Edit: I guess I should add that a lot of people in the US believe it is good for the US government to have absolute power in the world, because they think it’s okay for “their side” to have absolute power over others. Often I think they associate “our side” to be the side of the “good guys” and thus find our grip on global hegemony acceptable. Except there are no “good guys” who always behave in a fair and even way, that is a childish fantasy used to keep us on board with the serious injustice perpetrated by governments the world over. The US government is responsible for oppression and murder the world over in addition to the good things we might do. We cannot blanket trust any government to behave appropriately in secrecy unless we want to simply abdicate our responsibility for the harm that governments then cause.
And that's probably something that needs to be argued in front of the Supreme Court. It is vital in a democracy that a government can be held accountable. The government should not have a carte blanche to break the law in secret. There has to be some way to address this, and at the moment there clearly isn't.
Manning, Assange and Snowden provided a public service to the American public by showing them what their government was doing.
And swathes of the US public seem to be cheering as they go down. Strange times.
this isn't partisan. perhaps skewed one way or another, but both parties seem to be quite happy with the state of domestic surveillance as a whole..
Problem is the leaders of the country are profiting from the demise.
I see an "interesting" future for the next 20 years of the US
Why do people like you bring up this canard? Can you point to any pure democracies, anywhere, ever, aside from Ancient Greece? The US isn't special; every decent country (and many not-so-great ones too) now is a democratic republic of some kind, usually constitutional (UK is a notable exception here).
Example. In my youth police were called peace officers. Their main mission was to enforce the peace at the expense of bending the law.
Today law enforcement disrupts the peace to enforce the law. Society is not better off because of it.
Watching presidents change what they called the nation from Republic to Democracy has also been something that happened. A republic is a nation of laws where everyone has the same rules. A democracy is simply a majority vote and currently the constitution and the laws are being marginalized.
That is why folks bring up this "canard"
FYI calling something constitutionally guaranteed, a canard is exactly to what I refer
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4
Not necessarily. A republic is simply a country without a monarch. China is a republic. Iran is a republic. Russia is a republic. Democracies that are not republics include places like Denmark, Netherland, Sweden and Spain.
The canard you're bringing up stems from a weird misunderstanding of what republics and democracies really are. Democracies have laws, the same rules for everyone, they have constitutions that (try to) guarantee equal rights. Democracies often have better "rule of law" than many republics, but ultimately, they believe that the authority stems from the people and that the government serves the people rather than the other way around.
Fortunately many republics are also democracies. France, Germany, and, as many people would really, really like to believe, the United States of America. The fact that so many Americans don't really care about democracy, undermine its legitimacy with misleading arguments, and support an electoral system that denies minority representation while letting the loser of the popular vote win the presidency, is really sad.
You can conflate the ideas all you want. Does not change the fact the US is a republic. Your example proved it.
this is not a partisan issue, it is a public awareness / power-elitism issue
Outright corruption, unconstitutionality and waste are the main part of the show, but hidden behind that stage going on in front that most Americans are watching.
Democrats won the popular votes for the president, house and senate (they had 56.9% in the senate, in 2018, FFS!) in 2016 and 2018, but the republicans somehow managed to get complete control of the house senate and presidency, and unconstitutionally packed the courts in 2016-2018.
Now, the democrats have control of just the house, and the executive branch has decided to simply ignore the constitutional limits on its power, since, as Trump has boasted, he could shoot someone in public for no reason, and there’s still no way the senate would impeach him.
Also, it is apparently legal for state legislatures to override their popular vote. If even one swing state decide to do that, democrats won’t have enough votes in the house to prevent Trump from being reappointed (despite having a vast majority there, because of the way those votes are counted).
Florida, or Ohio are likely candidates. In 2000, Florida would have used this power if the courts hadn’t stepped in, and would have voted for W. After recounts, Gore won Florida. In Ohio, in 2004, the vote was decided by a ballot box that republicans illegally transported to Indiana, and then transported back for tallying. Exit polls disagreed with the tally.
We need to eliminate the electoral college, and get rid of per-state representatives. In our lifetimes, demographic trends suggest that the majority of the US will be represented by just 18 senators (with 82 for the minority).
One person, one vote!
There are lots of people in the US that believe strongly in the rule of law.
You only get one life and I don't blame him at all for not wanting to spend the rest of his time on Earth rotting in an American prison. I don't think we can say anything about his true intentions just based on the fact that he chose one of the few (possibly the only?) alternatives presented to him.
Unless we think the information he provided is intended to be misleading, the ball's in our court now (and we are dropping it). Whether or not he chooses to martyr himself to the American "justice" system is irrelevant now.
Anyone sitting on comfortable couch can!
I heard a conversation where Assange came out as a "drama queen" for not walking to the car that took him to prison. The event was discussed as if it were part of the Kardashians or something.
If he does not want to stand on principle, then no, I cannot blame him for choosing what is likely his only opportunity for any amount of freedom.
Part of being a martyr, is, well, being a martyr. He knew the game when he released classified information, even if the ends may eventually justify the means (for some, not all of the information he divulged). I agree that he is essentially irrelevant at this point, he has said what he had to say, and done as much as he will ever be able to do.
But I cannot blame reasonable people for believing that it is important he stand trial for breaking the law, regardless of how damning the information released. There is an argument to be made that we don't want to make it okay for every individual person to make their own judgement call about what classified information should be kept secret and what should not.
