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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 rplst8 on Thursday May 23, 2019 @06:45PM (#19996771)
Nearly every activity I've seen reported that has been leaked has been, IMHO, illegal in some way. Warrantless wiretapping, war crimes, or violations of international law. The rest have been things that are simply embarrassing, which are by statute, prohibited from being classified in the first place.

Classification has been completely misused in the second half of last century and particularly in the first two decades of this one.

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Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by AndrewKemendo on Friday May 24, 2019 @01:32AM (#19998754)
Being "Illegal" isn't black and white, especially in the case of ACLU vs Clapper, which was about bulk metadata collection through FISA.

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...

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