UK Approves Extradition Of Julian Assange, Allowing The US Government To Continue Criminalizing Journalism
from the publishing-leaks?-that's-a-prosecuting. dept
It appears all but inevitable that Julian Assange will be receiving an all-expenses-paid (except for his defense!) one-way trip to the United States to face espionage charges for, mostly, performing acts of journalism.
The Wikileaks founder has done plenty of self-inflicted damage to his reputation over the past few years, but his organization was instrumental in uncovering plenty of abusive behavior by the US government that had been perpetrated in secret.
Leaks are an instrumental part of government accountability, even if governments often treat leaks as criminal acts. And while it’s abhorrent to see the government punish whistleblowers who found the accepted whistleblowing routes inadequate, it’s even worse to see the US government engaged in a prosecution that threatens press freedoms in the home of the First Amendment.
The Obama Administration toyed with the idea of extraditing Assange to try him on criminal charges, but ultimately abandoned that effort, most likely due to the First Amendment implications. The Trump Administration — despite finding Assange to be an unlikely ally — had no such concerns. As the administration struggled to contain seemingly daily leaks, it decided sacrificing an ally might send a message to US journalists, many of whom the president treated with open hostility.
Why the Biden Administration is allowing this to continue isn’t clear. Perhaps the Biden DOJ feels the espionage charges are legit. Maybe it feels it should silence Assange before he does any more damage to the federal government. Maybe it feels it should punish an ally of Trump (and a seeming supporter of Russian disinformation campaigns) before he can wreak any more havoc on democracy in general.
Whatever the case, the prosecution continues. And, as Trevor Timm points out in his post for Freedom of the Press Foundation, you don’t have to be a supporter of Assange to understand extradition and prosecution over the publication of leaked documents will do severe damage to journalists in the United States, and anywhere else in the world the US government has extradition agreements in place.
You don’t have to like Assange or his political opinions at all to grasp the dangerous nature of this case for journalists everywhere, either. Even if you don’t consider him a “journalist,” much of the activity described in the charges against him is common newsgathering practices. A successful conviction would potentially make receiving classified information, asking for sources for more information, and publishing certain types of classified information a crime. Journalists, of course, engage in all these activities regularly.
There’s precedent for this, unfortunately. But it’s the sort of precedent the Biden DOJ shouldn’t willingly embrace. Timm notes that the extradition announcement falls on the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers trial, one instigated by a president whose downfall was the result of journalists publishing leaked documents.
What many do not know is that the Nixon administration attempted to prosecute Times reporter Neil Sheehan for receiving the Pentagon Papers as well — under a very similar legal theory the Justice Department is using against Assange.
Thankfully, that prosecution failed. And until this one does too, we continue to urge the Biden administration to drop this prosecution. Every day it continues to further undermine the First Amendment.
You’d think any administration would actively avoid replicating nearly anything instigated by the Nixon Administration. But here we are, fifty years later, experiencing deja vu as our government spends millions of our dollars to threaten long-held First Amendment protections.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, espionage act, extradition, free speech, journalism, julian assange, leaks, uk
Companies: wikileaks
Comments on “UK Approves Extradition Of Julian Assange, Allowing The US Government To Continue Criminalizing Journalism”
Is it about publishing though?
I’ve read the indictment(s) a bunch of times.
The one thing that becomes clear is that its worked such that for ANY of the convictions, they have to first prove he acted with Manning to obtain the material. If they don’t have that, they just have the publishing, which isn’t a crime.
Basically, it all hinges on not the publishing, but the obtaining. And I don’t think anyone actually thinks that journalists should be free to break the law to get material for stories.
That lack of factual nuance is not unusual in this case, where people have been repeating false claims for years (from Nils Melzer claiming Assange initially left Sweden with permission after the prosecutor refused to interview him – something clearly identified as a lie by Assange’s own lawyer back in 2011 – to a Guardian Op-Ed the other day saying he’s been in prison for 3 years and never charged when he was charged and convicted of bail abscondment, and then charged under this extradition request and indictment.)
