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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.

• trevelyan 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
      >Sorry, it's the law. I’d imagine this same argument sees regular use in China.
      • dymk 7y ago
        Should attempting to break into somebody else’s property not be a crime?
        • ryanlol 7y ago
          Agreeing to attempt, and no. It wouldn’t be in large parts of the world, so clearly many reasonable people disagree on this.
          • Aqueous 7y ago
            It wasn't just agreement. By his own statements he indicated that he tried to crack it.
      • sctb 7y ago
        We've asked you several times over the past few days to stop sparking and stoking political and ideological flamewar, so we're banning the account. We'd like to unban you if you'll email hn@ycombinator.com and commit to following the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        • occupodd 7y ago
          Do we have a Nazi mod?
    • trevelyan 7y ago
      Did he? How do you know? As above, evidence rather than speculation please.
      • Aqueous 7y ago
        Because i read the indictment. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481... Line 25 under "Acts in Furtherance of the Conspiracy" - by both his requesting more information about the password and his statement that he had "no luck so far" he indicated that he had been attempting to crack the password.
        • trevelyan 7y ago
          Read it again, Aqueous. And read it literally this time. The indictment cites Assange saying, "no luck so far" after asking some questions about the stuff Manning is sending him. You want to read complicity into a vague statement made to excuse non-contribution, whereas there could have been any number of reasons Assange replied that way, such as not alienating a source, or laziness, or knowledge that actually doing anything would put him in legal jeopardy. There is no actual claim here that Assange did anything to crack the system or assisted Manning in doing so. He is not accused of delivering a password. He is not accused of downloading password cracking software. He is not accused of contacting others to ask for their assistance. He is just accused of saying, "nope, can't help". If there is evidence that Assange delivered cracked passwords to Manning, I'm sure that people will change their minds and agree with you. But that is not what the indictment claims. And the lack of anything more specific in such a high-profile case suggests there is nothing more that they have on him than an ambiguous statement of sympathy with a source.
          • surrogatekey 7y ago
            Sure, it's an indictment, not a conviction. Whatever you might think of the government's case, it's false to say that "no one has claimed" Assange assisted Manning. The government is clearly making that claim in the indictment.
          • 7y ago
    • gameswithgo 7y ago
      what law clearly states that attempting this is a crime?
      • whateveracct 7y ago
        https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030
    • pierrebai 7y ago
      Cracking a hash is not illegal. That the hash is a password hash does not make it illegal. Using the cracked hash to access a system you have no authorization to access is illegal. Don't play the government's (and hollywood's, in case of DVD and Blueray) game. Cracking a hash is not a crime.
      • SargeZT 7y ago
        Being a locksmith isn't a crime, but knowingly trying to assist someone with breaking into a house that isn't their's very much is.
      • belltaco 7y ago
        Attempting to crack a hash with the intent to access a system you have no authorization to access is illegal. The intent is proven by the chat logs.
      • jamiek88 7y ago
        The law doesn’t work like an RPG you can use loopholes in. Intent matters.
  • leftyted 7y ago
    > No-one has claimed that Assange provided Manning with any assistance compromising any computer systems. The US government has claimed exactly this in its indictment of Assange: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481... It's fascinating to me how you can accuse someone of "spreading FUD" without having read the (short) indictment. In my opinion this is complicated stuff. I think people have not only a right but a moral obligation to leak in order to expose crimes. But it isn't clear that this was Assange's goal. Instead, Assange does a lot of moral posturing and seems mostly driven by ego: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting. I would be much more sympathetic had Assange or wikileaks provided leaks in a different manner. But they didn't. They released everything, unredacted, without commentary or contextualization which is why the previous poster's restatement of Assange's infantile position is basically accurate: > 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?
    • jamiek88 7y ago
      They also seem to be partisan or at least became that way. A tool of nation states in the end.
      • bsamuels 7y ago
        This entire Assage debacle has been nothing but partisan shit flinging by people who read headlines then refine their opinion using the comments section instead of actually reading the articles/indictment and forming an opinion for themselves. Nowadays when someone "reads" an article, they just skip to the comment section and unwittingly chose the highest voted memetic comment and adapt its opinion as their own, regardless of the facts laid by the article itself. Sometimes those people go so far as to write their own articles that spread the questionable memetic idea, which is exactly what the OP's article is. The truth is that Julian Assange is being indited for attempting to break into US gov computer systems. If there was no evidence he had done so, there would not be charges pressed. Nothing about this is a free speech matter.
