[foldr]

All laws are selectively enforced. I think the more interesting question is whether he's guilty. I don't know. But if he did it, it's pretty clearly illegal, and it's reasonable to charge him.

Note that it's completely irrelevant that he failed to crack the password. Failure to successfully carry out a crime to completion just means that you're incompetent, not that you're innocent.

[btilly]

The only evidence we have that he is guilty is what is claimed to be an intercepted IM.

Were I on a jury, I would refuse to convict because I would consider there to be a reasonable doubt that the IM was real and not invented by the government to make their case.

[foldr]

Oh, do you have a friend on the prosecution team who’s presented the entire prosecution case to you before the trial?

Or do you mean that that’s the only evidence that’s publicly known at the moment?

[btilly]

That's the only evidence that's publicly known at the moment. And, given the extraordinary lengths that the USA has gone to to persecute Assange, it would take a high bar before I'd believe the government at this point.

What Assange is actually guilty of is running Wikileaks with the explicit purpose of making it hard for interest groups within the government to conduct "business as usual" against the interests of both the world and the American public.

On the positive side, Wikileaks helped convince the USA to get out of Iraq, and helped cause the Arab Spring uprisings that removed several dictatorships. On the downside, Wikileaks has become a pawn used by foreign espionage groups attempting to manipulate the US public. See the DNC email dumps which appear to be the work of Russian hackers attempting to manipulate the US election.

Go ahead and charge him with what he actually did, and convince the world that on the balance it does more harm than good. But don't manipulate governments around the world to pursue him by dishonest means.

[foldr]

I don't follow. If he's been charged with things that he's not actually done, then he's innocent and can show that in court.

[btilly]

The fact that someone is innocent is no guarantee that they can prove it in court. Can you prove whether or not you sent a particular IM a dozen years ago on a device that you no longer have access to?

And the rest of my point stands. The US government is not particularly upset that he failed to crack a password. They are upset that he created Wikileaks and publicly embarrassed a lot of influential people.

[foldr]

>The fact that someone is innocent is no guarantee that they can prove it in court.

He doesn't have to prove it, just show that it's plausible. The burden of proof is on the prosecution.

>The US government is not particularly upset that he failed to crack a password. They are upset that he created Wikileaks and publicly embarrassed a lot of influential people.

I think they probably are upset that he tried to help someone hack into a DoD system.