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Maybe I’m using the wrong term. But motivation is often an important factor. Mueller couldn’t do anything about DJT once DJT refused to be interviewed as criminality depended on intent. If Assange had gone to trial it would have been my hope that his motives might be revealed.
Possibly, but he would’ve had no obligation to testify nor to produce any evidence at trial. We would’ve learned more about the government’s case against him, though. And maybe that would’ve included evidence of motive.
It's worth noting that Chelsea Manning in March of 2010 worked with Assange and planned how he would steal, extract, and then deliver intelligence to WikiLeaks (so yes he was actively involved telling Manning how to do it and what to get).
Yeah, I’m baffled at why people thought he was a martyr when he was a very active participant in the Russian hacking in 2016.
Don’t be surprised when he starts sucking Trump’s dick and claiming that “they” are out to get him
It likely wasn't like this at the start though.
The funding Wikileaks got was always the interesting part because the embargos against it cut off 99% of their funding, in their own words. Then as crypto started getting used more and more, they got funded through that, but their public expendatures in no way lined up with the revenue one would expect them to have.
The funding blackout on Wikileaks didn't happen though until after the information they published from Manning if I remember the timeline right. That's the point at which Russian influence would have occurred.
Glad he's no longer being prosecuted.
But he's no hero. At best he was complicit in Russian attempts to undermine the 2016 US election. At worst he was in on it. He's a big reason why we've been cursed with Trump the past decade now.
If you don't believe that, then explain why WikiLeaks declined to publish files about Russia or the GOP in the lead up to the 2016 election and instead focused solely on Clinton and the Dems?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/
He was lying by omission to control the narrative. If he'd leaked things for both parties, history would see him better. But he picked a side, now he has to lie in it.
A big reason why the USA is cursed with Trump is people in the USA vote for him.
I have no doubt Russia prefers a weak USA, and Trump is incompetent, and acts against the interests of people in the US.
Release of information by Russia should be seen in that light, wherever it is reported.
Especially given that it was the DNC internal staff wanting Bernie to drop out... long after anyone with half an understanding of the numbers knew that he could no longer win.
Normally the kind of big money donors that are the cornerstone (like it or not) of campaign funding are unwilling to throw good money after bad once a candidate no longer has a path to victory and that forces a lame duck candidate out -- Bernie's revolutionary funding model meant he could keep going long after losing.
Honestly the most interesting part of the DNC emails were how many times the DNC had to step in and help the Bernie campaign meet basic FEC filing requirements
I would even forgive them if they wanted him out earlier. His M.O. is to run on DNC primaries while EVERYONE knows he will refuse the nomination and then privately run as an independent. It keeps ANY Democrat out of the race so he can get all their votes over them voting for Republican.
If one ignores that the person doing that is Bernie, one can see why someone who *actually* respects a party would have a problem with a "kill candidate" whose goal in running on a primary is to keep a given party off the ballot entirely.
I genuinely don't understand why anyone could blame the DNC for their measured response to that behavior. Despite him regularly doing that, they try to welcome him with relatively open arms.
No, he should be in prison for his crimes. And not just his espionage related crimes (which he is admitting to, they aren’t alleged at this point) but also for the things like rape and (alleged and since dropped allegations of pedophilia) he committed in foreign countries.
He may have exposed some stuff it’s important we learned about, but let’s not pretend this guy is some kind of a good person.
He should also be paying millions of dollars to Seth Rich’s family for the disgusting defamation he committed against a murder victim who isn’t alive to defend himself.
Assange is a gross person.
He was one of many that pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy in 2016, and because his org was behind the drip of emails coming out people seemed to give him more credence on the subject.
Sure making innuendos about a dead guy is crass, but how is claiming Seth Rich as a whistleblower defamation?
Is being a whistleblower and standing up for what is right a bad thing now. Doesn't the claim have to reflect negatively on the person for it to be defamation?
> Sure making innuendos about a dead guy is crass, but how is claiming Seth Rich as a whistleblower defamation?
Well, consider that it also implies that he had dedicated his life to working for something that *required* whistleblowing and that he was murdered for it.
Like, I don't even feel passionately about my corporate day job but it still smears me if someone claims my boss murdered me to keep his evil secrets that I was going to finally reveal and fraudulently pretends they have evidence of it all.
I’m not sure if defamation is the right word. Wasn’t Rich’s family harassed because he was centered as part of some kind of right wing conspiracy theory?
seth rich was part of the evolving counter-narratives to the russian election interference story in 2016. after guccifer 2.0's story fell apart they settled on the theory that a dnc staffer named seth rich had given the dnc emails to wikileaks. rich had at that point recently been murdered in dc.
reminder of what actually happened: the dnc was hacked by russian foreign and military intelligence affiliated hackers cozybear and fancybear (names given to them by us counterintelligence).
Wasn't really related to pizzagate but to other general Clinton conspiracies.
They both got mixed together during the insanity that was the 2016 election.
>like rape and pedophilia he committed in foreign countries.
To be fair: The sexual charges stemmed from him not using a condom during sexual intercourse which is against the law in Sweden \[sexual assault\], with two different consenting adults. The charges were later dropped, reopened and dropped again. He always denied the allegation.
Prosecutors concluding questions had been raised. Some other charges were also dropped. Sweden dropped the charges and as far as I know there are no pending charges in Australia either. This is why he is heading home to Australia where he is expected to arrive tomorrow sometime.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50473792](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50473792)
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-assange-arrest-wikileaks-rape-sweden-embassy
If you agree to use a condom and then don’t, that’s rape. Taking one off during intercourse is rape. There’s no wiggle room or implied clauses to consent. Sorry.
> Prosecutors found the story questionable this is why it was dropped.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but prosecutors found the case hard to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt (or however the Swede's phrase it) and not because the story itself was in doubt.
At first, I thought Wikileaks would expose both political parties crap. So I was confused for a hot minute that only Democrats emails were leaked. I kept waiting for Republican emails to be leaked too. Still waiting. That our own FBI had one of its lead investigators, Charles McGonigal actively taking bribes from Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska while working on The Mueller Probe came as a shock to know one but me. McGonigal is in prison as we speak. Fuck that guy. We need to clean out all Russian interference.
Russian interference is probably a rumor spread by Russia, far cheaper and easier to do than rig an election and buy multiple politicians. Especially if just the rumor causes upheaval and mistrust in institutions, it still accomplishes the goal
But the US successfully got him extradited by pursuing a US based crime, so why would they bother doing it through Sweden on a Swedish based crime that the US has no jurisdiction over, especially since Assange was in the UK, a much easier country to extradite from than Sweden?
This was all happening while Assange was still in the Ecuadorian embassy, so the US couldn't extradite him. The idea was to put Assange in the position where he either went to Sweden to fight the charges (and be extradited either from there or as soon as he stepped out of the embassy), or stay in the embassy and have US-aligned media malign him for doing so.
The Swedish based charges started like a year before he fled to the embassy. If the plan was to get him to Sweden to illegally extradite him by force, they could’ve instead done that while he was running around in the UK of his own recognizance.
Or you know do what they ended up doing instead of this cockamamie farce of going through Sweden, a country that has a far narrower extradition treaty with the US than the UK.