This case needs a little more rational thought and a lot less hysterical ‘OMG its such a persecution’ based on lies and misunderstandings.
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People need to stop journalizing criminals.
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But this website is funded by Google. Can’t have pesky regulations cutting into tech profits.
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But this website is funded by Google.
Not since July last year, it hasn’t been. Do pay attention, 007. 😎
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Was.
And the Charles Koch Foundation hasn’t called back, either.
Re: Obtaining Material May Not Be Criminal
Well, it is more than that. He needs to be the one who broke the law to obtain it, or else he is not on the hook.
In Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), the radio commentator played a tape of an illegally-recorded car phone conversation. He had found the tape in his mailbox.
Trial court convicted of disclosing content of illegal wiretap. On review, the Supremes reversed, because it cannot be illegal to broadcast legally obtained material, and inasmuch as finding something in one’s mailbox is legal, the obtaining was legal.
Sure, he might have previewed it, so long as he was not running firefox without javascript on the new site, but even that in-house use should be legal.
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Right, so it’s on the obtaining.
Did he obtain it legally/innocently, or did he break the law in how he got it.
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TBH, I think that the US Government is trying to hang the same charge on Assange as they convicted Chelsea Manning of. Now, he may or may not be a sexually violent individual (rape charges were dropped about three years ago), but that’s no reason to hang something on him that Manning herself already said she did on her own.
But this has done the most important thing they needed, everyone is focused on seeing if and where the fault with be assigned… but did what was exposed lead to any changes beyond them doubling down on hiding their crimes?
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No, and for the simple reason that what was exposed wasn’t what was claimed to be exposed, or what people think was exposed.
For there to be the ‘warcrimes’ everyone thinks was committed, it’s not just ‘killing two journalists’, nope. It has to be ‘actively targeting a non-combatant’.
So, if they were emblazoned in the words ‘press’ (or other linguistic equivalent) so they are identifiable as ‘press’ that goes further, same as if they had the red crescent/cross symbols indicating medical.
They didn’t, so they were not identifiable as potential non-combatants for a start. Second, journalists in war zones are encouraged to keep people informed of their whereabouts, had they done so her, the pilots would have been told ‘watch out theres two journalists in the area’
Since no-one knew they were even in the area and never identified them as journalists (and thus non-combatants) they can’t have been targeted for that reason, which means warcrimes is a non-starter.
Third, non-combatants means just that – NON COMBATANTS.
You might be able to get away with light personal weapons for self-defense (sidearms, and light rifles etc) but when you’re carrying AK’s and RPG’s, that’s not weapons for self-defense. Thus they’re by definition ‘combatants’, so even if they were decked out in red crosses of 20ft high letters saying ‘press’ they wouldn’t be non-combatants.
Now, add in that they were a group of somewhat heavily armed men that may also have a journalist with them, that is moving towards a nearby active firefight, then there’s no question that it’s not even close to being considered a warcrime.
The idea its a warcrime comes from the heavily edited version of the video, which highlights ‘cameras’ and completely fails to mention things like RPG’s, or the active battle they were moving towards. It does this to create a false narrative, one that took something like 10 days for Birgitta Jonsdotter (who I believe did the editing) to create, making a video inspired by Project Veritas’s videos of Acorn.
He had no choice but to edit the video though. The cables showed nothing (Manning had offered them for sale to major news orgs for 6 months before going to wikileaks with them. Noone wanted to buy them because they had nothing of value/interest in them. The only other thing they got was this video, which showed ‘something’, but nothing surprising or revealing. And so he had to make something of it, to get ahead of any action taken in response.
