7 ms·

No matter what people believe he is guilty of, this guy right here is being railroaded by the US inJustice system.

colechristensen 7y ago
Let's assume there is a person guilty of the sort of crimes Assage is accused. How is he being treated differently than what you would expect this hypothetical person should be treated?
- lisper 7y ago
  That assumption is precisely the problem. We know that Assange published U.S. government secrets. We know that the U.S. government doesn't like this despite the fact that it's perfectly legal. We know that the current administration is willing to bend the rules to get what it wants. All that makes it plausible that Assange is being charged with crimes not because the U.S. government has a good-faith belief that he actually committed them, but to punish him for doing something that the U.S. government doesn't like, notwithstanding that it's legal. For the record, I am no fan of Assange. I think he's a dick. But even dicks are entitled to equal protection under the law.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    I chose my words carefully and said "guilty" not as in "guilty of doing the things we all know he did" but "guilty of the crimes he has been/will be indicted of". Assuming he is guilty of various crimes, how should he have been and be treated? Or in other words what is wrong with the "due process" w.r.t. Assange? Or is it simply that "he's not guilty" but will get convicted by an unfair justice system therefore the only just action is to leave him be?
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      A fair justice system does not convict all those who are guilty. It ensures that the innocent are not convicted.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > A fair justice system does not convict all those who are guilty. It ensures that the innocent are not convicted. A fair justice system does both. But fairness is unattainable, so one has to decide which failures are more desirable—the preference you suggest is both common and one I agree with, but it is not fairness but instead a preference for dealing with fairness being impractical.
    - lisper 7y ago
      > I chose my words carefully I understand. I chose my words very carefully too when I said, "That assumption is precisely the problem." The reason we have due process is not because society gets off on legal rituals, it's because a person can in fact be innocent despite the existence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As soon as you say, "Let's assume guilt," you've tossed due process out the window. "Innocent until proven guilty" is not just a catchy slogan. It's the bedrock of due process of law. The answer to your question, "How is he being treated differently than what you would expect this hypothetical person should be treated?" is precisely that: you are hypothesizing his guilt before it has been proven. That is how he is being treated differently than I would hope and expect.
      - colechristensen 7y ago
        You are missing the point. I am trying to set aside determination of guilt and talk about due process, which it seems is very hard to do. Let's assume we are uninterested in Assange's guilt and only interested in due process. How is he being treated unfairly w.r.t. due process? (either illegally or if the laws are unjust, immorally)
        lisper 7y ago
        The problem in Assange's case is that it is very hard to separate the charges being brought against him from the fact that he did something that is almost certainly legal but which the U.S. government would like very much to punish him for. The fact of the matter is that you can make someone's life miserable by bringing trumped-up charges against them, and this is especially easy to do if you're a powerful person. And if you're powerful enough then you can most likely do this with impunity. The possibility that this is happening to Assange needs to be taken very seriously. So no, there is no overt indication that Assange is being treated any differently from any other accused rapist. But anyone who is content to leave it at that has blinders on.
        Retra 7y ago
        Perhaps if somone named names and provided evidence of misconduct, they could take those blinders off under a pretense of actually seeing something?
  - oreo83 7y ago
    >For the record, I am no fan of Assange. I think he's a dick. What gives you this opinion of him?
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Still confused how Assange is being treated differently to anyone else in his situation.
    - lisper 7y ago
      I didn't say he was. People who expose government secrets often get railroaded as a result. That doesn't make it right. [UPDATE] I'd like to expand on my earlier answer. It depends on what you consider to be "his situation" because Assange is in two separate situations: he's an accused rapist, and he is a publisher of sensitive government secrets. The problem is not that he's being treated any differently from any other accused rapist or from any other publisher of sensitive government secrets. The problem is the possibility that he is in the first situation because he is in the second situation.
      - colechristensen 7y ago
        Your original post was about "equal protection", bending rules, and punishment for things which are legal. So far you have failed to name any actions you see as inappropriate. What rules are being bent? Which actions violate due process or equal protection? Can you name any specific issues?
