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The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism

323 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

Simulacra 8y ago
Perhaps I’m cynical, but the outrage from the media over the arrest of Assange smacks of duplicity for me. After all, it was Asaange who helped leak documents which then the media could write about. He was almost doing their job for them. Distant echoes of when Gizmodo found an iPhone 4, and some tech journalist ( Who would have loved the scoop) scolded them.
- 13415 8y ago
  I don't understand where the duplicity would be in that. "The media" (your term) used documents from Wikileaks in their reporting and now are outraged about the arrest of Assange? There is nothing incongruent about that. Did I misunderstand you?
  - kikoreis 8y ago
    I was going to post the same thing but I fumbled in finding the right word, incongruent of course. In general the media will protest when they perceive a threat to freedom of press which is both self interested and highly useful.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Some in the press are alleging he’s an “activist”, not a real journalist[1], which seems self serving. The reason, they hope to “define” what s true journalist is, so that they can remain gatekeepers of who journalists are and what is news. Baffling. [1]https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activist-not-journalist-ghitis/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activ...
iblaine 8y ago
IANAL but he’s awaiting trial for hacking, not being a journalist. Whether or not the charges are true will be one for the courts to figure out.
- taborj 8y ago
  Isn't his "crime" releasing documents that Manning stole? Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama...
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  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Isn't his "crime" releasing documents that Manning stole? No, releasing documents is not conduct that he is charged with. > Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama... Commutation is not a pardon; it is merely a limitation on punishment. Now, a pardon still wouldn't invalidate the Assange charges, but the idea that the fact that a coconspirator got less punishment than their original sentence negates the validity of charges against someone else in the conspiracy is laughable.
- kpU8efre7r 8y ago
  Exactly. It will be sorted out in court. I'm not sure what else people expect.
  - kikoreis 8y ago
    Uhhhh.. really?
    - kpU8efre7r 8y ago
      Thanks for the intelligent discourse. I take it you think my reply is silly? Yeah, sure, it could all be bullshit charges but the alternative is what? We just give people a pass?
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Are you sure? This seems to be a pretty big political issue in the UK. US doesn’t exactly have a strong track record of successfully extraditing people from the UK for hacking the military.
monochromatic 8y ago
Reporting on leaked documents is one thing. Helping your source crack passwords on government computers is another.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  Yeah, I guess it's a little bad to help crack a password but it also doesn't seem like a huge deal. Part of the stuff that Assange leaked included footage of American helicopters murdering people - which seems like a much bigger deal. If I crack your password and read your email and discover you're a serial killer, then yes, I've done wrong and should be punished for the minor crime I've committed, but you should be punished for the serial killing too. In my view Assange should be sentenced to a hundred hours of community service immediately after the people responsible for planning and executing the vastly more consequential crimes Assange revealed are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    It doesn't feel like a crime serious enough for extradition to me. He is guilty of skipping bail, which is a serious crime. It's possible that there's merit for what Sweden wanted to extradite him for, and the courts should look at the merits of extraditing him to Sweden
    - monochromatic 8y ago
      Sweden has dropped those charges though.
doomrobo 8y ago
So it appears that the author of this piece and the authors of the nearly identical Intercept piece [0] are skeptical of the "conspiracy to hack" charges brought against Assange. From what I understand, the action conspired towards was gaining access to an account on a government network that neither Assange nor Manning had access to ordinarily, with the goal of better covering Mannong's tracks (the other account had just as much file access rights as Manning). I understand the claim that this was an effort by Assange to protect his information source, but should it really not be considered Bad to login to someone else's account on a government network and spoof your actions with their name attached? Is it so unreasonable to believe that that's somehow too far? [0] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indictment-of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedoms/ https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indi...
- acqq 8y ago
  > should it really not be considered Bad to login to someone else's account That is not the story here. The story here is a narrative. The apparent "democratic institutions" instead of protecting freedom of the press directly press more whole countries in order to "as a discouraging example" punish a person who managed to expose some of the serious and actual misdeeds of the governments. In short, what they do is as tyrannical, whimsical and dictatorial as we could imagine, like in the movies about the older times "bring me the head of that guy." And they try to pretend this is simply and "normally" "lawful" whereas there's no other person with such a minor actual punishment in that land that would cause spending a million of pounds for "guards" to get him as soon as he leaves the Embassy, to plan everything that was planned to get him, etc. So now it's using the minor technicalities, which were before correctly recognized as not enough to charge him because of the potential effects on the freedom of the press, to "bring them his head." Exactly as the Intercept article explains, and the major line is: "the huge step this indictment represents in the Trump administration’s explicitly stated goal to criminalize journalism that involves reporting on classified information." Note that Obama's administration already broke some records in that direction.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  The Intercept has slowly turned into a Russian mouthpiece, which is sad because the original idea was very good.
