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Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

theguardian.com

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Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#181

Post by andrewla »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #177
andrewla wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He will have to be put on trial (by a jury if he so elects) and convicted before he goes to prison; there is no automatic conviction and even if he is refuse bail he will not be in prison. If the UK refuses to extradite him, then it's a matter of his looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life waiting for the hood and a chopper out. Besides, I have no faith in the UK court' ability to do anything here; they're…

> [...]before he goes to prison[...] And where is he now?

This is the core of the injustice of what is happening to him. He is currently in prison (in England, not the US) with no charge, no trial, and no conviction. It is a mockery of justice. The US has drifted far from our principles of "speedy trials" over which we fought a war of independence, but at least when it happens in the US there are charges and an indictment.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#182

Post by andrewla »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #161
andrewla wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conviction the US seeks under the Espionage Act is as good as automatic I find this assessment to be unsupported. Name a single journalist successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act. If you have to go back to the 1920s to find an example, then I think I've made my point. Ellsberg was the only journalist in modern times to even be charged under it, and his charges were dismissed.

>Ellsberg was the only journalist in modern times to even be charged under it, and his charges were dismissed.. His charges were dismissed after the Judge refused to allow him to present a defense. And they were dismissed because the FBI had illegally wiretapped him, not because of anything to do with the case itself. It's already come out that Assange was constantly wiretapped throughout his stay at the Ecuadorian e…

> Do you think the US would be pushing extradition if they thought a judge would dismiss the case based on that?

Just because they don't think it will happen does not mean that it will not happen. Nonetheless, you are correct -- Ellsberg was not acquitted, so there was no precedent set, and no guarantee that Assange will be acquitted or have his charges dismissed for similar cause.

All I'm saying is that we don't have a precedent, so it is very far from obvious that the result of a trial would be a conviction. Even the case against Ellsberg was stronger, since he had direct access to the information through his work at RAND.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#183

Post by willcipriano »

hylaride wrote: post #180
willcipriano wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure that could be the person "at risk". Could also be the guy behind having US troops guard the opium fields of pedophiles during a opioid epidemic

That's my original point. Assange/Wikileaks made little, if any, distinction between an American mid-level diplomat that's stationed at an embassy sending intel on the mistresses, corruption, or misdeeds of the local leadership and the genuine terrible things that were covered up and arguably should have been leaked. Leaking government misdeeds is whistle-blowing and has legal and moral justifications (and when wikil…

The leaks Assange provided proved a great deal of willing and intentional illegal activity by the government. It exposed several instances of officials lying to congress, it exposed a spying program that is not only unconstitutional but wiretapping in that manner is itself illegal.

Nobody went to jail. The only people who go to jail for government malfeasance are the people who expose it (Manning, Snowden). That is nonsense, We can all just ignore the "rule of law" if that's how its going to be.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#184

Post by surfingdino »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #56
surfingdino wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a complex legal matter and nobody involved is in any rush to make hasty decisions, because they may impact future extradition requests. Speaking of the future, intentional or not, Assange's case has a freezing effect on people who might be thinking of sharing secrets. That's already a win for those who don't want secrets to be shared with the public.

>Speaking of the future, intentional or not, Assange's case has a freezing effect on people who might be thinking of sharing secrets Saying Assange "shared" secrets seems incorrect. Manning shared secrets with Assange so that Assange could publish them. Punishing Manning surely scared those considering sharing secrets. Punishing Assange would frighten those considering publishing secrets, something the US has general…

We might be splitting hairs here, but is publishing not sharing?

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#185

Post by boomboomsubban »

surfingdino wrote: post #184
boomboomsubban wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Speaking of the future, intentional or not, Assange's case has a freezing effect on people who might be thinking of sharing secrets Saying Assange "shared" secrets seems incorrect. Manning shared secrets with Assange so that Assange could publish them. Punishing Manning surely scared those considering sharing secrets. Punishing Assange would frighten those considering publishing secrets, something the US has general…

We might be splitting hairs here, but is publishing not sharing?

From my position, your post looked like it was saying the prosecution of Assange would scare whistleblowers not journalists. You probably meant publishers, but I figured clarification would be better.

