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Australian MPs to lobby US to drop Julian Assange prosecution

149 points by mitchbob 3y ago

deadeye 3y ago
I think Vivek Ramaswamy is the only US potus candidate that said he'd pardon Assange.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Marianne Williamson has been quite active on this front, speaking with Julian's family directly and asking Biden to drop the charges. Watching the smear machine rev up against her, the moment she got traction, has been quite the spectacle.
- shwaj 3y ago
  RFK also makes the promise on his website: https://www.kennedy24.com/pardon_julian_assange_robert_f_kennedy_jr?locale=en https://www.kennedy24.com/pardon_julian_assange_robert_f_ken...
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    RFK died in 1968, and doesn't seem to have a personal website. The website in question is his son's, whose public service record is somewhat less established.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sparky_z 3y ago
      RFK Jr is RFK's son, not his nephew. You'd think the name would give it away...
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        For some reason I thought he was a nephew. Fixed; the substance of the comment is unchanged.
        sparky_z 3y ago
        The substance of your comment was performatively pretending that someone else was too dumb to know the difference between RFK and RFK Jr, when obviously they do. Literally nobody has ever confused that anti-vax moron for his famous father who ran for president and died over 50 years ago. You were play-acting as a virtuous corrector of "misinformation" as cover to try and derail a conversation into an unrelated political flame war. If you must stoop to that sort of thing, the least you can do is bother to get your facts right.
- EthanHeilman 3y ago
  Unfortunately it seems to be a position shared by the loonies and no one else. I suspect Ramaswamy support for Assange comes more than from Assange having had a TV show on Russia Today than Ramaswamy's love of liberty as Ramaswamy is deeply opposed to individualism and liberty. I think Assange should be pardoned but it is a choice between Assange doing time and the continued US support for Ukraine, I'd choose Ukraine. It seems stupid that it has to be such a choice, but here we are.
  - deadeye 3y ago
    "Ramaswamy is deeply opposed to individualism and liberty." Can you unpack that?
    - calgarymicro 3y ago
      I think his proposal to bar people under 25 from voting unless they pass a civics test is pretty bad.
      - epgui 3y ago
        I don’t know anything about the proposal or the person, but on its own, this seems like a prima facie great idea to me (in theory).
        calgarymicro 3y ago
        Really? If we're going to arbitrarily require a competence test for all voters under 25, then I say we should also mandate a competence test for all voters over age 65 (he hasn't proposed that one for some reason). Ironically enough, Vivek himself might fail the test (that he wouldn't have to take given his age), seeing as he seems to think the Constitution was ratified before the end of the Revolutionary War.[0] Given that, I wouldn't trust him to write such a test, or to appoint people to write one. So who exactly would write the test? [0]https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswamy-republican-debate-civics-test-fail-rcna101625 https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswa...
- one_level_deep2 3y ago
  [dead]
- senectus1 3y ago
  that guy flip flops more than a fish out of water. I wouldn't trust him to follow through.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Wow good for Australia. This is the first time I'm hearing them do something positive.
- cjs_ac 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - someotherperson 3y ago
    The Australian Labor Party and the Liberal/National Party are both centrist. Characterising Liberal/Nationals as "right-wing lunacy" when they're the party that banned firearms, legalised gay marriage and added a national VAT tax on everything (twice) is nonsense. It's an attempt at using projecting US-style politics on Australia and it's disingenuous at best. If the Liberal/National Parties are reelected it's because of Labor's incompetence and playing with American-themed identity politics instead of actually addressing concerns within the country.
    - russelg 3y ago
      I'm not sure about handing them the win of legalising same-sex marriage. They could have just passed it straight into law, instead they had this fuckaround of a non-binding plebiscite, wasting huge amounts of money ($400m I believe it cost). They basically passed it kicking and screaming.
      - mrkeen 3y ago
        They were also the ones that locked it down in 2004. The purpose of the Marriage Amendment Bill 2004 (‘the Bill’) is to give effect to the Government’s commitment to protect the institution of marriage by ensuring that marriage means a union of a man and a woman and that same sex relationships cannot be equated with marriage. http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/mab2004175/memo1.html http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/mab2004175/m...