wapoamspomw 8y ago
No journalist would help their sources hack their employer for more documents. Journalists can take documents their source already has; but helping their source illegally access more documents is against the law. Imagine if these were physical documents in a safe. A journalist helping the source crack that safe would be very illegal.
- doomrobo 8y ago
  I thought Manning already had access to the documents in question. The goal of getting into another account was to cover their tracks, not to gain unauthorized access.
  - wapoamspomw 8y ago
    Breaking into another account is unauthorized access. Doesn't matter if that account had more, the same, or even less access than Manning's account.
- pierrebai 8y ago
  A journalist giving someone else a document that explain how a particular brand of safe can be cracked is not illegal. Handing someone knowledge is not illegal. Actually cracking the safe is illegal. We've been over this for decades. Once it was about simply encrypting. Others about documents on bomb making. Or safe cracking. Or lock picking. The information is legal. Putting it in practice to gain unauthorized access is illegal.
  - belltaco 8y ago
    >A journalist giving someone else a document that explain how a particular brand of safe can be cracked is not illegal. Handing someone knowledge is not illegal. Terrible analogy. Assange obtained the actual NTLM hash from Manning of the user they were trying to crack the password of and attempted to crack it with the full knowledge that it was a top secret US military login. He wasn't sending her generic knowledge on how to crack NTLM passwords. >Actually cracking the safe is illegal. Attempting to crack a safe that you don't have authorization to, with the intent of stealing things from it is also illegal even if you failed to crack it. Just like going around the neighborhood trying the doors of homes or pulling handles of cars is illegal.
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Aqueous 8y ago
Is it legal for a journalist to assist another person in invading someone's home, for the purpose of obtaining information that could be published? It is not. It's very illegal, for good reason. It's also illegal to do the same thing with a computer system. People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In this case, the information system is government property, which for some reason many people believe gives us special license to take whatever we want from it. But the same principle applies to the property of private individuals, including you. So do you really want to live in a world where the governing maxim is that information wants to be free, and that justifies any and all means of getting to it, including breaking into secure information systems? That sword cuts both ways.
- trevelyan 8y ago
  Avoid spreading FUD please. No-one has claimed that Assange provided Manning with any assistance compromising any computer systems. The only revelation from the leaked indictment is that Manning apparently sent him a password hash once and Assange said, "can't break it." The Manning-Lamo chat logs leaked to Wired also clearly show that Manning sought out Assange. If you have any evidence to the contrary on these two points, please post as your claims are running against what is publicly known.
  - Aqueous 8y ago
    Merely attempting to assist the break-in is a crime. He attempted. Same metaphor applies. I try to help someone pick the lock as they try to break-in to a house. This is illegal. It's also illegal for a computer intrusion. Julian Assange took concrete steps in furtherance of a conspiracy. Whether or not he succeeded is besides the point. Sorry, it's the law.
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      >Sorry, it's the law. I’d imagine this same argument sees regular use in China.
IronWolve 8y ago
The material support claim is he helped direct how to hack passwords, but I've only seen claims of that, and the Obama administration didnt think it was true at the time. But now, that claim is back and the same week Ecuador receives 4.2 billion... Great Timing.
cedivad 8y ago
I have to say, this makes me sad. I visit HN daily, mostly look at the headlines and rarely engage in the discussion, but seeing what are supposed to be smart, thinking people commenting in here just saddens me. Same goes for the other 1k+ comments on the previous thread. It seems you people think it's ok to have someone end up like this guy for helping a source get us information we all benefited from. You can say trying to protect this source's identity is conspiracy to commit computer hacking, but your head needs to be buried very deep into the sand to pretend this is anything but the excuse used to get him. The actual crime here is holding governments accountable. Trying, at least. I understand most of you didn't love him for exposing problems inside a political party otherwise set to win the election. I really do. I understand he didn't do much to be loved by the public. I understand 10 years of propaganda could make most people change their mind about a saint. But here, too? I listened to his most recent interview today and I really enjoyed his views. I half expect people to point out this is Russian state media, and yes, the reds are out to get you but can listen to it in the background, that way the watermark can't bother you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A I lost one fifth of my karma yesterday defending the guy, let's see if this comment goes the same way. Edit: funny enough my comment went to -3 in no time before slowing crawling its way back to +1. Almost like if... Nah.
- erentz 8y ago
