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Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

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Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#321
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying anything about whether it was morally here or there, but that it's not at all an unreasonable application of the CFAA. The guy driving the getaway car from the FBI field-office break-in* (or whoever) is going to be on the hook for burglary, even if the burglary was done for laudable reasons. I think Obama 100% did the right thing commuting Manning's sentence, and was pleased to see her go free. I'm not…

Exposing government corruption (and sketchiness) isn't really the best area to apply black-letter law though - it is usually going to be illegal; governments routinely try to stop people publishing embarrassing information. If a whistleblower can't intend to get information of a government network, how are they meant to make an allegation with some substance behind it? Are they meant to have unsubstantiated word of m…

>Assange isn't even a US citizen, so he isn't expected to know US law.

Ignorance of the law is not a legal defense. Most Americans are not aware of the bulk of laws that apply to them.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#322

He has First Amendment protections. That doesn't apply to what he's being charged with, which is conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to US military systems.

I agree with Greenwald: “The DOJ says part of what Assange did to justify his prosecution - beyond allegedly helping Manning get the documents - is he encouraged Manning to get more docs for him to publish. Journalists do this with sources constantly: it's the criminalization of journalism”

Other journalists disagree: “I don’t know that journalists do “do this constantly”—I was always told that you get into legally questionable territory when you start asking for documents instead of just accepting them when offered.” https://twitter.com/yaelwrites/status/1116343757278892037?s=...

I would not be surprised to hear that Greenwald had done it, but that does not imply that it is actually common, nor legal.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#323
post #84
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1st amendment protection even applicable to foreigners on foreign soil? It seems to do so. >The Constitution does distinguish in some respects between the rights of citizens and noncitizens: the right not to be discriminatorily denied the vote and the right to run for federal elective office are expressly restricted to citizens.12 All other rights, however, are written without such a limitation. The Fifth and Fourt…

No. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/494/259/

That's decision on 4th amendment requirements for issuing warrants.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes some way toward explaining the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria...

Also Pizzagate. Spread by Mr. Assange himself for political purposes. https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...

Pizzagate is real. Pedophiles will lie even when caught in the act. What happened to Johnny Gosch? Who was involved in the Boystown scandal? How many cases of missing children are not solved or not reported? How many "priests" get moved around instead of prosecuted?

I find that most people don't even bother to analyze things like pedogate in-depth, because either this is too disgusting to even touch, or the person is just apathetic. That being said, analyze this problem like a programmer (as you would any other sort of problem), and you begin to see things you hadn't before.

Also, Julian Assange didn't spread the rumors, only provided the information. If you think "playing dominoes on cheese pizza" is a phrase normal people use, or that posting pictures of half-naked children and making sexual comments about them is normal, then f* you. (Disclaimer: Also, f* you).

Even if you just go by the "~10% rule" for population demographics, that at least 10% of the population belongs to any given demographic group, it makes for a large enough population group of pedophiles to be concerned about.

So let's just say (for this example) that 1% of the population of the United States (population of ~350 million) are pedophiles of varying degrees ranging from Jared at Subway, to people like Albert Fish. That's still 3,500,000 pedophiles. Using the Pareto Distribution, a hyper-minority of 1% of the 1% are dedicated to their "cause", would be a group of about 35,000 pedophiles. Given that people congregate based on similar interests and ideals, you can almost bet that about half of "the 1% of the 1%" (in this example, 17,500) are in some sort of group that works together for the mutual benefit of the overall group.

17,500 is a lot of people. What kind of things can you get done with a group of very intelligent predators whose targets are children? And that's just the core group, who knows how many underlings they have working for them with similar interests, given these demographics...

I mean, Goldman-Sachs has about 36k employees, and they're worth how much? The US Army reported 1,281,900 service members in 2017, and not all of them are in the "core group" 1% of 1%" that account for high-ranking power brokers, but the armed forces all work together as a well-oiled machine to accomplish a goal. Is it such a far-fetched idea that pedophiles don't have their own goal-oriented group? How many of them work in the entertainment and news industry? (Dan Harmon made a video about raping babies, and he thought it was funny...). Was Corey Feldman lying?

