[darawk]

Of course they were. Julian Assange's explicit mission was to expose US (and other) intelligence secrets. If they weren't spying on him and his visitors they'd be derelict in their most basic of duties.

I don't even know why this is a story. I don't mind Assange, and I think the counterpoint he created to state power was good, but the idea that the state shouldn't spy on him in turn is ludicrous.

[whatshisface]

Every time news comes out, people say "this was obvious from the start," but every time a suggestion is made before the news has come out people say "that's crazy there is no evidence." It was not the case that he was "of course" being spied on, it was plausible that he was being spied on.

[DiogenesKynikos]

In October 2010, the day after WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs, the New York Times ran a front-page article that essentially painted Assange as paranoid.[1] Here's the opening:

> Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London's rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears.

> He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.

This was the Times' lead article on the person who had just provided them with one of the biggest scoops in the history of the paper.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html

[atmosx]

Wikileaks schooled the entire western world mainstream media by releasing more material than they ever could hope.

I love the NYTimes, I consider them the best there is, but when it comes to US national matters or a specific Wall Street breed of Democrats, they are just as ridiculous as Fox News :-)

[nullc]

Have you ever read NYTimes coverage on a matter where you were personally an expert?

In those cases I personally found their coverage ranged from meh and mildly misleading to extremely poor and outright the opposite of the truth.

Most other big name venues appear to do better.

[atmosx]

Hm, interesting. Can you share specific examples? I reckon that they suffer heavily in the topics I mentioned before for obvious reasons.

[pc86]

You honestly think if someone had made a comment "the US is spying on Assange directly or through intermediaries" someone would have said they were crazy and there was no evidence of that?

[ndr]

Apparently even his lawyers, from TFA:

"It was Julian Assange who suggested holding the legal meetings inside the women's toilet due to his suspicion of being under intense surveillance. Lawyers had considered it paranoid on Assange's part, and UC Global had reassured them on this count, but in reality microphones had even been placed inside the women's toilet."

[tome]

If so someone should easily be able to provide a few links to historical comments saying that.

[crtccnt]

You would have been attacked and called a conspiracy theorist, putin troll, chinese bot, among other things by journalists, think tank workers and depending on the time - by republican supporters and democrat supporters.

[fromMars]

Governments spy on a wide range of people, it would be illogical to call someone a conspiracy theorist for asserting that the US was spying on Assange and lends doubt to your claim that most would be rebuked as such based on that alone.

In contrast, evidence that the US Intelligence agencies actually framed Assange for rape would be much more newsworthy.

[tspiteri]

Using that reasoning, there was no story when Klaus Fuchs was caught spying on the Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union: Of course the Soviet Union intelligence were spying on the Manhattan Project, if they weren't spying on it they'de be derelict in their most basic of duties.

[aisengard]

I mean, the story was that the Soviet Union was spying on its allies. Klaus Fuchs went to jail. All of this is pretty much accepted statecraft. Are we supposed to think that something _went wrong_ when Klaus Fuchs was caught spying and went to jail? That's what happens to spies who are caught. Hence Assange.

[DiogenesKynikos]

With the important difference being that Assange is not a spy.

Edit: Downvoted for pointing out that Assange is not a spy. I'm honestly surprised by HN.

[Analemma_]

That's actually very questionable. It's pretty clear by now that at the very least he's a Russian intelligence asset.

[sgjohnson]

[citation needed]

[optimiz3]

Misdirection. The news is a spy was caught and who it was; not that the Soviet Union was attempting to subvert the Manhattan Project.

[tspiteri]

And the news here to me is that the Spanish contractor was caught spying. So while it can be argued that the US spying is no news story, the spying by the security company is.

[saalweachter]

Frankly I can't help but imagine that the outsourcing of everything (but especially janitorial and security staff) has made it incredibly easy for everyone from state intelligence agencies to private corporations to insert spies into interesting places.

[metalliqaz]

that's stupid. counter intelligence is also one of our side's basic duties. spy on the other guys, and stop the other guys from spying on us, that's the job description.

[mikeyouse]

From the perspective of the Soviets - yes this is true. This analogy doesn’t work at all.

[77pt77]

BTW, Fuchs died of old age.

That's the most surprising thing in that story as far as I'm concerned.

[eecc]

Uhm, Assange’s mission is to expose abuse by members of powerful organizations, directed at protecting their own positions and covering up abuses with more of the same.

[root_axis]

Assange is a political actor. This is especially clear after his explicit support of Trump during the U.S. 2016 elections. Of course, being a political actor doesn't negate the substance of the revelations he facilitated, but his agenda definitely isn't based out of an objective desire to speak truth to power.

