There are things in the interview that are rather subjective (and things that are objective, and that I didn't know, admittedly). But this is ... quite misleading...:
> A constitutional democracy would probably investigate Chelsea Manning for violating official secrecy because she passed the video along to Assange. But it certainly wouldn’t go after Assange, because he published the video in the public interest, consistent with the practices of classic investigative journalism.
An investigative journalist wouldn't suggest to their source that they cover their trails and implicate innocent third parties in the egressing of confidential data[1], assist their source with cracking passwords, passively and actively ("I'm working on it, no luck yet"), or in the event that Assange was doing neither, just leading Manning on, would not lie to their sources while again, still encouraging them to break the law.
[1] by trying to crack someone else's password to use to get access to the same documents you're effectively _setting that person up_ as a patsy.
> I see where you're coming from, but I think there's a big misunderstanding about what Julian Assange is really being accused of
Not really, the full text of the indictment is in my link. I'd encourage you to read through it.
> It's super important to remember that a lot of what he did is pretty much what investigative journalists do all the time. Caitlin Johnstone nailed it when she said that Assange is getting heat for the same kind of work that journalists are praised for: helping sources stay anonymous, secure chats, and encouraging more leaks. This isn't "hacking" in the criminal sense; it's basic journalism 101 in today's digital world.
That's also the same kind of work that espionage entails. The discriminating factor is, like in many areas of law, intent. Specifically for classified info, whether it was leaked with the public interest in mind or to "be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of any foreign nation" and the degree to which the leaker conspired with the source. Yeah that's vague, but that's what a trial is for. Assange leaked unredacted cables, documents on cyberwarfare capabilities, in addition to stuff that was obviously of public interest. He and Wikileaks released so many documents that they admitted they didn't even look through most of it. "Helping sources stay anonymous" is a deeply funny thing to say that Assange did given what he leaked.
> Manning’s lawyer even argued that the leaked info didn’t contain anything that was still sensitive or would harm ongoing missions.
And that argument failed.
> When they went after Assange with those Espionage Act charges, they weren't just targeting him; they were firing a warning shot at every journalist out there.
There is, like, no better country on Earth to publish secrets about than the US. Glenn Greenwald and the Snowden documents, The Intercept and the Reality Winner documents, Neil Sheehan et al. and the Pentagon Papers. Even the sources themselves get fairly moderate sentences. Reality Winner got ~5 years, Manning got out after 7, Ellsberg wasn't even sentenced because the Nixon admin was so corrupt. The idea that Assange is going to be extrajudicially murdered as soon as he steps foot in the US is projection.
Assange is accused of more than that. Manning gave him something they thought was a hashed password. Assange tried to crack it so that Manning could use it to steal more data.
A journalist can receive information from a thief, but if the journalist starts helping the thief cracks safes to steal more stuff, that is a whole other story.
So - Assange's best defense against this is that, despite his own words, he was lying to Chelsea then, but isn't lying now?
'if there is actually evidence presented that Assange delivered passwords to Manning' - don't you mean if there is evidence that Assange attempted to crack passwords for Manning?
Because again the bar here is attempting to assist, not that he actually succeeded.
The press release makes it sound like the entire extent of Assange's involvement in the "conspiracy" was making offhand remarks that the government asserts encouraged Manning:
> During the conspiracy, Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions regarding Manning’s transmission of classified records to Assange. The discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information. During an exchange, Manning told Assange that “after this upload, that’s all I really have got left.” To which Assange replied, “curious eyes never run dry in my experience.”
If true, it seems to me like there's no meaningful difference between this and a newspaper approvingly publishing a leak, which I thought was meant to be protected in the US under the First Amendment.
If false, and there's more to it than the press release implies, then the authors of the press release are deliberately trying to make the case sound petty and vindictive, and falsely give the impression that merely making approving remarks about leakers while working with them is a crime - presumably for the chilling effect that this will have on others.
Neither option seems to reflect well on the government.
>Assange offered to try to crack a computer password for Manning
>“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.”
It's up for a trial to determine how much / if any of that happened, but if it did it seems well outside the boundaries of what a journalist should do.
I don't expect a journalist to be assisting someone in accessing information illegally. If the journalist is just given it fine they should be protected, but this seems a good step beyond that.
The article talks about how it would have helped protect that source but it's clear it also would have provided more information / assisted in that process.
Let alone a concern I would have if I were a journalist (I'm not) that providing my source with some cover of another real world person could seriously harm that other person.
That's not what he's accused of doing. The password would not have given Manning access to additional information - just a way to cover her tracks. Whether Assange even tried to crack the password is just speculation, though.
I believe that is incorrect. Assange is accused of helping Manning cover her tracks rather than extract the information in the first place. I.e. he was trying to protect his source.
In addition, multiple journalists have spoken out to the effect that encouraging sources to leak is standard journalistic practice.
Assange is a journalist and an Australian. He has no ties or obligations to the US. His organization also rededicated almost all published documents to prevent doxing. He is no different than the New York Post.
Snowden was an NSA contractor. Personally I still think he's a disinformation campaign similar to Operation Mockingbird or COINTELPRO and likely still works for either the CIA or State Dept (look up "Limited Hangouts")
Manning swore and oath as a soldier and broke it; releasing information that was not filtered or screened.