        3y ago
peter_retief 3y ago
It really is a disgrace that the US continues to ruin a mans life for being a journalist. People need to own up to ignoring this human rights violation.
- ChumpGPT 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - postalrat 3y ago
    Agent of what? Information?
    - dr-detroit 3y ago
      [dead]
    - one_level_deep2 3y ago
      He was an agent of the information he preferred to leak because he had an agenda. It has been well documented. [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/#cookie_message_anchor https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-hacked-russia/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-ha...
- ogogmad 3y ago
  Leaking national secrets needs to be punished to deter people from doing it. You can do it, but you must also be willing to defend your actions in a court. This seems necessary, as an organisation can't operate without keeping some secrets. I think the punishment should depend on what was leaked. If the contents were a clear injustice, then there should be no negative consequences for the leaker. But they must still stand up for their decision in court. What is certainly not acceptable is trying to flee from consequences. This should merit a punishment, which is what happened here.
ChumpGPT 3y ago
[flagged]
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > I think it's clear that Assange was working for the Russians trying to undermine the USA Even assuming that's true (which to be honest I am as well, given the... rather obvious selectiveness of later WikiLeaks releases): Assange and WikiLeaks uncovered legitimate war crimes or inacceptable behaviour by the USA. There is no denying that. If the USA had wanted to not have public scandals about their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq or spying on their closest allies, maybe they should have enforced some discipline in their troops and secret services.
  - dr-detroit 3y ago
    [dead]
  - snakeyjake 3y ago
    >Assange and WikiLeaks uncovered legitimate war crimes or inacceptable behaviour by the USA. There is no denying that. There is not a single newsworthy event uncovered by Assange that wasn't covered in the "lame stream" media prior to wikileaks. The coverage just wasn't sexy, with -leaks appended to it. Collateral Murder set the tone for Assange. People think he uncovered the event. This is incorrect. It was widely covered in the press prior to wikileaks, and the press didn't release a deceptively-edited video to stir up sexy, sexy, sexiness. There's more strikes against Assange, including lying about Sunshine Press being a non-profit, using John Young (who Assange wishes he was) to the point that Young started wikileaking wikileaks, not providing Wau Holland with proper accounting so Wau Holland couldn't release the audits they promised, and hanging their sources out to dry. But for me the pinnacle of his hypocrisy and scumminess was his deal with Russian state-controlled media for a television news show, starring him. (Which everyone seems to have forgotten about?)
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      I agree that there's a lot of bad things to be said about Assange and his conduct (both personal and regarding WikiLeaks itself), and some of it certainly warrants jail time if proven true (such as the allegations of sexual assault or the accounting issues). But it does not warrant the threat of life-long incarceration looming over him, and in any case, at least following European sentencing standards, holing him up in an embassy room for years is equivalent to a prison sentence for these crimes anyway. Justice has been served, let the guy out ffs.
mnot 3y ago
That's quite a lineup -- any MP who associates publicly with Barnaby Joyce is making a statement. And Monique Ryan is already on thin ice -- can't help but wonder what the people of Kooyong think about her spending her time on this.
- mrkeen 3y ago
  > And Monique Ryan is already on thin ice -- can't help but wonder what the people of Kooyong think about her spending her time on this. She's a federal representative, not a state representative. I hope you apply such 'non-local' arguments to all federal representatives equally.
- jackemcpherson 3y ago
  She's taking a break from her important work on getting Hard Solo taken off the shelves.
vlovich123 3y ago
> “You’ve now got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument. So the message [of the Australian delegation] is going to be: this is very dangerous for journalists around the world and a race to the bottom that’s going on.” That’s such an incredibly weak argument. Russia and China engage in whataboutism all the time. Why is this the case to listen to them?
- cheeseomlit 3y ago
  Because they have a point. People justify the actions of the US constantly with the argument that they are a 'force for freedom and democracy in a world of tyranny', or something to that effect. Just last week I had a discussion on HN with people who were rooting for the US to be the first to develop autonomous AI killer drone swarms, because clearly the US of all nations could be trusted to use such technology without devolving into a police state like China or Russia would. I'd love to share their optimism, but such arguments and sentiments are meaningless if the US is just going to behave like Russia and China anyways. And I think the more valid concern there anyways is the 'race to the bottom' part, not necessarily the 'moral equivalence' part