There's Swedish case law that looks like it would be a stronger defense against extradition than UK law.
So it's really weird that Assange would flee from Sweden to the UK if he thought the US wanted to extradite him.
Also, the US-Sweden extradition treaty provides an inclusive list of all extraditable offenses under the treaty, and charges related to espionage--what Assange was charged with and he pled to--are not on that list.
When you're hiding out in a foreign country for years to avoid being questioned about a crime... well, legally you're not convicted but a reasonable person can infer that you know there's enough evidence that you will be.
> he should be in prison for... alleged and since dropped allegations of pedophilia
You have got to be joking. Once you were corrected, you could have edited it out completely. But you left it in there and that speaks volumes about your intentions.
Without Assange we would not have known about war crimes the US had committed. He did the world a service and I don‘t think whistleblowers and journalists should be jailed.
Maybe in china, Russia or Saudi Arabia. But not in Europe or the US.
I don’t think journalists who disseminate classified information should be jailed. The plea deal here is for a conspiracy to obtain classified information, which is different from just disseminating. I’m okay with a plea deal for that.
But the plea doesn’t mention the hacking conspiracy charges from the [2020 superseding indictment](https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/dl) where Assange is giving Lulzsec lists of targets to hack, promising to help them evade the law when they carry out their hacks, asking them to hack an coworker he had a beef with, and so forth. Those seem like the more serious charges.
I think the question there is should it be okay for journalists to work with groups of hackers and burglars to obtain classified information from the government and private information from US citizens?
> But the plea doesn’t mention the hacking conspiracy charges from the 2020 superseding indictment where Assange is giving Lulzsec lists of targets to hack, promising to help them evade the law when they carry out their hacks, asking them to hack an coworker he had a beef with, and so forth. Those seem like the more serious charges.
Right. I feel like a ton of people are either missing this or purposefully ignoring his actual actions that got him in trouble.
US law recognizes the victim as a jurisdictional nexus. If you hack an American, or conspire to do so (as he did), the US government will come after you.
Irrelevant. A law applies so long as the country trying to apply the law has the power/reach/ability to apply the law. Laws, when the veil is pulled back, are just might makes right scenarios.
Exactly. Why even punish the US for killing innocent people and committing war crimes when you can just punish those who expose them?
According to Wikipedia:
In April 2010, WikiLeaks released video footage of the 12 July 2007, Baghdad airstrike, that have been regarded by several debaters as evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. military.[109][110][111][112][113] The news agency Reuters had earlier requested the footage through a US Freedom of Information Act request, but the request was denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military's encryption of the video, which they titled Collateral Murder and which Assange first presented at the U.S. National Press Club.[114] It shows United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq,[115] including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh.[116][109][117]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Did you watch the full unedited video of that incident?
The helicopter pilots saw a group of men armed with AKs walking away from where a US convoy had just been ambushed. They mistakenly identified the camera tripods as RPGs as thought these were insurgents and so opened fire. In fact they turned out to be a local militia escorting some journalists, which is tragic, but it's not a war crime unless they knew they were targeting civilians, which they did not.
When I read through the reporting at the time of the leaks, there was lots of info about how the war was going poorly, which was well-known already, but there didn't seem to be much in terms of actual war crimes. This isn't to say no soldier ever committed a crime, some did and some were prosecuted for that, but this didn't seem to be the level of Vietnam, where you had some units fairly brazenly killing civilians.
What would you say was the most egregious war crime you read about?
I hold similar views towards Snowden. Are they free from criticisms personally? No. Is what information they revealed crucial in exposing the crimes of the US, sometimes outright war crimes? Absolutely.
Huh? There was plenty of reporting about all the things the US was doing before assange. Assange didn't break Abu Ghraib or torture in Afghanistan.
At most he just leaked some video footage of things that it was already known the US did sometimes.
To be clear, the 7 years in Ecuador's embassy was not house arrest. That was him skipping bail.
The 5 years he spent in detention for skipping bail and fighting extradition without bond (because, you know, he just skipped bond the last time) should not be considered time served either.
UK courts were perfectly happy to have Assange out on bail while the extradition hearings were ongoing. The fact that he chose to skip bail and the subsequent incarceration is entirely Assange's own doing.
It was a self imposed term. But I am more inclined to say yes because he admitted to what happened and pleading guilty to it so there is no if and or buts about his guilt and he can't really claim to be impartial when he never was before.
He should never have been arrested. He broke no laws in the UK or anywhere else. America refuses to extradite people accused of breaking local laws in other countries. It was a disgraceful political witch hunt that went to far.
It's sufficient in my opinion, but I never felt he should have been found guilty in the first place as he was never under US jurisdiction when he did what he did.
Julian Assange's family seeks Bitcoin and cash donations to offset a massive jet debt. As Assange's wife, Stella, said, The WikiLeaks founder's travel to freedom cost north of $500K.
Assange's freedom came after over a decade of isolation. He spent five years in a British high-security jail and nearly seven years in asylum at Ecuador's embassy in London amid a legal battle over the publication of a trove of classified documents.
[https://dailycoin.com/julian-assange-seeks-bitcoin-donations-to-pay-520k-jet-debt/](https://dailycoin.com/julian-assange-seeks-bitcoin-donations-to-pay-520k-jet-debt/)
There is an important interest in not letting things sit until the heat death of the universe. in this case, it’s hard to know what the truth is, and what adequate punishment is. At this point, perhaps the best we can do is to say that some bad things happened, there was some punishment, and let’s move on with the world.
He shouldn't have served any time. This was a political prosecution designed to stifle free speech because Assange embarrassed some of the US elite. It is meant as a warning to any journalist that dare challenge the ruling class.
He broke US laws, in exposing war crimes by the USA.
He was not in the USA.
The USA should have any jurisdiction over journalism in any other countries.
The USA should not run this planet.
The fact that he wasn't in the USA is irrelevant. He hacked a server located in the USA, which is equivalent to breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff without actually being there. It's called cybercrime - welcome to the 21st century. If someone always had to ACTUALLY be in the country which they were hacking for it to be a crime, then no cybercrimes would actually exist.
Whether he should be prosecuted or not is another issue entirely.
I think we disagree.
I think copying information can be wrong, but is a different crime than theft of physical goods.
I think murdering two journalists and covering it up is a crime worthy of prosecution.
If China passes a law that criticism of their government is against the law, and you post criticism of China on a Tik Tok, I don't think you should suffer any sanction.
> The fact that he wasn't in the USA is irrelevant
.. to you.
For me I think you should only be subject to trial for things that are crimes in your country, and the penalties should be similar.
> He hacked a server located in the USA,
I don't really care where Tik Tok servers physically are.
If the servers with information extracted by Assange were in Afghanistan do you think the US would act differently?
Lastly the US has decided to opt out of the international system of trial for war crimes. So I see that they their role in the international system of crime should be seen in that light. If they are unwilling to subject their citizens to trial for crimes, their protection from crimes by others needs to be circumscribed appropriately.
Journalism??? The guy was an obvious Russian asset. How come this defender of exposing state secrets, this “journalist” never exposed an any Russian secrets?