Well I can kinda understand the principle of not wishing to turn one's self over to be waterboarded or held in draconian isolation in a US prison. I live in Scotland, if I had worked for the UK government, discovered extra-judicial killings and exposed them then sure I'd run somewhere. But it's not home. I lived in another country for a few years, within western Europe within an hour's flight "from home" and just as a "normal mort" I got homesick. Snowden upended his life over his leaks and can't go home. Maybe it's my age, I'm in my early 50's but that's a pretty big thing.
> Part of being a martyr, is, well, being a martyr.
What, as in being double tapped in the back of the head?
We shouldn't need to be "martyrs" these days, we should be given the protection where if your government is committing acts of murder on innocent citizens in other countries (and in the US) then you should be protected. We don't live in the 50's to 80's any more. And also see above, Snowden is an exile, he will likely never be able to go home, that's plenty of martyrdom. And see above.
> [...] I cannot blame him for choosing what is likely his only opportunity for any amount of freedom.
It is my understanding he didn't "accept" Russia's hopitality as such, nor did he actively chose it. I thought the US Department of State cancelled his passport, effectively forcing him to stay put in Russia.
On a side note, there seems to be some confusion with regards to that: some sources state that his travel documents were revoked a day before he boarded the flight to Moscow, whereas Greenwald maintains the opposite (his passport was cancelled while en route to Moscow). The whole Hong Kong episode seems very foggy and confused in places and its likely it will be a good while before the whole truth comes out.
EDIT: some spelling. Its late here.
History will show eventually that Snowden did the the right thing. The people will eventually come around because they know deep down that what he stood for was protecting their freedom. Perhaps not in a way that had boots on the ground against some foreign enemy, but against a government that was overreaching and spying on the lives of its own citizens against the peoples' constitutional rights.
It is your responsibility to hold your government accountable for their behaviour and he did that in the only possible way he could have - any other way would have seen his complaints shut down and he would have been silenced, by legal or illegal means. His only recourse was to obtain the information secretly and release the information to the public and let the U.S. population judge for themselves whether or not a government by the people, of the people and for the people was acting in the best interest of those to whom it is constitutionally bound.
You don't need to be a martyr to do what's right, you don't need to be a martyr to do what you believe in. The fact that he fled to preserve his freedom doesn't make what he did any less right, nor does it make him any less principled.
If I had to flee the country to preserve as much of my enjoyment of life as I could, while standing up for what I believe is right, I would do the same thing - and I think you'd probably find that a large proportion of other people would too.
If you were guaranteed to rot in a cell for standing up for what's right, would you still stand for what's right? Or would you fall in line and do what you were told?
Or would you find another way to stand up for what you believed was right?
You are making a naive, emotional argument based on your own moral convictions and assuming that everyone else must share it, and that everyone will eventually agree with you that disregarding our system of laws is the correct answer.
What principle, exactly?
The principle of spending your life in jail if you dare oppose the US government? Where is the fun in that principle?
They shouldn't have to martyr themselves to get the information out.
Snowden did that and didn't spend his life rotting for no reason, that's the better outcome.
I would argue that we do want this to be okay, at least on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately this means that it's incredibly subjective as to whether an unauthorized release of classified information was justified or not.
We currently live in a world where unethical (and often illegal) activities continue, secretly and silently, likely because people who do have some shred of a conscience are too afraid of the consequences of stepping forward and speaking out. We tighten that status quo only to our detriment and the continued erosion of our civil rights.
It's a tough call. I don't have a good answer.
Cought, ahem, but also overtly - Venezuela, Iran. Sure, not ideal world citizens, but at least Venezuela still has an independent privately owned press, though funded by some pretty unpleasant rich folks.
Iran - not a big fan but I kinda think I'd rather live there (at a push) than Saudi or most of the other UAE, Oman etc type regimes who are US client states for civilian oppression.
What law[s] do you believe he broke? Do you believe he is a US citizen/resident, committed crimes while in a US territory, or otherwise was under US jurisdiction? Please be specific in your legal references. Thank you very much in advance for your detailed legal citations in response.
There's no question that Snowden committed a crime under US law, and is absolutely subject to US jurisdiction, the question is whether it was justified. With Assange, however, you'd be right: he's never even set foot in the US to my knowledge, and was given the classified information by someone else (who was tried, convicted, and served time for it).
This particular thread is talking about Snowden.
And by the way, when exactly did Snowden “go beyond the limits?” As far as I’m aware, he made sure to hand over every copy of the documents he possessed to professional reporters so that every disclosure made was legitimately in the public interest.
Believing that narrative actually requires trusting the US security services, who may or may not have something to gain from a new cold war.
There are simpler explanations with just as much evidence behind them.
> There are lots of people in the US that believe strongly in the rule of law.
And that it applies to foreign citizens who have – quite sensibly – never set foot on your soil?
There is a lot of precedent here. Break the law in another country, and you may very well find yourself tried in their courts if you ever step into their jurisdiction. It's not like the US is snatching him off the streets in a foreign country under cover of darkness and dragging him to our jurisdiction, we are using very well established legal channels.
If the US wanted him on our soil without regards to consequences, we could certainly have him in a US jail in a matter of hours.
> The receiving State must, even in case of armed conflict, grant facilities in order to enable persons enjoying privileges and immunities, other than nationals of the receiving State, and members of the families of such persons irrespective of their nationality, to leave at the earliest possible moment. It must, in particular, in case of need, place at their disposal the necessary means of transport for themselves and their property.