- badcppdev 3y ago
  Maybe if the Western governments stopped any activities which could be pointed to during the 'whatabout' game then China and Russia would stop... and many people in the Western world would be very happy too. News story today about Germany refusing to extradite a criminal (alleged) to the UK because the conditions in UK prisons are so bad due to governmental neglect. Kind of hard for the UK to talk about human rights in other countries when it can't even run a prison.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    The point of the whatabout tactic is that there’s always something to critique. You can never have a perfect society. The story about Germany is very different which is they are expressing a concrete concern about a specific situation, not trying to equate one situation to other unrelated situations. There’s also the fact that the UK and Germany are largely allies with similar principles of government and human rights. And of course UK can talk about human rights if it’s explaining how it’s improving it’s prisons or talking about human rights unrelated to prisons. None of this is true for Russia and China which equate trying to prosecute potentially illegal behavior on the part of Assange (potentially as a Russian asset) to jailing people who expose embarrassing secrets for members of the government or report information not favorable to the government’s perspective. The closest the US comes to that in recent memory that I can think of is what happened with Valarie Plame and her husband (although neither was a journalist nor did they go to jail).
InTheArena 3y ago
More proof that the Moscow-based disinformation campaign continues to work despite more people actually paying attention to what Russia is actually doing. Wikileaks played an important role in exposing mistakes and malfeasance by the US government - but it's worth noting that Assange is not WikiLeaks - and has often been at odds with them. Currently, he is nothing more than a sock-puppet for authoritarian right voices.
- peepeepoopoo34 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  "If you are not with us 100%, you are against us and therefore deserve to rot in jail forever!" Personally, when I see authoritarian nations like Russia criminalize dissent, I don't consider it a model to emulate. But it seems many in the West disagree, they think we are falling behind in the repression department and need to catch up ASAP.
  - InTheArena 3y ago
    Nice strawman. I don't support giving known Russian agents, who have acted in ways that are clearly designed to further Russian political goals (which right now consists of murdering people in Ukraine) exemptions from the law.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    They're not criminalizing dissent in their indictment of Assange, they're criminalizing the conspiracy to hack government systems with the intent to leak state secrets. If Assange didn't help Manning dig deeper as alleged, there was no crime. If he did assist, he committed a crime. It's entirely disconnected from publishing documents you happened to come across, which according to New York Times Co. vs United States is not a crime. Do you see how there's a difference between actively taking a role in attacking state computer systems versus just publishing documents? They're two very different acts. A journalist equips someone to break into some company building, rifling through their records to show the public they're poisoning the river. The person doing the search gets caught and are arrested after they find what they were looking for. The journalist publishes their findings. The person who was caught had their phone linking them to the journalist equipping them. The journalist is charged with conspiracy of breaking and entering and trespassing. See how writing the article isn't the thing being tried here?
notavalleyman 3y ago
[flagged]
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Assange was never charged with anything in Sweden. Had prosecutors had evidence of a crime I expect he would have laid charges (and not dropped the case on two different occasions before the statute of limitations expired, with a huge number of procedural irregularities in-between), and he even could have been tried in absentia while he was in political asylum.
- tarboreus 3y ago
  ... Maybe go back and read a couple things. You don't even characterize the original charge correctly, let alone the updated situation.
epups 3y ago
Assange needs to be released immediately. He is a journalist imprisoned for exposing American war crimes, and every day he spends in prison is another stain in the West's claim of moral superiority to authoritarian regimes.
- bloppe 3y ago
  The only way he could be released in a way that's not hypocritical is if we scrap all notion of government secret classification. Is that what you're advocating?