      - gamblor956 7y ago
        No, he's an "accused rapist" because two separate women accused him of various forms of rape under Sweden's domestic rape laws. Quite ironically, Assange is being railroaded because he tried to avoid the rape charges, which led to his self-imposed Ecuadorian imprisonment, his current British imprisonment, and his future US and/or Swedish imprisonment. If he hadn't tried to flee, it's possible the Swedish charges would have been dropped after perfunctory investigation. The British would never have needed to jail him. The previous US administration would likely have filed minimal charges against him or sought a token punishment to serve as a deterrent to others. Plenty of others have exposed government secrets. Many of them won Pulitizers for their efforts...
        A2017U1 7y ago
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    We know that the current administration is willing to bend the rules to get what it wants. Assange is partially responsible for the current administration taking office...If anything, they would be bending over backwards to find a way to pardon him for that favor. And also for embarrassing the previous political administration. It turns out, it's not politics. It's that the US government believes that Assange broke the law when he tried to help Manning. If it were another set of laws, they might have turned a blind eye. But trying to decrypt classified information, and furthermore, publishing classified information that put US field personnel at risk...that's not something they'll ever let slide, because it sets a precedent that there's no punishment for stealing classified US intelligence. Contrast that to WaPo and other newspapers which faced no punishment for publishing classified documents...because they didn't come by those documents illegally.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  A hypothetical Australian citizen who did things in Britain which are legal there but illegal in the U.S. would simply not be detained at all. It doesn’t matter whether Assange committed these so-called crimes because he was never under obligation to follow U.S. law in the first place. I don’t see why Russian private citizens who broke U.S. election law should be detained either. I don’t approve of their behavior from an ethics perspective, but from a legal perspective it’s not their responsibility to follow laws in a country where they have no rights. If I conspired, from California, with people in Tibet to circumvent Chinese law, I also would not expect to be detained by U.S. police.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Assange broke that veil by conspiring with Manning who was very much inside US jurisdiction.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > A hypothetical Australian citizen who did things in Britain which are legal there but illegal in the U.S. would simply not be detained at all. I'm pretty sure the US-UK extradition agreement uses the double illegality rule, so Assange is safe from extradition if the British court finds that what he is accused of by the US is legal in the UK.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Most of the US charges against Assange, like hacking, are also crimes in the UK. He made himself subject to the jurisdiction of the US when he decided to try and decrypt US classified information. This is also why the Russians were detained. They made themselves subject to US law when they decided to get involved in US elections. If I conspired, from California, with people in Tibet to circumvent Chinese law, I also would not expect to be detained by U.S. police. That is because the US does not have an extradition treaty with China, so it doesn't matter what Chinese crimes you are accused of committing. Though generally, the US would not extradite for political crimes, so if your Tibetan activities involved organizing political resistant or independence movements, you would be protected by the First Amendment while in the US.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- znfi 7y ago
  There is an article from a Swedish tabloid which could be of interest [1], unfortunately only available in Swedish AFAIK. The reason this article is of interest is mainly that it shows that the Swedish prosecutors seem to be extremely reluctant to issue arrest warrants for people in other EU countries. In summary, and I hope I do not misrepresent the article too much, a man from Sweden went on a one-day cruise to the Åland Islands. After being out partying on the ship he goes back to his cabin. On his way there he meets two musicians (temporarily) employed by the cruise company and somehow get into a fight with them. (The article is very sparse on details on how the fight started, for the record.) Note that the fight takes place in front of a CCTV camera, and supposedly one can see on the surveillance photos one of the musicians taking charge and stomping the victim five times in the head, with full force. After briefly leaving, the musicians then returns