  I agree with your sentiment of disappointment in the general response on HN to this. And I also have the same disappointment in the general media's response. I thought Tulsi Gabbard's defense of Assange to Tapper on CNN was spot on, and can't believe it's up to a few politicians to defend journalism on a news network instead of the news network itself. The previous Obama administration went very hard against whistle blowers, but even they ultimately decided that prosecuting Assange for this would be a step too far. What's happening seems to be people don't like him for various reasons (fair enough), are blind to the larger issues and chilling effects caused by this prosecution, and so with motivated reasoning decide this is not about politics and is about hacking, he's a bad hacker who tried to crack a Government password, and they're just standing up for some principal of not trying to hack Govt passwords or some such.
tareqak 8y ago
Does anyone have the specifics of what was the exact nature of Julian Assange’s help in cracking the password? Specifically, 1. Did Assange send Manning the name of utility that would crack the password? Or 2. Did Assange send Manning a link to the utility in order to download it? Or 3. Did Assange send Manning a page of Google search results, and/or a Wikipedia page, a technical article or blog post with the computer science fundamentals behind password-cracking? Or 4. Did Assange send Manning a technical article or blog post with step by step instructions to crack the password? Or 5. Did Assange crack the password himself? I apologize if this information has been released somewhere and I haven’t seen it. In addition, apologize if the questions that I asked sound painfully fundamental or demeaning towards Assange or Manning. What I am trying to get at is how easy it seems to get in trouble with the law in this case. Suppose someone comes up to me and says they want to know how to hotwire a car (or whatever the term is) in order to steal it, I happen to blurt out that this someone can “just Google that”, and then this person goes out and does just that without me being totally sure about their intent to do so. Am I now an accomplice to the crime?
- r721 8y ago
  Here's the chat excerpt: https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336 https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336
  - tareqak 8y ago
    Thanks a lot 'r721 ! That’s even more worrying where there might be mismatch between the recorded intent and the actual intent.
    - r721 8y ago
      This subthread is quite interesting, apparently "In a conspiracy charge, the outcome doesn’t need to be achieved, only there was a “meeting of minds” and steps taken to achieve that end goal": https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166 https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166
  - 8y ago
duxup 8y ago
>Assange offered to try to crack a computer password for Manning >“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.” It's up for a trial to determine how much / if any of that happened, but if it did it seems well outside the boundaries of what a journalist should do. I don't expect a journalist to be assisting someone in accessing information illegally. If the journalist is just given it fine they should be protected, but this seems a good step beyond that. The article talks about how it would have helped protect that source but it's clear it also would have provided more information / assisted in that process. Let alone a concern I would have if I were a journalist (I'm not) that providing my source with some cover of another real world person could seriously harm that other person.
baby 8y ago
So. Mind you I haven't really followed what Assange did or didn't do. But it seems like a lot of people are angry at him because they think he is responsible for having Trump becoming president. Before that, the same people seemed pretty supportive of him.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Don't be ridiculous, HN is a bastion of rationality. Comparing breaking government computers to reveal war crimes with burglarizing your personal home convinces you to take the matter personally. This is how rational dispassionate people argue.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  From a UK perspective Assange started to fall out of favour before whatever happened in the 2016 USA elections. Avoiding rape charges and skipping out on bail (which people had put money towards in good faith) will do that.
  - LMYahooTFY 8y ago
    "rape charges" These never existed, and were the most obvious part of his character assassination. Unless you have a link to a Swedish government domain which has published such things?
    - ChrisSD 8y ago
      It was one of the charges listed on the European arrest warrant. http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html > 4. Rape > On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state. Whatever you think of Assange's guilt or innocence, it is a fact that he was charged with rape.
      - LMYahooTFY 8y ago
ratling 8y ago
Screw Assange, he's a large part of the reason we're stuck with Cheeto. People are high horsing him as some kind of journalist but he selectively leaked information to hurt the DNC during the 2016 campaign. Now it's 3 years later and his masters don't have any use for him anymore. So they'll make an 'example' of him and spew some law and order line. Zero sympathy from me. He sent 7 years rotting in the Ecuadorian embassy. Let him spend another 50 rotting in lockup.
- cedivad 8y ago
  You have Cheeto as a president because your population was tired of being lied to. The DNC leaks just proved them right, but sure, shoot the messenger. Get rid of your bipartisan system if you don't want to ever put your voters between a rock and a hard place again. Right. Can't do that.
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    Sorry I'm from the UK so this sounds really surreal. The USA was tired of politicians lying to them so they elected... Trump? Help me out here.
    - cedivad 8y ago
