[moksly]

Why is the WikiLeaks foundation responsible for the content posted on their platform, when Google and Facebook aren’t?

I haven’t really been following this a whole lot, but as I understand it, the US wants him extradited because his platform was used to leak sensible information that put American soldiers in danger. But why is that a thing when it isn’t for other platforms? I mean, twitter, Facebook and YouTube have all been used as effective recruitment platforms for various Islamic terror organisations. That would have put American lives in danger as well.

[threeseed]

It is alleged that Assange coordinated with Chelsea Manning and the Russian government to obtain information for Wikileaks. This would make him an active conspirator in breaking the law.

Completely different from Facebook, Google, Twitter etc where they merely provide a platform for others to upload content and aren't actively involved in sourcing illegal content.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

Sure, but the Barton Gellman, from the Washington Post, coordinated with Ed Snowden to publish his leaks, too. Breaking the law in such a way is just not sufficient to explain why he ends up in prison.

[bbatha]

Snowden had already exfiltrated the documents by the time he coordinated with journalists to publish them. Assange allegedly instructed Manning on how to exfiltrate the documents and directed Manning’s exfiltration process. Publishing is protected by the first amendment, stealing classified documents is not and ergo conspiracy to steal documents is not.

[benologist]

Assange broke US laws that he was never subject to, as an Australian living in Europe.

[threeseed]

That's not how the entire fabric of international law works though.

Citizenship and postal address are irrelevant. If you break the law in another country and there is an extradition treaty then you will face the consequences.

[prepend]

So if I buy something from a Saudi Arabian e-commerce site am I at risk for extradition from Ireland to Saudi Arabia for the capital offense of being gay?

Clearly I was gay while doing stuff online on a Saudi Arabian server.

[rebuilder]

That seems a bit simplistic. There's a wide range of crimes you can commit on-line without ever entering the jurisdiction of the victims.

[toomanybeersies]

Yes, just ask Kim Dotcom, who has also tried to jump on the "persecuted internet freedom fighter" bandwagon.

[dragonwriter]

> Assange broke US laws that he was never subject to, as an Australian living in Europe.

That's not how laws work. Laws are limited in territorial applicability only to the extent that the sovereign adopting them so limit them, and basically no government would fail to hold foreign coconspirators in a crime occuring within their domestic jurisdiction immune to prosecution (some might not have the practical means to bring such an actor to justice, and some might not choose to apply them in most cases as a matter of policy priorities, but that's a different issue.)

[boomboomsubban]

Manning knew how to extract the documents already, Assange attempted to help her do it more anonymously. Trying to protect your source is the duty of the press.

[Fjolsvith]

"Assange attempted to help her"

Aiding and abetting.

[foldr]

He coordinated with them to publish the information, not to acquire it in the first place.

[danabrams]

The allegations against him (and there is evidence to support this) is that he didn’t just coordinate to publish, but provided instructions and technical training to Manning on how to steal them.

[boomboomsubban]

This is not true. The allegations are that he attempted to crack a password on a different Windows account so that the documents would not he tied to Manning. And most of the charges against him are related to publishing.

[droithomme]

Manning leaked the info proving US war crimes and lying, including the "collateral damage" video. She got these leaks using her own access, and sent them to wikileaks.

There were additional files she was interested in leaking that she did not have access to.

She then obtained the password hash of an account that did have access and tried to crack the password, but was unsuccessful. She then sent the hash to wikileaks, not something wikileaks asked for, along with a request for help. There was no response.

Later she was in a chat with someone using a known wikileaks chat account. The identity of this person has not been established. She asked if they had been able to crack the password hash and that person said no they had not cracked it. They did not say they tried to crack it or they approved of cracking it. They answered the question factually, no, they had not cracked it.

Manning never hacked the system, but did try to. There's no evidence Assange attempted to hack the system. There's pretty solid evidence someone at wikileaks told Manning that they had not cracked the hash she had sent them, but none that they had attempted to do so. As far as the leaks that were published, none of these involved hacking, they were obtained using Manning's granted access. They were however unauthorized exfiltration of state secrets documenting war crimes.

This is the case alleging he actively assisted a leaker in hacking crimes.