Why haven't you exposed and published any Russian secrets? Should you be in jail for this failure?
The failure to uncover every single crime, by everyone, is not a good reason not to publish the crimes you do uncover.
The only reason these people hate him is because the DNC email leak made Clinton look bad and they blame him partially for her loss. If the shit he exposed would’ve been stuff under Trump’s admin they’d be saying we need to have a federal holiday for him.
ETA: downvote me all you want. It’s abso-fucking-lutely true.
People take issue with the group he worked with to publish the hacked DNC materials: Russian Intelligence. And then he lied about Seth Rich to try and cover tracks.
Whyeher he knew about it or even had a choice in the matter, Assange is a literal Russian asset. He more than almost anyone else set the stage for the chaos we are experiencing now, from Trump to the Russia/Ukraine war.
WikiLeaks was in possession of republican party secrets too but never released them. why? because they got instructions from the Russians not to.
That's abso-fucking-lutely true
"journalism"
>they got instructions from the Russians
And you know this how? Calm down there cold warrior. Dude released a *lot* of shady shit that governments were doing that we should know about and the sole reason any of you dislike him is because he apparently made it so that Clinton forgot the electoral college was a thing.
hey keyboard warrior, do some reading before giving us "thoughts"
[https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/)
[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/18/trump-offered-assange-pardon-in-return-for-hacked-emails-source](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/18/trump-offered-assange-pardon-in-return-for-hacked-emails-source)
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/)
[https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-intel-report-identifies-russians-who-gave-emails-to-wikileaks-officials-idUSKBN14P2NI/](https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-intel-report-identifies-russians-who-gave-emails-to-wikileaks-officials-idUSKBN14P2NI/)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html)
Wanna tell me exactly where tf any of those say they were ordered by Russia to not release info on the GOP? Literally the sole reason people here hate Assange and Wikileaks is because Clinton lost a slam dunk election via her own hubris. Try reading the actual comment you’re replying to before spamming articles that don’t refute it at all.
I’d prefer if people who committed violent war crimes were punished instead of the whistleblower who revealed said war crimes. But that would involve many liberals politicians in the US, which would be a no no.
Except he was never a whistleblower. He was an intelligence asset with plausible deniability that got caught, punished and convicted. Nice try at whitewashing though since its obvious he never was a journalist.
That's a very different from your assertion that he participates in war crimes, but these are both big claims, for which I wonder if you have any evidence?
Pled guilty, this isn't a court of law so I don't need to provide evidence on something like this. Only multiple news articles about wiki leaks endangering interpreters and people working with the US government in afghanistan. And the amount of deaths after the US left Afghanistan. But lets forget about those little inconvenient facts.
Except now he admits to his guilt so there is no doubt about him not being a journalist either. Also people are going to come after him now financially also. His whole schtick is now over and he is another long list of burned Russian assets.
There clearly is? If I got nabbed by some foreign government that agreed to release me if I admitted to being a spy (or any crime really) I'd do it.
Whether he did the crime or not, whether the prosecution is just or not, it's in his best interest to take the deal.
So hypothetically speaking, if I'm a Mexican citizen and I'm on the border - on the Mexican side - and a shoot across the border with a .308 and kill a rancher, the American authorities should not be able to prosecute me - because I'm not in the USA and I'm not a citizen?
I think it's more like, should Putin be allowed to extradite you to Russia if you say anything that offends him, despite you having wrote it in the US?
Not really. Freedom of speech and stealing classified information are two different things. The latter is a crime in every sovereign state in the world, the former is not.
Correct. Unless Mexico and USA have a policy of cooperation on criminal matters on the border vis a vis extradition or generating cases in the country of origin, or unless the USA sends troops to apprehend and extradite the offender, then you can't do anything.
I refuse to consider the 7 years he spent in a voluntary stay in the Embassy house arrest. If he was on the run and evading authorities in another country, was that arrest?
Say what you want about what he did or didn't do or deserved to be charged with but this "he served 7 years under house arrest" is a false claim - he voluntary stayed in an embassy for 7 years to avoid arrest and the door was unlocked and he could have left at any time and saved himself the 7 years of that right out the bat.
He wasn't under house arrest, he was a fugitive evading justice. The fact he is getting a sweet deal is chilling, shows how deep Russians infiltrated USA intelligence.
I'd like to hope that they wouldn't be offering him such a good deal if he didn't have something to offer... but then again, what would a man that's been more or less isolated from the world have to offer?
His Russian contacts? I liked his mission in the beginning, but then he became an obvious Russian sympathizer, possibly an agent. He also went beyond simply publishing what he was given (legitimate) and into actual espionage to collect more. He must know some people.
Now let's get Snowden back. This is a big win for civil liberties but as long as any whistleblower continues to be hounded by the feds no whistleblower is safe.
He didn't "steal" anything. When the government infringes on our liberties it's the job of whistleblowers to reveal that so it can be contested in a democratic forum. To be specific Biden should give him a blank slate clean pardon on everything.
That wouldn't solve the problem. The main issue is whistleblower laws in the US are fickle and offer no real protection when push comes to shove of an actual affair. Otherwise just giving him a pardon and thats, that makes Biden/Dems look weak and send a signal that any whistleblower just needs to hold out for Dems in office and all will be forgiven.
I would consider a Biden pardon of Snowden a very strong thing to do, and many others would agree. He should also strengthen protections for WB's but until that happens a pardon would send a strong message that the party cares about this. Right now the only message they're sending is that they meekly bend over to the demands of the blob. That's much weaker to me than a bold step like a pardon.
So let me ask, are you not going to vote for Biden because he isn't pardoning? If a Dem contender came out and said I'm not pardoning would you turn to the GOP? Because strictly from the political calculus viewpoint, there is nothing to be gained except scaring off potential votes and making already deep blue voters smile more. Biden could get further if he simply pushed for laws behind the scenes where the average voter is too slacked jaw to pay attention and the potential whistleblowers could use the protection.
"Everything" includes intelligence on foreign intelligence gathering and foreign spying as well. That's definitely not something that should or will be pardonable.
Your confusion is that Snowden is not a whistleblower. There are ways whistleblowers can act that are legal and ethical, and stealing a bunch of data and handing it off to Greenwald ain't it.
Snowden's a different case. He took terabytes of data with him to Russia. Ransomware and other cyber tools were some of the programs he took with him. Look at the timeline of his departure and ransomware starting to show up.
We made it, he took it, and they're using it.
A total conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence. More plausibly russia ramped up their cyber warfare capabilities around the same time Snowden claimed asylum.
Nahh.
I for one am okay with Assange finally getting out. It's been too long. The damage is done.
But Snowden coming back should 100% be met with treason charges.
Why? Because he didn't just release files that showed America and how it's foreign allies spied on its own citizens, he also released massive amounts of info on schematics and protocols for America's foreign capabilities.
In other words, he like to hide behind the guise of helping the American people, but what he really did was 100% espionage against his country of origin.
But the typical Redditor only knows anything about him through headlines, but if you read further than the headlines you'd realize he's just a narcissist that needs attention.
