291–300 of 426 posts
I am baffled to see that the majority of the comments here are at best showing no support for what Assange did and at worst are trying to find excuses not to be disturbed in their belief that since we are in a democracy hence everything that's happening is normal. I thought the people here had a sharper political view on what kind of society we could/should live in but I just read people that are always in a hurry to…
I feel like the powers that be have decided to make this extradition happen. Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him. Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" a…
I think people care, but the "powers that be" are aware of our lack of power.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please read the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl... Assange was doing far more than giving a few tips and encouragement.
Which points do you find most troubling? It's a very long document and the beginning is filled with flim flam. It says he tried to crack a hash and didn't succeed and therefore didn't even give Manning anything useful. While cracking and giving info back could be problematic, getting info and cracking it is certainly not. In any case, it certainly does not rise to this level of indictment.
The indictment isn't clear whether he succeeded or not. But if you look at the March 10th communication, it's clear that Assange tried to crack the hash. If so, that constitutes an illegal conspiracy.
Say your friend asks you to pick a lock so he can rob someone's house. You try to pick the lock and fail. Even though you haven't robbed the house yet, you're both guilty of conspiracy to rob the house. The attempted lock-picking is an "overt act" that completes the conspiracy: https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/inchoate-crimes/con...
> Finally, in most states, conspiracy requires an “overt act” taken in furtherance of the crime. This overt act does not have to be the crime itself, nor does it have to be an act that is illegal. Rather, the act must merely be a step taken in furtherance of the criminal objective, such as buying a weapon or holding a meeting to plan an attack. The act must also take place after the group of individuals has agreed to conspire.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Journalistic practice doesn’t define what is and isn’t illegal in connection with collaborating with a source.
But it should. The law should follow morality, ethics, and common practice. If the US law is beyond that, then it is overreaching and tyrannical. But of course, especially with these leaks, we already knew that.
Whose morality, ethics, and common practice? The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision. They want the government to have wide latitude to protect them from terrorism, and they care more about that than prosecuting this purported wrongdoing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be more interested to hear what a local bartender might have to say about any of this than a marxist scholar. Hard pass. Also, naming a theory does not give it credence. So simply saying that a person said a thing and gave it a name tells me nothing if you don't tell me what they said. Linking to a hour long video is not a good substitution for defining your terms.
I'll take all the downvotes in the world on this one. Marxist's don't get a seat at the adults table. Same way neo nazis don't get a seat at the adults table. Makes sense anyway. The communists have a higher death toll.
I feel like the powers that be have decided to make this extradition happen. Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Of those that do, the noisy attention payers like us, a sizeable group have decided Assange isn't likeable and so should suffer for upsetting people more powerful than him. Now we have to go through all this theatrics simply so those people can say things like "he got a fair hearing" a…
> Most people don't care because they don't pay attention. Are you sure it's not the other way round? Additionally, I don't think it matters whether they care or pay attention. Unless the media pays attention and publishes information, they won't get anywhere. > It's very disappointing, because the whole point of laws is that it shouldn't matter whether you're pretty or funny or sympathetic. A cynic might say that th…
I agree it's the other way around. People trust the government (conceptually, they may or may not trust any given administration). I can't even get most of my friends worked up about the TSA. My wife is one of the most libertarian people I know IRL (to be fair, I live in DC and not SV) and she hates Assange and thinks he's a Russian puppet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This logic would render all national security reporting illegal. The job of national security reporters is to convince people in government to divulge information they're legally barred from divulging.
In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password. To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism. In my…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case we're not talking about documentation of wrong-doing on the part of the US government. In this narrow instance, we're talking about a government employee providing the hash of a password to a journalist who will then try to find another person capable of "decoding" that hash to yield the clear-text password. To me, that seems very different then what I normally think of as investigative journalism. In my…
Journalists will themselves sneak into physical venues if they can. The example I can recall is of a reporter crashing a meeting/party of a financial fraternity in NYC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Scotland is a country, and its part of the UK
Doesn’t this just emphasise that the UK is not a nation state? ‘Country’ is an informal term. ‘Nation state’ is weirdly specific and doesn’t even apply!
What would you use to refer to UK then? Because if Scotland is a country, and Scotland is a part of UK, that feels kinda weird to call an entity composed of multiple countries a country.