The US Government Vs Wikileaks

[evildevil.livejournal.com]

Over the days there has been a lot of outcry against Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Many are calling him a traitor that should be prosecuted or executed. The problem with this issue is that Julian Assange cannot be considered a traitor if he is not an US citizen. That would be like North Korea calling President Obama a traitor for releasing nude pictures of Kim Jon Il on the internet (great, now I am going to have nightmares).

The problem is that there are issues regarding the prosecution of Julian Assange for his actions and he is outside the reach of US law. Even if we wanted him dead (and I do not support this idea) it would only result in an International backlash. After all who wants to read "US Government Authorizes Assassination of Foreign Citizen on Foreign Soil" on the headlines? (Besides the fact that it will probably violate international treaties, lets face it, he will become a martyr) Not to mention the last thing President Obama wants is to be tied to an Assassination Squad (probably inherited it from Dick Cheney) that can kill anyone who disrespects him; the last thing he needs is to add more fuel to the fire of conspiracy theories against him. Of course, I am taking these cries of Julian Assange's assassination as more bark than bite.

Joe Lieberman is attempting to introduce a new legislation to be used against Wikileaks, the problem with this move is that it wont punish Wikileaks' past crimes, to do so would be unconstitutional. New laws cant penalize past criminal conducts, the Constitution clearly bans ex post facto laws. This move is either a political attempt to look good (after looking at his poll numbers this shouldnt be a surprise) or an attempt to prevent future "cyber crimes" against individuals who release sensitive information that is harming to the safety of the public (must be nice for Scooter Libby and company to live in the land of hypocrisy, where the real criminals are anyone but the government).

Even if this law were to pass, I just dont see how can they stop Wikileaks:

It is not clear whether WikiLeaks — a confederation of open-government advocates who solicit secret documents for publication — could be subject to a federal subpoena. Federal courts most likely do not have jurisdiction over it or a means to serve it with such a subpoena.

But leaving that issue aside, what is there to stop the government from prosecuting the New York Times or any media organization that "conspired" to release the leaked documents? After all, they also helped Wikileaks in spreading the information to the masses, making them no less different than Wikileaks on their part. And what about bloggers and online media outlets or social networks like facebook? Would they also be prosecuted for spreading the information? Will the government shut down the internet just so they can stop the spread of electronic information? It soon becomes an issue of Freedom of Speech.

The only law that the US can use against Julian Assange is the World War I-era spy law, the Espionage Act of 1917, and this is a law that was created before the internet and the electronic age. The law has several holes that would make it difficult to successfully use against Julian Assange. The Espionage Act of 1917 would successfully prosecute Bradley Manning, the 22 year old private in the US army. Since the law makes it clear regarding the issue of those responsible for providing leaked information. But it becomes murky on Assange's case. It will be the burden of the government to prove that Assange encouraged and conspired with Bradley Manning to produce and pass the documents to Wikileaks.

The fact that the government is more concerned with prosecuting whistle-blowers releasing their dirty secrets for the world to see over the issue that the government has no problem in violating our civil liberties to learn our own private secrets in the name of National Security says a lot about their view of the world and their priorities.

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Comments

Free Press?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people, peaceably to assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Re: Free Press?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Wikileaks isn't a press organization.

Who gives a shit? It's not even within U.S. jurisdiction!

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Frankly, who gives a shit if the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law or the U.S. government permits what Wikileaks is doing?

It's beyond their legal jurisdiction. It didn't happen in the U.S. It's beyond the internationally lawful reach of U.S. authority.

Anything the U.S. does to Assange and Wikileaks now, falls entirely beyond the scope of law and is instead just another example of the U.S. disregarding international law, and the laws of other democratic nations, whenever and wherever it suits U.S. purposes.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I cannot fucking STAND when the legislature tries to pass laws intended specifically to punish or rid the world of one specific thing they don't like, irrespective of whether such legislation is constitutional or not. And they've been doing it a hell of a lot lately so I'm a pretty pissed-off guy pretty much all the time these days.

[http://users.livejournal.com/aviation_/]

yeah!

[http://users.livejournal.com/aviation_/]

We already did this. It was called The Times V. United States.

I also do not understand going over wikileaks. They did not steal the documents, so they are not accountable in that way like perhaps Bradley Manning is. They simply obtained them, read them, and then published them - something which the New York Times has also done. Yet I see no backlash against the newspapers. It simply isn't logically to so harshly attack Wikileaks unless you are equally attacking The Guardian, NYT, etc.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

It's a fantastic distraction tho, isn't it?