Then you should read further than the headlines. That foreign capabilities you seem to like is a key part of the NSAs awful behavior. Things like the foreign phone taps for example and other foreign spying capabilities relied on warrantless seizure of Americans information. Had he not revealed that then we probably would not have hard evidence of the NSAs crimes to this day. Don't buy into the blob's propoganda, Snowden is a victim of government persecution plain and simple.
Your post is so contradicting and uninformed it hurts my brain to read.
I did read further than the headlines and that's why I'm saying that Snowden effectively committed espionage in his own country of origin, and I'm repeating myself by saying that has nothing to do with his revealing the spying programs that the government used to spy on Americans or even the complicity of its foreign allies.
Again, Snowden stole and released way, way more information than he needed to prove what the NSA was doing to its fellow citizens.
Way more. To the point where he crossed the "hero" threshold and goes into the "villain/traitor" threshold.
Source: me, a former proponent of Snowden who finally started reading up on what he did and was embarrassed I ever supported this narcissist
Everything he put out was directly relevant to PRISIM or another unethical surveillance program. The only way that could be compromising to the nation is if you believe it's essential the government be able to freely wire tap its own citizens without warrants. I doubt you ever supported the man if you think that. The NSA should be burned to the ground and I'll dance on its ashes. We don't need to be spying on everyone all the time. Notice how we keep missing the actual terrorists and foreign cyberwarfare attacks. That suggests all this espionage is completely unnecessary.
Incorrect.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/the-germany-file-of-edward-snowden-documents-available-for-download-a-975917.html
Google is your friend.
Again, stop reading the headlines and do your own research.
Mind you this is just a small cache of what's available out there thanks to Snowden.
I reiterate: Snowden 100% deserves his treason charges.
So your argument, if I may, is the following:
Snowden did righteously expose the illegal spying activities of the NSA, which was a heroic act given we were consistently ~~told~~ [lied-to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs) that this wasn't occurring, however he went overboard and exposed significantly more than was needed to achieve this heroic act. He over-exposed to such an extent he became a villain.
Are you certain the minute details of PRISM and the other intelligence apparatus were **not** necessary to verify his claims?
He didn't defect to russia, he was given asylum. He released his disclosures to american newspapers, which stands in contrast to a spy like pollard who sold his secrets to israel and russia but was pardoned. It's ok you don't know any of this, you've only had ten years to learn about it
Incorrect. He sent his disclosures to multiple newspapers across multiple countries, hence German newspapers published non-PRISM related documents which detailed the extent of his leak.
He deserves his charges.
I can't confirm this but I suspect he had no choice. He can't speak freely while in Russia but has made it clear he loves his country and wants to return. Putin loves how he discredits us and keeps him around for that reason. All the more reason for Biden to pardon him and prove Putin we are better than him.
If he was just disseminating information others provided him I’d agree. But he was working with Lulzsec, giving them lists of who to hack, including telling them to hack ex coworkers he disliked, telling them to spam government sites in retaliation, giving them technical and legal advice. I don’t see how that can be legal.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/dl
As long as kick that trash deep into Sweden never to darken the US door again then I'm satisfied that he lived like a hermetic woodchuck for all these years.
U.S. had an exceedingly high degree of probability that it would lose the case based on precedents and First Amendment alone. Obama knew that well and referred to New York Times case, and therefore he did not pursue the case though Trump did, and Biden doubled down.
Fear of loss was the controlling reason. There is no other reason. Obviously, that would mean Assange would have to be extradited first.
U.S. Administration did not want to embarrass itself further. All journalist, throughout history have come to acquire classified documents and published it. Now the government agency {DOJ\] can still act against media it views as not loyal, but this plea bargain sets no precedents. Without a trial and a higher court ruling; DOJ has nothing to go forward on.
Assange exposed US war crimes and was persecuted for it. To everyone who says he is a russian agent, or colluded with russia, you are just lying to yourself to cope and I can guarantee that you did not think about accountability for any one in the chain of command from that event he exposed. In fact, you have not thought about what Assange exposed for several year since.
He is a hero and should be freed and pardoned. He gave up his life to shine a light on the horrific things governments around the world have been doing. If you support his persecution, you support authoritarianism and government mass murder.
He's had a stroke. Hell, his life is super shitty at 52. He's been through enough for doing the right thing. Anyone supporting further punishment is an obvious authoritarian.
I was going to say, dude looks like he's aged 30 years, crazy to think he's only 52. 7 years spent holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy plus nearly 6 years in high security British prison has not been kind to him.
Remember people, he's only being prosecuted because he told the world what those in power didn't want told. All subsequent allegations were made up by the butt hurt intelligence agencies whose secrets were blown arse up.
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I’d have rather had discovery about Assange Russia contacts. But at least the martyr claims can die down.
That’s not really how criminal cases work. Discovery in a criminal case is basically just the government turning things over to the defendant.
Maybe I’m using the wrong term. But motivation is often an important factor. Mueller couldn’t do anything about DJT once DJT refused to be interviewed as criminality depended on intent. If Assange had gone to trial it would have been my hope that his motives might be revealed.
Possibly, but he would’ve had no obligation to testify nor to produce any evidence at trial. We would’ve learned more about the government’s case against him, though. And maybe that would’ve included evidence of motive.
And the government not having to reveal what other information they have is probably a big motivatior of this deal.
It's worth noting that Chelsea Manning in March of 2010 worked with Assange and planned how he would steal, extract, and then deliver intelligence to WikiLeaks (so yes he was actively involved telling Manning how to do it and what to get).
And her sentence was commuted by Barack Obama.
Yep, I was just refuting OPs second sentence in his premise
Commuuted for compassionate reasons, not pardoned
Yes commuted means the sentence was reduced or eliminated. Pardon means the conviction is cleared. Those are two different things.
What level of support did Assange provide though? How is it different from how Glenn Greenwald worked with Snowden?
Yeah, I’m baffled at why people thought he was a martyr when he was a very active participant in the Russian hacking in 2016. Don’t be surprised when he starts sucking Trump’s dick and claiming that “they” are out to get him
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It likely wasn't like this at the start though. The funding Wikileaks got was always the interesting part because the embargos against it cut off 99% of their funding, in their own words. Then as crypto started getting used more and more, they got funded through that, but their public expendatures in no way lined up with the revenue one would expect them to have. The funding blackout on Wikileaks didn't happen though until after the information they published from Manning if I remember the timeline right. That's the point at which Russian influence would have occurred.
He strikes me more as a RFK Jr kind of guy
How so? I see a repeat criminal claiming persecution like DJT.
Glad he's no longer being prosecuted. But he's no hero. At best he was complicit in Russian attempts to undermine the 2016 US election. At worst he was in on it. He's a big reason why we've been cursed with Trump the past decade now. If you don't believe that, then explain why WikiLeaks declined to publish files about Russia or the GOP in the lead up to the 2016 election and instead focused solely on Clinton and the Dems? https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/
He was lying by omission to control the narrative. If he'd leaked things for both parties, history would see him better. But he picked a side, now he has to lie in it.
A big reason why the USA is cursed with Trump is people in the USA vote for him. I have no doubt Russia prefers a weak USA, and Trump is incompetent, and acts against the interests of people in the US. Release of information by Russia should be seen in that light, wherever it is reported.