[foldr]

I think you've misread my post. I wasn't talking about Assange.

[CalChris]

coordinated != publish.

[plutonorm]

Authoritarians emphasise the fact he broke laws, everyone else appreciates the moral act.

[INGELRII]

It's not mutually exclusive.

* Sometimes individuals must break the law for greater good. This is called civil disobedience, or civil resistance.

* Just because one is breaking the law for common good, civil servants can't and should not be expected to stop enforcing the law. If you allow that, it's the end of the rule of law based society. The whole idea of just society is that you restrict what individuals in the government can do.

If you decide that civil disobedience is the way and you break the law, you should not ask to be treated differently under the law. Political pardons exist for a reason.

(I'm not taking position on the legality of actions Assage took, or justification of his actions. I'm arguing general principle.)

[samatman]

Civil disobedience is breaking a law because you believe the law itself is wrong. As invented by Thoreau, and practiced by Gandhi and MLK.

Breaking a law you otherwise believe in, in the service of some broader goal, is called direct action, riot, or terrorism, depending on the severity of the law broken, and/or the sympathies of the person describing it.

[jessriedel]

Yes, civil disobedience means you believe the specific law itself is wrong, but not the law-making process. The justness of the law-making process is why the classic method of practicing civil disobedience involves accepting the punishment. MLK:

> In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

[dragonwriter]

> Yes, civil disobedience means you believe the specific law itself is wrong, but not the law-making process.

The US Civil Rights movement generally practiced civil disobedience because the views the laws, the law making process, and the process of selecting who could even participate in the law making process as unacceptable.

The key assumption was that enough of the people who could participate in that process were nevertheless moral enough to reform all of those aspecta given a vivid enough demonstration that they could not turn away from of the top-to-bottom injustice of the system.

I don't think Assange was engaging in civil disobedience, nor do I think he would have been justified if he were, but doing so does not and never has relied on faith in the justice of the existing law-making process any more than it does in the law being violated itself.

[wolfgke]

> Breaking a law you otherwise believe in

You won't consciously break a law that you believe in. "otherwise believe" means that you don't believe in the law.

[INGELRII]

In both cases, if you believe in society based on laws, what I said stands. Agreed?

[samatman]

I was speaking to your first point, namely:

> Sometimes individuals must break the law for greater good. This is called civil disobedience, or civil resistance.

Which is not a complete description of civil disobedience. It is accurate, but not precise.

Civil disobedience implies the actor wishes the law to be changed. They might expect not just a pardon for themselves, but a pardon for everyone who broke the unjust law. It's a distinction with a difference.

We agree that its effectiveness depends on accepting the punishment, sure.

[buckminster]

And this is why there were hundreds of prosecutions in both America and the UK of the perpetrators of America's post-9/11 kidnap, torture and murder program.

Except there weren't. The attachment of authoritarians to the rule of law is merely a posture. They set it aside whenever it suits them to. They could set it aside in this case.

[tehjoker]

There was an interesting case in Katherine Gun, who was a GCHQ employee that leaked that the US was conspiring to manipulate the US security council vote on the Iraq war by coercing other members. She attempted to use a legal defense that it was necessary to break the law in order to prevent war crimes. The prosecution appears to have stood down in order to prevent memos getting out that would have confirmed that invading Iraq was considered illegal by Downing St. at the time she made the leak.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/03/katharine-gun-...

[dependenttypes]

Civil disobedience, along with civil servants that stopped enforcing an unjust law is the reason that my grandmother was able to escape from Germany in 1938. Saving people by stopping the enforcement of an unjust law is more important than trying to defend the abstract concept of the rule of law. To me this seems like yet another collectivist (where it is ok to sacrifice innocents for the "greater good" - depending on your ruler's definition of greater good) vs individualist (where the rights and freedom of a single person is more important than defending an abstract concept) argument.

[dragonwriter]

> civil servants can't and should not be expected to stop enforcing the law

In general, criminal law permits but does not mandate prosecution and every prosecution is a judgement about not only the law but policy priorities. This argument is almost completely vacuous where it concerns offenses primarily against the state (it has some weight in equal protection terms when there are victims besides the state and the issue is whether the state is discriminating among victims on improper grounds in the manner in which it chooses to prosecute or not prosecute offenses against them.)

