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USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

judiciary.uk

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Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#261

Post by dec0dedab0de »

rjbwork wrote: post #208
0x445442 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your scenario, the good news would be that you'd be within you're rights as a juror to vote not guilty on the grounds you did not think the law was just; it's called Jury Nullification. The bad news is, the "justice system" goes out of it's way to hide the existence of this right from U.S. citizens.

And they weed you out of the jury pool if you admit to knowing of its existence. And of course you can't lie when asked, as that's perjury.

yeah, but when you say guilty or not guilty you don't have to explain why.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#262

Post by Chris2048 »

lmg643 wrote: post #239
baybal2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Brilliant news, but be in no doubt. This ruling is utterly chilling for investigative journalism. Baraitser sided with US prosecutors on pretty much all of their arguments. It was the barbaric nature of the US penal system that saved Assange." A barbarical nature of US penal system it is, but they did not even note a prima fascie political nature of the prosecution when the defence was slashing it left, and right.…

Are we sure that Assange is better off in the UK? Reports from other sources suggest he is being kept in terrible conditions in UK as well. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/julian-assange-is-kept-u... >> "Each day Julian is woken at 5 am, handcuffed, put in holding cells, stripped naked, and x-rayed. He is transported 1.5 hours each way in what feels like a vertical coffin in a claustrophobic van,” Morris said. >>…

> Each day Julian is ... x-rayed

Wait, what? This can't be true - daily x-rays would guarantee cell/DNA damage.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#263

Post by JAlexoid »

pydry wrote: post #85
agd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced by your implied equivalence of, on the one hand, phone hacking celebrities and murder victims to generate tabloid clickbait, and on the other, helping protect an intelligence source whose leaked material shows human rights abuses and the death of innocent civilians.

If he hacked a celebrity's account and used it to uncover a killing spree by said celebrity it might be equivalent. And, no doubt the celebrity's supporters would argue that he'd crossed the line from journalism to hacking as well. If Assange were a Russian holed up in Belarus being extradited to Russia for uncovering Russian war crimes by cracking password hashes I really wonder how many people here would still be a…

Some people are still into the idea of "national unity" and "collective insult" things.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#264

Post by detaro »

buckminster wrote: post #248
tw04 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll set aside for a moment the fact that a country like Nigeria hasn't even HAD laws against hacking on their books: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-nigerian-law-means-seven-y... There are countless examples of state sponsored hacking. There's no way the actor would be punished in the country of origin if their country of origin was not only OK with their actions but supporting them. Does that mean whoever did it…

Extradition requires dual criminality. If you can extradite you can prosecute the offence locally.

I don't think that's universally true? E.g. reading the judgement here, when evaluating the charges regarding the conspiracy to obtain national security documents, does not ask "is stealing US national security documents against UK law", but rather "if Manning had been a UK army member, targeting the UK, would this have been against UK law", finding that would be the case and thus accepting the conspiracy charges as fulfilling dual criminality.

But you couldn't prosecute Assange in the UK for conspiracy to steal documents from the US and damage done to US national security, but at best for damage done to UK national security through that.

(It's possible I am misunderstanding something?)

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#265

Post by dcolkitt »

mrkramer wrote: post #149
hestefisk wrote: post #128

Practically speaking a good outcome for Assange, but a bad outcome for our rights to free speech and free reporting in a liberal democracy. The US have killed millions in the Middle East since 9/11, yet no one is ever held to account for their brutal war crimes. Blair, Bush, Rumsfeld and their associates should be the ones prosecuted, not Assange.

European colonial empires killed millions as well and faced no prosecution. Never forget what Hitler said; he said that concentration camps were not his idea instead he learnt about it from reading about British concentration camps during the Second Boer War in which thousands of Boers died.

The comparison is silly. While the Boer War concentration camps were brutal, they were nothing on par with the Nazis.

In fact “concentration camp” is largely a misnomer. The sizable majority of Holocaust victims were killed in extermination camps, like Treblinka. These never even purported to hold any prisoner population, and simply murdered all prisoners immediately upon arrival.

The British have no shortage of problems. But nothing in their history is even remotely comparable to Hitler.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#266

Post by Closi »

raxxorrax wrote: post #55
Closi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to argue that Assange crossed the line between "journalism" and "hacking", for example when he attempted to assist with cracking a hash. The UK has other history about journalists hacking (see the phone hacking scandal). It's one thing to receive the contents of a hack, and quite another to offer active assistance to exploit systems.