And as far as just ‘publishing’ things is being persecuted, that’s just crap, and anyone who knows this case should know why. That ‘why’ that there was an American in with Assange at the time they were published, and thus, technically, are a party to the publication of those files. The name is known, its been out there for almost 12 years, and that American has been living happily in the US, continuing to be a journalist, and untroubled by the feds. His name, is Raffi Khatchadourian. Under the Conspiracy section of the Espionage act, he could be charged if they were going after publishing. He hasn’t been. Which is why the whole silly circus of pandering to hysteria built on bullshit falls down…. again
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The indictment uses a lot of words to say “Assange asked for these documents”. THAT is your “obtaining”.
… criminalizing receiving “stolen National Defense Information”. Again, criminalizing “he asked for them”.
The indictment says that you are wrong.
Re: Re: Re: It's always fun to see someone play at being a lawyer
If you’d read the indictment fully, you’d notice that it all hangs on the conspiracy element.
That’s WHY the 793(g) charge is the first count.
the two persons are Manning and Assange. That means that charges that could apply to Manning can be applied to Assange, and those that can be applied to Assange would also count against Manning. Understand it now?
So the ‘disclosure’ charges are sections c, d and e.
C is ‘attempts to obtain classified info for disclosure’ – thats a charge that could go against both.
D is “authorised people disclosing it to unauthorised people’ – thats a charge based on Manning, but which can be applied through the conspiracy aspect to Aassange.
E is about those having unauthorised access – this is the assange side of the same charge that is D, implying them working together.
Without them proving Assange worked with manning, the Conspiracy charge goes away. When it does that, the D charges automatically fail (he’s not ‘authorised’), the C goes away (because they didn’t prove he was ‘working with’).
That just leaves counts 15-17, which has never been directly tested, but where the best/closest law, NYT v USA, leans in Assanges favor IF they don’t prove the conspirac (the most recent precedent being the non-charges for revealing of Pres. Trump’s taxes in 2017 which are considered confidential (just for being tax documents, doubly so for being that of that sitting presidents)
In short, most of the charges state ‘worked with manning’, which is the basis oc count 1. If they can’t prove count 1, then most of the rest of the charges vanish anyway, as they rely on that as the bedrock.
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The person you replied to didn’t say what you’re claiming they did. Wanna try again by clicking on the correct reply link this time?
'Making us look bad? Oh you better believe you're paying for that.'
You’d think any administration would actively avoid replicating nearly anything instigated by the Nixon Administration. But here we are, fifty years later, experiencing deja vu as our government spends millions of our dollars to threaten long-held First Amendment protections.
Only if the administration in question isn’t of the mindset that the problem back then wasn’t that the government did something bad but that it got caught doing something bad. If you’re of the belief that the public has no right to know what the you/the government is doing beyond what the government tells them trying to undermine a ruling that found otherwise is great.
“His name, is Raffi Khatchadourian. Under the Conspiracy section of the Espionage act, he could be charged if they were going after publishing.”
Or, they want to go after the guy that does not have the deep pockets for lawyers to set legal precedent before going after the tougher nuts.
I see no problem, Assange is a foreigner
Blowing people away, or video that portrays blowing people away, sells proxy war and is a valid form of entertainment, like sizzle sells charred meat and lipstick sells ass. WHY would this administration, or any other administration do anything to diminish access to Government snuff videos? Or is Assange propelling a valuable Streisand dynamic: ten years of newspaper slugs?
“Government is simply the biggest corporation, with a monopoly on violence… where you have no recourse. So how much money do you want to give that entity?” See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSD_vpfikbE
No sympathy for Assange
Assange is to journalism like Giuliani is to jurisprudence. Assange sold his soul to the wrong devil and now that sale is coming back to bite him.
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We don’t have journalists in this country anymore. We do have liars. The lies they threw out there about Trump were just insane!! They all regurgitated the same lies.
If you actually saw what Trump actually said, you would have seen that they are big fat liars!!! Because they are just on the Democrat side. Even now, they have been covering up for half a brain Biden. Where is the attack on Biden? Why are they not doing their job NOW? Why do they keep making excuses for Biden?