  • noelsusman 7y ago
    The indictment is pretty clear on this point. We'll have to see what they have to back it up in court, but it's not FUD.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• Wintamute 7y ago
  What specific "principle" are you referring to where you conflate private property with public property? That they are both just types of "property" and therefore the invasion of either is an identical ethical misdemeanour? This seems a rather crummy "principle" to me. There is a world of difference between the two types of property, and it's fundamental to the very definition of a nation - especially the US. Government property is publicly/collectively owned by the citizens of the nation, while private property, while coming with certain collectively agreed responsibilities (tax, licenses, codes etc), is controlled entirely privately by individuals. Invasion of private property as you say is unambiguously morally wrong, but I don't think the same can be said about collectively owned public property. I'm not saying everyone should have a "license" to ransack public property, but if there is an invasion then the morality of the act has to be gauged on case by case basis - if the public property of a non-corrupt state is breached for private gain then of course that's wrong. But what if property of an evil/corrupt regime is breached for the public good - surely the same can't said?
  • Aqueous 7y ago
    Just the principle that the laws that dictate what is and isn't government property and who is and isn't entitled to access it are decided by legislators that were chosen by the people of the United States in an election, and not by Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning or any other single individual
    • gameswithgo 7y ago
      chosen by corporations of the united states, often
      • Aqueous 7y ago
        if the people choose not to participate, yes. that's why it's up to us to participate. effectively.
        • salawat 7y ago
• Sir_Substance 7y ago
  >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. You've skipped over a chunk of logic there which I feel bears closer scrutiny. The house and the car are owned by people, who feel emotional distress when their privacy is invaded. Governments do not feel emotional distress ever. It's also hard to argue that governments are harmed by invasions of privacy the same way an individual might be, because governments wield much power in the form of monopolization of force and have more control over how information they dislike is used. See the British parliaments ban on using parliamentary footage for comedy purposes. The point is, while I'm not saying government information systems should be a free-for-all, I am personally of the opinion that the larger an organization gets, the less right it has to privacy. I don't agree with your logical leap of "people deserve privacy -> governments are basically people -> governments deserve privacy". Governments don't have a right to privacy the way people do.
  • whateveracct 7y ago
    This isn't a privacy issue it's a property issue. Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property.
    • Sir_Substance 7y ago
      >Just because the government is big doesn't mean it can't own (digital) property. The topic of whether there's any meaning to the concept of owning digital property when anything digital is a post-scarcity asset that costs essentially nothing to duplicate is something that society still hasn't really agreed upon.
      • whateveracct 7y ago
        But we're talking about proprietary government information here. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it can't be criminal to access it via unauthorized channels. It isn't a matter of "oh you still have your copy" - I'd be surprised if anyone actually thinks that because something is a string of bits it means that there can't be an illegal way of obtaining those bits.
• bubblethink 7y ago
  >People need to start thinking about information systems as property Except they don't ? "You" can, of course, but it doesn't mean "people" need to. There is no scarcity of digital files in the world. You can create and destroy them at will. With real property, you can't. That's also the basic argument against DRM systems. The file isn't scarce. That you transferred the scarcity of resources to make the file to the file itself is something you brought upon yourself. Nobody asked you to. If it does not suit you, you are free to do everything with pen and paper, and put the papers in your wardrobe. You can't have the benefits and convenience (i.e., lack of scarcity) of digital files, and still pretend that they are scarce. Pick one.
  • whateveracct 7y ago
    So because I put information in a digital format, I cannot own it? Even if I only put it on my hardware and encrypt it etc? If you hack into my stuff and get my information, it isn't criminal because We All Own the Bits??
    • bubblethink 7y ago
      No, all I am saying is that you cannot equate "breaking and entering" to "decrypting a file". The two are fundamentally different. If you want to deal with crimes pertaining to decryption, you deal with them after the fact based on the actions and their broader context. So in this case, the action is "publishing". Whether publishing is legal or not is governed by different laws.
      • whateveracct 7y ago
        I think it's more analogous to the following than publishing: If someone steals a safe, and then brings it to me to unlock and I know they stole it originally, I am in violation of the law and clearly committing a criminal act.
