[0xParlay]

Because you lose the moral high ground and then have to pull out of Afghanistan with people hanging on the side of airplanes so you can say things like invading Ukraine is bad mkay.

Either hacking up journalists is ok or it isn't. HN has a really tough time with this one.

[vel0city]

Hacking up a journalist who says some things a king doesn't like and charging someone with supposedly assisting in hacking classified networks and computer systems in a court of law to maybe eventually serve some prison time are two radically different things.

Hell, the person who actually did the hacking and extracting the classified documents only served 7 years of prison time. Are you seriously comparing butchering someone to serving 7 years of prison time after an investigation and public trial?

I don't understand how you seem to have a really tough time with that.

[0xParlay]

Manning and Collateral Murder was only mildly embarrassing. So we blow up a few reporters and ambulances. Zzzz

A better comparison would be the Snowden treatment. The grounding of Evo Morales' plane suggests we'll violate national sovereignty if you really embarrass the intel community.

Would the intel community like to wire up Assanges reproductive organs to a high voltage source? Idk, they've done it to others for much less. But that's the price of freedom right

[vel0city]

Asking a few friendly countries to deny airspace to a flight is still pretty radically different from hacking up a reporter because they said something the Prince didn't like.

Try again.

[bloppe]

This perspective ignores the facts of the case. Freedom of the press never protected the unauthorized release of classified military secrets. That's completely different from being prosecuted simply for publishing articles critical of the CCP. We cannot give journalists blanket immunity to publish military secrets just because the CCP will try to equate it with their jailing of people who simply advocate for democracy.

[Georgelemental]

> Freedom of the press never protected the unauthorized release of classified military secrets.

Yes, it did and does. If you agree not to divulge a military secret as a condition of gaining access to it (for example, as part of the terms of your employment with the government), then you can be prosecuted for reneging on your promise. But if you are a journalist who learns the info secondhand, you never agreed to anything and freedom of expression sanctions your actions.

[vel0city]

What if you're a journalist who assists someone looking for help to access/exfiltrate documents they're not supposed to be handling or sharing externally? Or a journalist privately pushing people to commit crimes and assisting them in ways to share those documents with you? Doesn't that then make you a conspirator to a crime?

There's a big difference between someone uploading a collection of secret files to a website you run and actively communicating with someone trying to get them to commit crimes on your behalf, or knowingly helping others commit crimes.

I'm not arguing Assange did or did not do those things, I don't know. I'm just saying if he did those things, he did commit a crime separate from just publishing documents the government would prefer the public to not see (which according to New York Times Co. vs United States it is not a crime).