[josefresco]

Just because Assange did one (or more) good things (Collateral Murder) does not make everything else he does, also good. Assange is not a journalist, and ceased being a journalist when he decided to enforce personal agendas and arguably work with nation-states to harm other nation-states. Even if you believe he's a journalist, journalists should not be above the law even if part of their work is for the good of the people.

[Nasrudith]

I hope you really didn't think that through. Because you just suggested that journalists should not exist when outlawed then.

If they are completely subservient to the law then they should not break it even when it is wrong. Therefore it is justified to do violence against them.

Goddamn right journalists should be above the law! The truth is fundamentally above the law as nothing written as law can change the truth. The nation-states running travesties and making reporting on them state secrets that is even more reason to report on them.

Fuck treating nation-states and laws as sacred. Any student of 20th century history (really before) should know why doing so is a dangerous, stupid, and /evil/ idea.

[luckylion]

> Goddamn right journalists should be above the law!

In very select instances, and under certain circumstances. A corrupt journalist is terrible and shouldn't be above the law at all. Granted you could argue that he's not a journalist if he doesn't adhere to journalistic standards, but that just makes it a battle over "is this person a journalist?"

[LoSboccacc]

> "is this person a journalist?"

the proper angle would be "was the presented data believed true at the moment of reporting" - even if this leave the door open for manipulation by omission, it can't really be more stringent than that without becoming dangerous.

[superqwert]

"Goddamn right journalists should be above the law!" - so the Monarchy should not be above the law (Magna Carta), but journalists should?

The last people I would want to have additional privileges are journalists, who often love to create spin or ruin people's lives for a story.

[Nasrudith]

The point of being above the law isn't about legal standards - power corrupts and the nominal protection without anything to back it is meaningless.

The only literal solution to that would be a daft concept of a nation-state of journalists with nuclear arms to give diplomatic immunity. Technically possible but a throughly daft idea that would create its own nation-state to corrupt.

Journalist legal immunity would be problematic in how it is defined as it could be used as a cudgel to restrict it to those who "play ball".

I suspect that an affirmative defense being recognized would probably be the best. So "broke into the Pentagon and published information on blacksites" would be protected but not "got drunk, beat spouse, then hit someone with your car". Even that is flawed as the judge could discard it or it could be given to cronies - plus again not an absolute defense against malfeasance. Said ideals are in short supply. Journalists would ideally be ethereal immortals - unable to be caged, killed, or silenced but we don't live in such a place.

The point for now is to see what was shown, ignore the "but that is illegal" and pay attention to the truth to use it to guide your decisions in a complicated world.

[nkozyra]

> Just because Assange did one (or more) good things (Collateral Murder) does not make everything else he does, also good.

Who is saying this? It was simply a demonstrable example of why people need the protections we afford the media.

> Assange is not a journalist,

There exists no binary test for "a journalist"/"not a journalist" and by the broadest definition it's not a particularly hard thing to meet. By quibbling over the definition we create wiggle room for the government to decide when someone isn't or isn't a journalist and charge accordingly. We should afford someone like Assange the same general rights we would for a veteran journalist at WSJ or NYT.

[belorn]

I took a look at the list for Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and asked myself, how many of those journalists broke the law?

The 2019 winner reported on a University of Southern California gynecologist accused of violating hundreds of young women. In order to write the story they went to former USC employees and solicited, among other things, patient confidential information. This is of course a crime by both the journalists and former employees, but one that most people will agree benefited society.

I wonder how many other journalists has won that award because they approach people to get confidential information in order to further a investigation. My guess is a lot. I doubt we could have investigative reporting at all if journalists could not ask questions in fear of being guilty of soliciting confidential information.

[gamblor956]

In order to write the story they went to former USC employees and solicited, among other things, patient confidential information.

What you have written is libel, and I suggest you remove your comment, since the LA Times has stated exactly how they conducted the investigation.

Ryan, Hamilton and a third colleague, Paul Pringle, kept knocking on doors, and over a period of months, they persuaded more than 20 current and former USC employees and a handful of former patients to talk on an anonymous basis. The story they told was jaw-dropping.

Unlike similar stories about sexual abuse, our investigation did not have the benefit of police records, court filings or other public documents because none existed. It was based almost exclusively on interviews.

The LA Times journalists did not look at patient records for the first story; they based the reporting solely on interviews with patients and with staff. They found these patients by basically just cold-calling people that might have been victims until they found some. Given the hundreds of women the doctor molested, this was actually not that hard to do (though in most cases this would have been like finding a needle in a haystack).