There is an argument to be made that since he is not embassy personnel he isn't granted any such rights (in fact that's the most likely explanation).
But then again, there is some grey area here -- in the 1984 someone in the Libyan embassy in the UK shot into a crowd killing a police officer[1]. The UK police weren't granted access to investigate whether the individual who did it was embassy personnel (and thus under diplomatic immunity) or not. The UK then cut diplomatic ties with Libya and all the personnel were forced to leave and return to Libya. However, if the UK had the legal right to refuse passage for non-embassy personnel then surely they would've done so and captured all non-embassy personnel for questioning. But they didn't do that.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher
You never define what "persons enjoying privileges and immunities" means. I doubt very much that it is "any random citizen of a country who happens to be inside their embassy".
That's not at all what I'm implying.
> You never define what "persons enjoying privileges and immunities" means.
I copied the text directly from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations[1]. From my understanding (as a non-lawyer) it broadly means embassy personnel, which would exclude Julian Assange.
However my point is that there is a case in 1984 where a suspected criminal for a crime committed in the UK (who might not have been embassy personnel) was allowed safe passage with embassy personnel. It's possible they didn't want to deal with additional scandals or didn't think of this avenue, but it is quite strange. However, the fact that the UK threatened to storm the embassy and cut of ties with Ecuador does indicate the political situation is much higher than it was in the 1984 incident.
Ecuador tried to instate Assange as a Ecuadorian Ambassador, but the UK refused their request for diplomatic immunity. So it probably isn't a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (though the UN did state that the UK's actions are a violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights[2]).
[1]: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1964/06/19640624%2002-1... [2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
No, they tried to appoint him to a subordinate (not “Ambassador”) diplomatic position to Russia. Which does not give him diplomatic immunity in the UK by right. The UK declined to extend such status as a courtesy as it might otherwise do.
> However my point is that there is a case in 1984 where a suspected criminal for a crime committed in the UK (who might not have been embassy personnel) was allowed safe passage with embassy personnel.
Everyone leaving the embassy had their diplomatic status verified when they were stopped, questioned, and frisked on the way out, but it's quite possible the perpetrators were one of those who left before the cordon was thrown up, and if not they were embassy personnel. The act was clearly.a state act of reprisal, so there would be no reason to have it done by unprotected persons.
It was a brilliant ploy to get Assange out, if you believed UK would adhere to the Vienna convention. Unfortunately they didn't, and there's no one around who are willing and able hold them to it.
Why doesn’t every country just do this routinely, in that case?
> However, if the UK had the legal right to refuse passage for non-embassy personnel then surely they would've done so and captured all non-embassy personnel for questioning.
Every person exiting the embassy was stopped, frisked, questioned, and photographed by the police; none were held further because they were all diplomatic personnel. (This is not addressing the people who exited before the police through a complete cordon around the embassy, or the material—including certainly he weapons and other evidence—sent out in sealed diplomatic bags thereafter and before the final evacuation of the embassy.
>And that it applies to foreign citizens who have – quite sensibly – never set foot on your soil?
Of course it does. That's like saying a foreign terrorist can't be charged for an act of terrorism because they're not a U.S. citizen. Furthermore, because Assange is a foreign national, 1st Amendment protections do not apply in this situation.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nowhere in there does it mention "citizens". Only "people". And you don't need to be a US citizen to be a person. The first result[0] of a quick Google search suggests that federal courts do indeed believe that the Constitution protects to non-citizens.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2017/01/30/does-th...
Now, all disclaimers given, I figure the Constitution ought to apply to anyone within it's jurisdiction, which to my mind means that if you are subject to our jursdiction for criminal purposes, you're subject to our constitution for it's protections as well.
I fully agree, hopefully the SCOTUS will confirm this in a ruling at some point.
Additionally the Declaration of Independence included this statement:
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
I think the consent to be governed should be established whether implied or expressed in a way more specific that just being a person somewhere on earth.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
In other words it is by refusing to revolt that people consent to be governed. Revolution doesn't require all that many people, but it requires them to be willing to risk it all. See, for example, the Romanian revolution in 1989. [1] It's one of the most ironic revolutions. Their communist dictator, in an effort to prove his popularity, decided to force tens of thousands of people to appear in a public square to listen to his speech so it could be used as propaganda and broadcast to show his 'popularity.' 'You'll never believe what happened next.' 3 days later following a 2 hour trial their dictator was sentenced to death and executed immediately.
The logic is circular (people consent by not not consenting), but I think reasonable. The reason is that there are many people who, given the choice, would reject consent anytime they failed to achieve victory in a democratic process. That would lead to complete chaos. And revolution is not a particularly high standard. Imagine if 0.1% of the US population (that's around 330k people) chose to move on DC with the goal of aggressively rebooting the government. They'd be near impossible to stop. And even if stopped, it would certainly trigger a rethink of our entire system which would be at least a partial victory. So if you can't get even 1/1000 people willing to risk it all, it's tough to claim that our evils are not sufferable, or are not reparable within the systems available to us.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution#Ceau%C8%99...
My understanding based on the statement "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government" is that this right to revolt is the nuclear option for people who have the ability to alter it and the ends which the government can be destructive towards are the initial rights previously outlined in the document. So if the US government doesn't work to secure these right for an Australian citizen and doesn't express their right to alter or abolish or revolt against the US government then it should not interpret their consent to be governed by US law for actions taken by them outside the US.
