I hope he takes his future security seriously. They are always around the corner.
Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turns out taking an active role in breaking into government systems is a bad idea. The whole situation is funny because he would have been out years ago had he not done everything in his power to avoid a trial haha.
Everybody keeps repeating this without actually knowing specifically what his "crime" was. Here it is: He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran hashcat over it, couldn't successfully reverse it, and gave up. That's it. Prosecuting him for this "heinous crime against the state" has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. At the time of this "crime" occurring he was not physically in the USA, not a…
>He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran hashcat over it, couldn't successfully reverse it, and gave up.
Yeah..? He played an active role with his conspirator lol. He doesn't pretend to be some fool who accidentally got involved so there is no reason for you to do so on his behalf by trying to deny his crimes.
>At the time of this "crime" occurring he was not physically in the USA, not a citizen of the USA, and hence not subject to its laws.
An abused claim. Plenty of Russian hackers aren't US citizens or in the US when they commit credit card fraud or launch ransomware attacks but obviously they are still able to be charged under US law (or the law of any country they attack). And no one can seriously argue otherwise. Sitting in a different jurisdiction doesn't mean you can't be charged with a crime. For example, the South American drug lord isn't free to traffic drugs into Europe just because he isn't in Europe or a European citizen. That would be stupid and isn't how the world works.
>Unless you think the USA is the world government and can police anyone, anywhere, for anything?
US law can apply to the whole world if the US wants to enforce it (and so do most countries for plenty of crimes like cybercrime, terrorism, money laundering).
>Prosecuting him for this "heinous crime against the state" has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
I mean sure; trying any person for a crime cost money. Not really relevant.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#263Can someone who has an accurate source post when Wikileaks cryptographic canary expired? I'm unable to find a source and it's important to know they shouldn't be trusted.
Here's when their key expired in 2007: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys
From another below:
vikingerik
A canary goes something like "This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove material." When they ever do, then they remove that notice. The government enforcement usually includes a gag order prohibiting the target from saying that they're under orders, so the intent is that you can infer government gag pressure by the canary having been removed. Wikileaks used to have such a notice and no longer does, so we assume government enforcement is why.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was reminded of this joke: > A city slicker shoots a duck out in the country. As he's retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him. After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the matter "country style." > "What's country style?" asks the city boy. > "Out here in the country," the farmer says: "when two fellers have a disput…
The real life version is a company sues you for a stupid reason and after spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on your defense the company loses and says "our bad lol", and then the matter is settled. Or, in this case, after prosecutors hold someone in prison for a decade or two they offer a plea deal.
That's not what's happened here. His time in UK prison counts towards his US charges and is the reason he's not doing time in US prison.
It's more like if "settling things country style" involved giving each other ducks, and after round one the farmer received a duck then said "forget it keep your duck".
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#265> Court documents revealing Assange's plea deal were filed Monday evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born.
I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in US territory before a US judge who is actually under any obligation to honor the plea deal. The judge could reject the plea deal and remand him to custody or sentence him to US prison.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was reminded of this joke: > A city slicker shoots a duck out in the country. As he's retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him. After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the matter "country style." > "What's country style?" asks the city boy. > "Out here in the country," the farmer says: "when two fellers have a disput…
That's like playing "who can punch the softest" with my dad
Oh man, core memory unlocked. Only fell for that one once!
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#267So I have a couple of thoughts on this. For context, I'm a big fan of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Julian Assange is... more interesting. Imagine you're a journalist and someone hands you a shoebox full of SD cards with classified materials including video evidence of war crimes. Most of us would agree it is the ethical thing to do to publish that and you're definitely a journalist. Now imagine you had a conta…
I would add to what you wrote that I personally have reservations about revealing the identities of confidential sources, activists, etc. He willfully published not only the sources in active warzones who were feeding information to the US, risking their deaths, but also the secret identities and conversations of activists in Belarus who were summarily imprisoned or killed.
And it's not that they're committed to always releasing everything, they painstakingly withheld information about Russia's financial backing of Syria during one of their releases.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In May, two judges on the High Court said he could have a full hearing on whether he would be discriminated against in the U.S. because he is a foreign national. A hearing on the issue of Assange's free speech rights had been scheduled for July 9-10. At the risk of sounding a tad conspiratorial, it's possible the U.S. agreed to this deal specifically to avoid the upcoming trial. As I understand it, there remains an…
I like how you think! I think it’s some combination of this and very recent bipartisan Australian sentiment to end it that combined into enough people having a slight shift culminating in “the system” deciding to let him go
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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#269It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of whistleblowing, which informs us, the citizens, about what our governments are doing that's illegal, than about the illegal activities themselves. What does that say about those people? Are they easily led by emotion? They certainly don't care about the rule of law, if breaking the law by others can so easily be ignored. They aren't particularly patriotic, i…
when your whistle blowing only reveals secrets of one side, then i am very skeptical of motivations.
where are the dumps from north korea. where is kim jong un's private communications with Xi Jinping. Where is Putin's communications with Lukashenko. Where are internal memos from the people's liberation army. Where are the leaks from the Ayatollahs.
Also yes the targets were western governments. What about western corporations? Where are leaks from Boeing about their issues? Where are leaks from Facebook about PTSD of their moderators? Where are the leaks about Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or whatever?
The targets WL chose were basically the "evil west", you know, the only reason Ukraine has not been reduced to a prison complex.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#270Despite what his defenders claim, he went beyond journalism and actively engaged in process to obtain and disclose national defense information. Now he will pledge guilty for that.