        • bubblethink 7y ago
          If someone steals your safe, you don't have the safe any more, do you ? Does the person from whom you steal a file still have the file ? See why analogies don't work ?
• Zenst 7y ago
  Exactly, if he is to be classed as a journalist, has his past actions conformed with journalist ethics and standards expected within the USA? I do disagree with him being classified as a journalist as from my understanding he published writings from others. That, if we are to classify him, would place him more within the realms of a publisher, not a journalist. Hence this is not a threat to journalists, but publishers - who are less protected and the legal buck for journalists actions. That's their job. They are there to make sure journalists adhere to standards as much as write articles wanted. But journalist or publisher, etc - your not above the law and the journalist card is not a get out of free jail card. Never has been and some would argue, more the opposite.
• thatoneuser 7y ago
  With all the things released by assange, the crime you want to talk about is hacking? Come on man. Numerous innocent people were mowed down gleefully. Political powers were sabatoging nations. Evil amok. And the only thing you want to talk about is that hacking allegedly occurred and after 7 years imprisonment assange deserves more? I won't even get into how different it is to break into someone's home as compared to a govt office...
  • mikeash 7y ago
    It’s not imprisonment when you hole up so the police won’t get you. Once they get you, that’s imprisonment.
    • thatoneuser 7y ago
      Being confined to a single building for 7 years is imprisonment. You don't need police or judicial systems to be imprisoned.
      • mikeash 7y ago
        He could have left at any time. A defining characteristic of prison is that they lock the door.
        • nightcracker 7y ago
          So if you are in prison but they forget to lock the door for some time that time doesn't count because you could have physically left?
• colllectorof 7y 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? You clearly don't understand the concept of whistleblowing. And you did not read the article you're commenting on: “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.” So the goal was to protect Manning’s identity, and Assange offered to assist.
• justinclift 7y ago
  Well, when one whistle blower tells another whistle blower how to collect the evidence needed for... blowing said whistle about illegal activity, the methods themselves often seem a bit off-book. eg gaining authorised access to materials, transmitting them to third parties for public reveal, etc. The thing with whistle blowing though, is (some) countries have protections for whistle blowers specifically because off-book methods are commonly needed. So, even if Assange did assist Manning as stated... the "illegality" here isn't really the point (except to people trying to suppress whistle blowing). The point is whether whistle blower protections turn out to be fit for purpose. ;)
• GeekyBear 7y ago
  Justice Black had something to say about the role of journalism when he ruled on the New York Times publishing material from the Top Secret Pentagon Papers, showing how our leaders had misled the public about the Vietnam war: >In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). The Obama administration had the same information that the Trump administration used to make it's "hacking" claim and came to a very different conclusion. >“The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists,” said former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.” Justice officials said they looked hard at Assange but realized that they have what they described as a “New York Times problem.” If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julian-assange-unlikely-to-face-us-charges-over-publishing-classified-documents/2013/11/25/dd27decc-55f1-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...
• mmjaa 7y ago
  Apply some more of that sane and rational thinking to this question: what real evidence do any of us have that Assange attempted to 'break into someones house'? Is conjecture enough to be able to establish a moral position in this particular case? And then, think of it like this: you see a dark house at the end of the street, a dark den of scum and villainy, and you know that crimes have been committed from this house because you've seen the corpses scattered in its yard. Are you not justified in investigating - or at least, reporting to relevant authorities, that something is going wrong? Because America today is that house, and the only relevant authorities who can do anything about it, are the American people themselves. (The local law enforcement already know about the house - they sell their crack and bury their corpses there too.. such is the state of the American military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex today, the real, tangible crimes of which are and always have been in Wikileaks sights...)
• no-s 7y ago
  Misfeasance is the real issue here. Wikileaks exposed it. I don't care if Assange broke the cited law, if the US govt is up to no damn good as a US Citizen I have a right to know. If the govt is using the law to retaliate against journalists who expose misfeasance I expect 18 U.S. Code § 214to apply.
  • mike10010100 7y ago
    > If the govt is using the law to retaliate against journalists Assange is not a journalist. He conspired to hack a computer system. That is a crime. Regardless of what you believe to be right, you must acknowledge that sometimes good people have to face consequences for their actions, regardless of the morality of said actions.