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Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

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Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#381

Post by webninja »

light_triad wrote: post #342

The whole saga is an interesting lesson in how a noble cause can end up helping anti-democratic forces. Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton. Politics is complicated.

Yes, and politics is not about supporting only one side either. If transparency makes for more informed decisions, who’s to judge the better outcome? Meritocracies die in darkness and evidence of corruption scares lots of voters away. Especially the unaffiliated/independent ones that decide elections.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#382

Post by themoonisachees »

benreesman wrote: post #317
whoitwas wrote: post #263

Can 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 ma…

I remember when canaries were useful as a deterrent: even with an apathetic public on balance the tech community was pretty vigilant. These days Snowden is screaming into the void even as concerns HN readers, never mind that he was completely right at great personal cost the first time. I still trust Moxie, and Carmack/Palmer/etc. seem to be taking a stand, there are others, but it’s getting thin.

The main problem with canaries is that it's dead easy for a government to remove them from existence, simply issue subpoenas to every website that has one.

The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically they won't.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#385

Post by tivert »

nemo44x wrote: post #210

Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything. But it’s great he’s free, or it sounds like.

> Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything.

He didn't serve 12 years. He locked himself in his room for 7, then he actually served 5.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#386

Post by bandrami »

webninja wrote: post #381
light_triad wrote: post #342

The whole saga is an interesting lesson in how a noble cause can end up helping anti-democratic forces. Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton. Politics is complicated.

Yes, and politics is not about supporting only one side either. If transparency makes for more informed decisions, who’s to judge the better outcome? Meritocracies die in darkness and evidence of corruption scares lots of voters away. Especially the unaffiliated/independent ones that decide elections.

Weird that he had the hacked emails of two political parties in the US and only released one of them, then

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#387

Post by yzydserd »

PUSH_AX wrote: post #376
yzydserd wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Australian government brokered the deal [0] after their parliament voted for him to be freed [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/biden-assange-... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/14/austr...

Interesting, I’m guessing he didn’t expose many Australian secrets? Their government is fresh off of jailing a whistleblower (David McBride) ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ 5 years who exposed a so called war hero as someone who actually committed war crimes.

The phrase used by the attorney general was “enough is enough”. He was found guilty today and sentenced to time served, which was 5 years 1 month. David McBride seems to have been sentenced to 5 years 8 months. Where did you read he was jailed for life?

I don’t agree with either sentence, but they do not appear at odds with one another.

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#389

Post by bandrami »

instagib wrote: post #259
olalonde wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which illegal government activities did the Manning/Assange leaks uncover? The only thing I can recall is that "collateral damage" helicopter footage but it was an isolated incident and was deemed legal following investigation.

“On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks.[6] The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder,[7][8] showed the crew firing on a group of people and killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians.[15] An anonymous U.S.…

The gunship crew literally talk about how annoying it is to have to wait for them to pick up a gun (at which point they aren't civilians)

Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free

#390

Post by [deleted] »

aixpert wrote: post #313
throwup238 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but the judge can't both reject the plea deal and sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. He's not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn't be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the t…

The history of Assange is the history of diplomatic incidents, in that sense rejecting the plea deal would not be out of the ordinary

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