Obama/Biden now it’s Biden/Obama. So of course they would still be going after this guy. That is when Biden is even awake or not in Delaware falling over on his bike!!!
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That’s as many as four tens. And that’s terrible.
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… said nobody who has ever once demonstrated any capacity for rational independent thought, ever.
disgraceful! but while they have Prity Patel in the position of Home Office boss, this is the sort of thing she seems to thrive on. i’m waiting to read where she has done the same sort of thing to someone of her native country. is also a shame she didn’t push to get the bitch sent back to UK who fled to USA under lie after lie when she killed that teenager! as usual, if it fucks me up, i’ll ignore it. if it can further my ambitions, i’ll pursue it!
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I’m waiting to read where she has done the same sort of thing to someone of her native country.
If you’re accusing Patel of having done something to a Brit, then she already did do it to someone of her native country. Yes, I saw your racist assertion that someone with brown skin can’t be from a country with a temperate climate, and like all racist assertions before it, it wasn’t that hard to rebut. Now go away, the less ignorant people are talking.
Missed something
As far as I was aware everything wikileaks published was factual. What did I miss?
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Where Russia hacked the Democrats and the Republicans in the run up to the 2016 Presidential Election, but sent only material damaging to Hillary Clinton to Wikileaks for publication. Careful, someone got piled on the other day for not knowing about this, despite not being from the US.
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Ah, semantics. Lol. Tim has a tendency to do this. Get caught up in his politics when writing.
There’s a big difference between displaying blatant bias in publishing, and disinformation.
Like them or not, wikileaks has exposed real scandals through its life.
I have seen no evidence they ever knowingly published anything inaccurate. And they are quick to fix proven errors.
A recurring issue with those that simply hate Trump is they only see things, like the emails, through that view. The other side is some people didn’t care about Trump one way or another, they just hated Clinton. From that viewpoint he wasn’t helping Trump, he was hurting his opposition.
That doesn’t change factual accuracy of what was published.
I have serious issues with some of what was published over the years. Including CM. But to call it disingenuous, disinformation, is either lying or ignorance.
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You tell that same lie about Breitbart.
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Show a single time where wikileaks posted a leak that wasn’t authentic. Feel free. Link please.
In the meantime: you’re statement about Breitbart is out of context. At the time it was made it was in discussions how they, usually, if not always, posted retractions or correction updates, vs WaPo who did/does so quite rarely.
Go back and reread those (rather old) posts. It was always comparison with other options. And I stand by what I said at the time in context. It’s been a long while since I read anything from them.
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The Collateral Murder video. That video – the ‘leak’ of ‘warcrimes’ was not authentic, it was edited to change its meaning.
Re: Re: Re:4
And both versions were released. I didn’t see any change in the full video from the shorter version.
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I didn’t see any change in meaning.
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Don’t jump to conclusions, it was not Tim that enlightened someone about this, it was me since a poster had no clue that RNC also had been hacked back then and it had been all over the media for a short period.
In Wikileaks case, choosing to publish some things but not others would actually be a form of disinformation or perhaps misinformation.
Whether that was the case or not we don’t know, but we do know it was Russia that supplied Wikileaks with the information from the DNC hack.
You seem unaware about the fact that most people actually don’t hate Trump, they despise him. If you want to see what real hate is, just look at Trump’s supporters and how they conduct themselves.
A distinction without meaning. If I intentionally trip a runner that is about to win a race because I don’t like that person I know someone else will win instead.
As mentioned above, anyone can present completely factual information but leave other information out, just to misdirect people.
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It does have meaning though.
if you trip the runner because you hate him you did so without regard for the actual winner. Your goal was to stop one person. Someone else winning is a byproduct, not the intent.
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I gave you a bunch of examples already. Want some more?
“In September of this year, it was revealed that the CIA drew up plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange” from This page almost 8 months ago. There was no such plans. There was one person, Pompeo, suggesting it, and being shot down straight away. No ‘plans’ were drawn up by the CIA.