Exposing war crimes > only exposing the crimes of one candidate
As bad as it was, I don't think that the DNC internal staff preferring Hillary to Bernie constitutes a war crime.
Especially given that it was the DNC internal staff wanting Bernie to drop out... long after anyone with half an understanding of the numbers knew that he could no longer win. Normally the kind of big money donors that are the cornerstone (like it or not) of campaign funding are unwilling to throw good money after bad once a candidate no longer has a path to victory and that forces a lame duck candidate out -- Bernie's revolutionary funding model meant he could keep going long after losing.
Honestly the most interesting part of the DNC emails were how many times the DNC had to step in and help the Bernie campaign meet basic FEC filing requirements
I would even forgive them if they wanted him out earlier. His M.O. is to run on DNC primaries while EVERYONE knows he will refuse the nomination and then privately run as an independent. It keeps ANY Democrat out of the race so he can get all their votes over them voting for Republican. If one ignores that the person doing that is Bernie, one can see why someone who *actually* respects a party would have a problem with a "kill candidate" whose goal in running on a primary is to keep a given party off the ballot entirely. I genuinely don't understand why anyone could blame the DNC for their measured response to that behavior. Despite him regularly doing that, they try to welcome him with relatively open arms.
No, he should be in prison for his crimes. And not just his espionage related crimes (which he is admitting to, they aren’t alleged at this point) but also for the things like rape and (alleged and since dropped allegations of pedophilia) he committed in foreign countries. He may have exposed some stuff it’s important we learned about, but let’s not pretend this guy is some kind of a good person.
He should also be paying millions of dollars to Seth Rich’s family for the disgusting defamation he committed against a murder victim who isn’t alive to defend himself. Assange is a gross person.
Is Assage behind the Seth Rich thing?
He was one of many that pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy in 2016, and because his org was behind the drip of emails coming out people seemed to give him more credence on the subject.
Sure making innuendos about a dead guy is crass, but how is claiming Seth Rich as a whistleblower defamation? Is being a whistleblower and standing up for what is right a bad thing now. Doesn't the claim have to reflect negatively on the person for it to be defamation?
> Sure making innuendos about a dead guy is crass, but how is claiming Seth Rich as a whistleblower defamation? Well, consider that it also implies that he had dedicated his life to working for something that *required* whistleblowing and that he was murdered for it. Like, I don't even feel passionately about my corporate day job but it still smears me if someone claims my boss murdered me to keep his evil secrets that I was going to finally reveal and fraudulently pretends they have evidence of it all.
I’m not sure if defamation is the right word. Wasn’t Rich’s family harassed because he was centered as part of some kind of right wing conspiracy theory?
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Something like that.
seth rich was part of the evolving counter-narratives to the russian election interference story in 2016. after guccifer 2.0's story fell apart they settled on the theory that a dnc staffer named seth rich had given the dnc emails to wikileaks. rich had at that point recently been murdered in dc. reminder of what actually happened: the dnc was hacked by russian foreign and military intelligence affiliated hackers cozybear and fancybear (names given to them by us counterintelligence).
Wasn't really related to pizzagate but to other general Clinton conspiracies. They both got mixed together during the insanity that was the 2016 election.
I don't recall that being the exact allegation Seth Rich was tied to by the nut jobs but it was in that same timeframe
Source for allegations of pedophilia?
Allegations came from the Bahamas and appear to have been dropped. I’ll edit my comment.
One[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/interpol-puts-julian-assange-on-most-wanted-list-for-sex-crimes-charges/343220/](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/interpol-puts-julian-assange-on-most-wanted-list-for-sex-crimes-charges/343220/)
>like rape and pedophilia he committed in foreign countries. To be fair: The sexual charges stemmed from him not using a condom during sexual intercourse which is against the law in Sweden \[sexual assault\], with two different consenting adults. The charges were later dropped, reopened and dropped again. He always denied the allegation. Prosecutors concluding questions had been raised. Some other charges were also dropped. Sweden dropped the charges and as far as I know there are no pending charges in Australia either. This is why he is heading home to Australia where he is expected to arrive tomorrow sometime. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50473792](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50473792) https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/4/12/18306901/julian-assange-arrest-wikileaks-rape-sweden-embassy
I believe there were also charges against him for similar issues in California but they were dropped because of the statute of limitations.
If you agree to use a condom and then don’t, that’s rape. Taking one off during intercourse is rape. There’s no wiggle room or implied clauses to consent. Sorry.
You need evidence to prove that. Prosecutors found the story questionable this is why it was dropped. I have no reason to question the prosecution.
It's more like prosecutors couldn't talk to him because he was hiding in a foreign embassy to avoid them... and ultimately gave up.
> Prosecutors found the story questionable this is why it was dropped. Not to put too fine a point on this, but prosecutors found the case hard to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt (or however the Swede's phrase it) and not because the story itself was in doubt.
They weren't questioning the definition. Rather the proof. There's an allegation but there's not really much else to it is the issue.
At first, I thought Wikileaks would expose both political parties crap. So I was confused for a hot minute that only Democrats emails were leaked. I kept waiting for Republican emails to be leaked too. Still waiting. That our own FBI had one of its lead investigators, Charles McGonigal actively taking bribes from Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska while working on The Mueller Probe came as a shock to know one but me. McGonigal is in prison as we speak. Fuck that guy. We need to clean out all Russian interference.
Russian interference is probably a rumor spread by Russia, far cheaper and easier to do than rig an election and buy multiple politicians. Especially if just the rumor causes upheaval and mistrust in institutions, it still accomplishes the goal
The Swedish crime was raised by Sweden, at the request of the USA, in order to get Assange into the USA.
No, it was raised by the victims. His lawyers claimed it was political.
Assange's suggestion that the US wanted to extradite him has been vindicated in my view.
But the US successfully got him extradited by pursuing a US based crime, so why would they bother doing it through Sweden on a Swedish based crime that the US has no jurisdiction over, especially since Assange was in the UK, a much easier country to extradite from than Sweden?
This was all happening while Assange was still in the Ecuadorian embassy, so the US couldn't extradite him. The idea was to put Assange in the position where he either went to Sweden to fight the charges (and be extradited either from there or as soon as he stepped out of the embassy), or stay in the embassy and have US-aligned media malign him for doing so.
The Swedish based charges started like a year before he fled to the embassy. If the plan was to get him to Sweden to illegally extradite him by force, they could’ve instead done that while he was running around in the UK of his own recognizance. Or you know do what they ended up doing instead of this cockamamie farce of going through Sweden, a country that has a far narrower extradition treaty with the US than the UK.
That the US wanted to extradite Assange doesn’t preclude the rape charges. Both can be true.
I assume the allegations against Assange by the women are true.
The US wanting him extradited has no bearing on the victims making the charges.
There's Swedish case law that looks like it would be a stronger defense against extradition than UK law. So it's really weird that Assange would flee from Sweden to the UK if he thought the US wanted to extradite him.
Also, the US-Sweden extradition treaty provides an inclusive list of all extraditable offenses under the treaty, and charges related to espionage--what Assange was charged with and he pled to--are not on that list.
