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They (the government) have _always_ said this and the courts have backed them up on it. Always. Ellsberg should have gone to jail and were it not for incompet
by evgen 6y ago
They (the government) have _always_ said this and the courts have backed them up on it. Always. Ellsberg should have gone to jail and were it not for incompetent prosecutors and Liddy, Hunt, and the rest of the plumbers along with some FBI wiretapping Ellsberg would have been in prison until at least the Ford administration and possibly until Carter took office.
- voxic11 6y agoWhy was no one prosecuted for publishing or receiving the Snowden leaks then? I remember the Guardian and the NYT both receiving leaked information from Snowden. Can you give a single example where the courts backed them up? Even the prosecution in this Assange case seems to be agreeing that there has never been a successful prosecution.
- evgen 6y agoReceiving and publishing are not specifically crimes and that is why the New York Times and Washington Post won in the Pentagon Papers case. Gathering the info or soliciting it are crimes. The latter is what Assange is being charged with the in US and the former is what Snowden would be charged with if he ever left Russia. The Espionage Act charges made against Assange are fairly weak and I expect them to eventually get dropped or any conviction to be overturned on appeal, but the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge is both an overt act and one that is not protected by any claim of being a 'journalist'.
- voxic11 6y agoThat is what most people understand the law to be. What is surprising in this case is that the US prosecutor is arguing that it is an incorrect understanding and that merely publishing or receiving classified information is a prosecutable crime under the espionage act. > James Lewis QC: Do you accept that the Pentagon Papers judgement is the most relevant one? Eric Lewis: Yes, but there are others. James Lewis QC: A close reading of the Pentagon Papers judgement shows that the New York Times might have been successfully prosecuted. Three of the Supreme Court judges specifically stated that an Espionage Act prosecution could be pursued for publication. Eric Lewis: They recognised the possibility of a prosecution. They did not say that it would succeed. James Lewis QC: So your analysis that there cannot be a prosecution of a publisher on First Amendment grounds is incorrect. ... James Lewis QC: The United States Supreme Court has never held that a journalist cannot be prosecuted for publishing national defence information. Eric Lewis: The Supreme Court has never been faced with that exact question. Because a case has never been brought. But there are closely related cases which indicate the answer. The case they are mentioning is this one (or more specifically the dropped related case against Rosen) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Franklin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Franklin Read the legal principles by which the judge was planning on allowing it to proceed with.
- evgen 6y agoThe prosecutor can make whatever claims he wants in an extradition hearing, but until the case actually sees the inside of a US courtroom I do not think anyone really knows how these are going to hold up. In this case you are running into a situation where the US prosecutor may be (significantly) over-playing his hand, but I am not sure how much latitude this court has to call bullshit on the claims being made by the US prosecutor.