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

nbcnews.com

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

#701

Post by sandworm101 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #434
DaoVeles wrote: post #351

All around my neighborhood is the graffiti of "Free Assange, Oz hero". Just this morning I saw a large amount of it in a new place. Was thinking "I really hope one day it happens but I am doubtful". And then I just saw this... wow! I am so glad to be wrong, to see my pessimistic side be completely wrong. Julian is free!

What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a “real” Australian, and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints, looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?

>> We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K.

Does Australia actually exile people? I thought that was done away with long ago. If they are wanted for crimes in Australia then they would be extradited from the UK. Even informal exile only normally happens between countries that do not have extradition treaties. I suspect these politicians are simply expatriates living in the UK for professional or tax reasons.

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

#702

Post by adammarples »

alkonaut wrote: post #472
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…

> This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove material. Never understood why gag orders don't just say "You can't say you received this order. Oh and by the way if we find you removed a canary, we'll just write that up as you having said you received this order". Because the point of a canary is for it to be known beforehand. So the government surely knows about any…

The whole point of a canary is that it's passive, and for exactly that reason. All you do is stop updating the date.

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

#704

Post by highcountess »

madaxe_again wrote: post #434
DaoVeles wrote: post #351

All around my neighborhood is the graffiti of "Free Assange, Oz hero". Just this morning I saw a large amount of it in a new place. Was thinking "I really hope one day it happens but I am doubtful". And then I just saw this... wow! I am so glad to be wrong, to see my pessimistic side be completely wrong. Julian is free!

What’s the actual view on him in oz? We’ve got exiled Aussie politicians here in the U.K. saying that he’s universally reviled, and that nobody even sees him as a “real” Australian, and that Australians will never forgive him for violating their privacy (oh, the bleeding irony). No alternate viewpoints, looks like 100% of sampled Australians hate him?

Could you clarify for me how he violated people’s privacy?

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

#705

Post by babypuncher »

I wouldn't call his work on Wikileaks "groundbreaking", he was clearly only willing to leak documents his benefactors wanted him to.

I agree that whistleblowing shouldn't be punished like we usually do, and the attempts to imprison him were a farce, but I still think he's a piece of shit who ruined any journalistic credibility he had when he got in bed with Putin.

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

#706

Post by bob88jg »

kybernetikos wrote: post #361
tetris11 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least the current Labour leader strikes me as a decent man with some actual principles and backbone and this would fundamentally be a decent thing to do. (massive sidetrack, but I can't let this sentence go unpunished) The current labour leader is the lamest duck in a group of wet blankets. His policies revolve around not being as corrupt as the Tories whilst doing virtually nothing else to better his constituen…

He's also got a background as a human rights lawyer. He probably has a lot of personal interest in cases like this.

He literally started the UK side of the persecution - starmer is a cop, always has been always will be....

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

#707

Post by bandrami »

bandrami wrote: post #388
penguin_booze wrote: post #380

Good for him, and I'm glad he's out. But this remains a lesson to whistleblowers: "we. will. make. you. suffer". At least he's alive.

What whistle did he blow?

Weird how many people could downvote this and how few people could give an example of him blowing a whistle on something

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

#708

Post by wmf »

impossiblefork wrote: post #516
wmf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the US had offered whistleblowers reasonable plea deals and they had taken them. Unfortunately that's not the world we live(d) in. The US pursued a policy of vindictive and extralegal punishment against "enemy combatants" that made a lot of people doubt whether they could get fair treatment.

Plea deals aren't a solution. No matter how reasonable. This agreement itself is a plea deal, but involves the agreement in principle that Assange has committed a crime by publishing this information. That in itself is an enormous problem for people seeking out government wrongdoing.

Yeah, it's not at all clear to me that Assange did anything illegal and if he was offered a deal 12 years ago he probably would have rejected it. But Snowden and Manning definitely broke the law and I don't think it's a good look for anyone involved to have Snowden being a fugitive and cause celebre in exile for life.

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

#709

Post by rvnx »

babypuncher wrote: post #705

I wouldn't call his work on Wikileaks "groundbreaking", he was clearly only willing to leak documents his benefactors wanted him to. I agree that whistleblowing shouldn't be punished like we usually do, and the attempts to imprison him were a farce, but I still think he's a piece of shit who ruined any journalistic credibility he had when he got in bed with Putin.

And whistleblowing is for a different case, it is when you work for an organization and see illegal or dangerous things, and choose loyalty to the law / public interest instead of the organization whom you work for.

Here it is different, it is an activist sponsored/supported by an enemy state actively seeking to create chaos in a foreign government.

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

#710

Post by zelphirkalt »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #377
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…

> Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident. Australian Politicians: collective silence We let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.

As far as I remember there were a few Australian politicians making a few waves about the Assange case.
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