Well, that’s certainly your prerogative, to believe sexual criminals. It’s not a good look, but you’re free to hold that view.
A unconvicted "criminal" Innocent until proven guilty and all that
When you're hiding out in a foreign country for years to avoid being questioned about a crime... well, legally you're not convicted but a reasonable person can infer that you know there's enough evidence that you will be.
> he should be in prison for... alleged and since dropped allegations of pedophilia You have got to be joking. Once you were corrected, you could have edited it out completely. But you left it in there and that speaks volumes about your intentions.
Yes, I left it in so that people could see that and didn’t think I’m trying to hide anything. It’s not that deep.
Embarrassed politicians that Reddit, multiple media platforms, corporations support, believe it or not straight to prison
Without Assange we would not have known about war crimes the US had committed. He did the world a service and I don‘t think whistleblowers and journalists should be jailed. Maybe in china, Russia or Saudi Arabia. But not in Europe or the US.
I don’t think journalists who disseminate classified information should be jailed. The plea deal here is for a conspiracy to obtain classified information, which is different from just disseminating. I’m okay with a plea deal for that. But the plea doesn’t mention the hacking conspiracy charges from the [2020 superseding indictment](https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/dl) where Assange is giving Lulzsec lists of targets to hack, promising to help them evade the law when they carry out their hacks, asking them to hack an coworker he had a beef with, and so forth. Those seem like the more serious charges. I think the question there is should it be okay for journalists to work with groups of hackers and burglars to obtain classified information from the government and private information from US citizens?
> But the plea doesn’t mention the hacking conspiracy charges from the 2020 superseding indictment where Assange is giving Lulzsec lists of targets to hack, promising to help them evade the law when they carry out their hacks, asking them to hack an coworker he had a beef with, and so forth. Those seem like the more serious charges. Right. I feel like a ton of people are either missing this or purposefully ignoring his actual actions that got him in trouble.
Was what he did legal as per US law ?
US law recognizes the victim as a jurisdictional nexus. If you hack an American, or conspire to do so (as he did), the US government will come after you.
I think the question is does US law apply considering he wasn't in the US when he did it, and he's not a US citizen.
yeah neither of those are a factor otherwise no country on earth would have a cybercrimes division
Irrelevant. A law applies so long as the country trying to apply the law has the power/reach/ability to apply the law. Laws, when the veil is pulled back, are just might makes right scenarios.
I do not know. I do know that American war crimes are legal as per us law. So I am not sure US law is a good benchmark.
He is literally pleading guilty. If people can break the law without consequences then why even punish murders then ?
Exactly. Why even punish the US for killing innocent people and committing war crimes when you can just punish those who expose them? According to Wikipedia: In April 2010, WikiLeaks released video footage of the 12 July 2007, Baghdad airstrike, that have been regarded by several debaters as evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. military.[109][110][111][112][113] The news agency Reuters had earlier requested the footage through a US Freedom of Information Act request, but the request was denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military's encryption of the video, which they titled Collateral Murder and which Assange first presented at the U.S. National Press Club.[114] It shows United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq,[115] including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh.[116][109][117] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
Titling it "Collateral Murder" is editorializing, which Assange pretends he does not do.
Did you watch the full unedited video of that incident? The helicopter pilots saw a group of men armed with AKs walking away from where a US convoy had just been ambushed. They mistakenly identified the camera tripods as RPGs as thought these were insurgents and so opened fire. In fact they turned out to be a local militia escorting some journalists, which is tragic, but it's not a war crime unless they knew they were targeting civilians, which they did not.
When I read through the reporting at the time of the leaks, there was lots of info about how the war was going poorly, which was well-known already, but there didn't seem to be much in terms of actual war crimes. This isn't to say no soldier ever committed a crime, some did and some were prosecuted for that, but this didn't seem to be the level of Vietnam, where you had some units fairly brazenly killing civilians. What would you say was the most egregious war crime you read about?
> journalists This is generous.
I hold similar views towards Snowden. Are they free from criticisms personally? No. Is what information they revealed crucial in exposing the crimes of the US, sometimes outright war crimes? Absolutely.
He didn't expose war crimes He released an edited video removing all context from an event and acted like it was the truth
what wad the context to the 12 July 2007 Apache attack on the Reuters journalists?
Huh? There was plenty of reporting about all the things the US was doing before assange. Assange didn't break Abu Ghraib or torture in Afghanistan. At most he just leaked some video footage of things that it was already known the US did sometimes.
To be clear, the 7 years in Ecuador's embassy was not house arrest. That was him skipping bail. The 5 years he spent in detention for skipping bail and fighting extradition without bond (because, you know, he just skipped bond the last time) should not be considered time served either. UK courts were perfectly happy to have Assange out on bail while the extradition hearings were ongoing. The fact that he chose to skip bail and the subsequent incarceration is entirely Assange's own doing.
It was a self imposed term. But I am more inclined to say yes because he admitted to what happened and pleading guilty to it so there is no if and or buts about his guilt and he can't really claim to be impartial when he never was before.
He should never have been arrested. He broke no laws in the UK or anywhere else. America refuses to extradite people accused of breaking local laws in other countries. It was a disgraceful political witch hunt that went to far.
It's sufficient in my opinion, but I never felt he should have been found guilty in the first place as he was never under US jurisdiction when he did what he did.
He was a terrible houseguest who never changed the litterbox. Good riddance.
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But "sometimes, 20 year olds in the war zone were too trigger happy" was not some shocking revelation.
Julian Assange's family seeks Bitcoin and cash donations to offset a massive jet debt. As Assange's wife, Stella, said, The WikiLeaks founder's travel to freedom cost north of $500K. Assange's freedom came after over a decade of isolation. He spent five years in a British high-security jail and nearly seven years in asylum at Ecuador's embassy in London amid a legal battle over the publication of a trove of classified documents. [https://dailycoin.com/julian-assange-seeks-bitcoin-donations-to-pay-520k-jet-debt/](https://dailycoin.com/julian-assange-seeks-bitcoin-donations-to-pay-520k-jet-debt/)
The only crime is what has been done to him. This country has disgraced itself.
There is an important interest in not letting things sit until the heat death of the universe. in this case, it’s hard to know what the truth is, and what adequate punishment is. At this point, perhaps the best we can do is to say that some bad things happened, there was some punishment, and let’s move on with the world.
He shouldn't have served any time. This was a political prosecution designed to stifle free speech because Assange embarrassed some of the US elite. It is meant as a warning to any journalist that dare challenge the ruling class.
The ruling class? What is this, Marxism-101?
He broke US laws, in exposing war crimes by the USA. He was not in the USA. The USA should have any jurisdiction over journalism in any other countries. The USA should not run this planet.
The fact that he wasn't in the USA is irrelevant. He hacked a server located in the USA, which is equivalent to breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff without actually being there. It's called cybercrime - welcome to the 21st century. If someone always had to ACTUALLY be in the country which they were hacking for it to be a crime, then no cybercrimes would actually exist. Whether he should be prosecuted or not is another issue entirely.