LIE
Hell, on its [https://wikileaks.org/What-is-WikiLeaks.html](What is Wikileaks) page, it says “Julian Assange’s ongoing detention without charge is best described here:” That’s two lies – First the UK high Court ruled in 2011 that under the definition of ‘charged’ wikileaks are using, he WAS charged (and since then, he’s been charged and convicted of another crime, and then charged and held on remand – to say ‘ongoing detention without charge’ is a MASSIVE lie) And that site is not the best description of it, as it too is filled with lies.
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He is being held for the Us government, not a UK charge. And that is what the long term detention is regarding.
You’re intentionally reading it out of context.
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Let’s discuss that for a moment.
In discussion of leaks, I claimed they have a record of accuracy.
You point to two things. A non-leak piece of self propaganda. Nothing wrong with presenting your side of the story. It’s not published as a leak.
The other, CM.
Both the original edited video and the not-long-after-released video show the same thing. I don’t see any message or opinion change between the two. I’ll mention I had seen the longer one FIRST. And the shorter one does not change the message at all. Simply cuts out a lot of video that doesn’t show what the intention of the leak was. The targeted killing of non-verified people who were non-combatants.
It looks no more justified in the long version than the short version.
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> The targeted killing of non-verified people who were non-combatants.
Then you only saw the short one then.
To be non-combatants, you should be easily identified as such – big markings saying ‘press’, or a red cross/crescent is the usual way. Without that there’s no positive way to identify as a non-combatant.
The second element for a non-combatant is that you don’t have weapons. Some interpretations are that you can have some light weapons for self-defense (talking mainly sidearms, maybe a single semi-auto rifle) – nothing that makes you really combat-capable.
These people had multiple automatic weapons, AND RPG’s. Unless you learnt about ‘non-combatant’ status from an institution as prestigious as Trump University, you’d know that if you’re carrying an RPG, you’re *NEVER* going to be considered a non-combatant. Even if they were carrying sandwich boards with ‘press’ in 5ft letters, and driving a red cross truck, having the RPG instantly eliminates any consideration of ‘non’ combatant.
Carrying automatic weapons, RPGs, and moving towards an active firefight, that’s always going to get your ass waxed, especially as that RPG could have taken down those choppers (they were in range).
>He is being held for the Us government, not a UK charge. And that is what the long term detention is regarding.
>You’re intentionally reading it out of context.
No, it says ‘no charges’, not ‘no UK charges’, it says ‘no charges’, and it’s a lie they’ve said for ages.
Heres a statement [on the wikileaks site from 2012](https://wikileaks.org/Press-Statement-By-Julian-Assange.html)
“It is accepted by the UK Supreme Court that Julian Assange has not been charged with any criminal offence in Sweden. It is also accepted that he was by told by Swedish authorities that he was free to leave Sweden”
Except in court in Feb 2011 Assange’s own lawyer said that he prosecutor never said he was free to leave. Except the UK High Court ruled in November 2011 that under the UK definition of ‘charged’ he had been charged by Sweden.
Now I understand you may not have known all of that, but your ignorance of the facts, doesn’t make your assumptions into reality.
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I’ll have to go back to see the video again. But it looked to me like a camera. Not an RPG.
Despite the crew commentary.
I don’t know what the actual rules of engagement were at the time.
Mind you I don’t blame anyone for anything.
All I see is another video that shows war has costs. Human costs.
As for the rest of the post.
A) not Russian disinformation.
B)not a published leak
No, I wasn’t aware of the details. I’ll give it to you that that appears to be inaccurate. But that was not the discussion. I should have made the sentence clearer,
I see no evidence wikileaks ever knowing published a leak that was inaccurate. I didn’t realise there were errors in things unrelated to leaks that I didn’t particularly care about anyway.
As the news portion.
