Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection • Hacker News Board

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#431

Post by coldtea » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

Meph504 wrote: post #421

coldtea wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our laws aren't written in away that says if you steal something, and the value to others out weights the crime of stealing, then its not stealing. Well, that's bad. And it has been known to be bad since the time of Les Miserables at least... > Who in your opinion makes the choice of "what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed?" A judge, a police officer, a prosecutor, or a jury of his peers? The jury of peers…

It's not bad, how do you suppose a law like this would make the value jugement? This again is why you a jury.

In principle, what you say makes sense.

My disconnect is because I think I already know the value judgement the law will end up making.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#432

Post by darkarmani » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

stoolpigeon wrote: post #383

wybiral wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the cries about 1st Amendment ignore the fact that the grand jury proceeded with the indictment because they have Jabber records of WikiLeaks discussing cracking the password of a Department of Defense database. The next time I get caught trying to hack the government I'm going to try the "but it was for journalism" defense. In fact, why can't I hack companies and claim I was just trying to get information to…

I used to consider grand jury indictments to indicate that something was going on. Then someone close to me was indicted. That's when I learned that it takes almost nothing to get an indictment. In the case I know best it was less than nothing. When the case finally made it to a judge and was heard the judge realized how bad it was and through it out. Those indictments come from a group of people who hear only one si…

> That's when I learned that it takes almost nothing to get an indictment.

While that may be true, DAs don't like to lose in court, so why would they bring spurious charges? In this case, they would bring spurious charges because of the politics, but in general, they need a motive to take things to court that are obviously not even suspicious.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#433

Post by 8bitsrule » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true."

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#434

Post by techsin101 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

doe88 wrote: post #139

I tell you what, I'm moderate, some might say a bit coward, tonight I will sleep as usual, tomorrow I won't protest, never been in a single protest in my life. But I nonetheless think there is something wrong in our current western democracies. Instead of prosecuting people committing murders in a video, these are the men and women revealing these facts that are hunted down, for years. Meanwhile, these same people do…

I'm right there with you

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#435

Post by eridius » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #424

roguecoder wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she didn’t father a child, since she isn’t a father. The expectation that one be accurate is not “complexity”: it’s how you avoid saying things that are wrong. It is often simpler to be wrong. “Pi is 3” simplifies infinite complexity, in fact. But that doesn’t make it acceptable.

At that time she was identifying herself as a father though. There is no need to whitewash history. When people get married and change their last name they don't make people go into quotes from the past and change them, and that is far less of an identity change then we are talking about here. Bruce Jenner won an olympic medal. They don't need to scrub Bruce Jenner from old episodes of the Kardashians. Bruce Jenner t…

When people change their last name, newly-created references to them do in fact use their new name, even if talking about old events. That said, it's not really an analogous situation, because when people change their last name it's generally in response to a life event, and so references to them that predate that life event weren't inaccurate, they're just old. Transgender people who change their name aren't doing so in response to a life event, they're doing so because their old name was never who they were. It was a name forced upon them by their parents and society. Chelsea was always a woman, it's just the world didn't know until she came out. The name she used to go by was never really her, and continuing to use it is supremely disrespectful to her.

Or to put it another way, if you have a friend that comes out of the closet and announces they're gay, do you ever talk about "when they used to be straight", or do you recognize that they were always gay and you simply didn't know?

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#436

Post by toufiqbarhamov » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #337

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true, but you don’t get clicks from outrage by just saying the boring truth. I’ve also been reading rants from people who think the US is going to throw a bunch of other charges at him when he gets here, which is just hilariously wrong. In general a state can’t request extradition on charge A then throw B-Z into the mix when the plane lands. The only way to expand on the original charges are with permission fr…

> In general a state can’t request extradition on charge A then throw B-Z into the mix when the plane lands. The only way to expand on the original charges are with permission from the country which received the original request on the basis of new information. Does anybody think UK would not give all the permissions when asked?

The charges have to be based on new information, and the UK judiciary isn’t overtly political. All told I think Assange will go down for the hacking, and then be off to Sweden. After that I suspect the world at large will be done with him. He isn’t anything like as important as he and his few supporters seem to think.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#437

Post by antidesitter » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

roguecoder wrote: post #319

antidesitter wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or can we admit that he had an agenda in all of this that didn't align with the best interests of the American people? What agenda would that be? Edit: It’s a sad state of affairs for HN when a question like this immediately gets downvoted twice without explanation. HN is indeed changing, and not for the better.

Assange himself told us his agenda: he hated Clinton and wanted to prevent her election [1]. He then collaborated with Roger Stone[2] to desciminate the documents stolen by Russian intelligence [3], and succeeded at his goal. 1: https://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-12/assange-on-peston... 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/roger-stone-and-wikileaks-dire... 3: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/mar…

Can you explain why disseminating this information “didn't align with the best interests of the American people”?

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#438

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

ru999gol wrote: post #292

torstenvl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ICJ handles dispute between states. It has no authority to prosecute the soldiers of any country. You are, perhaps, referring to the ICC, established by the Rome Statute - to which the United States is not a party. The issue of whether the United States respects international law is not likely to be conducive to productive conversation on HN. It is also beside the point of this specific topic.

its not productive conversation with any american, as you are all brainwashed anyways by your corrupt government and media. As far as I'm concerned any american is complicit in war crimes.

Please don't post flamebait here or engage in nationalistic flamewars. Yes there are huge challenges to conversation across deep divides—but the site guidelines require that we make good-faith efforts to overcoming those challenges or—if you can't or don't want to do that—simply not to post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#439

Post by waffleguy » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

peteradio wrote: post #30

waffleguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He already has first amendment protection. You have an article above that explains the charges... you don’t even have to google and you’re lazy

My questions are rhetorical read between the lines.

Rhetorical questions don’t work online. Read a book.

Re: Julian Assange Deserves First Amendment Protection

#440

Post by thatoneuser » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

roguecoder wrote: post #329

thatoneuser wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Conway or the rnc had zero impact on people's perception of trump. Trump was the forerunner and eventually became president and it was clear that was the only way a republican would be president by the time the dnc emails were leaked. What would it have accomplished to release those docs, assuming assange had possession of them?

What exactly was the crime you're referring to and saying he's guilty of? If I have information about two candidates I can give it to others however I'd like.