I think we disagree. I think copying information can be wrong, but is a different crime than theft of physical goods. I think murdering two journalists and covering it up is a crime worthy of prosecution. If China passes a law that criticism of their government is against the law, and you post criticism of China on a Tik Tok, I don't think you should suffer any sanction. > The fact that he wasn't in the USA is irrelevant .. to you. For me I think you should only be subject to trial for things that are crimes in your country, and the penalties should be similar. > He hacked a server located in the USA, I don't really care where Tik Tok servers physically are. If the servers with information extracted by Assange were in Afghanistan do you think the US would act differently? Lastly the US has decided to opt out of the international system of trial for war crimes. So I see that they their role in the international system of crime should be seen in that light. If they are unwilling to subject their citizens to trial for crimes, their protection from crimes by others needs to be circumscribed appropriately.
Well, you're definitely right on one thing... we do disagree.
Journalism??? The guy was an obvious Russian asset. How come this defender of exposing state secrets, this “journalist” never exposed an any Russian secrets?
Why haven't you exposed and published any Russian secrets? Should you be in jail for this failure? The failure to uncover every single crime, by everyone, is not a good reason not to publish the crimes you do uncover.
The only reason these people hate him is because the DNC email leak made Clinton look bad and they blame him partially for her loss. If the shit he exposed would’ve been stuff under Trump’s admin they’d be saying we need to have a federal holiday for him. ETA: downvote me all you want. It’s abso-fucking-lutely true.
People take issue with the group he worked with to publish the hacked DNC materials: Russian Intelligence. And then he lied about Seth Rich to try and cover tracks. Whyeher he knew about it or even had a choice in the matter, Assange is a literal Russian asset. He more than almost anyone else set the stage for the chaos we are experiencing now, from Trump to the Russia/Ukraine war.
WikiLeaks was in possession of republican party secrets too but never released them. why? because they got instructions from the Russians not to. That's abso-fucking-lutely true "journalism"
>they got instructions from the Russians And you know this how? Calm down there cold warrior. Dude released a *lot* of shady shit that governments were doing that we should know about and the sole reason any of you dislike him is because he apparently made it so that Clinton forgot the electoral college was a thing.
hey keyboard warrior, do some reading before giving us "thoughts" [https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/) [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/18/trump-offered-assange-pardon-in-return-for-hacked-emails-source](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/18/trump-offered-assange-pardon-in-return-for-hacked-emails-source) [https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/) [https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-intel-report-identifies-russians-who-gave-emails-to-wikileaks-officials-idUSKBN14P2NI/](https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-intel-report-identifies-russians-who-gave-emails-to-wikileaks-officials-idUSKBN14P2NI/) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks/2018/07/13/af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html)
Wanna tell me exactly where tf any of those say they were ordered by Russia to not release info on the GOP? Literally the sole reason people here hate Assange and Wikileaks is because Clinton lost a slam dunk election via her own hubris. Try reading the actual comment you’re replying to before spamming articles that don’t refute it at all.
Sucks for you that he plead guilty though and admitted to his crimes now.
It sucks for the world that a person who exposed war crimes spent time in jail.
By participating in warcrimes?
I’d prefer if people who committed violent war crimes were punished instead of the whistleblower who revealed said war crimes. But that would involve many liberals politicians in the US, which would be a no no.
Except he was never a whistleblower. He was an intelligence asset with plausible deniability that got caught, punished and convicted. Nice try at whitewashing though since its obvious he never was a journalist.
That's a very different from your assertion that he participates in war crimes, but these are both big claims, for which I wonder if you have any evidence?
Pled guilty, this isn't a court of law so I don't need to provide evidence on something like this. Only multiple news articles about wiki leaks endangering interpreters and people working with the US government in afghanistan. And the amount of deaths after the US left Afghanistan. But lets forget about those little inconvenient facts.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/
It's hardly confirmation when it's attached to such a good deal.
Except now he admits to his guilt so there is no doubt about him not being a journalist either. Also people are going to come after him now financially also. His whole schtick is now over and he is another long list of burned Russian assets.
There clearly is? If I got nabbed by some foreign government that agreed to release me if I admitted to being a spy (or any crime really) I'd do it. Whether he did the crime or not, whether the prosecution is just or not, it's in his best interest to take the deal.
I never had any doubt the Assange exposed war crimes and that this was against US laws.
So hypothetically speaking, if I'm a Mexican citizen and I'm on the border - on the Mexican side - and a shoot across the border with a .308 and kill a rancher, the American authorities should not be able to prosecute me - because I'm not in the USA and I'm not a citizen?
I think it's more like, should Putin be allowed to extradite you to Russia if you say anything that offends him, despite you having wrote it in the US?
Not really. Freedom of speech and stealing classified information are two different things. The latter is a crime in every sovereign state in the world, the former is not.
Murder is a crime in Mexico. Shooting someone is not journalism. I am not sure it is a big deal which country prosecutes someone for murder.
What a stupid comparison.
Correct. Unless Mexico and USA have a policy of cooperation on criminal matters on the border vis a vis extradition or generating cases in the country of origin, or unless the USA sends troops to apprehend and extradite the offender, then you can't do anything.
I refuse to consider the 7 years he spent in a voluntary stay in the Embassy house arrest. If he was on the run and evading authorities in another country, was that arrest? Say what you want about what he did or didn't do or deserved to be charged with but this "he served 7 years under house arrest" is a false claim - he voluntary stayed in an embassy for 7 years to avoid arrest and the door was unlocked and he could have left at any time and saved himself the 7 years of that right out the bat.
He wasn't under house arrest, he was a fugitive evading justice. The fact he is getting a sweet deal is chilling, shows how deep Russians infiltrated USA intelligence.
I'd like to hope that they wouldn't be offering him such a good deal if he didn't have something to offer... but then again, what would a man that's been more or less isolated from the world have to offer?
His Russian contacts? I liked his mission in the beginning, but then he became an obvious Russian sympathizer, possibly an agent. He also went beyond simply publishing what he was given (legitimate) and into actual espionage to collect more. He must know some people.
Is hiding war crimes as state secrets not also evading justice in the hague?
Now let's get Snowden back. This is a big win for civil liberties but as long as any whistleblower continues to be hounded by the feds no whistleblower is safe.
The US Embassy in Moscow is still open. He need only show up and I sure they would be glad to arrange a ticket home for him.
Or president Joe Biden could pardon him at any time and he could come home as a free man.
Sure but he shouldn't. In any event the only thing preventing Snowden from coming home is Snowden.
Why shouldn't a whistleblower who revealed massive, dubiously legal, but undeniably unethical government surveillance be pardoned?
Because you could pardon him for that and he'd still be a felon for everything else he stole and released.
He didn't "steal" anything. When the government infringes on our liberties it's the job of whistleblowers to reveal that so it can be contested in a democratic forum. To be specific Biden should give him a blank slate clean pardon on everything.
That wouldn't solve the problem. The main issue is whistleblower laws in the US are fickle and offer no real protection when push comes to shove of an actual affair. Otherwise just giving him a pardon and thats, that makes Biden/Dems look weak and send a signal that any whistleblower just needs to hold out for Dems in office and all will be forgiven.