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Secret classification (in civilized nations that respect free expression) only binds people who agree beforehand not to divulge the information as a condition of gaining access to it, for example in the course of their employment. Journalists or other people who gain access to the info secondhand didn't agree to anything, and therefore commit no crime by republishing the classified info.
    - NoPicklez 3y ago
      I think it depends, if the information was classified appropriately the person who ends up with it will see that the information was not intended for them and that it obviously contains information of potential national significance blah blah A court may we able to argue that you knowingly distributed information that you were not authorised to see and in doing so was malicious. I agree with you, I'm just thinking of the optics.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      The indictment alleges Assange was more involved in the exfiltration than just getting some documents handed to him. It alleges he assisted in at least cracking passwords and requesting more documents after the initial contact. Both of these things would be entering a criminal conspiracy if true.
  - epups 3y ago
stevenjgarner 3y ago
Not to take away from Julian's plight, dare I say what about Edward Snowden?
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Snowden is not Australian.
- throw3747874747 3y ago
  Snowden is fine, he got citizenship a few months ago. He is doing contract gigs, and has some money from investments.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Yeah, now that Snowden is a Russian citizen, when is he going to leak loads of Russian state secrets?
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    The plight of the whistleblower is that nobody will ever let you near anything sensitive again.
  - drt5b7j 3y ago
    What a dishonest thing to say. Even if you're willing to leak secrets, you have first to find yourself in the position to have access to the secrets. As a leaker, it's extremely unlikely that Snowden will ever find himself in that situation a second time. You know this, and yet you pretend that you're making a point.
Terr_ 3y ago
Since this is literally "Hacker News", I think it's worth focusing a technical hacking-nugget near the center of this political thing: Allegedly Assange agreed to crack password-hashes for Manning, supplying the resulting fresh passwords to Manning to use. [0] While I'm sure the US government is out to make an example of Assange, I don't see how anyone can argue the above allegation falls under regular ethical journalism. Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?" [0] https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-breaking-password.html?m=1 https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-brea...
- throw3747874747 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Canada 3y ago
  > Allegedly Assange agreed to crack password-hashes for Manning, supplying the resulting fresh passwords to Manning to use. Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. First, it's not totally clear that Assange agrees to crack the password, though he does remark that he had the capability to do so. He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password. > Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?" And then imagine the newspaper editor not actually supplying the lockpicks or grappling-hook and never speaking of it again.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > First, it's not totally clear that Assange agrees to crack the password, Assange said he "passed it into our lm guy", which is an implicit--but clear!--signal that he will help with the technical problem, along with being a kind of small assistance all on its own. > Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. [...] He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password. That part doesn't matter, since Assange is accused of conspiracy to X. That one word is very important, it means a chat-log showing him agreeing to assist with the X is sufficient grounds to charge him with that related crime. Analogy: You message me explaining you need to crack data on a CAN bus in order to steal a luxury car, and I agree to analyze your collected data and find the secret key needed to disable the security systems. Those chat-logs would still be enough to charge me (and you) with conspiracy to commit grand theft auto: It doesn't matter if I never touched the car myself, and it doesn't matter if I failed at extracting a secret key, the important thing is we each acted and collaborated towards a crime.
hackandthink 3y ago
They have already destroyed Julian Assange's life and the message is clear: don't mess with the military industrial complex. They could afford a little humanity and release Julian Assange.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  > They could afford a little humanity They see 'humanity' as a weakness. Like decency, and honesty. What's astounding is that neither Democrat elites or their donors seem to give a flying. Lil Russian accusations here, lil smear there, and suddenly he's not a journalist or a whistleblower any more. The barrel has rotted.
donottell 3y ago
[dead]

149 points by mitchbob 3y ago

deadeye 3y ago

I think Vivek Ramaswamy is the only US potus candidate that said he'd pardon Assange.

mandmandam 3y ago
Marianne Williamson has been quite active on this front, speaking with Julian's family directly and asking Biden to drop the charges. Watching the smear machine rev up against her, the moment she got traction, has been quite the spectacle.
shwaj 3y ago
RFK also makes the promise on his website: https://www.kennedy24.com/pardon_julian_assange_robert_f_kennedy_jr?locale=en https://www.kennedy24.com/pardon_julian_assange_robert_f_ken...
- woodruffw 3y ago
  RFK died in 1968, and doesn't seem to have a personal website. The website in question is his son's, whose public service record is somewhat less established.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sparky_z 3y ago
    RFK Jr is RFK's son, not his nephew. You'd think the name would give it away...
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      For some reason I thought he was a nephew. Fixed; the substance of the comment is unchanged.
      - sparky_z 3y ago
        The substance of your comment was performatively pretending that someone else was too dumb to know the difference between RFK and RFK Jr, when obviously they do. Literally nobody has ever confused that anti-vax moron for his famous father who ran for president and died over 50 years ago. You were play-acting as a virtuous corrector of "misinformation" as cover to try and derail a conversation into an unrelated political flame war. If you must stoop to that sort of thing, the least you can do is bother to get your facts right.
EthanHeilman 3y ago
Unfortunately it seems to be a position shared by the loonies and no one else. I suspect Ramaswamy support for Assange comes more than from Assange having had a TV show on Russia Today than Ramaswamy's love of liberty as Ramaswamy is deeply opposed to individualism and liberty. I think Assange should be pardoned but it is a choice between Assange doing time and the continued US support for Ukraine, I'd choose Ukraine. It seems stupid that it has to be such a choice, but here we are.
- deadeye 3y ago
  "Ramaswamy is deeply opposed to individualism and liberty." Can you unpack that?
  - calgarymicro 3y ago
    I think his proposal to bar people under 25 from voting unless they pass a civics test is pretty bad.
    - epgui 3y ago
      I don’t know anything about the proposal or the person, but on its own, this seems like a prima facie great idea to me (in theory).
      - calgarymicro 3y ago
        Really? If we're going to arbitrarily require a competence test for all voters under 25, then I say we should also mandate a competence test for all voters over age 65 (he hasn't proposed that one for some reason). Ironically enough, Vivek himself might fail the test (that he wouldn't have to take given his age), seeing as he seems to think the Constitution was ratified before the end of the Revolutionary War.[0] Given that, I wouldn't trust him to write such a test, or to appoint people to write one. So who exactly would write the test? [0]https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswamy-republican-debate-civics-test-fail-rcna101625 https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/vivek-ramaswa...
one_level_deep2 3y ago
[dead]
senectus1 3y ago
that guy flip flops more than a fish out of water. I wouldn't trust him to follow through.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Wow good for Australia. This is the first time I'm hearing them do something positive.

cjs_ac 3y ago
[flagged]
- someotherperson 3y ago
  The Australian Labor Party and the Liberal/National Party are both centrist. Characterising Liberal/Nationals as "right-wing lunacy" when they're the party that banned firearms, legalised gay marriage and added a national VAT tax on everything (twice) is nonsense. It's an attempt at using projecting US-style politics on Australia and it's disingenuous at best. If the Liberal/National Parties are reelected it's because of Labor's incompetence and playing with American-themed identity politics instead of actually addressing concerns within the country.
  - russelg 3y ago
    I'm not sure about handing them the win of legalising same-sex marriage. They could have just passed it straight into law, instead they had this fuckaround of a non-binding plebiscite, wasting huge amounts of money ($400m I believe it cost). They basically passed it kicking and screaming.
    - mrkeen 3y ago
      They were also the ones that locked it down in 2004. The purpose of the Marriage Amendment Bill 2004 (‘the Bill’) is to give effect to the Government’s commitment to protect the institution of marriage by ensuring that marriage means a union of a man and a woman and that same sex relationships cannot be equated with marriage. http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/mab2004175/memo1.html http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/mab2004175/m...
      - 3y ago

peter_retief 3y ago

It really is a disgrace that the US continues to ruin a mans life for being a journalist. People need to own up to ignoring this human rights violation.

