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If we start with the premises that if people think that something is a crime, they can commit a crime to try and prove it, our legal system will quickly crumble

If we start with the premises that if people think that something is a crime, they can commit a crime to try and prove it, our legal system will quickly crumble. Would it still be journalism, if they hacked the database and didn't find evidence. Should the fact that the information released, put many lives in danger when it compromised many people aiding our government? Morally his actions can be debated, but not from a legal one, so he should be arrested and it should be up to a jury to determine if is moral reasoning and actions out way his crimes.

thatoneuser 8y ago
So how exactly would you have the people informing themselves? We just sit and wait for the benevolent government to tell us what it deems is good for us to know? We don't need to make a whole new set of legal principles where people automatically get off for claiming journalism. In this case the people (here and around the world) were able to learn a lot of valuable information. Assanges actions are justified.
- Meph504 8y ago
  You have every right to your opinion about if you feel his actions were justified. But that doesn't excuse him from the framework of our laws, if you break the law, even for a good reason, its a jury that decides.
  - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
    Sadly yes, this doesn't excuse him from the framework of our laws, just like it did not excuse Turing, leading to his death. Maybe it's time to adopt a more aggressive stance against immoral laws, don't you think?
    - gameswithgo 8y ago
      everyone breaks laws every day, if the government has a problem with you they will find one you broke. we see it all the time at scales big and small.
  - raxxorrax 8y ago
    This "holy" law is cleverly circumvented in the quest for war crimes. So any appeal only gets you so far. We are back to square one. Government will hide crimes, people will try to call them out. Law is as useful and error prone, as we want it to be.
    - wybiral 8y ago
      The law isn't perfect, in any country, and that's never going to change. We need to vote for leaders who will reform it in the direction that we want. But the fact that some people get away with crimes doesn't mean we should ignore all crimes and adopt a system of anarchy.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Why not? Who said it would be worse? Where you asked before adopting the current system? Or you were just expected to sit and accept it? Any why would a system that takes into account actual benefit to the public or not, to absolve someone of something that is otherwise a crime, would be tantamount to "anarchy"?
        wybiral 8y ago
        > Any why would a system that takes into account actual benefit to the public or not, to absolve someone of something that is otherwise a crime, would be tantamount to "anarchy"? Without a clear set of laws things get messy really quickly. We do allow for subjective peer input in a trial, that's exactly why the jury exists. But to say that someone shouldn't even be put in front of a jury just because you think they broke the law with good intentions is undermining the purpose of law. Who are you to decide what was a "benefit to the public"? There were people who thought that Guantanamo was a "benefit to the public" so should they be allowed to torture people? There were people in the NSA who thought that mass collection of metadata from phone companies was a "benefit to the public" so maybe we shouldn't investigate those things. That's not how I want the law to work. We should investigate all of those things, regardless of what you think is beneficial, under a strict set of rules of law. And we use democracy and international order to shape that set of rules. If you think this is crazy and oppressive you should look around at how non-western countries handle these things.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Are you proposing a double-standard? Can cops be justified breaking into your house without a warrant, so long as they find evidence of a crime?
  - fuzzbuzz 8y ago
    Since USA invaded a country because they blamed that country had weapons of mass destruction, does that mean I can "invade" anyone on false accusations? There is a huge difference between the state and the poeple. And they should be trated respectively. What Julian Assange did was for the best of all poeple, not for the state. It also follows that the state are made of the poeple, for the poeple. So anything that is "good" for the poeple, the state should do.
    - Meph504 8y ago
      I can't tell if you are trolling me, or just willfully being contrary. Nothing you are saying here holds up under even the most basic logical scrutiny. If your justification is that regardless of his actions the net result was "good" for the people. You run into an undefended slippery slope. If we murder everyone in the US, that has deadly communicable diseases, or hereditary genetic disorder and we wipe the diseases out, that's "good" for the people, and the harm when compared to the whole is trivial as long as you kill less than say 30 million people. We can never hold ourselves to this sort of standard and claim we have any form of justice. On the other hand, the law is far to ridge without the human factor, and hence the jury, a jury can nullify a case if they so choose, and simply agree that this person violated the law, but did it for a reason that his peers felt they deserved no punishment. I'm not saying that Assange, so go to jail, I'm simply suggesting that he has to have his day in court, if what the state is saying is to be show through evidence to be true, or false. And that if his group of peers feels that after hearing all the specific details of the case from both sides, determine if what he did is right or wrong.