How scandalous, he hacked someone... Of course that is far worse than killing hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east which he put the finger on. Hacking and computer sabotage.... really? You call that justice? It is not and the UK jurisdiction remains a joke. A posh joke, but a joke nonetheless. Please... as if there would have been alternative to leaking hunan rights violations.

Unfortunately nowhere in the law does it state "you can break any law if it helps human rights causes".

I fully support Assange FYI, but at the same time I think he possibly broke laws while doing his (incredibly important) work, or at least there would be enough ambiguity around law to bring a case to the crown court (remember this is the magistrates).

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#267

Post by boomboomsubban »

africanboy wrote: post #221
boomboomsubban wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crime is a crime, justice doesn't care. Which is why all the war crimes detailed in Manning's leaks have been prosecuted with the criminals behind bars. Further, a crime isn't just a crime. A journalist attempting to protect their source is an essential part of their freedom of the press. Prosecuting them for that action infringes on their rights, making it unconstitutional. Even if you disagree with my assessment o…

> Further, a crime isn't just a crime. A journalist attempting to protect their source is an essential part of their freedom of the press What Assange is accused of is not that. > Even if you disagree with my assessment of Assange's actions, it should be clear that justice does care about the context. It doesn't. Protecting a source is not a crime, hence a journalist cannot be prosecuted for that. Nobody is forced to…

I don't want to try and change your opinion on Assange's actions, many journalist have said the "I'll help" you see as a problem is a routine procedure, but you clearly disagree.

A crime still isn't just a crime though. A less ambiguous example, unauthorized possession's of classified information is a crime, yet no journalist has been charged for it.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#268

Post by capableweb »

andy_ppp wrote: post #155
hestefisk wrote: post #128

Practically speaking a good outcome for Assange, but a bad outcome for our rights to free speech and free reporting in a liberal democracy. The US have killed millions in the Middle East since 9/11, yet no one is ever held to account for their brutal war crimes. Blair, Bush, Rumsfeld and their associates should be the ones prosecuted, not Assange.

US soldiers did not kill millions of people, Iraq is somewhere between 100000 and 650000 excess deaths to Oct 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas... The criticisms in the Wikipedia are very detailed and imply there are problems with the 650000 figure of which 186000 are due to US troops direct actions. That still seems high, but you know being caught in the middle of a civil war is chal…

Lancet indeed gives those numbers, other sources gives other numbers. Who's right? Probably we'll never know, but just for having the other numbers out there, here they are:

- Lancet survey (March 2003 – July 2006): 654,965 (95% CI: 392,979–942,636)

- Opinion Research Business (March 2003 – August 2007): 1,033,000 (95% CI: 946,258–1,120,000)

- Iraq Family Health Survey (March 2003 – July 2006): 151,000 (95% CI: 104,000–223,000)

- PLOS Medicine Study (March 2003 – June 2011): 405,000 (95% CI: 48,000–751,000)

Only Opinion Research Business[1] seems to put the upper bound above 1 million.

Rather than going for the "Lancet Surveys" page on Wikipedia, you'll probably get a better view when reading through the general page of "Casualties of the Iraq War" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Also, hestefisk (which you're replying to) are talking about Middle East, not just Iraq. US sure has killed a lot more people in Middle East than just the ones that died in Iraq.

> being caught in the middle of a civil war is challenging

Not sure we're talking about the same war here. As far as I know, the US invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq in recent times (so no civil war), pretty sure we're referring to those events (post 9/11), not the civil wars that were happening there before that.

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#269

Post by jimmydorry »

Uberphallus wrote: post #212
rjbwork wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they weed you out of the jury pool if you admit to knowing of its existence. And of course you can't lie when asked, as that's perjury.

You lie, if they accuse you of perjury then you say "I googled it after I was asked".

Then what, for every other jury duty?

Re: USA vs. Julian Assange Judgment

#270

Post by rsynnott »

pydry wrote: post #160
rsynnott wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but how do you think this works? Boris Johnson having a word with the judge? The judiciary haven’t exactly shown much interest in pandering to Boris; see Brexit judgements over the last couple of years.

I think the judges are probably more interested in the global standing, power and leverage of the UK than Boris is and the Brexit rulings arguably reflect that too. The UK government is about more than just Boris's ego. I wouldn't speculate as to the exact mechanism as to how this ruling came about but to assume it came divorced from politics is naive, especially given the nature of the ruling.

> I think the judges are probably more interested in the global standing, power and leverage of the UK than Boris is

Really? I wouldn't assume that at all; it's very much not their job, and it's not unusual for the courts to cause the government significant trouble and embarrassment. A judge's job is to uphold the law, not to be a political actor. And the UK's judges, by and large, have a reasonably good reputation for sticking to it.

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