ChumpGPT 3y ago
[flagged]
- postalrat 3y ago
  Agent of what? Information?
  - dr-detroit 3y ago
    [dead]
  - one_level_deep2 3y ago
    He was an agent of the information he preferred to leak because he had an agenda. It has been well documented. [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/#cookie_message_anchor https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-hacked-russia/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-ha...
ogogmad 3y ago
Leaking national secrets needs to be punished to deter people from doing it. You can do it, but you must also be willing to defend your actions in a court. This seems necessary, as an organisation can't operate without keeping some secrets. I think the punishment should depend on what was leaked. If the contents were a clear injustice, then there should be no negative consequences for the leaker. But they must still stand up for their decision in court. What is certainly not acceptable is trying to flee from consequences. This should merit a punishment, which is what happened here.

ChumpGPT 3y ago

[flagged]

mschuster91 3y ago
> I think it's clear that Assange was working for the Russians trying to undermine the USA Even assuming that's true (which to be honest I am as well, given the... rather obvious selectiveness of later WikiLeaks releases): Assange and WikiLeaks uncovered legitimate war crimes or inacceptable behaviour by the USA. There is no denying that. If the USA had wanted to not have public scandals about their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq or spying on their closest allies, maybe they should have enforced some discipline in their troops and secret services.
- dr-detroit 3y ago
  [dead]
- snakeyjake 3y ago
  >Assange and WikiLeaks uncovered legitimate war crimes or inacceptable behaviour by the USA. There is no denying that. There is not a single newsworthy event uncovered by Assange that wasn't covered in the "lame stream" media prior to wikileaks. The coverage just wasn't sexy, with -leaks appended to it. Collateral Murder set the tone for Assange. People think he uncovered the event. This is incorrect. It was widely covered in the press prior to wikileaks, and the press didn't release a deceptively-edited video to stir up sexy, sexy, sexiness. There's more strikes against Assange, including lying about Sunshine Press being a non-profit, using John Young (who Assange wishes he was) to the point that Young started wikileaking wikileaks, not providing Wau Holland with proper accounting so Wau Holland couldn't release the audits they promised, and hanging their sources out to dry. But for me the pinnacle of his hypocrisy and scumminess was his deal with Russian state-controlled media for a television news show, starring him. (Which everyone seems to have forgotten about?)
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    I agree that there's a lot of bad things to be said about Assange and his conduct (both personal and regarding WikiLeaks itself), and some of it certainly warrants jail time if proven true (such as the allegations of sexual assault or the accounting issues). But it does not warrant the threat of life-long incarceration looming over him, and in any case, at least following European sentencing standards, holing him up in an embassy room for years is equivalent to a prison sentence for these crimes anyway. Justice has been served, let the guy out ffs.

mnot 3y ago

That's quite a lineup -- any MP who associates publicly with Barnaby Joyce is making a statement. And Monique Ryan is already on thin ice -- can't help but wonder what the people of Kooyong think about her spending her time on this.

mrkeen 3y ago
> And Monique Ryan is already on thin ice -- can't help but wonder what the people of Kooyong think about her spending her time on this. She's a federal representative, not a state representative. I hope you apply such 'non-local' arguments to all federal representatives equally.
jackemcpherson 3y ago
She's taking a break from her important work on getting Hard Solo taken off the shelves.

vlovich123 3y ago

> “You’ve now got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument. So the message [of the Australian delegation] is going to be: this is very dangerous for journalists around the world and a race to the bottom that’s going on.” That’s such an incredibly weak argument. Russia and China engage in whataboutism all the time. Why is this the case to listen to them?