So the migration case you mention was a good example of this nuance. Congress can ban entry from whatever country they want. We could ban Canadians tomorrow if congress so chose. As for executive orders, the current precedent set is that the president is allowed to ban travel from any group so long as allowing it would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States." So the nuance there is, is Trump banning travel from these nations because they are Muslim majority, or is he banning travel from these nations because travel from these Muslim majority nations is not in the interest of the United States?
He tasked a 50 day review ranking and classifying nations on their migration controls as well as making diplomatic efforts to mutually improve the standards of these nations. After the 50 days he prohibited entry from the countries which were deemed threats, most of which where Muslim majority. Lower courts tried to then claim he did this because these countries were Muslim, and attempted to use his past words against him. The Supreme Court ruled that his words did not override an otherwise valid justification and upheld his order. [1]
---
The big point here is that the constitution can render laws unlawful, but it itself does not directly provide any protections from otherwise legitimate laws. For maybe the clearest example consider Kleindienst vs Mandel [2]. In that case the US chose to prohibit entry to an individual based exclusively on speech that would be perfectly legal if it had been said within the US. This case made its way to the supreme court and they upheld that this action was not a violation of the first amendment. [2] And it should be clear why (though the fact this made it all the way to supreme court belies my notion of obviousness here) - his speech was used against him but within the confines of other valid laws.
[1] - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf
One man's might-is-right flag-waving US exceptionalism is another man's terrorism.
Except, they can't, because the USA will protect them, even threatening to INVADE any country which attempts to reign their war criminals in.
Duplicity is the order of the day.
Not remotely true, the first amendment protects anyone and everyone from government infringement. All of the bill of rights applies to anyone, citizens or not. Try reading them, they say what the government cannot do, nowhere will you find it saying but only to citizens.
That's massaged a bit. if only he'd have had other travel plans to any other non extradition countries (he did), but stopped in an international terminal (for weeks before entering Russia) after diplomatic planes were being force grounded.
What if Assange was being "used" by the United Nations Human Rights Council, or by Canada, or Oxfam, or Letsie III, or Burger King? The premise here appears to be that the Russians are somehow evil. The US isn't at war with Russia and Assange isn't a citizen of either state.
In any case, how was he "used" by Russia? Isn't this sort of leak exactly the kind of thing that Assange and Wikileaks have always stood for? Do you think he'd not have leaked the info if the Russians weren't a factor?
Can't really blame Snowden for staying in the one place on earth US can't buy or blackmail.
IMO both Manning and Snowden have the weakest legal arguments, and Assange the strongest. I would personally have advised him to avoid taking sides in US politics, but he wasn't asking my opinion :). Playing in the big pond as a small fish is a dangerous game.
Only in a sense of "Stop hitting yourself!".
That doesn't sound like a first world democratic country. Yet it is.
In my country it's 30 days tops. Not sure if you can be sentenced more than once for the same thing.
Also you can refuse to answer any question that might incriminate you, your family or your loved one without any punishment.
I wouldn't say it's Manning's choice so much as a 'testify if you want to get out' Hobson's choice.
ftfy
No, just until she either testifies as legally required or the term of the grand jury expires.
in case you missed it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/us/politics/obama-commute...
In case you missed it, she's currently in jail. [0] [1]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/chelsea-mann...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/16/chelsea-mann...
That doesn't sound like a first world democratic country. Yet it is.
That's the limit on civil contempt, but there's no reason she couldn't then be charged with criminal contempt and imprisoned for that.
I find this argument specious. If it were the case, Americas criminal, illegal wars would not be happening.
And they are criminal, and they are illegal - and the world is having a very hard time prosecuting the criminals behind them.
Which is why we need Assange and Snowden and Manning, and the people they inspire, more than ever before. Because real crimes are being committed, and the American people are complicit.
Rule of law isn't harmed by even the most vile criminals running away from enforcement or even the most ineffectual enforcement - those undermine its power but not its legitimacy. It is misapplication of the law in the first place that does it.
Fuck that authoritarian "You have to accept the unjust punishment because rules is rules!" mentality. Rules are meant to serve the people not the other way around. The scales are already weighted against justice and the power.
You mean like the First and the Fourth amendments?
Please correct me if it was an honest mistake, but you're revealing your bias by choosing to use "he" instead of "she".
This is nothing but a cheap excuse on your behalf for your bullying. Transgender people already way more about their real genes and the issue as a whole than you do, and the idea that you're doing them a favour by telling them the truth would be highly patronizing at least, but in reality you're just being hypocritical, because you know that they already know more about it than you anyway. It's not as if someone just decides to change his or her gender from one day to another, and you know that very well.
What you say about telling the truth is also not true in general, of course. You know very well for yourself that it wouldn't be okay to tell your boss that he's fat and ugly, even if that was the case. We lie for politeness and courtesy several times a day, and that's not just fine, it's indispensable, since we cannot always choose whom to deal with. These things concern basic values of our society that people like you choose to ignore whenever it's convenient to them. But God forbid somebody uses the same whacko principles that you propose on you and tells you the truth about you...
> Being complicated and not plain is that makes us unique and interesting.
Still, that gives you zero reason not to respect other people's 'complexity.'
> the idea that you're doing them a favour by telling them the truth would be...
Should they be provided with a comforting lie instead for the rest of their lives? Santa Claus children's tales style? And you call me hypocrite and patronizer?
> you know that they already know more about it than you
Do I? Because all transgender people are super smart and all non transgender people are dumb? Sounds delusory thinking at its best, or something worse
> God forbid somebody uses the same whacko principles that you propose on you, and tells you the truth about you...
There is also the option to just stand criticism like and adult, and do not care about what a strange says about you. Some people could even benefit from adopting this point of view, but I must admit that shatter like porcelain at the tiniest injury or frustration perceived or imagined is also a popular choice nowadays.
No, harassment is not what decent people do.
Also educate yourself on the multifaceted nature of biological sex and gender identity.
If we outed the names of dissidents in Turkey or China, wouldn’t that be met with outrage? Yet as long as it is in the interests of opposing the US, it seems like there is a significant crowd that celebrates that. In the context of the United States and Western Europe, espionage was committed.
Has there been any actual evidence that Russian people were involved in the leaking of the john podesta emails? To the contrary, Seth Rich was mentioned as the likely leaker from the very beginning, and his unsolved murder and the various agencies that refuse to investigate it are involved in this to hide the truth.... What if any evidence has been presented to show any link to russian people with regard to john podesta emails. The treasure trove of information about illegal activity by the Clinton campaign was well worth any harm the publication of the emails presented.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-report-julian-assange-...
The Mueller report demolished that final moral refuge. Rich had been dead four days when Assange received the DNC files
Take a look at the facts rather than the interpretations of random events which are used to try and make it seem like he's involved in any way at all.
It's just a bunch of QAnon-lite conspiracy theories. It's a pity people fall for it so easily.
I'd note that you fail to cite sources, but here's plenty explaining the conspiracy theory in depth.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/528804792/unproved-claims-ree...
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/05/25/seth-rich-conspiracy-...
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/01/fox-news-seth-rich-co...
Which Russians?
Is it the Russians that ran "Jesus can help you beat masturbation" and "Support BLM" ads on Facebook as part of their ad farm site scam?
Or perhaps you mean the "Russians" who was a disgruntled DNC employee that handed DNC emails on a thumb drive to Craig Murray in Washington DC, who then flew to England and delivered the thumb drive to Julian Assange?
Which Russians?
I don't blame him. He's doing everything to survive, when everything was being cut off. I think everyone can agree that Trump is an insurgent and outsider. He was a wildcard for Assange at the time. He didn't exactly have a lot of options given his desperate situation.
For example the Pentagon Papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg and published by The NY Times. From Wikipedia;
> For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
An FBI agent, military enlisted or officer, etc. would rightly face charges for doseminating classified materials. There is no carte blanche to break the law because of something you don’t like that your Administration is doing. Sometimes the offense is so egregious that it’s a sacrifice someone is willing to make. In those cases if the court of public opinion is enough on the side of the leaker, there is always pardons or jury nullification to fall back on.
But I do think that it’s still precipitated by an illegal act (the leaking) which can rightly be prosecuted because generally classified material is classified for a reason and it’s not up to each individual that comes across it to decide if they agree or not.
The publisher also has to be careful that they are not soliciting or assisting the leaker in providing the materials lest they become an accomplice. I assume, although I’m not fully up to speed on the case, that this is the angle for charging Assange.
Edit: turns out we do, but it has to be actually illegal behavior as opposed to just unethical.
Classification has been completely misused in the second half of last century and particularly in the first two decades of this one.
Originally dismissed by district courts, then successfully appealed as overreaching the PATRIOT act the dismissal was vacated and remanded back to district courts where it was eventually effectively dismissed during Smith v Obama when the program was sunsetted.
On the topic of war crimes, despite claims that war crimes were committed, no formal trials convicting anyone of war crimes came from either Manning's nor Snowden's revelations, despite investigations thereof [1]. This isn't just a nit-picking point, or handwaving away corruption or cover-up. If people have problems with the process, the same process that has revealed War Crimes, then that's a separate subject.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...
Also;
> ...existing legal protections for whistleblowers are limited and generally do not extend to leaks of classified information. [1]
[1] - https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/analysis/F...
Which essentially means that law enforcement can collect info from your ISP, cell carrier, grocery store, banks, and anyone else without a warrant because it doesn't qualify as a search.
It's a completely broken mindset but there has been zero effort to reform it from any political party.
Technically correct. Ellsberg faced the threat of prosecution for many years after the leak.
I don't see how it could ever happen.
It's arguable that democracy and government accountability in the US ended in the early 1800s. If it ever existed at all, really.
I mean, consider history. The New Deal was arguably appeasement to forestall revolution. We finally elected a black president, who had cultivated almost a "black power" reputation in Chicago, and he ended up barely more liberal than Nixon.
In short, Assange is no Daniel Elssberg.
"Julian, meanwhile, is being charged with having gone beyond the limits of journalism by helping Manning to conceal her identity with a new username. He is also charged with having encouraged her to give him documents."
And that's exactly my argument why he's not a journalist.
Specifically, my argument is that if you want to protect journalism from being criminalized, then criminal activity cannot be called journalism.
