America charges someone for letting the public know their secrets, how about don't keep secrets from the people of your country unless it's specific names.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/politics/assange-indictment.html?module=inline
Was Mr. Assange charged with publishing secrets?
No. When the indictment was unsealed on Thursday, it showed that a grand jury had instead charged Mr. Assange with conspiring with Ms. Manning to illegally hack a government computer to obtain national security information.
Specifically, the indictment said, on March 8, 2010, Mr. Assange agreed to help Ms. Manning try to crack part of an encoded password that would have let her log onto a classified computer network under a user name that did not belong to her. Prosecutors also cited a chat log from two days later that they said indicated that Mr. Assange had taken steps to act on that conspiracy: He said he had “no luck so far” in trying to crack the password.
Do you honestly think countries shouldn't have any top secret information withheld from public? What world do you live in?
Right, but that info is over a month old and as the article in the OP states, he has now been charged with publishing secrets
I don't know what world I live in to be honest, I live in the same world as everyone else but that doesn't mean I get it.
He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison if convicted of all the US charges.
Yeah, honestly as much a fan of government transparency as I am, there are secrets that are actually quite important to keep secret. Things like troop movements, deployments, locations, names of foreign contacts and spies, even things like bleeding edge technology. And Manning's leak (due to Wikileaks just dumping all the information instead of vetting it like they assured her they would do from what I've read) did contain much of that information. From what I've read it didn't turn out to cause issues for US spies or anything but it was still a problem that they leaked that information in the first place.
There is a boatload of shit that the government absolutely shouldn't be allowed to keep secret
Obviously there are always exceptions but we need people that will grab them by the ear and force information out of them
This is an assault on the first amendment and press freedom. People who consider themselves liberals are cheering a Trump DOJ going after leakers and whistleblowers? Really? A journalist being charged under the Espionage Act hasn’t happened before and it’s an incredibly dangerous precedent. As an example, this could allow Trump to prosecute the New York Times if they publish his tax returns and someone obtained the information illegally. He could prosecute the Washington Post for publishing a story about migrant concentration camps if one their sources is a leaker in ICE. If you want to stop fascism and have government transparency, not allowing the government to prosecute the media publishing secrets is step fucking one. Manning is a hero, her leaks hurt no one, and she exposed wrongdoing by the government. Assange should not be prosecuted for publishing them, and the charge that he aided Manning in hacking frankly sounds like bullshit to me.
Nobody's "cheering" Trump. They're just amused at, metaphorically speaking, an anti death penalty activist hypocritically helping a pro death penalty politician into office to go after his enemies, only to be the first person executed
You greatly underestimate the zeal of some people when it comes to enforcing the law regardless of ethics. Way too many people have it backwards where law always supersedes reason as an indicator of what's good and what isn't.
2016 Assange is no hero, but he still deserves adequate praise for helping break out classified info over the years. To me, there will probably never be a good argument in favor of punishing whistleblowing. Justice should never stand on the side of conspiracy, and security top secret should never be used as a closet to hide your skeletons in.
Well guess what, justice is standing on the side of conspiracy- a conspiracy he willingly and knowingly abetted. Julian Assange is going to die in prison, having betrayed everything he claimed to stand for and leaving transparency and the press in a far worse state than when he started.
Sure, but he's not going to prison for life for the right reasons. I don't think Chelsea Manning should die in prison either.
Honestly, I feel they are out for blood and are just using the fact that he fucked up as a convenient excuse to nail him for uncovering our government’s dirty laundry, and specifically not because of the role he played in meddling with the election with Trump and Russia.
He should absolutely be held responsible for playing a role in meddling with the election, but it’s pretty obvious that a few ABC agencies just have this guy near the top of their shit list and just want to make an example out of him to prevent future whistleblowing.
The UK may not extradite him because of the severity of these charges apparently
Not like its difficult to find out what they're up to. Governments aren't known for being subtle and when they try to be its a trail instead of a river of blood.
Didn't Assange just boil down to another Russia-funded stooge over the last few years? I don't see why we still feel bad for him.
While there are posters who will call absolutely anyone who leaks any classified government info for any reason a hero, most of this thread seems to be frustrated over the fact that he'll likely go to prison for leaking documents in general rather than specifically for leaking documents as an asset of a hostile foreign government or putting people's lives in danger as a result of failing to withhold the identities of vulnerable individuals. Even if you think the original idea of Wikileaks is bad, we should still recognize a moral distinction between that and the malicious acts they've been involved in more recently.
Publishing information obtained through shady means and/or to serve a political agenda is not a crime. If it were, you'd have to prosecute literally every single media outlet in the world.
It's less about people feeling sorry for him and more about not letting a government throw someone in jail for exposing them as war criminals.
RIP Assange
Assange is as much of a journalist as Sean Hannity is a news anchor.
It's not that simple. Texts reveal he and Manning agreed to crack the admin account of a government computer on SIPRnet, the classified network. He then tried to get Manning to provide him more stolen info. He's fucked, it's outside of the realm of journalism and into espionage.
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