and kicks him in the face, twice. The article then discusses the subpar response from the security guards employed by the cruise company. The musicians are later arrested by the Åland police, their identities checked, but are later released. According to the article they are released because the possible crime was committed in Swedish territory and they are not Finnish citizens [2]. The musicians then return home to Ireland. However, Swedish police or prosecutors do not seem interested in investigating this case. When pressed on why the prosecutor does not issue an arrest warrant for the men, their identities and whereabouts are supposedly known, he responds by saying that the Swedish prosecutor authority cannot go chasing people all across Europe and they only issue arrest warrants for very serious crimes, like murder. To summarize the timeline. These events took place in October 2009, if I understand correctly. The Assange case started in August 2010. The news paper article was published in late October 2010. So, according to this tabloid story, this is an open and shut case for a fairly serious crime, and still the prosecutor authority cannot even be arsed to issue an arrest warrant. At the same time they keep Assange locked in an embassy far longer than he could even be sentenced to for the crime he is accused of commiting. And the Assange case certainly seems much more flimsy, I'm not even sure what he is accused of, exactly. But it certainly seems to boil down to some he-said, she-said situation that will be completely impossible to get to the bottom of. IIRC he can at most be sentenced to 4 years in prison for the sex crimes he is accused of in Sweden. But in practice he will be released after serving two thirds of this sentence, so he would spend at most 2.6 years in prison. Note also that it seems to me EXTREMLY unlikely that he would recieve a sentence of 4 years, at the very most 2 years but 1 year seems more probable. So if he just left the embassy, went to Sweden and lost the case, then he would most likely be a free man after just 8 months. So his actions certainly seem to indicate that he fears something more than just being found guilty of "less-severe rape". (Sounds a bit weird but is the crime he is accused of IIUC.) Just to reiterate, he has spent close to 7 years in the embassy for a crime which he would quite likely serve 8 months in prison for. With the caveat that I am now a lawyer, and whatnot. Quite possibly I've screwed something up in this last part of the analysis. Edit: To further clarify the point, I guess it is that there is maybe not anything wrong with how he is being treated if one looks at this case in isolation. But when one combines this with how other cases seem to be handled, as well as considering proportionality, things are less clear. [1]: https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/ka8ndv/har-sparkar-han-pa-sitt-liggande-offer https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/ka8ndv/har-sparkar-han-... [2]: The Åland islands belong to Finland.

Let's assume there is a person guilty of the sort of crimes Assage is accused. How is he being treated differently than what you would expect this hypothetical person should be treated?

lisper 7y ago
That assumption is precisely the problem. We know that Assange published U.S. government secrets. We know that the U.S. government doesn't like this despite the fact that it's perfectly legal. We know that the current administration is willing to bend the rules to get what it wants. All that makes it plausible that Assange is being charged with crimes not because the U.S. government has a good-faith belief that he actually committed them, but to punish him for doing something that the U.S. government doesn't like, notwithstanding that it's legal. For the record, I am no fan of Assange. I think he's a dick. But even dicks are entitled to equal protection under the law.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I chose my words carefully and said "guilty" not as in "guilty of doing the things we all know he did" but "guilty of the crimes he has been/will be indicted of". Assuming he is guilty of various crimes, how should he have been and be treated? Or in other words what is wrong with the "due process" w.r.t. Assange? Or is it simply that "he's not guilty" but will get convicted by an unfair justice system therefore the only just action is to leave him be?
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    A fair justice system does not convict all those who are guilty. It ensures that the innocent are not convicted.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > A fair justice system does not convict all those who are guilty. It ensures that the innocent are not convicted. A fair justice system does both. But fairness is unattainable, so one has to decide which failures are more desirable—the preference you suggest is both common and one I agree with, but it is not fairness but instead a preference for dealing with fairness being impractical.