"Julian, meanwhile, is being charged with having gone beyond the limits of journalism by helping Manning to conceal her identity with a new username. He is also charged with having encouraged her to give him documents. That is criminalizing journalism. I can’t count the number of times that I have been asked for documents by journalists or for more documents. She had already given hundreds of thousands of files to Assange and he wanted more. This is the practice of journalism."
If you want to protect the standard of "innocent until proven guilty", you shouldn't deem them guilty until proven innocent; though it seems you already have?
Assuming Ellsberg is the gold standard, his behavior would be sufficient, but not necessary, to be in the clear. Put another way, just because you don't live up to his standard, it doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong.
I agree that Assange is no saint. Assuming the allegations of rape are credible, he should stand trial and be punished if convicted. His motivations across a wide variety of leaks are certainly open for questioning.
But did he break any laws with regard to this specific leak? If he did actually assist Manning in cracking passwords (or whatever is alleged), then he should be held accountable for that. If not, he should go free (for that particular charge). It's that simple.
Of course, I don't trust the US gov't to give him a fair trial. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd manufacture evidence in a case like this; my belief is that they'll take any measures necessary when it comes to deterring people from leaking classified information, especially classified information they find embarrassing or damaging.
According to the DOJ Indictment yes. He conspired with Manning to obtain access to a classified system. That's different than say Glenn Greenwald merely accepting Snowden's documents.
How do we protect forces providing oversight and sunlight to parts of the government that we the people really should know about to be informed voters? How do we reasonably protect 'watchers', and how can we have reasonable oversight of the 'watchers'?
Part of the issue is that there is not a clear standard that must be adhered to; where does selection bias count as an editorial action and where does it count as being an agent of a foreign power? If someone is a completely dumb conduit that does not evaluate the data but republishes it without inner knowledge do they have more or less protections than someone that evaluates and 'publishes' the content (I.E. in technical terms 'the press', even if not part of something traditionally obvious as a news organization.)?
Of course, I also believe that OIG should be hounding the Executive constantly, and have the authority and onus to declassify anything classified as soon as possible too. That means that classification stops being a privilege of the Executive, and instead becomes a maintenance item That requires periodic review to reclassify.
However it is also commonly said that a "fourth estate" (or branch) exists, and the top search result that I get for that phrase is:
"What is the role of the Fourth Estate?
In the United States, the term fourth estate is sometimes used to place the press alongside the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. The fourth estate refers to the watchdog role of the press, one that is important to a functioning democracy.Jan 3, 2019
What is the Fourth Estate? - ThoughtCo https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-fourth-estate-3368058"
The press should also watch the government, and the oversight branches, and all of them should have oversight over the others as a completely closed system that roots out any actions that are may represent impropriety, immoral, OR illegal actions.
In short, there has to be a difference between a spy and a journalist.
Further, it's worth noting that Snowden agreed to sign his life away when he signed the SF-86 form to apply for a US clearance. Glenn Greenwald did not.
And why wouldn't the government be in bed with the Supreme Court?
Perhaps the Supreme Court review is what makes everything OK since they are the best of the best. Viva Dred Scott.
do you really want that?
the supreme court will rule 5-4 in favor of the administration, where 2 of those 5 judges were placed there by the current president
what people want is for the thin fabric of society to not be challenged when people already recognize that it exists on shaky legal ground, not nearly in line with the social contract in their head
obama administration had considered an espionage act charge but didn't want the first amendment challenge, if they had the supreme court they would have done it as well
You're right. We don't and the reason for that is centralization. The way the country was originally designed, an all powerful behemoth of a federal government was never intended to be a thing.
A combination of 2 things has allowed it to happen over time: Federal consolidation in the aftermath of the Civil War and the creation of Federal Reserve.
Those two things set us down the path where we are today and it's why a more decentralized government is advantageous. You can personally influence things that are more local do you. You can get involved in city or county government. You can call your mayor or you councilmen. You can join a school board or run for Sheriff, city/county council. All of those things are possible.
But an individual has almost no power to influence federal policy and when people disagree with federal policy, they have no escape. If you don't like a law in your city, you can work to change it or you can simply move to another city. Same thing with states, even though it's more of a task...but at this level you always have the ability to vote with your feet.
It's not so easy to just leave a country and it's the reason that constitutional amendments are supposed to require 2/3 votes instead of 51%. The country need to be in significant agreement over federal policy...or we will be at each others throats about what is / isn't being imposed on people.
That's where we are now.
But with 450M people in the US for instance, and wages and work the way it is, admit that the vast majority of people don't live in some village or small town. They live in metropolitan cities. With about the same hope of affecting their 'local' govt as the federal one.
And who has time in their life to go politicking at city hall? Average folks barely have room in their lives to go get an official ID so they can vote at their polling place.
This is a middle-class argument that doesn't apply to most citizens in most places.
The state of California has a higher population than Canada...there's very little reason that California shouldn't be able to almost entirely self-govern. At the same time, there's very little reason to assume a policy that makes sense in California and will likely be popular with the people there...will make sense in other parts of the country.
Yet we constantly see people unwilling to simply settle for state level policy wins and instead feel the need to force policy nationally. We don't need that any more than we need politicians from South Carolina trying to force national policy that will affect California.
We'd all be a heck of a lot happier if we could stop at the level of just talking about how backwards we all think each other to be rather than constantly fighting to keep the backwardness away.
I suspect more centralization could help with accountability ironically but there are other issue there including harmonizing different needs and values by region and deciding "who is right".