[selfishgene]

Exactly. A judge not too long ago was observed on camera stealing a gold watch from an airport security checkpoint bin at Login Airport in Boston MA and was never charged with the crime.

A group of judges met behind closed doors to discuss the incident involving Judge Patricia Curtin and concluded that she "intended eventually to give it back."

This is apparently part of a much larger pattern of "unequal protection under the law" in Massachusetts:

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/secret-courts/

[dragonwriter]

> Authoritarians emphasise the fact he broke laws, everyone else appreciates the moral act.

It was an immoral act done as far as I can tell, for immoral purposes, which were successfully attained. That it was also illegal is why it can be punished rather than merely pointed to as the kind of thing that must be tolerated despite its immorality.

The argument has, however, been made that the law as it is prohibits some other acts that are not so immoral and it could not effectively address what Assange did without so doing, and so it should be narrowed (or treated as more narrow by the executive) so as to let Assange go free in order to not chill more legitimate acts. This is, IMO, a not entirely unreasonable argument that I can respect, though I am unconvinced by it as yet.

[dependenttypes]

> It was an immoral act done as far as I can tell, for immoral purposes

The immoral purpose of letting the people know of the crimes that the US army has committed?

[scient]

What moral act? Working for Russia and helping them push their agenda - willingly or out of ignorance? You are blind if you thing Assange and Wikileaks was some kind of a knight for truth.

[ben_w]

It is possible for multiple things to all be true. I see no contradiction between the following:

1. Assange helped reveal severe wrongdoings by various governments.

2. Assange engaged in unprotected sexual activity with two women that violated the scope of their consent, because they only consented to protected sex, and also because one woman was asleep in one case. This would have also been illegal in the UK.

3. No prosecution would have been attempted if Assange has not already made political enemies.

4. Russia made hay while the sun was shining by using Assange as a conduit to publish dirt they wanted published.

5. Assange definitely and unambiguously broke UK law by fleeing to the Ecuadorean embassy.

6. The fact that the UK would not allow Assange to depart the Ecuadorian embassy was condemned by the UN as indefinite detention without trial.

7. The current condition of Assange is really suspicious and makes the UK look bad.

(Which of these are actually true is for someone more qualified than I am, but they are all compatible.)

[forgetfulusr]

Hmm, maybe if our 'fourth estate' actually wasn't the govs bitch, Assange's org wouldn't have looked so moral. But here we are.

[peteretep]

Your point and the publication of Snowden’s material by the mainstream media can’t both be true

[forgetfulusr]

For some reason I thought that Snowden went to a UK publisher because the US outlets were not interested. Once the Guardian agreed, were the outlets here expected to ignore it?

[dmurray]

It's much more tribal than that. For example, Russian authoritarians are pretty happy with him.

[jessaustin]

"Russian authoritarians" are happy both that he exists and that Western authoritarians are torturing him to death.

[amelius]

If the Russian government wants to leak information, why do they need WikiLeaks?

Also, I'm curious, where is the line between investigative journalism and criminal disclosure of information?

[grzm]

> "If the Russian government wants to leak information, why do they need WikiLeaks?"

One doesn't always want to be known as the source of information, for a variety of reasons.

> "Also, I'm curious, where is the line between investigative journalism and criminal disclosure of information?"

Can depend on the jurisdiction and one's own perspective. The "ethical dilemmas" section of this Wikipedia article on ethics in journalism provides a taste:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

[foldr]

The main issue here is criminal acquisition of information, not disclosure.

[sneak]

I am pretty sure the main issue here is that someone who has not been put on trial yet is being tortured to death.

[foldr]

He has been put on trial, and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for skipping bail:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/julian-assan...

Try to keep up!

[MiroF]

Typically in the UK he would have been released by now since he was sentenced for under a year. Unsure why the snark is necessary

[aNoob7000]

He could have walked out of the Ecuador embassy in England and gone to court; instead, he chose to wait for seven years in the hopes of waiting it out.