FFS people back in the early 1900's thought that "organized crime" was an oxymoron, what is so hard to believe about this? I think it comes down to either you don't know or you don't want to know.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what I did is a crime under US law then yes, in the US. If what I did involved accessing servers in Austrailia, from the US, then again, only if what I did is a crime under US law then yes, in the US. If I claimed in an online chat that I attempted to derive a password from a hash and failed, while I was located in Mexico then no. The idea of a government's authority being derived from a consent to be governed was…

It sounds like you don't believe in extradition at all, but there is precedence for this and most western countries are on board. It's not just the US, UK, and Australia. And the conspiracy wasn't just cracking the password, it was explicit intent to crack it for unauthorized access to classified military intelligence.

In limited cases I support it but I believe some type of consent to be governed is required, I consider physically visiting a sovern nation as implicit concent to be governed by their laws. I'm opposed to the notion that any government be able to determine the authorization for information access and excerpt authority on foreign citizens.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#326
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you change your gender does it apply retroactively? I assume it doesn't because that is needlessly complicated.

She didn’t change her gender: she is and has been a woman who was in times passed misread. Besides, in what world would referring to someone by a name they purposefully decided not to use be less complicated than referring to them by their actual name? Regardless of whether or not someone is trans, always call them by their current name: it is polite and also doesn’t cause null pointer errors.

Avoid confusing constructions (Jane Doe fathered a child) by rewriting (e.g., Jane Doe became a parent). Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and "[sic]" may be used where necessary). MOS:MULTIPLENAMES calls for mentioning the former name of a transgender person if they were notable under that name.

This is needlessly complicated. Editing all previous quotes and trying to rewrite past events is confusing.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes some way toward explaining the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria...

Also Pizzagate. Spread by Mr. Assange himself for political purposes. https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate Leading to https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/john-pod...

Did you read the pizzagate emails? I won't speculate on their meaning but they are weird as hell and I would like a plausible explanation as to what they were talking about.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The next time I get caught trying to hack the government I'm going to try the "but it was for journalism" defense. Shouldn't it if that access revealed information about war crimes? Or an artificial conflict that cost about 500.000 lives? That should remain undisclosed because computer sabotage is bad? This is missing perspective left and right.

If we start with the premises that if people think that something is a crime, they can commit a crime to try and prove it, our legal system will quickly crumble. Would it still be journalism, if they hacked the database and didn't find evidence. Should the fact that the information released, put many lives in danger when it compromised many people aiding our government? Morally his actions can be debated, but not fro…

So how exactly would you have the people informing themselves? We just sit and wait for the benevolent government to tell us what it deems is good for us to know?

We don't need to make a whole new set of legal principles where people automatically get off for claiming journalism. In this case the people (here and around the world) were able to learn a lot of valuable information. Assanges actions are justified.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, Assange lost his moral high ground after it came out that he was communicating with Trump Jr. and helping the Trump campaign. And that he delayed and timed the DNC and Podesta leaks to cause maximum advantage to Trump, instead of just releasing them when ready. Not to mention that DNC and Podesta were private entities, not government officials and zero illegality was revealed by those leaks. He later w…

Showed Hillary was cheating the dnc which she lied to the public about. There's plenty more justification but thats enough for me.

There he was just doing oppo research for Trump, corrdinated via Roger Stone. We don’t know whether he also conspired with that crime, as he is alleged to have done here, but we do know that if it was about public information we would have seen the RNC and Conway’s emails too. Since it was a crime and a possibly-unrelated disclosure both of which were acts of propaganda and information warfare and he has said it was motivated by his personal desire to change the outcome of the election, it is by definition neither motivated by not in service to educating the public.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#330
I'm trying to understand the various ways lines can be drawn.

One line is passive versus active gathering of classified information. It's clear that the article doesn't think the line should be drawn here.

But where then? The article says: "If he explicitly agreed to act as a Russian agent, he should lose his First Amendment protection," but I don't understand what line is being drawn.

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