  - lisper 7y ago
    > I chose my words carefully I understand. I chose my words very carefully too when I said, "That assumption is precisely the problem." The reason we have due process is not because society gets off on legal rituals, it's because a person can in fact be innocent despite the existence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. As soon as you say, "Let's assume guilt," you've tossed due process out the window. "Innocent until proven guilty" is not just a catchy slogan. It's the bedrock of due process of law. The answer to your question, "How is he being treated differently than what you would expect this hypothetical person should be treated?" is precisely that: you are hypothesizing his guilt before it has been proven. That is how he is being treated differently than I would hope and expect.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      You are missing the point. I am trying to set aside determination of guilt and talk about due process, which it seems is very hard to do. Let's assume we are uninterested in Assange's guilt and only interested in due process. How is he being treated unfairly w.r.t. due process? (either illegally or if the laws are unjust, immorally)
      - lisper 7y ago
        The problem in Assange's case is that it is very hard to separate the charges being brought against him from the fact that he did something that is almost certainly legal but which the U.S. government would like very much to punish him for. The fact of the matter is that you can make someone's life miserable by bringing trumped-up charges against them, and this is especially easy to do if you're a powerful person. And if you're powerful enough then you can most likely do this with impunity. The possibility that this is happening to Assange needs to be taken very seriously. So no, there is no overt indication that Assange is being treated any differently from any other accused rapist. But anyone who is content to leave it at that has blinders on.
        Retra 7y ago
        Perhaps if somone named names and provided evidence of misconduct, they could take those blinders off under a pretense of actually seeing something?
- oreo83 7y ago
  >For the record, I am no fan of Assange. I think he's a dick. What gives you this opinion of him?
- threeseed 7y ago
  Still confused how Assange is being treated differently to anyone else in his situation.
  - lisper 7y ago
    I didn't say he was. People who expose government secrets often get railroaded as a result. That doesn't make it right. [UPDATE] I'd like to expand on my earlier answer. It depends on what you consider to be "his situation" because Assange is in two separate situations: he's an accused rapist, and he is a publisher of sensitive government secrets. The problem is not that he's being treated any differently from any other accused rapist or from any other publisher of sensitive government secrets. The problem is the possibility that he is in the first situation because he is in the second situation.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      Your original post was about "equal protection", bending rules, and punishment for things which are legal. So far you have failed to name any actions you see as inappropriate. What rules are being bent? Which actions violate due process or equal protection? Can you name any specific issues?
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      No, he's an "accused rapist" because two separate women accused him of various forms of rape under Sweden's domestic rape laws. Quite ironically, Assange is being railroaded because he tried to avoid the rape charges, which led to his self-imposed Ecuadorian imprisonment, his current British imprisonment, and his future US and/or Swedish imprisonment. If he hadn't tried to flee, it's possible the Swedish charges would have been dropped after perfunctory investigation. The British would never have needed to jail him. The previous US administration would likely have filed minimal charges against him or sought a token punishment to serve as a deterrent to others. Plenty of others have exposed government secrets. Many of them won Pulitizers for their efforts...
      - A2017U1 7y ago
- gamblor956 7y ago
  We know that the current administration is willing to bend the rules to get what it wants. Assange is partially responsible for the current administration taking office...If anything, they would be bending over backwards to find a way to pardon him for that favor. And also for embarrassing the previous political administration. It turns out, it's not politics. It's that the US government believes that Assange broke the law when he tried to help Manning. If it were another set of laws, they might have turned a blind eye. But trying to decrypt classified information, and furthermore, publishing classified information that put US field personnel at risk...that's not something they'll ever let slide, because it sets a precedent that there's no punishment for stealing classified US intelligence. Contrast that to WaPo and other newspapers which faced no punishment for publishing classified documents...because they didn't come by those documents illegally.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