      Just like Thiel said before becoming the most hated famous person in the valley, voters were desperate for an outsider. The politicians == liar equivalency was well established in people's minds and they wanted to try something different. "Drain the swamp" was an amazing slogan that worked perfectly for them. (Italian here). And as an Italian I will say that sounds like what Berlusconi was riding on during his first election.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      It's largely about him saying things directly instead of using the traditional dog whistles, at least on the issues that his target audience was most concerned about. In "normal" politics, you're allowed to imply it all, so long as you coach it in the language that is appropriate for the times. Here's one historical example: "You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone." This is Lee Atwater, explaining the Republican "southern strategy", and its evolution over time. But the same happened on most everything else. And then comes Trump, and straight up says that Mexican immigrants are rapists, and Muslims need to be banned. Which is exactly what most of his base were thinking - so hearing him say it out loud earned him that "honest man who says things as they are" reputation among them.
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Aloha 8y ago
Assange is in my opinion a slimeball, and not a neutral player, but I don't think he committed a crime - at least not anymore than Daniel Ellsberg did when they published the Pentagon Papers, or for that matter Bob Woodward did when publishing the Watergate Leaks from the FBI - but, like I said, not a Neutral Player - he has his own agenda, which while from time to time may align with the interests of the greater good, is neither benign or uniformly positive. I dont consider the charges against Assange to be any more of a risk to journalism than the charges leveled against Ellsberg in the wake of the publication of the Pentagon Papers - and will likely not survive a trial. The assertion that he helped Manning beyond acting as a publisher/dissemination method is absurd and more or less baseless.
- erentz 8y ago
  There is an important difference between Assange and Ellsberg so your comparison of the two isn’t a good one: Assange did not steal and leak the materials, he was the outside party publishing them. On the other hand Ellsberg was the person working for the government who copied and leaked all the materials and knew he might face charges for that reason. In this comparison Manning would be compared to Ellsberg. And Assange would be the reporter at The NY Times or WaPo (I’m brain farting here) who published them.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    NYT, and you're right
  - belltaco 8y ago
    He wasn't just publishing them. He is accused of trying to crack the NTLM hash of a DoD admin login. https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
- partiallypro 8y ago
  The government's position isn't that he "helped" Manning, it is that Manning acted, in part on the direction of Assange. If I remember correctly, their correspondence between each other occurred before Manning did anything. Assange basically said he would publish it if it were given to him. So imagine if a journalist did that, and told someone "if you break into this person's house, I will publish your findings. Since neither of us like this person." Would that be illegal? It would definitely be illegal.
jjtheblunt 8y ago
New Yorker clickbait, like most of the NYT, no?
thrwwy412947 8y ago
Look at these pro-establishment anti-assange comments on "hacker" news. They are mindlessly parroting the same thing they hear on msnbc, foxnews and cnn.
kstenerud 8y ago
It's important to look at the actual indictment [1] rather than all the commentary about it, because everyone involved seems to have an axe to grind thanks to Assange's colorful character. The indictment charges Assange with conspiring with Manning to unlawfully gain new access to a protected government computer system. Specifically: * Assange gave Manning a CD to boot from on the target computer, containing tools to copy the protected password data. * Assange received a copy of the password hashes from Manning, and attempted to crack them. Regardless of what reasons the Obama administration had to proceed or not proceed with the indictment at the time (which we are not privy to), these are very clearly defined criminal offenses in the USA, with much precedent behind them. Had Assange not provided the hacking tools, and had he not attempted to crack the passwords, this indictment would never have happened. Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here; it's about conspiring to hack a government computer. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
- m0zg 8y ago
  I call BS. They'd find something else to charge him with, such as that false flag CIA "rape" affair in Sweden. No problems with women whatsoever until he started disclosing data on the "wrong" people. Then he immediately becomes a serial rapist and literally Hitler. Please, we've heard this song before. Cablegate starts in November 2010, Assange becomes a "rapist" that same month. Coincidence?
  - tiredyam 8y ago
    Please give sources
    - longhorn_alum 8y ago
      To what
      - tiredyam 8y ago
        the comment was flagged
lurchpop 8y ago
What if Rachel Maddow had a source inside the IRS who's trying to get at a folder that has trump tax returns and other financial details but doesn't have access. Source says they can deliver everything if Maddow can get some passwords on a thumb drive cracked. Maddow says she can't but to keep trying.
viivaux 8y ago
Seems everything I want to say here is likely to end up as [flagged]. If only I wanted to cast vague and unsubstantiated aspersions; then I'd be fine.
chx 8y ago
> The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Russian Agents. FTFY. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988
rukuu001 8y ago
Yeah, the Assange case is going to tie everyone up in knots, because he's practically the definition of 'complicated'. Everyone's going to take a different side, based on: - He helped make available information genuinely in the public interest about US technically-not-quite war crimes. - He's alleged to have committed sex crimes in Sweden - He arguably delivered the presidency to Trump Edit: it's kind of an ethical version of rock-paper-scissors - no matter what position you take, Assange himself has provided a reason not to take that position.