[metalliqaz]

perhaps at one time it was. now his mission is to stay out of prison.

[threeseed]

But only if they organizations align with his world view.

Never saw anything from Wikileaks criticising the Trump or Russian administration even though they are two of the most egregious abusers of norms.

[jhayward]

Funny how he ended up being Putin's bitch and working with the GRU to throw the US presidential election to Trump then, isn't it?

[wglb]

Information wants to be free

Unless it’s about me

[buboard]

Which state, the british, the US, or ecuador? Or all three? I get what you 're saying but this doesnt make it normal or ethical.

[roywiggins]

It's extremely normal. Every intelligence agency is trying to bug each others' embassies. There's tape of the Saudis killing Jamal Kashoggi because the Turkish government was routinely bugging the Saudi embassy. We've been bugging each others' embassies since we had electronic surveillance, and before that we were sneaking informants in on the staff.

Ethics is another question.

[dvt]

Ethical is of course up for debate, but it's certainly normal that an intelligence asset that leaked thousands of pages of classified documents would be surveilled in captivity. It's spycraft 101.

[kick]

I think I know a handful of men who'd disagree with you on the idea of the state not taking things (like privacy) that don't belong to them is "ludicrous"...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Actually, if you go through the Declaration of Independence, everything said about King George...basically applies to now. A lot of it directly applies to Assange.

And that's not even getting into the Constitution.

[roywiggins]

Assange isn't American, isn't on American soil, and people in his position have been fair game for surveillance for approximately the entire existence of America.

George Washington personally ran a spy ring: https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-revolution...

[kick]

It says that all men are endowed these rights by a creator, which doesn't imply that nationality has anything to do with those rights. George Washington was the worst of the Founding Fathers, and didn't write the Declaration of Independence.

[roywiggins]

The declaration says there's a right to "Life" and every one of the founders fought a bloody revolutionary war.

I don't think it makes any sense to read the Declaration as a pacifist document.

[77pt77]

Which one was the best in your opinion?

[cma]

Jefferson refused to recognize Haiti as an independent republic.

[Jach]

Does it? It didn't really apply then either: https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-hutchinson-strictures...

[buboard]

it's more about spying on everyone else around them. Also spying isn't meant to be acceptable in principle. It's a bad thing that shows low trust , it's justified in case-by-case basis.

[stefan_]

Intelligence agencies spying on an Australian? Of course!

Any of that finding its way into a prosecutors stack of documents and informing police action? That's how you build the Geheime Staatspolizei aka Gestapo.

See also: Parallel construction

[notelonmusk]

> I don't even know why this is a story.

I was going to call it gossip journalism but then Google corrected me

[JumpCrisscross]

> Julian Assange's explicit mission was to expose US (and other) intelligence secrets

Those secrets are already exposed. The intelligence value in watching him is to (a) see what further assets he gains and (b) suss out what channels he uses to communicate to foreign intelligence agencies. Either could unveil e.g. a previously-unknown Russian spy or communications channel in London or Ecuador.

[jMyles]

> but the idea that the state shouldn't spy on him in turn is ludicrous.

I think that a healthy plurality of us here don't even really believe that the state's existence is just to begin with, much less its proclivity to spy on those seeking to shine light on its indiscretions.

[jhayward]

> a healthy plurality of us here don't even really believe that the state's existence is just to begin with

The idea that the largest group of people on HN do not believe states should exist is straight up delusional. Why is it that you believe that it is so?

[jMyles]

I don't have a good reason for thinking this, and perhaps I might be more likely to achieve certainty if I limited my query to the USA HN audience, but I think that there is a widespread sense that the internet, insofar as it represents some evolutionary mechanism, is unlikely to tolerate the capricious and childish tendencies that the state seems to continually embody.

[randcraw]

This reflects VERY badly on the nation of Equador. It reveals that their promise of sanctuary to Assange was meaningless. Worse, it calls into question ANY claim of diplomatic privilege by Equador toward anyone and their private communications is untrustworthy and will remain so until the entire present government of Equador is dead and gone.

Simply put, Equador canot be trusted. Now everyone knows.

Alas, the same can be said for Sweden now that it's been revealed that their prosecution of Assange was baseless.

[ceejayoz]

Wait, how it is Ecuador's fault that the Americans managed to spy on their embassy?

[kube-system]

I guess it shows Ecuador’s counterintelligence skills aren’t up to the level of a superpower, but I’m pretty sure anyone could have guessed that one already.