A hypothetical Australian citizen who did things in Britain which are legal there but illegal in the U.S. would simply not be detained at all. It doesn’t matter whether Assange committed these so-called crimes because he was never under obligation to follow U.S. law in the first place. I don’t see why Russian private citizens who broke U.S. election law should be detained either. I don’t approve of their behavior from an ethics perspective, but from a legal perspective it’s not their responsibility to follow laws in a country where they have no rights. If I conspired, from California, with people in Tibet to circumvent Chinese law, I also would not expect to be detained by U.S. police.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Assange broke that veil by conspiring with Manning who was very much inside US jurisdiction.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > A hypothetical Australian citizen who did things in Britain which are legal there but illegal in the U.S. would simply not be detained at all. I'm pretty sure the US-UK extradition agreement uses the double illegality rule, so Assange is safe from extradition if the British court finds that what he is accused of by the US is legal in the UK.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Most of the US charges against Assange, like hacking, are also crimes in the UK. He made himself subject to the jurisdiction of the US when he decided to try and decrypt US classified information. This is also why the Russians were detained. They made themselves subject to US law when they decided to get involved in US elections. If I conspired, from California, with people in Tibet to circumvent Chinese law, I also would not expect to be detained by U.S. police. That is because the US does not have an extradition treaty with China, so it doesn't matter what Chinese crimes you are accused of committing. Though generally, the US would not extradite for political crimes, so if your Tibetan activities involved organizing political resistant or independence movements, you would be protected by the First Amendment while in the US.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
znfi 7y ago
There is an article from a Swedish tabloid which could be of interest [1], unfortunately only available in Swedish AFAIK. The reason this article is of interest is mainly that it shows that the Swedish prosecutors seem to be extremely reluctant to issue arrest warrants for people in other EU countries. In summary, and I hope I do not misrepresent the article too much, a man from Sweden went on a one-day cruise to the Åland Islands. After being out partying on the ship he goes back to his cabin. On his way there he meets two musicians (temporarily) employed by the cruise company and somehow get into a fight with them. (The article is very sparse on details on how the fight started, for the record.) Note that the fight takes place in front of a CCTV camera, and supposedly one can see on the surveillance photos one of the musicians taking charge and stomping the victim five times in the head, with full force. After briefly leaving, the musicians then returns and kicks him in the face, twice. The article then discusses the subpar response from the security guards employed by the cruise company. The musicians are later arrested by the Åland police, their identities checked, but are later released. According to the article they are released because the possible crime was committed in Swedish territory and they are not Finnish citizens [2]. The musicians then return home to Ireland. However, Swedish police or prosecutors do not seem interested in investigating this case. When pressed on why the prosecutor does not issue an arrest warrant for the men, their identities and whereabouts are supposedly known, he responds by saying that the Swedish prosecutor authority cannot go chasing people all across Europe and they only issue arrest warrants for very serious crimes, like murder. To summarize the timeline. These events took place in October 2009, if I understand correctly. The Assange case started in August 2010. The news paper article was published in late October 2010. So, according to this tabloid story, this is an open and shut case for a fairly serious crime, and still the prosecutor authority cannot even be arsed to issue an arrest warrant. At the same time they keep Assange locked in an embassy far longer than he could even be sentenced to for the crime he is accused of commiting. And the Assange case certainly seems much more flimsy, I'm not even sure what he is accused of, exactly. But it certainly seems to boil down to some he-said, she-said situation that will be completely impossible to get to the bottom of. IIRC he can at most be sentenced to 4 years in prison for the sex crimes he is accused of in Sweden. But in practice he will be released after serving two thirds of this sentence, so he would spend at most 2.6 years in prison. Note also that it seems to me EXTREMLY unlikely that he would recieve a sentence of 4 years, at the very most 2 years but 1 year seems more probable. So if he just left the embassy, went to Sweden and lost the case, then he would most likely be a free man after just 8 months. So his actions certainly seem to indicate that he fears something more than just being found guilty of "less-severe rape". (Sounds a bit weird but is the crime he is accused of IIUC.) Just to reiterate, he has spent close to 7 years in the embassy for a crime which he would quite likely serve 8 months in prison for. With the caveat that I am now a lawyer, and whatnot. Quite possibly I've screwed something up in this last part of the analysis. Edit: To further clarify the point, I guess it is that there is maybe not anything wrong with how he is being treated if one looks at this case in isolation. But when one combines this with how other cases seem to be handled, as well as considering proportionality, things are less clear. [1]: https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/ka8ndv/har-sparkar-han-pa-sitt-liggande-offer https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/ka8ndv/har-sparkar-han-... [2]: The Åland islands belong to Finland.