323 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

Perhaps I’m cynical, but the outrage from the media over the arrest of Assange smacks of duplicity for me. After all, it was Asaange who helped leak documents which then the media could write about. He was almost doing their job for them. Distant echoes of when Gizmodo found an iPhone 4, and some tech journalist ( Who would have loved the scoop) scolded them.

13415 8y ago
I don't understand where the duplicity would be in that. "The media" (your term) used documents from Wikileaks in their reporting and now are outraged about the arrest of Assange? There is nothing incongruent about that. Did I misunderstand you?
- kikoreis 8y ago
  I was going to post the same thing but I fumbled in finding the right word, incongruent of course. In general the media will protest when they perceive a threat to freedom of press which is both self interested and highly useful.
- mc32 8y ago
  Some in the press are alleging he’s an “activist”, not a real journalist[1], which seems self serving. The reason, they hope to “define” what s true journalist is, so that they can remain gatekeepers of who journalists are and what is news. Baffling. [1]https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activist-not-journalist-ghitis/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activ...

iblaine 8y ago

IANAL but he’s awaiting trial for hacking, not being a journalist. Whether or not the charges are true will be one for the courts to figure out.

taborj 8y ago
Isn't his "crime" releasing documents that Manning stole? Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama...
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- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Isn't his "crime" releasing documents that Manning stole? No, releasing documents is not conduct that he is charged with. > Manning, by the way, who had their sentence commuted by president Obama... Commutation is not a pardon; it is merely a limitation on punishment. Now, a pardon still wouldn't invalidate the Assange charges, but the idea that the fact that a coconspirator got less punishment than their original sentence negates the validity of charges against someone else in the conspiracy is laughable.
kpU8efre7r 8y ago
Exactly. It will be sorted out in court. I'm not sure what else people expect.
- kikoreis 8y ago
  Uhhhh.. really?
  - kpU8efre7r 8y ago
    Thanks for the intelligent discourse. I take it you think my reply is silly? Yeah, sure, it could all be bullshit charges but the alternative is what? We just give people a pass?
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Are you sure? This seems to be a pretty big political issue in the UK. US doesn’t exactly have a strong track record of successfully extraditing people from the UK for hacking the military.

monochromatic 8y ago

Reporting on leaked documents is one thing. Helping your source crack passwords on government computers is another.

ALittleLight 8y ago
Yeah, I guess it's a little bad to help crack a password but it also doesn't seem like a huge deal. Part of the stuff that Assange leaked included footage of American helicopters murdering people - which seems like a much bigger deal. If I crack your password and read your email and discover you're a serial killer, then yes, I've done wrong and should be punished for the minor crime I've committed, but you should be punished for the serial killing too. In my view Assange should be sentenced to a hundred hours of community service immediately after the people responsible for planning and executing the vastly more consequential crimes Assange revealed are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
- isostatic 8y ago
  It doesn't feel like a crime serious enough for extradition to me. He is guilty of skipping bail, which is a serious crime. It's possible that there's merit for what Sweden wanted to extradite him for, and the courts should look at the merits of extraditing him to Sweden
  - monochromatic 8y ago
    Sweden has dropped those charges though.

doomrobo 8y ago

So it appears that the author of this piece and the authors of the nearly identical Intercept piece [0] are skeptical of the "conspiracy to hack" charges brought against Assange. From what I understand, the action conspired towards was gaining access to an account on a government network that neither Assange nor Manning had access to ordinarily, with the goal of better covering Mannong's tracks (the other account had just as much file access rights as Manning). I understand the claim that this was an effort by Assange to protect his information source, but should it really not be considered Bad to login to someone else's account on a government network and spoof your actions with their name attached? Is it so unreasonable to believe that that's somehow too far? [0] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indictment-of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedoms/ https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indi...

acqq 8y ago
> should it really not be considered Bad to login to someone else's account That is not the story here. The story here is a narrative. The apparent "democratic institutions" instead of protecting freedom of the press directly press more whole countries in order to "as a discouraging example" punish a person who managed to expose some of the serious and actual misdeeds of the governments. In short, what they do is as tyrannical, whimsical and dictatorial as we could imagine, like in the movies about the older times "bring me the head of that guy." And they try to pretend this is simply and "normally" "lawful" whereas there's no other person with such a minor actual punishment in that land that would cause spending a million of pounds for "guards" to get him as soon as he leaves the Embassy, to plan everything that was planned to get him, etc. So now it's using the minor technicalities, which were before correctly recognized as not enough to charge him because of the potential effects on the freedom of the press, to "bring them his head." Exactly as the Intercept article explains, and the major line is: "the huge step this indictment represents in the Trump administration’s explicitly stated goal to criminalize journalism that involves reporting on classified information." Note that Obama's administration already broke some records in that direction.
partiallypro 8y ago
The Intercept has slowly turned into a Russian mouthpiece, which is sad because the original idea was very good.