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

Good article in today's WaPo about the difficulties of prosecuting here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303267.html

Note, it is not illegal to release classified documents.

[ygrii-blop.livejournal.com]

international relations is a lot more mature than people expect

Yeah, stupid me. I always thought diplomacy was dignified and reserved... stuffy, even. Now I see it's done at the level of junior high schoolgirls dishing on one another.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is why I think he really won't try pissing off Ivan or Israel. Most people don't have the balls to stick their heads into a noose knowing they're on a gallows while so doing.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The government has *plenty* of secure stuff, that stuff hasn't been leaked either. The stuff that has been leaked was stuff that was on the second tier privileged citizen network.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Wikileaks has released tonnes of stuff on other countries, it just didn't make the news in the highly insular world of the US media.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

go to section 2.2 "some of the stories we have broken" (http://wikileaks.ch/about.html).

[ygrii-blop.livejournal.com]

The problem with this issue is that Julian Assange cannot be considered a traitor if he is not an US citizen.

Yeah, this. I read an opinion piece yesterday by the horrible Michael Reagan shrieking Assange should be charged with treason and then hanged. Two blood vessels in my forehead burst. "He's not American!" I screamed. I screamed it so hard I ruptured a disk in my neck. Now I can't turn my head and my left arm is drawn into a claw.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

You should probably work on not being so emotional in response to the news.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

see my post on this very issue for more of my opinion.

We need democratic governments answerable to the people that hire them. Secrecy should be the exception, not the rule. That means no classified secrets unless they genuinely warrant being kept secret. This can be determined in a court of law closed to the public.

I kept hearing that these Wikileaks releases could endanger lives of soldiers. Nothing I've read remotely fits that description. At worse i might endanger a marriage and a divorce results. But overall the warnings have sounded like deliberate lies to save their own butts.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

"I kept hearing that these Wikileaks releases could endanger lives of soldiers. Nothing I've read remotely fits that description."

Assuming that you have not read all of the thousands of messages, I would imagine the ones that might endanger someone have not been published, due at least partly to the better discretion of responsible media.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

http://wikileaks.org

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

"...open-government advocates who solicit secret documents for publication"

Make that "anti-government".

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Julian Assange is neither a terrible person or a glorious hero. Once again I reject the dichotomy of our ridiculous competing narratives and adopt a measured tone in response to the circus.

Bah-humbug. Find some real heroes for once.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

The measured, moderate voices of this great nation deserve a memorial built for them. Why commemorate only the loud assholes?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Let's not say Assange is really about ending secrecy and dirty tricks in international relations until he starts exposing Israel's and the Russian Federation's dirty laundry same as he has the USA's. I tend not to believe anyone who claims moralism as a motivation unless they're willing to commit acts that might cost them up to and including their lives. Otherwise it's a particularly sanctimonious type of trolling/attention whoring, but certainly not the tempest in a teacup people are making it into.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

You don't think that Assange's actions might cost him his life?

I'd bet plenty some of the people mentioned in the leak would like to silence Assange permanently.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

After all who wants to read "US Government Authorizes Assassination of Foreign Citizen on Foreign Soil" on the headlines?

You mean, like we already have (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html)? (citizenship isn't really relevant.)

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

There is a significant issue here, given that Assange is clearly not engaged in any kind of actual combat activity against U.S. forces, so a targeted killing is not really an applicable term, even if you accept the validity of the argument that there is any real difference between a targeted killing and an assassination.

Killing Assange would certainly be a political assassination by any factually based legal assessment, and as such, pursuant to executive order 12333, Obama nor any other person acting on behalf of the U.S. is not lawfully permitted to authorise or carry it out.

Given U.S. political machinations of course, that we can't necessarily rely on any such legal assessment that might be relied upon actually being factually based, so I concede it would be possible, that he could be assassinated, even if they had dodgy up a pile of crap to make it look legal post facto. But I think that's unlikely. They are far more likely to go ahead with having the Swedes frame him up on these rape charges to silence him and use other such traditional forms of intertnational intimidation to silence Wikileaks and similar sites.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

What is the point in making laws, looking for laws, worrying about treaties and public backlash?

If you're going to play dirty, play dirty. If you're going to play nice, play nice.

My government half-assing a reaction somewhere in between pisses me off more than anything Wikileaks has leaked on them.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I'm a little late, but do you know how to use an LJ cut?

[penguin42.livejournal.com]

whistle-blowers

Wholesale unfiltered dumping is whistleblowing now?