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> His "freedom of movement" is self-restricted by his fear that he will have to face justice for acting as an agent of Russian military intelligence to attack A

> His "freedom of movement" is self-restricted by his fear that he will have to face justice for acting as an agent of Russian military intelligence to attack America including laundering Russian intelligence into America to upset elections. Let's assume for a moment that your premise is true, and Assange got the DNC documents from Russian intelligence. Should he have buried the documents? He had in his possession documents that a huge number of Americans would find politically interesting. They showed, among other things, that DNC operatives were biased against Bernie Sanders and looking for ways to undermine him. They also contained transcripts of speeches to Wall Street firms that Hillary Clinton had refused to publish during the primaries. Assange has always said that he will publish whatever documents are verifiable and of public interest. If he had decided not to publish the DNC documents, that would have been a violation of his stated principles. It would even look like he's hiding documents in order to help Hillary Clinton win the election. What you're describing as "acting as an agent of Russian military intelligence" is actually the publication of documents of public interest - something journalists do. If what you're saying is correct, every NY Times journalist who publishes state secrets could be thrown in jail. Imagine if a NY Times journalist got a cache of documents about misdeeds of the Russian government, and the NY Times were to publish those documents. Imagine then that the Russian government claimed those documents came from a foreign intelligence service, and labeled the NY Times journalist a hostile intelligence agent. Would you support the extradition of that journalist to Russia to face charges of espionage?

matthewdgreen 7y ago
>Let's assume for a moment that your premise is true, and Assange got the DNC documents from Russian intelligence. Should he have buried the documents? The idea that Wikileaks took a non-partisan, journalistic attitude towards these leaks is a fantasy. He repeatedly contacted the Trump campaign and told them that he had "damaging leaks" on the way, and made it clear in internal chats that he wanted to use Wikileaks to sway the election outcome. https://qz.com/1599384/mueller-report-on-trump-campaigns-contacts-with-wikileaks/ https://qz.com/1599384/mueller-report-on-trump-campaigns-con...
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  Journalists aren't required to be non-partisan. You don't seriously believe that journalists working at the NY Times or Washington Post are non-partisan, do you? What matters is whether the information Assange published was true and in the public interest. Do you believe that it would have been better for Assange to cover up for the DNC and Hillary Clinton and decide not to publish their dirty laundry?
  - matthewdgreen 7y ago
    Being partisan is fine for a journalist! But your premise in the OP is that Assange had to choose between burying the documents and publishing them -- because he had a responsibility to inform the public over what were matters of public interest. I don't think he did either of those two things, I think he did a third thing.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      What he did was perfectly in line with what he's always said he would do. The only reason people are upset is that they wish he wouldn't publish embarrassing things about politicians they support. If Assange had instead published Trump's dirty laundry, the very same people would be praising him. But as Assange said, it's hard to imagine what he could have published about Trump that would be worse than what was already publicly known.
      - matthewdgreen 7y ago
        People are upset because the dream of WikiLeaks was that it would would help to produce a better, more open, just world. This was the thesis that Assange himself put forward [0]. But that didn’t happen. Instead, it seems likely that closed and secretive intelligence agencies were able to effortlessly repurpose WikiLeaks into a weapon for pursuing the foreign policy of an unjust government. That isn’t a crime necessarily. It just completely undermines the core argument that Assange and Wikileaks made for the organization’s existence. If your argument is that an organization like WikiLeaks fundamentally has no choice but to allow itself to be misused in this way, then I think it’s reasonable to ask why we need such an organization in our world. [0] http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

matthewdgreen 7y ago

>Let's assume for a moment that your premise is true, and Assange got the DNC documents from Russian intelligence. Should he have buried the documents? The idea that Wikileaks took a non-partisan, journalistic attitude towards these leaks is a fantasy. He repeatedly contacted the Trump campaign and told them that he had "damaging leaks" on the way, and made it clear in internal chats that he wanted to use Wikileaks to sway the election outcome. https://qz.com/1599384/mueller-report-on-trump-campaigns-contacts-with-wikileaks/ https://qz.com/1599384/mueller-report-on-trump-campaigns-con...

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
Journalists aren't required to be non-partisan. You don't seriously believe that journalists working at the NY Times or Washington Post are non-partisan, do you? What matters is whether the information Assange published was true and in the public interest. Do you believe that it would have been better for Assange to cover up for the DNC and Hillary Clinton and decide not to publish their dirty laundry?
- matthewdgreen 7y ago
  Being partisan is fine for a journalist! But your premise in the OP is that Assange had to choose between burying the documents and publishing them -- because he had a responsibility to inform the public over what were matters of public interest. I don't think he did either of those two things, I think he did a third thing.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    What he did was perfectly in line with what he's always said he would do. The only reason people are upset is that they wish he wouldn't publish embarrassing things about politicians they support. If Assange had instead published Trump's dirty laundry, the very same people would be praising him. But as Assange said, it's hard to imagine what he could have published about Trump that would be worse than what was already publicly known.
    - matthewdgreen 7y ago
      People are upset because the dream of WikiLeaks was that it would would help to produce a better, more open, just world. This was the thesis that Assange himself put forward [0]. But that didn’t happen. Instead, it seems likely that closed and secretive intelligence agencies were able to effortlessly repurpose WikiLeaks into a weapon for pursuing the foreign policy of an unjust government. That isn’t a crime necessarily. It just completely undermines the core argument that Assange and Wikileaks made for the organization’s existence. If your argument is that an organization like WikiLeaks fundamentally has no choice but to allow itself to be misused in this way, then I think it’s reasonable to ask why we need such an organization in our world. [0] http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf