks is very disingenuous/naive. The Swedes would likely have quickly dropped the case if they hadn't been pressured by the US to not do so. The amount of press this case got in Sweden almost from day 1 was very unusual. The Swedes normally don't commit character murder like this without a trial. Yet, Assange was named and shamed in public, lots of details were leaked, and when the prosecutor dropped the case, she was overruled. It's not normal for high level politicians to get involved with cases like this in Sweden.

From what I understand, it was never actually a really strong case. Yet, the Swedes went all out on this. Likewise, the UK would never have put as much effort in pursuing such a minor matter had it not been for the Wikileaks thing. Nor would the Ecuadorians have considered hosting him for seven years. Both the US and UK have repeatedly pressured Sweden to not drop their extradition request and arrest warrant.

The fact that he's now being extradited to the US rather than Sweden only confirms that Wikileaks is the only reason all this stuff happened to Assange. Otherwise he'd be on his way to Sweden now. This was about the Swedish extradition request right until he walked out of the embassy.

Re: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

#180

Post by ataturk »

Shivetya wrote: post #77
throwaway8879 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also seems to me that the possibility of a revolution, in any sense of the word, is getting more and more miniscule, no matter which angle you look at it, whether it's because many people simply don't care or are happy to voluntarily give up private information for diminishing doses of dopamine hits. The thing about any major revolutionary change is that the initial seed is planted through breaking some kind of la…

The revolution needed is for people to quit letting the politicians and press to set their world view. One must remember that political parties extensively use market research to craft their message and through sycophants in the press will float trial balloons of upcoming campaign statements to see what will work. Using fear, uncertainty, doubt, and jealously, the convince you to not only put them in office but to st…

This would be great! Find your own damn worldview, turn off CNN and Fox, for the politicos to work for YOU.

Also what would be great is if Americans smartened up about taxes, tax withholding, the whole monetary system that gives the insiders first access to debt, and maybe just a better basic understanding of MATHEMATICS.

I mean, Americans as a whole are mathematical illiterates. It is so utterly incomprehensible that a first world nation would be so full of dullards.

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