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A comment on Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues. Parent comment

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by PorterDuff on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:33PM (#19996221)
Although I don't pretend to understand the specifics, I expect that any charges against him will be on the corner cases. They won't be a frontal assault on Wikileaks. After all, what's the difference between WL and the New York Times when you get right down to it?

My guess is that hidden on page 1050 (or whatever) of the charges, the meat of the matter will be some sort of Swiss Army knife of Justice Department power involving a kind of conspiracy, meeting with C. Manning, or whatever. Truth is, they can put anyone in prison any time they like.

Thank goodness the intelligence nomenklatura in this country isn't joined at the hip with the Googles, Facebooks, and AT&Ts of the world. Then where would we be?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by DiogenesKynikos on Thursday May 23, 2019 @05:48PM (#19996357)
> After all, what's the difference between WL and the New York Times

The difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times is that WikiLeaks would not have kept Bush's warrantless wiretapping program secret until after the 2004 election - at the request of the Bush administration.

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Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by rigoleto on Thursday May 23, 2019 @09:03PM (#19997555)
What? NYT regularly publishes information unfavorable to the US government. WikiLeaks on the other hand participates directly in advancing Russian state aims.
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Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by panarky on Thursday May 23, 2019 @11:02PM (#19998112)
"The New York Times had held the story at the request of the government."

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

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Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by DiogenesKynikos on Sunday May 26, 2019 @12:40AM (#20013196)
One of the most incredible things about that is that the New York Times only published the story when the journalist who had uncovered it threatened to publish it outside the paper. They were willing to sit on one of the biggest stories in their history, at the request of the government, until they were faced with the prospect of getting scooped. Wikileaks would have published right away, informing the US electorate (I mean, "interfering in the 2004 election by providing truthful information to the public").
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