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Surprisingly few technical people understand the extent to which the CFAA charges he faces are bullshit. It all goes back to a jabber log that they got from Ma

Surprisingly few technical people understand the extent to which the CFAA charges he faces are bullshit. It all goes back to a jabber log that they got from Manning. The gist of it is as follows: Manning: <some bytes from a hexdump> Manning: can you guys crack NTLM? Assange: we have rainbow tables. I’ll forward it onto someone on our team. Few days later, Manning: any update on NTLM? Assange: no luck so far. And this is computer conspiracy. No additional access to any machine was had, and there’s no real evidence that any cracking was attempted at all. He merely agreed to take a look and reported no progress on it. It’s been a while since I looked at the details but I seem to recall that the pcap hexdump manning sent wasn’t even the correct bytes to do an attack — it wasn’t even possible. There are so many explanations for why Assange could have said this while plausibly not attempting to crack the hash. Manning put him in a strange position to become complicit and he had to strike a balance between not saying to his source, “lol that’s illegal no way, you’re on your own dude” while simultaneously saying exactly that.

jessaustin 5y ago
s/Assange/Nathaniel Frank/ Manning was chatting with "Nathaniel Frank". That was understood to be a pseudonym for someone at Wikileaks, but there's no proof of any of that. So, these charges are even more bullshit.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  So Assange can say, under oath, that he is not Nathaniel Frank. Boom. Case closed- US govt looks stupid. Assange walks. I do not care about the verdict of the trial. I care a lot that a trial takes place. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Everybody is presupposing the result of this and being outraged rather than waiting and seeing what happens. He is innocent until proven guilty.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I fully expect the US to select a judge for this case that will not give Assange the slightest bit of generosity. I hope you're right, but I'm much more cynical about the impartiality of the judiciary.
ModernMech 5y ago
Criminal conspiracy in the US is defined in Title 18, U.S.C. § 371: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." The elements of the crime of conspiracy are: 1. Two or more people 2. Intentionality 3. An agreement 4. An underlying crime 5. An overt act The discussion you post seems to point to all 5 being met, although additional evidence would be needed to prove it. Obviously there are two people here discussing "cracking" something. Assange agrees to the overt step of taking the data and forwarding it to his team, ostensibly with the intention that this team would do the cracking. When asked for an update, Assange states "no luck so far". Do we take that to mean they are currently working on it and have not succeeded? Or is Assange saying that there's no luck, but he hasn't really done anything with the data? It really doesn't matter according to the statute, which defines the overt act as any act done to further the conspiracy. So it doesn't matter if there was no other access to any machine or if there is no evidence cracking was attempted. If Assange took that data and sent it to anyone else, then he's part of the conspiracy. Actually, according to the statute, it doesn't even matter if he took an overt action. If he agreed with Manning to implement the crime, and Manning on her own did the cracking, then Assange would still be part of the conspiracy due to the first 4 elements.

jessaustin 5y ago

s/Assange/Nathaniel Frank/ Manning was chatting with "Nathaniel Frank". That was understood to be a pseudonym for someone at Wikileaks, but there's no proof of any of that. So, these charges are even more bullshit.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
So Assange can say, under oath, that he is not Nathaniel Frank. Boom. Case closed- US govt looks stupid. Assange walks. I do not care about the verdict of the trial. I care a lot that a trial takes place. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Everybody is presupposing the result of this and being outraged rather than waiting and seeing what happens. He is innocent until proven guilty.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I fully expect the US to select a judge for this case that will not give Assange the slightest bit of generosity. I hope you're right, but I'm much more cynical about the impartiality of the judiciary.

ModernMech 5y ago

Criminal conspiracy in the US is defined in Title 18, U.S.C. § 371: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." The elements of the crime of conspiracy are: 1. Two or more people 2. Intentionality 3. An agreement 4. An underlying crime 5. An overt act The discussion you post seems to point to all 5 being met, although additional evidence would be needed to prove it. Obviously there are two people here discussing "cracking" something. Assange agrees to the overt step of taking the data and forwarding it to his team, ostensibly with the intention that this team would do the cracking. When asked for an update, Assange states "no luck so far". Do we take that to mean they are currently working on it and have not succeeded? Or is Assange saying that there's no luck, but he hasn't really done anything with the data? It really doesn't matter according to the statute, which defines the overt act as any act done to further the conspiracy. So it doesn't matter if there was no other access to any machine or if there is no evidence cracking was attempted. If Assange took that data and sent it to anyone else, then he's part of the conspiracy. Actually, according to the statute, it doesn't even matter if he took an overt action. If he agreed with Manning to implement the crime, and Manning on her own did the cracking, then Assange would still be part of the conspiracy due to the first 4 elements.