I say that, but my post also could use clarification. The US has typically been unable to scare publishers of documents, the last time they really tried was with the Pentagon Papers and the Supreme Court ruled they couldn't punish publishers.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#186

Post by boomboomsubban »

tharmas wrote: post #171
boomboomsubban wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is over the Manning leaks, where Assange tried to go over the documents with the US government so he could do a responsible disclosure. The US refused. He then got a team of journalists together to sift through the documents to make sure things were properly disclosed. Some Guardian journalists then published the encryption keys in a book.

I seem to recall the Journalists had an argument with Assange over the leaking. The Journalists wanted to take their time and carefully filter out any info that was not necessary such as informants identities. Assange wanted to get the stuff out as quickly as possible perhaps out of fear of being stopped before it was released. Snowden's mistake was revealing himself. He should've done what the Panama Papers leaker d…

>seem to recall the Journalists had an argument with Assange over the leaking.

After the keys had already leaked, there was a disagreement whether Wikileaks should continue their plan of slowly publishing things as they went through them or dump everything since it was already in the public.

But before "the Journalists" leaked the keys, Assange was in charge of a massive undertaking to sort through the documents for responsible disclosure.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#187

Post by manquer »

sofixa wrote: post #93
bdw5204 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, the rest of the "free world" can be seen as provinces of an American Empire with their independence. From that perspective, the Assange extradition makes perfect sense. This isn't as crazy as it sounds because the Roman Empire had provinces which were technically "independent" monarchies aligned with Rome. Most famously, Egypt under Cleopatra and Judea under Herod.

> Arguably, the rest of the "free world" can be seen as provinces of an American Empire with their independence Arguably, this is bullshit. The UK might be dangerously friendly with the US on multiple fronts, but e.g. France has refused to extradite Polanski forever, refuses to hand over control of their nukes to NATO, and pursues an independent but aligned foreign policy to the US.

Polanski is French citizen though and key figure in the French cultural circles, also he was well connected enough to be let go in the US in the first place multiple times .

While US would prosecute him if they could , they have not tried anywhere as hard to extradite him like they are doing with Assange .

Assange is not a UK citizen , UK has some of the weirdest privacy and human rights laws they are not fully part of EHCR anymore and actively trying to deport refugees to Rwanda , France is hardly in the same category as UK .

I wouldn’t characterize UK as country with strong human rights they are pretty exploitative (see how they treated windrush generation or the Gurkhas )

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#188

Post by beeboop »

mminer237 wrote: post #101
bondarchuk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly the difference between a normal UK jail and indefinite solitary confinement with possibility for "enhanced interrogation" in the US is not pointless.

We still have the 8th and 14th Amendments. He's not going to get tortured.

Go read any first hand account of anyone who's spent time in solitary for more than a week and tell me that isn't torture. People go into solitary for years

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#189

Post by singularity2001 »

prmoustache wrote: post #15

I still don't understand how a country can grant extradition of a non US citizen to the USA for "espionage". Every country is potentially spying on every other country and it doesn't even matter if they are supposed to be allies or enemies. The only limits are resources.

Remember the judge of Epstein who boasted that he got murderers aquitted? That's the level of legal juggling you get in such cases.

Re: Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US

#190

Post by alexey-salmin »

andrewla wrote: post #143
weberer wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're storing UFOs in Guantanamo Bay now?

Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a secret? But if you know about it ... and I know about it ... then ... maybe it's not a secret prison?

Nope, the supreme court ruled that a secret prison remains secret even if publicly known.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-827_i426.pdf

"On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the District Court that much of the information sought by Zubaydah was protected from disclosure by the state secrets privilege, but the panel majority concluded that the District Court had erred when it dismissed the case. It believed that the state secrets privilege did not apply to publicly known information.

...

Here, the information held by the Ninth Circuit to be nonprivileged would necessarily tend to confirm (or deny) that the CIA maintained a detention site in Poland. The Government has shown that such information — even if already made public through unofficial sources — could significantly harm national security.

...

Here, the state secrets privilege applies to the existence (or non- existence) of a CIA facility in Poland, and therefore precludes further discovery into all three categories of information the Ninth Circuit concluded to be nonprivileged.

...

This case is remanded with instructions to dismiss Zubaydah’s current application for discovery under §1782. P. 18. "

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