The three things to optimize and balance are "sensitive to local demands" (treating water by conservation needs in the desert or by great lakes or demands of road salt by road area regardless of climate would be a terrible idea), "ability to scale and administrate effectively" and "respectful of rights" - and all three may clash or agree.
So we are subject to strange rules about parking, shooting, building, water and power that make little sense in our small community.
Seriously? Name one person making this argument? Perhaps you are just misusing the phrase "absolute power". Typically this is used to refer to the unrestricted power of a monarch or dictator. The US doesn't even have this power within the US. It's a childish fantasy (as you say) to think the US has this "in the world" generally.
We shouldn’t blanket trust anybody of course, but it makes more sense to put your faith in the one advocating for free speech and democracy if you believe in human rights and equality.
It’s really easy to point out where we’ve fucked up, but a lot harder to appreciate the regional conflicts that just plain didn’t happen because of the “big stick” as Teddy Roosevelt would call it.
Just as an aside, I have no idea how I feel about this particular case against Assange.
He doesn’t seem like a great guy, but the “helped Manning hack” charges seem pretty trumped up. I’m a little surprised the justice department is even pursuing it considering how much the current administration loved Wikileaks during the election. Any precedent which hampers the press’s ability to publish whistle blown information is, of course, a step back.
The problem of secrecy in government is that the situation is not always clear. If indeed there is some classified information that shouldn't be exposed, that is extremely serious and can't just be aired like a tabloid news story. There is no simple way to keep the public informed of classified information. It's likely that the most reasonable safeguard is to have elected representatives with a strong moral code to vet the situation and act to protect their constituents.
According to a couple of other studies, states choose policies their citizens want only 59% of the time and politicians, overall, vote against the will of the people they represent 35% of the time: https://promarket.org/study-politicians-vote-will-constituen...
Unless you're using large scale money and influence to interact directly with politicians, neither your will or your direction have any meaning.
We are always spoon fed the Eisenhower's remarks regarding the "Military Industrial Complex" but I am quite curious as to how many of you (American or not) have even heard about, much less read in full, president Truman's op-ed in the Washington post, dated Dec. 22, 1963.
https://archive.org/stream/LimitCIARoleToIntelligenceByHarry...
Quote:
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
end quote.
p.s. about that 12/22/1963. (See 11/22/1963)
[p.s.s. do read it in full.]
To your first point, I believe we are screwed as long as Citizens United stands (0). We the people will always be out-coordinated by the oligarchs and their bureaucrats.
Which leads to your second point. As long campaign spending of the super rich is protected as “free speech” (the result of Citizen’s United) we are stuck with politicians who can be bought and sold. Men and women with strong moral codes cannot be bought, and therefore will not win elections. Exceptions are few and far between.
Obviously the poor have no money to buy ads with, but we're not talking about the poor here. Nobody seriously running for office is poor. This is a battle between people who are rich enough to buy ads on a TV network and people who are rich enough to buy the TV network, and Citizens United is a win for the "little guy" in that situation.
The big problem we have in elections isn't that someone can be heard too well, it's that some people can't be heard well enough. But the answer to that is public financing of elections, which doesn't require restricting private speech in any way.
Also, I appreciate your alternate view on this case. I will definitely be revisiting the facts in the light of your comment to reconsider my position.
If you think that's a ridiculous statement, then consider that every major television network around the world covers our political elections here in the US and the focus is always voter turnout and who we vote for. The only reason for that is: we have all the power.
Of course, if you don't like who gets elected all the time, perhaps you need to consider why your candidates never win because it seems far fewer people agree with your selections. Why is that?
In terms of voter turnout: I think the problem is that voter turnout doesn't happen in a vacuums. We have the voter turnout that we do due to a combination of societal factors, practical factors, current events, etc. That's not to say that it cannot be effected, but I think there's sort of a catch 22: In order to have power people need to increase voter turnout, but in order to increase voter turnout people need to have power.
In terms of your second point (i.e. "...need to consider why your candidates never win...). I think you make a good point, especially in situations where one side or the other refuses to engage in the diplomacy necessary to find a mutually acceptable solution.
However, it also seems to me that a free society would require that people be able to find a situation where they can live in accordance with their views without having to make them acceptable to a plurality of society (I'm excluding "core" social norms such as not stealing and outlawing slavery which everyone would need to agree to). It seems to me that a combination of factors makes it so that is no longer the case:
The increasing power of state and federal governments
The increasing globalization of the issues that affect people's lives
The fact that the United States has diverged into at least three different cultures (in a VERY broad sense coastal, southern, and everyone else)
This seems especially true outside of the largest cities and states. California, Texas, New York City, etc. can have very distinct political/societal systems because they are so large, but I'm not sure I think that's the case for smaller cities and states.
I'm not sure what the solution to this is other than that I don't think its fair to just say "The majority has spoken, if you don't like it leave" now that it's not really possible to leave. (I'm not saying that's what you are trying to communicate. I'm just speaking in general)
A "critical" spotlight - but a spotlight nonetheless.
See the difference?
There is oversight, just probably not the kind you want.
There's numerous congressional committees which all have oversight of every aspect of the executive branch if they so choose to ask for it. All of which are elected officials. From the Gang of 8 to the Ways and Means committee. They also leak information to the press like a sieve.
There's an inspector general in many of the agencies which can independently investigate criminal activity within the agency.
There's the FBI and the DOJ which can investigate criminal activities whether they involve classified matter or not.