cheeseomlit 3y ago
Because they have a point. People justify the actions of the US constantly with the argument that they are a 'force for freedom and democracy in a world of tyranny', or something to that effect. Just last week I had a discussion on HN with people who were rooting for the US to be the first to develop autonomous AI killer drone swarms, because clearly the US of all nations could be trusted to use such technology without devolving into a police state like China or Russia would. I'd love to share their optimism, but such arguments and sentiments are meaningless if the US is just going to behave like Russia and China anyways. And I think the more valid concern there anyways is the 'race to the bottom' part, not necessarily the 'moral equivalence' part
badcppdev 3y ago
Maybe if the Western governments stopped any activities which could be pointed to during the 'whatabout' game then China and Russia would stop... and many people in the Western world would be very happy too. News story today about Germany refusing to extradite a criminal (alleged) to the UK because the conditions in UK prisons are so bad due to governmental neglect. Kind of hard for the UK to talk about human rights in other countries when it can't even run a prison.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  The point of the whatabout tactic is that there’s always something to critique. You can never have a perfect society. The story about Germany is very different which is they are expressing a concrete concern about a specific situation, not trying to equate one situation to other unrelated situations. There’s also the fact that the UK and Germany are largely allies with similar principles of government and human rights. And of course UK can talk about human rights if it’s explaining how it’s improving it’s prisons or talking about human rights unrelated to prisons. None of this is true for Russia and China which equate trying to prosecute potentially illegal behavior on the part of Assange (potentially as a Russian asset) to jailing people who expose embarrassing secrets for members of the government or report information not favorable to the government’s perspective. The closest the US comes to that in recent memory that I can think of is what happened with Valarie Plame and her husband (although neither was a journalist nor did they go to jail).

InTheArena 3y ago

More proof that the Moscow-based disinformation campaign continues to work despite more people actually paying attention to what Russia is actually doing. Wikileaks played an important role in exposing mistakes and malfeasance by the US government - but it's worth noting that Assange is not WikiLeaks - and has often been at odds with them. Currently, he is nothing more than a sock-puppet for authoritarian right voices.

peepeepoopoo34 3y ago
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Georgelemental 3y ago
"If you are not with us 100%, you are against us and therefore deserve to rot in jail forever!" Personally, when I see authoritarian nations like Russia criminalize dissent, I don't consider it a model to emulate. But it seems many in the West disagree, they think we are falling behind in the repression department and need to catch up ASAP.
- InTheArena 3y ago
  Nice strawman. I don't support giving known Russian agents, who have acted in ways that are clearly designed to further Russian political goals (which right now consists of murdering people in Ukraine) exemptions from the law.
- vel0city 3y ago
  They're not criminalizing dissent in their indictment of Assange, they're criminalizing the conspiracy to hack government systems with the intent to leak state secrets. If Assange didn't help Manning dig deeper as alleged, there was no crime. If he did assist, he committed a crime. It's entirely disconnected from publishing documents you happened to come across, which according to New York Times Co. vs United States is not a crime. Do you see how there's a difference between actively taking a role in attacking state computer systems versus just publishing documents? They're two very different acts. A journalist equips someone to break into some company building, rifling through their records to show the public they're poisoning the river. The person doing the search gets caught and are arrested after they find what they were looking for. The journalist publishes their findings. The person who was caught had their phone linking them to the journalist equipping them. The journalist is charged with conspiracy of breaking and entering and trespassing. See how writing the article isn't the thing being tried here?

notavalleyman 3y ago

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stephen_g 3y ago
Assange was never charged with anything in Sweden. Had prosecutors had evidence of a crime I expect he would have laid charges (and not dropped the case on two different occasions before the statute of limitations expired, with a huge number of procedural irregularities in-between), and he even could have been tried in absentia while he was in political asylum.
tarboreus 3y ago
... Maybe go back and read a couple things. You don't even characterize the original charge correctly, let alone the updated situation.

epups 3y ago

Assange needs to be released immediately. He is a journalist imprisoned for exposing American war crimes, and every day he spends in prison is another stain in the West's claim of moral superiority to authoritarian regimes.

