| You're correct, but it's not immediately clear to me what it means to be part of such a conspiracy. Would simply receiving classified information from Chelsea Manning count? (Probably not, I would guess.) What about receiving classified information and then remarking "Wow, this is great stuff! I'm going to pass this information on to prominent news organizations through my website called Wikileaks. You don't have more that you could send me, do you?" Would this count as conspiracy if his remark lead to Manning obtaining more information in an illegal manner? It seems that something along these lines may have happened. It seems to me that Assange should only be prosecuted if he broke into DoD computers himself. It doesn't appear that such an event occurred. I believe that discourse between a journalist and a source (or any two civillians, for that matter) is protected by the 1st Amendment. Thus, encouraging Manning to hack government computers, or even describing to her how to hack government computers[1], should both be protected by the 1st Amendment. [1] Perhaps this opinion is controversial. Allow me to lay out an example: Source: "I've sent you all the info I have! Everything else is password-protected."
Reporter: "The password isn't 'password123', is it?"
Source: "Hey, that worked! Let me send you some more stuff to help with your expose." In this case, or even if the reporter suggested something more technically advanced like "Hey, look up sql injection on Wikipedia," I believe that the reporter's speech is protected by the 1st Amendment. (The source's activities are almost certainly illegal, but that doesn't answer the question of whether they should be prosecuted for them). |