  - Meph504 8y ago
    Actually if a cop finds evidence of a crime without a warrant when one is required,(or any illegal means) it won't be admissible, so I'm not sure where you are coming from. Nor do I see how you are suggesting what I'm talking about is some sort of proposal for a double standard. I'm not saying out legal framework is perfect, and certainly not saying that injustices don't happen because there are bad people, doing horrible shit to innocent people. I'm saying that you can't abandon the rule of law, just because someone did something that you see as a net positive. I'm also against this train of thought when the government attempts to use this logic with eminent domain cases for example.
belorn 8y ago
Journalists history is full of people that break the law in order to investigate something and the result is almost in every case the same: they get a small fine which the news paper pays. To take a direct example, a Swedish TV crew smuggled a person through several nations in order to report on experience a person went through during the migration crisis. The maximum punishment for human smuggling is 6 years in Sweden (and this is not counting all the other countries which this TV crew traveled through), and the verdict was of course a small fine (basically one month of pay) after going through two courts. When you have a person with no priors, low risk for repeat offense of the specific crime they are accused of, for the intent of journalist reporting, and a single offense, what you get is a small fine. The US do not do extraditions from other nations when the expected punishment is a small fine.
kgbme 8y ago
Police do it all the time.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Too late for that - have you seen what passes for standards of accountability and standards where ignorance of the law is not an excuse - unless you are the police. I think the legal system has already throughly crumbled by those standards. So much FUD and dangerous hypotheticals to justify /their/ crimes. At this point accountability and transparency need to be held far higher because the alternative is so much worse and corrupted. If you don't want whistleblowers there is an easy answer - not being so fucking corrupt and they will have nothing to whistleblow on!
coldtea 8y ago
>If we start with the premises that if people think that something is a crime, they can commit a crime to try and prove it, our legal system will quickly crumble. How about starting with the solid facts, that what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed? >Would it still be journalism, if they hacked the database and didn't find evidence. We could just say no -- or, if they did find evidence, yes. This keeps the risk of violating the law, but makes it OK if you indeed unearth something beneficial. You know, as if we can make rational value judgements given the end result, and not give everyone a free pass, or condemn everyone from the start.
- Meph504 8y ago
  Our laws aren't written in away that says if you steal something, and the value to others out weights the crime of stealing, then its not stealing. But as I've said, this is the human element, and is why we have a jury, if the jury feels that his actions though criminal were justified. They can hold him free of punishment, this is why our judicial system is structured this way, because the letter of the law, doesn't understand the context of a situation, and a jury can. Who in your opinion makes the choice of "what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed?" A judge, a police officer, a prosecutor, or a jury of his peers? That value judgement you are talking about is literally the roll of the jury, but to get to that point, they have to be arrested, and prosecuted.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Our laws aren't written in away that says if you steal something, and the value to others out weights the crime of stealing, then its not stealing. Well, that's bad. And it has been known to be bad since the time of Les Miserables at least... >Who in your opinion makes the choice of "what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed?" A judge, a police officer, a prosecutor, or a jury of his peers? The jury of peers. But we're still on the court of public/pundit opinion, and many are making arguments as if the technical aspects of the law outweigh any benefits -- in fact as if breaking the law itself is morally condemnable whatever the circumstance. So I wanted to counter that. Besides, are the people which will be jury really "peers" when the act might benefit humanity at large, but they are tied to a particular nation state (one he doesn't even belong to)? "Peers" original intention was to be people "related to the community/society the accused lives in" with the same public interests (and moral ideas).