bloppe 3y ago
The only way he could be released in a way that's not hypocritical is if we scrap all notion of government secret classification. Is that what you're advocating?
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Secret classification (in civilized nations that respect free expression) only binds people who agree beforehand not to divulge the information as a condition of gaining access to it, for example in the course of their employment. Journalists or other people who gain access to the info secondhand didn't agree to anything, and therefore commit no crime by republishing the classified info.
  - NoPicklez 3y ago
    I think it depends, if the information was classified appropriately the person who ends up with it will see that the information was not intended for them and that it obviously contains information of potential national significance blah blah A court may we able to argue that you knowingly distributed information that you were not authorised to see and in doing so was malicious. I agree with you, I'm just thinking of the optics.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    The indictment alleges Assange was more involved in the exfiltration than just getting some documents handed to him. It alleges he assisted in at least cracking passwords and requesting more documents after the initial contact. Both of these things would be entering a criminal conspiracy if true.
- epups 3y ago

stevenjgarner 3y ago

Not to take away from Julian's plight, dare I say what about Edward Snowden?

Georgelemental 3y ago
Snowden is not Australian.
throw3747874747 3y ago
Snowden is fine, he got citizenship a few months ago. He is doing contract gigs, and has some money from investments.
vel0city 3y ago
Yeah, now that Snowden is a Russian citizen, when is he going to leak loads of Russian state secrets?
- jstarfish 3y ago
  The plight of the whistleblower is that nobody will ever let you near anything sensitive again.
- drt5b7j 3y ago
  What a dishonest thing to say. Even if you're willing to leak secrets, you have first to find yourself in the position to have access to the secrets. As a leaker, it's extremely unlikely that Snowden will ever find himself in that situation a second time. You know this, and yet you pretend that you're making a point.

Terr_ 3y ago

Since this is literally "Hacker News", I think it's worth focusing a technical hacking-nugget near the center of this political thing: Allegedly Assange agreed to crack password-hashes for Manning, supplying the resulting fresh passwords to Manning to use. [0] While I'm sure the US government is out to make an example of Assange, I don't see how anyone can argue the above allegation falls under regular ethical journalism. Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?" [0] https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-breaking-password.html?m=1 https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/04/assange-indicted-for-brea...

throw3747874747 3y ago
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Canada 3y ago
> Allegedly Assange agreed to crack password-hashes for Manning, supplying the resulting fresh passwords to Manning to use. Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. First, it's not totally clear that Assange agrees to crack the password, though he does remark that he had the capability to do so. He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password. > Just imagine a newspaper editor saying: "Wow, these documents you found while burgling the mansion are awesome, hey, how about I give you fresh lockpicks and a grappling-hook so you go back and check the upper floors that you couldn't reach before?" And then imagine the newspaper editor not actually supplying the lockpicks or grappling-hook and never speaking of it again.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > First, it's not totally clear that Assange agrees to crack the password, Assange said he "passed it into our lm guy", which is an implicit--but clear!--signal that he will help with the technical problem, along with being a kind of small assistance all on its own. > Read the chat logs. This allegation is actually false. [...] He definitely doesn't supply the cracked password. That part doesn't matter, since Assange is accused of conspiracy to X. That one word is very important, it means a chat-log showing him agreeing to assist with the X is sufficient grounds to charge him with that related crime. Analogy: You message me explaining you need to crack data on a CAN bus in order to steal a luxury car, and I agree to analyze your collected data and find the secret key needed to disable the security systems. Those chat-logs would still be enough to charge me (and you) with conspiracy to commit grand theft auto: It doesn't matter if I never touched the car myself, and it doesn't matter if I failed at extracting a secret key, the important thing is we each acted and collaborated towards a crime.

hackandthink 3y ago

They have already destroyed Julian Assange's life and the message is clear: don't mess with the military industrial complex. They could afford a little humanity and release Julian Assange.

mandmandam 3y ago
> They could afford a little humanity They see 'humanity' as a weakness. Like decency, and honesty. What's astounding is that neither Democrat elites or their donors seem to give a flying. Lil Russian accusations here, lil smear there, and suddenly he's not a journalist or a whistleblower any more. The barrel has rotted.

donottell 3y ago

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