After the story broke, hundreds of women contacted the LA Times and provided permission for the LA Times to access their records as part of the investigation because they didn't trust USC to investigate properly without external pressure.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-times-pulitzer-geo...

[belorn]

From the source you linked:

"This story is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former USC employees. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing patient confidentiality laws"

Odd behavior citing patient confidentiality laws if the former USC employees does not think they divulged any information that is covered by patient confidentiality.

[cyphar]

> arguably work with nation-states to harm other nation-states

The claim by Mueller that the emails were stolen by Russian operatives is an incredible stretch of the imagination given the following:

* The public audit logs during the leaks provides clear evidence that the transfer must have happened locally using a USB drive because the transfer speed was too fast to happen over the internet -- Bill Binney and some other ex-NSA whistleblowers did tests to verify this[1]. Which makes it seem quite likely it was leaked by an insider of the DNC.

* Where did the data provided by the report (such as "XYZ searched for 'russia' on the DNC servers") come from? You might think the NSA, but all NSA intel is classified and so the President must have declassified it (which we would've heard about). It seems incredibly likely that this "evidence" was provided by the third-party "cyber threat intelligence" company which the DNC gave their email server to instead of the FBI when they broke the chain of custody.

Now, it is still possible that it happened -- but it is at the very least an incredibly suspicious claim.

[1]: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...

[simion314]

You accuse him again of working with other countries, first of all there is no proof, second if I I am not an US citizen why should be bad for me to work for say China and publish Trump/Hillary emails.

Then finally he is accused because he promised to look into how to crack some passwords, the accusations are very weak and the result will be similar to the result of the "Saddam chemical weapons", aka US will decide that he won'ts you then some pretext will be created and then the propaganda will start to justify the pretext.

[LoSboccacc]

this whole election interference thing is egregious because it's the typical crime that's only bad when bad people do it, which is a very ugly and problematic standard when it comes to building a trial.

on the accusation of having extracted information as opposed to having received information I think we really don't have the elements to reach an informed conclusion, albeit I suspect by how the story developed that the trial will not be particularly fair to him.

[ANPEQ-1]

Thank you. There is such thing as legitimate secrets. The threat of jail for wholesale and thoughtless release of top secret information... is a good threat. Professional journalists know this and shouldn't jump on the Assange bandwagon; they understand that their power comes a duty of care.

[rplst8]

Secrets are just that, secrets. Not some legally protected object. If you don't want your secrets getting out, then don't tell people them, or better yet - don't do bad things. Making secrets legally protected for those that have not signed an NDA and do not participate in government inner-workings or aren't even citizens of that country is a dangerous precedent that erodes the first amendment.

What would stop a government from making something "classified" ex post facto just to silence and/or jail nay-sayers, political opponents, or oppressed peoples? The answer is nothing, and this is exactly why this cannot stand.

[jmpman]

So, a journalist could publish the design documents for the F-35? The newest hydrogen bomb? Information on how we are spying on the North Koreans? Proof that military intelligence isn’t always 100% correct and has bombed groups incorrectly? Proof that we are spying on suspected terrorists who have recently been granted US citizenship? I believe there is a line somewhere in the above scenarios, and journalists are responsible for determining where that line exists. Assange appears to have a different interpretation of where that line is from the US government officials.

[Nasrudith]

If a secret is legitinate nobody should need threats of jail to keep it but its own merits.

Even the damnable rhetorical justification for abuses "fire in a crowded theater" standard of nuclear launch codes this applies to - since if they were compromised let the whole goddamn world know it is 1-2-3-4-5 so that they can have actual security instead of illusion of security and the fuck ups responsible being safe from any deserved backlash.

[simion314]

If I am a non US journalist why should be illegal for me to publish an US secret especially war crimes and not weapon or defense designs ?

[maze-le]

This is why there are countless indictments against sources. Editorial work [the very things he is accused of] should not be viewed as illegitimate -- even if you think that the sources should be jailed -- they have made the information public...

However that may be, sloppy/negligent editorial work i.e. the release of names (uncensored) can very well be a judicial issue -- but that is not what he is accused of. And it should definitely not be persecuted with the remnant of a war-time power grab [espionage act].

[raxxorrax]

Secrets need to be justified. Otherwise you cannot hold your allegedly democratic government accountable.

War crimes are no valid secrets and there was no legitimate channel. You would be ethically required to act and leak the information.