thatoneuser 8y ago

So how exactly would you have the people informing themselves? We just sit and wait for the benevolent government to tell us what it deems is good for us to know? We don't need to make a whole new set of legal principles where people automatically get off for claiming journalism. In this case the people (here and around the world) were able to learn a lot of valuable information. Assanges actions are justified.

Meph504 8y ago
You have every right to your opinion about if you feel his actions were justified. But that doesn't excuse him from the framework of our laws, if you break the law, even for a good reason, its a jury that decides.
- AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
  Sadly yes, this doesn't excuse him from the framework of our laws, just like it did not excuse Turing, leading to his death. Maybe it's time to adopt a more aggressive stance against immoral laws, don't you think?
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    everyone breaks laws every day, if the government has a problem with you they will find one you broke. we see it all the time at scales big and small.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  This "holy" law is cleverly circumvented in the quest for war crimes. So any appeal only gets you so far. We are back to square one. Government will hide crimes, people will try to call them out. Law is as useful and error prone, as we want it to be.
  - wybiral 8y ago
    The law isn't perfect, in any country, and that's never going to change. We need to vote for leaders who will reform it in the direction that we want. But the fact that some people get away with crimes doesn't mean we should ignore all crimes and adopt a system of anarchy.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Why not? Who said it would be worse? Where you asked before adopting the current system? Or you were just expected to sit and accept it? Any why would a system that takes into account actual benefit to the public or not, to absolve someone of something that is otherwise a crime, would be tantamount to "anarchy"?
      - wybiral 8y ago
        > Any why would a system that takes into account actual benefit to the public or not, to absolve someone of something that is otherwise a crime, would be tantamount to "anarchy"? Without a clear set of laws things get messy really quickly. We do allow for subjective peer input in a trial, that's exactly why the jury exists. But to say that someone shouldn't even be put in front of a jury just because you think they broke the law with good intentions is undermining the purpose of law. Who are you to decide what was a "benefit to the public"? There were people who thought that Guantanamo was a "benefit to the public" so should they be allowed to torture people? There were people in the NSA who thought that mass collection of metadata from phone companies was a "benefit to the public" so maybe we shouldn't investigate those things. That's not how I want the law to work. We should investigate all of those things, regardless of what you think is beneficial, under a strict set of rules of law. And we use democracy and international order to shape that set of rules. If you think this is crazy and oppressive you should look around at how non-western countries handle these things.
paulddraper 8y ago
Are you proposing a double-standard? Can cops be justified breaking into your house without a warrant, so long as they find evidence of a crime?
- fuzzbuzz 8y ago
  Since USA invaded a country because they blamed that country had weapons of mass destruction, does that mean I can "invade" anyone on false accusations? There is a huge difference between the state and the poeple. And they should be trated respectively. What Julian Assange did was for the best of all poeple, not for the state. It also follows that the state are made of the poeple, for the poeple. So anything that is "good" for the poeple, the state should do.
  - Meph504 8y ago
    I can't tell if you are trolling me, or just willfully being contrary. Nothing you are saying here holds up under even the most basic logical scrutiny. If your justification is that regardless of his actions the net result was "good" for the people. You run into an undefended slippery slope. If we murder everyone in the US, that has deadly communicable diseases, or hereditary genetic disorder and we wipe the diseases out, that's "good" for the people, and the harm when compared to the whole is trivial as long as you kill less than say 30 million people. We can never hold ourselves to this sort of standard and claim we have any form of justice. On the other hand, the law is far to ridge without the human factor, and hence the jury, a jury can nullify a case if they so choose, and simply agree that this person violated the law, but did it for a reason that his peers felt they deserved no punishment. I'm not saying that Assange, so go to jail, I'm simply suggesting that he has to have his day in court, if what the state is saying is to be show through evidence to be true, or false. And that if his group of peers feels that after hearing all the specific details of the case from both sides, determine if what he did is right or wrong.
- Meph504 8y ago
  Actually if a cop finds evidence of a crime without a warrant when one is required,(or any illegal means) it won't be admissible, so I'm not sure where you are coming from. Nor do I see how you are suggesting what I'm talking about is some sort of proposal for a double standard. I'm not saying out legal framework is perfect, and certainly not saying that injustices don't happen because there are bad people, doing horrible shit to innocent people. I'm saying that you can't abandon the rule of law, just because someone did something that you see as a net positive. I'm also against this train of thought when the government attempts to use this logic with eminent domain cases for example.

belorn 8y ago

Journalists history is full of people that break the law in order to investigate something and the result is almost in every case the same: they get a small fine which the news paper pays. To take a direct example, a Swedish TV crew smuggled a person through several nations in order to report on experience a person went through during the migration crisis. The maximum punishment for human smuggling is 6 years in Sweden (and this is not counting all the other countries which this TV crew traveled through), and the verdict was of course a small fine (basically one month of pay) after going through two courts. When you have a person with no priors, low risk for repeat offense of the specific crime they are accused of, for the intent of journalist reporting, and a single offense, what you get is a small fine. The US do not do extraditions from other nations when the expected punishment is a small fine.

kgbme 8y ago

Police do it all the time.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Too late for that - have you seen what passes for standards of accountability and standards where ignorance of the law is not an excuse - unless you are the police. I think the legal system has already throughly crumbled by those standards. So much FUD and dangerous hypotheticals to justify /their/ crimes. At this point accountability and transparency need to be held far higher because the alternative is so much worse and corrupted. If you don't want whistleblowers there is an easy answer - not being so fucking corrupt and they will have nothing to whistleblow on!

coldtea 8y ago

>If we start with the premises that if people think that something is a crime, they can commit a crime to try and prove it, our legal system will quickly crumble. How about starting with the solid facts, that what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed? >Would it still be journalism, if they hacked the database and didn't find evidence. We could just say no -- or, if they did find evidence, yes. This keeps the risk of violating the law, but makes it OK if you indeed unearth something beneficial. You know, as if we can make rational value judgements given the end result, and not give everyone a free pass, or condemn everyone from the start.

Meph504 8y ago
Our laws aren't written in away that says if you steal something, and the value to others out weights the crime of stealing, then its not stealing. But as I've said, this is the human element, and is why we have a jury, if the jury feels that his actions though criminal were justified. They can hold him free of punishment, this is why our judicial system is structured this way, because the letter of the law, doesn't understand the context of a situation, and a jury can. Who in your opinion makes the choice of "what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed?" A judge, a police officer, a prosecutor, or a jury of his peers? That value judgement you are talking about is literally the roll of the jury, but to get to that point, they have to be arrested, and prosecuted.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Our laws aren't written in away that says if you steal something, and the value to others out weights the crime of stealing, then its not stealing. Well, that's bad. And it has been known to be bad since the time of Les Miserables at least... >Who in your opinion makes the choice of "what was unearthed is justified to be unearthed?" A judge, a police officer, a prosecutor, or a jury of his peers? The jury of peers. But we're still on the court of public/pundit opinion, and many are making arguments as if the technical aspects of the law outweigh any benefits -- in fact as if breaking the law itself is morally condemnable whatever the circumstance. So I wanted to counter that. Besides, are the people which will be jury really "peers" when the act might benefit humanity at large, but they are tied to a particular nation state (one he doesn't even belong to)? "Peers" original intention was to be people "related to the community/society the accused lives in" with the same public interests (and moral ideas).