Exactly. If people actually read the initial and subsequent indictments against Assange they'd realise he was actively encouraging and assisting Chelsea Manning to attempt to further compromise DoD databases beyond Chelsea's level of access. This included Assange providing instructions to Chelsea on how to obtain an administrator password hash from said DoD DB server which Chelsea then provided to Assange who attempted to brute force the hash. I don't really consider that journalism; at best Assange is a co-conspirator.
You could know. Transcripts for Assange's convos with Manning are publicly available.
Furthermore, even if Assange did break a law that doesn't mean he did anything wrong. Or do you disagree with the notion of civil disobedience?
Do you also think Snowden did something wrong? He very clearly violated the oath he took, but the government was itself breaking the law and the system was immune to change from the inside.
I don't see why Assange's classification as either a hacker or journalist should affect your moral judgment in any fashion. The point I've been trying to make is that your original moral argument for judging Assange is simplistic, and doesn't apply on the fringes of human behaviour where powerful players are trying to influence the outcomes, because any narratives or facts are guaranteed to be distorted. Why do you think the US just wasted 20 years fighting wars in the middle east?
Assange is accused of working with Manning to crack a Linux password hash of a government computer so Manning could gain access. It’s not about publishing any data obtained; he was, it seems, not a passive receiver.
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.
The theories you're supporting would make reporting on US government secrets illegal. You should stop and think about how fundamentally this would undermine the freedom of the press and the ability of the public to know about what their government does in secret.
Black-and-white/yes-or-no/kindergarten level of analysis? Sure, that's correct.
In the real world? It's not correct at all. For starters, it's perfectly legal to ask for classified information, because it's well understood that a source generally will not provide any classified information (because the source would face criminal sanction if they do). However, if the source is willing to reveal said information, and the journalist did not solicit it, then the journalist is free to publish it because journalists are not covered by classified information laws (in the US).
If, however, the journalist solicits the information (by offering something of value, not necessarily monetary), or by assisting in the acquisition of the information, then they have violated various US laws, because they've crossed the line.
Assange is alleged to have performed acts that could be construed as attempts to access classified information, beyond merely asking for it--specifically, it is alleged that he assisted Manning with attempting to acquire and decrypt classified documents. That is the heart of the issue--if Assange had merely accepted a document dump from Manning (as he generally did with most other sources), he wouldn't be facing 18 charges today.
However, Assange is also not protected by free press rulings. Because he's not a journalist. He's just a parrot. A parrot merely passes on what's given to them. A journalist verifies their sources, the information they've received, and exercises some sort of analysis and judgment in deciding what to publish. Assange literally did none of those things until it came time to interfere in the Trump-Clinton election, when he chose to bury the Trump documents he received and time the release of Clinton-related documents, most of which are now known to have been partial or whole-scale forgeries by the Russian intelligence agencies.
Assange is in chat logs with Manning who then passed Assange a password hash and with Assange saying he will attempt to get it cracked. The password would have given Manning admin privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull more files to leak and better cover her tracks.
That's being pretty directly involved in leaks imo.
> If they had some crazy leak to make, it doesn’t seem like something they would just sit on to use as personal leverage for assange.
Really? A major part of Wikileaks has done the past 5 years has been in relation to the personal wants and desires of Julian Assange. I'm referring here to the intense focus of Wikileaks on Hillary Clinton and the DNC while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the corruption of Russia (who were helping Wikileaks attack Hillary).
I understand why Assange disliked Hillary Clinton, but let's not pretend that his personal desires and vendettas didn't play a large role in Wikileaks' interference in US elections (a deed that placed him on the same moral ground as the Western intelligence agencies he so loved to criticize for similar work).
"There is absolutely no point of arguing who working for whom - only facts are important."
I don't think so.
There's generally no such thing as 'individual blocks of truth' as independent things. The truth is always contextual.
New Orgs have biases that exhibit themselves in all sorts of ways, and they matter.
I'm not fully sure if either of these things are fully true but if 1) Assange was actively trying to help people steal sensitive information form the US and 2) has some kind of implied relationship with an American adversary whereupon they support him politically or with information - and whereby he returns the favour by suppressing leaks on their behalf - then what does this look like? This person basically becomes a foreign agent, intent on discrediting one party over another. The 'facts' released are ultimately selective. It'd be 'journalism' in the same way that Putin could use his powers to 'uncover' information and then frame and leak the information selectively. Again: I don't know if 1 and 2 are true.
I'm also not fully on board with the notion that information about Assange is suppressed in the conspiratorial sense it'd be interesting to see more behind the scenes mechanics of how that might work.
> A constitutional democracy would probably investigate Chelsea Manning for violating official secrecy because she passed the video along to Assange. But it certainly wouldn’t go after Assange, because he published the video in the public interest, consistent with the practices of classic investigative journalism.
An investigative journalist wouldn't suggest to their source that they cover their trails and implicate innocent third parties in the egressing of confidential data[1], assist their source with cracking passwords, passively and actively ("I'm working on it, no luck yet"), or in the event that Assange was doing neither, just leading Manning on, would not lie to their sources while again, still encouraging them to break the law.
[1] by trying to crack someone else's password to use to get access to the same documents you're effectively _setting that person up_ as a patsy.
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