I have zero sympathies for the guy. His intentions might have been honorable, but when you play with fire, you are bound to get burned.

[shkkmo]

Seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy justifies torture how?

[thiagoharry]

And what are the proofs about this russian government involvment?

[deepakhj]

https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

[wazoox]

Breaking which law? Assange isn't a US citizen, nor resident. Why and how should US law apply to him?

[nabla9]

WikiLeaks is journalistic organization. (Some claim that they are shitty journalistic organization, but that is not a good argument for removing their status as journalistic organization)

The question you should be asking is why Assange and not journalists in NYT, Guardian etc. who published what Assange provided?

The answer is that charges against Assange are not about publishing secret information. Charges are Assange actively helping to get that information. That's illegal. Journalist should never get actively involved getting the secret information.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> Journalist should never get actively involved getting the secret information.

That's a problem given the importance of investigative journalism - which by its very nature may require breaking laws to get the goods. For example, the "ag-gag" laws in states with strong farm lobbies that make it effectively illegal to report on animal welfare issues because any honest attempt at investigating reports will necessarily mean breaking farmers' recent "privacy" laws.

[sneak]

He has not yet been put on trial. He must be presumed innocent of all charges until such time that he is.

Torturing even a guilty person is not acceptable. Torturing an innocent one is presumably less so.

[nabla9]

Assange is presumed innocent.

Assange is in jail because his lawyers are challenging the US extradition request and there is legal process going on.

There is no evidence of him being tortured. He seems to have mental problems. People getting mentally ill in jails is very common.

[Karunamon]

Solitary confinement is, at least, very unethical given its known deleterious impacts on mental health[1][2], and can be considered torture for most purposes[3].

[1]: https://semanticscholar.org/paper/8f8fbb6bd68357311bb82e48a8...

[2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole

[3]: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2015/spring/co...

[nabla9]

Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture has said that Assange is not held in solitary confinement at HMP Belmarsh. Melzer objected against the limited ability of Assange to prepare his legal case.

It seems that John Shipton (father of Assange) used therm solitary confinement to describe situation where Assange's access to outside is limited to his lawyers and family.

I thing Assage is currently in the the prison’s medical ward.

[shkkmo]

Melzer was pretty specific and his concerns are not just about "access to legal counsel".

> «He continues to be detained under oppressive conditions of isolation and surveillance, not justified by his detention status,” said Melzer

Melzer fairly clearly states that he believes there is credible evidence that Assange has been subjected to psychological torture.

[sneak]

Why do you think that might be?

[rjsw]

He is guilty of breaking his bail conditions.

[evgen]

The only people required to presume him innocent are the jurors in his trial. The rest of us are under no such compulsion for self-delusion.

[feanaro]

And who are the jurors? The jurors are you. You should not expect of yourself to magically pause your judgement only in the event of being chosen as a a juror. The pause of judgement should be your default state.

[kspacewalk2]

The US is accusing him of being more than just a passive receiving end for previously exfiltrated classified info. The allegation is that he actively encouraged Manning to obtain the diplomatic cables after he sent the helicopter video, and that Manning then downloaded them. That's a whole lot more than just being a leak host.

[boomboomsubban]

The only "encouragement" mentioned in the indictment is Assange saying "curious eyes never run dry in my experience" in response to Manning saying that was all she could get for him. Nothing like what you described.

[tehjoker]

Wikileaks is an effective critic of US foreign policy that cannot be controlled by the usual means. YouTube 's executives are much more friendly to US government interests.

[jevgeni]

I’d think it’s the same reasoning why ISPs aren’t held accountable for piracy.

[OrgNet]

Looks like this is changing, strangely: https://m.slashdot.org/story/364910

[cryptica]

>> Why is the WikiLeaks foundation responsible for the content posted on their platform, when Google and Facebook aren’t?

Governments still have control over Facebook and Google. They don't like WikiLeaks because they cannot control it. But it's still a good point though; I think Google and Facebook do much more harm to American citizens than WikiLeaks ever could.

It's just that with Google and Facebook, it's less obvious because the bad is mixed in with the good.

[philwelch]

The Russian government has no problem controlling WikiLeaks.