wapoamspomw 8y ago

No journalist would help their sources hack their employer for more documents. Journalists can take documents their source already has; but helping their source illegally access more documents is against the law. Imagine if these were physical documents in a safe. A journalist helping the source crack that safe would be very illegal.

doomrobo 8y ago
I thought Manning already had access to the documents in question. The goal of getting into another account was to cover their tracks, not to gain unauthorized access.
- wapoamspomw 8y ago
  Breaking into another account is unauthorized access. Doesn't matter if that account had more, the same, or even less access than Manning's account.
pierrebai 8y ago
A journalist giving someone else a document that explain how a particular brand of safe can be cracked is not illegal. Handing someone knowledge is not illegal. Actually cracking the safe is illegal. We've been over this for decades. Once it was about simply encrypting. Others about documents on bomb making. Or safe cracking. Or lock picking. The information is legal. Putting it in practice to gain unauthorized access is illegal.
- belltaco 8y ago
  >A journalist giving someone else a document that explain how a particular brand of safe can be cracked is not illegal. Handing someone knowledge is not illegal. Terrible analogy. Assange obtained the actual NTLM hash from Manning of the user they were trying to crack the password of and attempted to crack it with the full knowledge that it was a top secret US military login. He wasn't sending her generic knowledge on how to crack NTLM passwords. >Actually cracking the safe is illegal. Attempting to crack a safe that you don't have authorization to, with the intent of stealing things from it is also illegal even if you failed to crack it. Just like going around the neighborhood trying the doors of homes or pulling handles of cars is illegal.

deleted 8y ago

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Aqueous 8y ago

Is it legal for a journalist to assist another person in invading someone's home, for the purpose of obtaining information that could be published? It is not. It's very illegal, for good reason. It's also illegal to do the same thing with a computer system. People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In this case, the information system is government property, which for some reason many people believe gives us special license to take whatever we want from it. But the same principle applies to the property of private individuals, including you. So do you really want to live in a world where the governing maxim is that information wants to be free, and that justifies any and all means of getting to it, including breaking into secure information systems? That sword cuts both ways.

trevelyan 8y ago
Avoid spreading FUD please. No-one has claimed that Assange provided Manning with any assistance compromising any computer systems. The only revelation from the leaked indictment is that Manning apparently sent him a password hash once and Assange said, "can't break it." The Manning-Lamo chat logs leaked to Wired also clearly show that Manning sought out Assange. If you have any evidence to the contrary on these two points, please post as your claims are running against what is publicly known.
- Aqueous 8y ago
  Merely attempting to assist the break-in is a crime. He attempted. Same metaphor applies. I try to help someone pick the lock as they try to break-in to a house. This is illegal. It's also illegal for a computer intrusion. Julian Assange took concrete steps in furtherance of a conspiracy. Whether or not he succeeded is besides the point. Sorry, it's the law.
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    >Sorry, it's the law. I’d imagine this same argument sees regular use in China.

IronWolve 8y ago

The material support claim is he helped direct how to hack passwords, but I've only seen claims of that, and the Obama administration didnt think it was true at the time. But now, that claim is back and the same week Ecuador receives 4.2 billion... Great Timing.

cedivad 8y ago

I have to say, this makes me sad. I visit HN daily, mostly look at the headlines and rarely engage in the discussion, but seeing what are supposed to be smart, thinking people commenting in here just saddens me. Same goes for the other 1k+ comments on the previous thread. It seems you people think it's ok to have someone end up like this guy for helping a source get us information we all benefited from. You can say trying to protect this source's identity is conspiracy to commit computer hacking, but your head needs to be buried very deep into the sand to pretend this is anything but the excuse used to get him. The actual crime here is holding governments accountable. Trying, at least. I understand most of you didn't love him for exposing problems inside a political party otherwise set to win the election. I really do. I understand he didn't do much to be loved by the public. I understand 10 years of propaganda could make most people change their mind about a saint. But here, too? I listened to his most recent interview today and I really enjoyed his views. I half expect people to point out this is Russian state media, and yes, the reds are out to get you but can listen to it in the background, that way the watermark can't bother you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A I lost one fifth of my karma yesterday defending the guy, let's see if this comment goes the same way. Edit: funny enough my comment went to -3 in no time before slowing crawling its way back to +1. Almost like if... Nah.