Then there's the FISA court, which oversees the use of secret government surveillance.
Then as a last resort, there are leakers, which leak information to journalists (e.g. Daniel Ellsburg and the Washington Post)
It's more than likely if the government is doing something shady, word will get out.
You are implicitly blaming the projects and the developers, while the rest of the world spends billions on developing software and networks without having any regard for privacy.
No low latency system will be anonymous in the face of a global passive adversary. Tor does not claim to protect against a global passive adversary.
That isn't true. The trivial system is the one where everyone has a broadcast transmitter and transmits constantly even when there isn't a real message.
The implementation of that over the internet is full mesh, which is impractical, but it's a spectrum trading off anonymity for bandwidth and there are potentially interesting points along that spectrum between Tor and full mesh, where they use more bandwidth but then a global passive adversary can't learn anything. Something like virtual circuit switching could potentially work for example.
nothing is IMO. it's a function of raising the cost so it becomes too prohibitive for an adversary to track you. the only way to be "truly" anonymous online is not to go online (or to be truly anonymous irl is to stop being alive).
We should all realize that there are much worse outcomes than the current society we live in, and lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe. Truly anonymous communication is a catastrophe-enabler.
"Could be worse" is not a compelling argument.
> lots of them increase dramatically in likelihood when you remove the ability of society to protect itself from people who intend to create catastrophe.
I'm curious what you could possibly be thinking of, because to me it seems obvious that the exact opposite is true.
This idea that all communication must be "accountable" to a central authority is very modern, and very very dystopian.
If bad guys can conspire in secret, I consider that an acceptable sacrifice in the name of liberty. Just like ensuring there is no surveillance inside of bathrooms (but what if terrorists assemble their bombs there!).
It is remarkable how often zealots are eager to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others to achieve their 'liberty'.
Liberty isn't enhanced by enhancing the ability those who wish to harm us to do so. We have laws and law enforcement for a reason. Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations. That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
I also find it remarkable how often people are willing to sacrifice any amount of liberty in the name of preserving life.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? That would certainly deter a lot of crime. Of course it's an obviously ridiculous extreme, but it serves to illustrate that you don't really believe that in a tradeoff between liberty and safety, we should always decide in favor of safety. All we're arguing about is where to draw the line.
> Untraceable communication is a tremendous force multiplier for crime, terrorism, and foreign political de-stabilization operations.
And it is only very recently that our government was even capable of beginning to block it. Untraceable communication has been the norm for all of human history. We survived. You act like law enforcement is powerless without it, but of course that's not the case.
> That you want to increase the effectiveness of those things is very scary.
That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish.
Would you say that there are material, qualitative differences in the way electronic communication increases an organizations ability to execute, vs, say, people hiding handwritten notes in their underwear?
> That you insist on reducing me to a caricature in order to demonize me is very childish
What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
Would you say that unmonitored electronic communication is an order of magnitude more dangerous to society than unmonitored postal mail?
50 years ago, would you have been this alarmist insisting that the government needs to open and examine every single letter that goes through the mail service in order to make sure that nobody is discussing anything illegal?
> What would you say about someone who claims that hiding notes written on parchment is the same thing as widespread, free untraceable electronic communication?
I don't know, I haven't seen such a person.
Instead, I'm someone who says that communication has, gotten easier and easier every generation, throughout history. Today's electronic communications are a small evolution past paper mail.
If the government really, legitimately suspects you of something, they're free to ask a judge for permission to install a keylogger, or arrest you and search your hard drive. These are things that happen, and they work, and it's fine.
And ya know, I'm really interested in hearing your answer to the questions I've already posed, instead of trying to further caricature my position by claiming the state of the art before the digital age was hiding hand-written notes in underwear.
Would you be willing to accept a police state where AI-controlled body cameras are required to be worn by all people at all times? What's the qualitative difference between the safety boost provided by that, and this world you're describing where we somehow re-bottle the pandora's box of cryptography?
We elect representatives who are able to review the classified materials and act on our behalf.
That's how the system works. If you think governments shouldn't have secrets you are in the minority.
Some information, like the location of and launch codes for nuclear weapons, names of sources in hostile nations, etc absolutely should be secret.
I don't think that because "governments need secrets" we should set up a system where the government can classify something, rendering it unable to be reviewed by the courts, as described in the article I linked to.
Ooohhh, that's quite on point actually. Guess what Assange disclosed plenty of, at great risk to these sources' safety? He is quite far from any sort of genuine journalistic ethics, and I'm not going to complain if he were to be held responsibile for these actions.
(And yes, he used to claim, with no basis in reality whatsoever, that these sources were self-serving for the most part and thus had it coming for them...or something, honestly it's hard to even guess at a coherent argument from his unhinged claims. By now though, I think we all can agree that this was BS. He has garnered an extensive track record of optimizing his "leaks" for shock value while minimizing effort, and disclosing sources' identity does fit the pattern.)
Are you going to hold them accountable, or is this just a convenient stick to smack Assange with?
It's also interesting that, at least so far, no stories have surfaced about the grave consequences for these listed sources. Considering this would have been huge news, one might want to conclude that no smoke means no fire here.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/judge-dodges-legality-...
Without the ability for the press to publicize illegal actions so that voters can remove officials who allow it, the US government can engage in unconstitutional conduct with almost zero oversight by making the illegal conduct classified.