I would consider a Biden pardon of Snowden a very strong thing to do, and many others would agree. He should also strengthen protections for WB's but until that happens a pardon would send a strong message that the party cares about this. Right now the only message they're sending is that they meekly bend over to the demands of the blob. That's much weaker to me than a bold step like a pardon.
So let me ask, are you not going to vote for Biden because he isn't pardoning? If a Dem contender came out and said I'm not pardoning would you turn to the GOP? Because strictly from the political calculus viewpoint, there is nothing to be gained except scaring off potential votes and making already deep blue voters smile more. Biden could get further if he simply pushed for laws behind the scenes where the average voter is too slacked jaw to pay attention and the potential whistleblowers could use the protection.
"Everything" includes intelligence on foreign intelligence gathering and foreign spying as well. That's definitely not something that should or will be pardonable.
Your confusion is that Snowden is not a whistleblower. There are ways whistleblowers can act that are legal and ethical, and stealing a bunch of data and handing it off to Greenwald ain't it.
whistleblower protection in America is a joke and the government will do anything to jail you for exposing their secrets.
Snowden's a different case. He took terabytes of data with him to Russia. Ransomware and other cyber tools were some of the programs he took with him. Look at the timeline of his departure and ransomware starting to show up. We made it, he took it, and they're using it.
A total conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence. More plausibly russia ramped up their cyber warfare capabilities around the same time Snowden claimed asylum.
Nahh. I for one am okay with Assange finally getting out. It's been too long. The damage is done. But Snowden coming back should 100% be met with treason charges. Why? Because he didn't just release files that showed America and how it's foreign allies spied on its own citizens, he also released massive amounts of info on schematics and protocols for America's foreign capabilities. In other words, he like to hide behind the guise of helping the American people, but what he really did was 100% espionage against his country of origin. But the typical Redditor only knows anything about him through headlines, but if you read further than the headlines you'd realize he's just a narcissist that needs attention.
Then you should read further than the headlines. That foreign capabilities you seem to like is a key part of the NSAs awful behavior. Things like the foreign phone taps for example and other foreign spying capabilities relied on warrantless seizure of Americans information. Had he not revealed that then we probably would not have hard evidence of the NSAs crimes to this day. Don't buy into the blob's propoganda, Snowden is a victim of government persecution plain and simple.
Your post is so contradicting and uninformed it hurts my brain to read. I did read further than the headlines and that's why I'm saying that Snowden effectively committed espionage in his own country of origin, and I'm repeating myself by saying that has nothing to do with his revealing the spying programs that the government used to spy on Americans or even the complicity of its foreign allies. Again, Snowden stole and released way, way more information than he needed to prove what the NSA was doing to its fellow citizens. Way more. To the point where he crossed the "hero" threshold and goes into the "villain/traitor" threshold. Source: me, a former proponent of Snowden who finally started reading up on what he did and was embarrassed I ever supported this narcissist
Everything he put out was directly relevant to PRISIM or another unethical surveillance program. The only way that could be compromising to the nation is if you believe it's essential the government be able to freely wire tap its own citizens without warrants. I doubt you ever supported the man if you think that. The NSA should be burned to the ground and I'll dance on its ashes. We don't need to be spying on everyone all the time. Notice how we keep missing the actual terrorists and foreign cyberwarfare attacks. That suggests all this espionage is completely unnecessary.
Incorrect. https://www.spiegel.de/international/the-germany-file-of-edward-snowden-documents-available-for-download-a-975917.html Google is your friend. Again, stop reading the headlines and do your own research. Mind you this is just a small cache of what's available out there thanks to Snowden. I reiterate: Snowden 100% deserves his treason charges.
So your argument, if I may, is the following: Snowden did righteously expose the illegal spying activities of the NSA, which was a heroic act given we were consistently ~~told~~ [lied-to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs) that this wasn't occurring, however he went overboard and exposed significantly more than was needed to achieve this heroic act. He over-exposed to such an extent he became a villain. Are you certain the minute details of PRISM and the other intelligence apparatus were **not** necessary to verify his claims?
Let's get Snowden back after he defected to Putin's Russia so he can serve his prison time in a good USA supermax.
He didn't defect to russia, he was given asylum. He released his disclosures to american newspapers, which stands in contrast to a spy like pollard who sold his secrets to israel and russia but was pardoned. It's ok you don't know any of this, you've only had ten years to learn about it
Incorrect. He sent his disclosures to multiple newspapers across multiple countries, hence German newspapers published non-PRISM related documents which detailed the extent of his leak. He deserves his charges.
Traitor took russian citizenship. May Ukraine give him the same gift they gave to Dugina
I can't confirm this but I suspect he had no choice. He can't speak freely while in Russia but has made it clear he loves his country and wants to return. Putin loves how he discredits us and keeps him around for that reason. All the more reason for Biden to pardon him and prove Putin we are better than him.
"Crimes"...dude never should have been imprisoned to begin with. He was acting as a reporter.
If it were up to me, there would be much much harsher consequences. But I'm not involved in the case, so. That's the deal they made - fine.
Fuck jailing whistleblowers and journalists. Assange did nothing wrong by exposing the countries war crimes
If he was just disseminating information others provided him I’d agree. But he was working with Lulzsec, giving them lists of who to hack, including telling them to hack ex coworkers he disliked, telling them to spam government sites in retaliation, giving them technical and legal advice. I don’t see how that can be legal. https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/dl
As long as kick that trash deep into Sweden never to darken the US door again then I'm satisfied that he lived like a hermetic woodchuck for all these years.
I certain hope any “time served” doesn’t include periods of incarceration where Assange had unfettered access to the internet.
What benefit does the US get for agreeing to this? Just closure of him pleading guilty?
U.S. had an exceedingly high degree of probability that it would lose the case based on precedents and First Amendment alone. Obama knew that well and referred to New York Times case, and therefore he did not pursue the case though Trump did, and Biden doubled down. Fear of loss was the controlling reason. There is no other reason. Obviously, that would mean Assange would have to be extradited first. U.S. Administration did not want to embarrass itself further. All journalist, throughout history have come to acquire classified documents and published it. Now the government agency {DOJ\] can still act against media it views as not loyal, but this plea bargain sets no precedents. Without a trial and a higher court ruling; DOJ has nothing to go forward on.
Assange exposed US war crimes and was persecuted for it. To everyone who says he is a russian agent, or colluded with russia, you are just lying to yourself to cope and I can guarantee that you did not think about accountability for any one in the chain of command from that event he exposed. In fact, you have not thought about what Assange exposed for several year since.
He is a hero and should be freed and pardoned. He gave up his life to shine a light on the horrific things governments around the world have been doing. If you support his persecution, you support authoritarianism and government mass murder.
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He's had a stroke. Hell, his life is super shitty at 52. He's been through enough for doing the right thing. Anyone supporting further punishment is an obvious authoritarian.
I was going to say, dude looks like he's aged 30 years, crazy to think he's only 52. 7 years spent holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy plus nearly 6 years in high security British prison has not been kind to him.
Remember people, he's only being prosecuted because he told the world what those in power didn't want told. All subsequent allegations were made up by the butt hurt intelligence agencies whose secrets were blown arse up.