The claim of Russian disinformation. That’s a bold claim, and I’ve yet, even now, to see any evidence of leaks being false or inaccurate, Russian or otherwise.
Because the closest statement is the email leaks. Where there is no, zero, evidence they received the Republican emails that I’ve read.
Which was my point.
And even if they did, and didn’t publish them, maybe it was because Russia asked. Maybe not. Maybe they just hated Clinton. Maybe they liked Trump. We don’t know. But partial reporting is nothing new in news. Fox, CNN, NBC, Etc. They all have a plan in reporting. A “spin” of sorts. A tilt or lean.
Burying a story is not exactly unheard of, is it?!!
Re: Re: Re:5
Sure, the cameraman had a camera.
Other members of the group he was with had RPGs.
Even Assange doesn’t dispute that there were RPGs there, he just avoids mentioning it when possible.
Re: Re: Re:2
Hell, on its [https://wikileaks.org/What-is-WikiLeaks.html](What is Wikileaks) page, it says “Julian Assange’s ongoing detention without charge is best described here:”
If being wined and dined in the foreign embassy you’re holed up in meets the definition of ‘detention without charges’, then I’d like to be detained. Unlike Assange, I’d do my best not to piss off my hosts so they kicked me out.
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They published at one point a ’96 things you can’t say about Assange’ thing, with 96 entries they claimed was defamatory.
Except they’d sent around to journalists as recently as a day earlier a list with 140 things on it.
Worse, not a single thing on there was defamation. It was from things like “its defamatory to call him a hacker” (he literally pled guilty to hacking charges in the 90s) or “its defamatory to say he was charged by sweden” (the UK High Court ruled in 2011 that under the definition of ‘charged’ that wikileaks used, the UK one, he had been charged), to the absolutely stupid like “its defamatory to say he smells”
You want other lies, US extradition from sweden (his own lawyers said it was impossible in court, and he knew it too, he had a whole press conference about it in 2010 about it being the main reason he was moving to sweden) or how he would give up hiding if manning’s sentence was commuted (he didn’t), Or the “Collateral Murder” video, which was edited to be factually inaccurate on purpose to push a lie.
When they say ‘never been proved wrong’ or similar, what they mean is that they’ve not published ‘non-authentic material’
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The lie that the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks by Seth Rich.
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Assange suggested they received the DNC leaks from Seth Rich, which is nonsense Russian disinfo.
Re: Re: Really?
You mean this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7FkLBRpKg
As far as I’m aware he never claimed that himself personally, only stating they don’t reveal sources and that others have made such a link. Not themselves.
If I’m missing something specific I’d be happy to look at it. But I haven’t seen him make such a claim.
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He implied Seth Rich was the source in a 2017 interview on dutch TV, while at the same time dancing around specifically saying it.
“There’s a 27-year-old who works for the DNC who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.”
“That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn’t it?” the host interjected.
“No,” Assange said. “There’s no finding.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that our sources take risks,” Assange said, “and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.”
It’s the ‘not saying it’ of saying it. If he wasn’t saying Seth Rich was the source, why mention him at all? The ONLY reason to bring him up is to tie his to it.
It’s also why Assange has constantly dodged being deposed by Seth’s family in a defamation suit, where he’d have to make a statement either way. Either he tries to continue the lie, and opens himself up for more BS, or he’d have to finally go on the record and say it was made up. He wouldn’t be given the kind of softball question he can dodge around that’s been the only kind he’ll answer for years.
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I don’t see the family prevailing in their case, unfortunately. Assange claimed what he did weeks after Rich’s murder, and the relevant statutes all say that you can’t defame the dead.
Re: Re: Re:2
I don’t see why it matters. If the point was the source takes a risk, well that’s a set of hyperbole that works.
How you take such a comment is entirely on you. Let’s be honest. Many leakers get killed. All over the world. Even here.
So passing the buck on a corpse is a good way to deflect.
Again, this has nothing to do with the factuality of any leak.