erentz 8y ago
I agree with your sentiment of disappointment in the general response on HN to this. And I also have the same disappointment in the general media's response. I thought Tulsi Gabbard's defense of Assange to Tapper on CNN was spot on, and can't believe it's up to a few politicians to defend journalism on a news network instead of the news network itself. The previous Obama administration went very hard against whistle blowers, but even they ultimately decided that prosecuting Assange for this would be a step too far. What's happening seems to be people don't like him for various reasons (fair enough), are blind to the larger issues and chilling effects caused by this prosecution, and so with motivated reasoning decide this is not about politics and is about hacking, he's a bad hacker who tried to crack a Government password, and they're just standing up for some principal of not trying to hack Govt passwords or some such.

tareqak 8y ago

Does anyone have the specifics of what was the exact nature of Julian Assange’s help in cracking the password? Specifically, 1. Did Assange send Manning the name of utility that would crack the password? Or 2. Did Assange send Manning a link to the utility in order to download it? Or 3. Did Assange send Manning a page of Google search results, and/or a Wikipedia page, a technical article or blog post with the computer science fundamentals behind password-cracking? Or 4. Did Assange send Manning a technical article or blog post with step by step instructions to crack the password? Or 5. Did Assange crack the password himself? I apologize if this information has been released somewhere and I haven’t seen it. In addition, apologize if the questions that I asked sound painfully fundamental or demeaning towards Assange or Manning. What I am trying to get at is how easy it seems to get in trouble with the law in this case. Suppose someone comes up to me and says they want to know how to hotwire a car (or whatever the term is) in order to steal it, I happen to blurt out that this someone can “just Google that”, and then this person goes out and does just that without me being totally sure about their intent to do so. Am I now an accomplice to the crime?

r721 8y ago
Here's the chat excerpt: https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336 https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336
- tareqak 8y ago
  Thanks a lot 'r721 ! That’s even more worrying where there might be mismatch between the recorded intent and the actual intent.
  - r721 8y ago
    This subthread is quite interesting, apparently "In a conspiracy charge, the outcome doesn’t need to be achieved, only there was a “meeting of minds” and steps taken to achieve that end goal": https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166 https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166
- 8y ago

duxup 8y ago

>Assange offered to try to crack a computer password for Manning >“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.” It's up for a trial to determine how much / if any of that happened, but if it did it seems well outside the boundaries of what a journalist should do. I don't expect a journalist to be assisting someone in accessing information illegally. If the journalist is just given it fine they should be protected, but this seems a good step beyond that. The article talks about how it would have helped protect that source but it's clear it also would have provided more information / assisted in that process. Let alone a concern I would have if I were a journalist (I'm not) that providing my source with some cover of another real world person could seriously harm that other person.

baby 8y ago

So. Mind you I haven't really followed what Assange did or didn't do. But it seems like a lot of people are angry at him because they think he is responsible for having Trump becoming president. Before that, the same people seemed pretty supportive of him.

darkpuma 8y ago
Don't be ridiculous, HN is a bastion of rationality. Comparing breaking government computers to reveal war crimes with burglarizing your personal home convinces you to take the matter personally. This is how rational dispassionate people argue.
ChrisSD 8y ago
From a UK perspective Assange started to fall out of favour before whatever happened in the 2016 USA elections. Avoiding rape charges and skipping out on bail (which people had put money towards in good faith) will do that.
- LMYahooTFY 8y ago
  "rape charges" These never existed, and were the most obvious part of his character assassination. Unless you have a link to a Swedish government domain which has published such things?
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    It was one of the charges listed on the European arrest warrant. http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html > 4. Rape > On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping, Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep. was in a helpless state. Whatever you think of Assange's guilt or innocence, it is a fact that he was charged with rape.
    - LMYahooTFY 8y ago

ratling 8y ago

Screw Assange, he's a large part of the reason we're stuck with Cheeto. People are high horsing him as some kind of journalist but he selectively leaked information to hurt the DNC during the 2016 campaign. Now it's 3 years later and his masters don't have any use for him anymore. So they'll make an 'example' of him and spew some law and order line. Zero sympathy from me. He sent 7 years rotting in the Ecuadorian embassy. Let him spend another 50 rotting in lockup.

cedivad 8y ago
You have Cheeto as a president because your population was tired of being lied to. The DNC leaks just proved them right, but sure, shoot the messenger. Get rid of your bipartisan system if you don't want to ever put your voters between a rock and a hard place again. Right. Can't do that.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  Sorry I'm from the UK so this sounds really surreal. The USA was tired of politicians lying to them so they elected... Trump? Help me out here.
  - cedivad 8y ago
    Just like Thiel said before becoming the most hated famous person in the valley, voters were desperate for an outsider. The politicians == liar equivalency was well established in people's minds and they wanted to try something different. "Drain the swamp" was an amazing slogan that worked perfectly for them. (Italian here). And as an Italian I will say that sounds like what Berlusconi was riding on during his first election.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    It's largely about him saying things directly instead of using the traditional dog whistles, at least on the issues that his target audience was most concerned about. In "normal" politics, you're allowed to imply it all, so long as you coach it in the language that is appropriate for the times. Here's one historical example: "You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone." This is Lee Atwater, explaining the Republican "southern strategy", and its evolution over time. But the same happened on most everything else. And then comes Trump, and straight up says that Mexican immigrants are rapists, and Muslims need to be banned. Which is exactly what most of his base were thinking - so hearing him say it out loud earned him that "honest man who says things as they are" reputation among them.

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Aloha 8y ago

Assange is in my opinion a slimeball, and not a neutral player, but I don't think he committed a crime - at least not anymore than Daniel Ellsberg did when they published the Pentagon Papers, or for that matter Bob Woodward did when publishing the Watergate Leaks from the FBI - but, like I said, not a Neutral Player - he has his own agenda, which while from time to time may align with the interests of the greater good, is neither benign or uniformly positive. I dont consider the charges against Assange to be any more of a risk to journalism than the charges leveled against Ellsberg in the wake of the publication of the Pentagon Papers - and will likely not survive a trial. The assertion that he helped Manning beyond acting as a publisher/dissemination method is absurd and more or less baseless.

erentz 8y ago
There is an important difference between Assange and Ellsberg so your comparison of the two isn’t a good one: Assange did not steal and leak the materials, he was the outside party publishing them. On the other hand Ellsberg was the person working for the government who copied and leaked all the materials and knew he might face charges for that reason. In this comparison Manning would be compared to Ellsberg. And Assange would be the reporter at The NY Times or WaPo (I’m brain farting here) who published them.
- Aloha 8y ago
  NYT, and you're right
- belltaco 8y ago
  He wasn't just publishing them. He is accused of trying to crack the NTLM hash of a DoD admin login. https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...
partiallypro 8y ago
The government's position isn't that he "helped" Manning, it is that Manning acted, in part on the direction of Assange. If I remember correctly, their correspondence between each other occurred before Manning did anything. Assange basically said he would publish it if it were given to him. So imagine if a journalist did that, and told someone "if you break into this person's house, I will publish your findings. Since neither of us like this person." Would that be illegal? It would definitely be illegal.

jjtheblunt 8y ago

New Yorker clickbait, like most of the NYT, no?

thrwwy412947 8y ago

Look at these pro-establishment anti-assange comments on "hacker" news. They are mindlessly parroting the same thing they hear on msnbc, foxnews and cnn.

kstenerud 8y ago

It's important to look at the actual indictment [1] rather than all the commentary about it, because everyone involved seems to have an axe to grind thanks to Assange's colorful character. The indictment charges Assange with conspiring with Manning to unlawfully gain new access to a protected government computer system. Specifically: * Assange gave Manning a CD to boot from on the target computer, containing tools to copy the protected password data. * Assange received a copy of the password hashes from Manning, and attempted to crack them. Regardless of what reasons the Obama administration had to proceed or not proceed with the indictment at the time (which we are not privy to), these are very clearly defined criminal offenses in the USA, with much precedent behind them. Had Assange not provided the hacking tools, and had he not attempted to crack the passwords, this indictment would never have happened. Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here; it's about conspiring to hack a government computer. [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictme...

m0zg 8y ago
I call BS. They'd find something else to charge him with, such as that false flag CIA "rape" affair in Sweden. No problems with women whatsoever until he started disclosing data on the "wrong" people. Then he immediately becomes a serial rapist and literally Hitler. Please, we've heard this song before. Cablegate starts in November 2010, Assange becomes a "rapist" that same month. Coincidence?
- tiredyam 8y ago
  Please give sources
  - longhorn_alum 8y ago
    To what
    - tiredyam 8y ago
      the comment was flagged

lurchpop 8y ago

What if Rachel Maddow had a source inside the IRS who's trying to get at a folder that has trump tax returns and other financial details but doesn't have access. Source says they can deliver everything if Maddow can get some passwords on a thumb drive cracked. Maddow says she can't but to keep trying.

viivaux 8y ago

Seems everything I want to say here is likely to end up as [flagged]. If only I wanted to cast vague and unsubstantiated aspersions; then I'd be fine.

chx 8y ago

> The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Russian Agents. FTFY. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988

rukuu001 8y ago

Yeah, the Assange case is going to tie everyone up in knots, because he's practically the definition of 'complicated'. Everyone's going to take a different side, based on: - He helped make available information genuinely in the public interest about US technically-not-quite war crimes. - He's alleged to have committed sex crimes in Sweden - He arguably delivered the presidency to Trump Edit: it's kind of an ethical version of rock-paper-scissors - no matter what position you take, Assange himself has provided a reason not to take that position.