Julian Assange arrested in London | Hacker News Reader

Julian Assange arrested in London

bbc.co.uk

2,369 pointskragniz1,119 comments

It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers.

There's a few avenues: 1) Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time.

2) Conspiracy to commit espionage. Probably the most likely, this would require showing that he was actively working with someone to extract classified information. Just openly soliciting leaks to an email address wouldn't be enough, he'd really have to be talking to a leaker before/during the extraction of the data. Depending on the nature of his communications with Guccifer (The GRU hackers from 2016) they may be able to make a case on this basis.

3) Al Capone style / collateral attack. The US made it very hard for Wikileaks to operate financially. Maybe he did something that falls under the US' capacious money laundering rules?

Note that this case is fundamentally different from Manning / Snowden / Winner who all had access to classified information legally and misused that access. Due to the first amendment, American espionage laws are quite narrowly written compared to those of many other countries and while it is easy to prosecute people on the "inside" for leaking classified material to the "outside", it is much harder to prosecute someone for what they do with it when it's out.

(Edit: Well that was fast! Interested to see what's in the indictment)

America could have just as easily extradited him from the UK as from Sweden.

He wasn't in the UK.

He is now.

Extraterritoriality of embassies is a myth. Assange was in the UK when he was in the Ecuadorian embassy. However, the UK authorities could not have removed him from the embassy without violating the Vienna Convention.

Semantics. The host country is prevented from entering, searching, seizing people or persons, or otherwise enforcing its laws in any way. The soil is technically still British, but so long as he had Ecuador's cooperation, he was entirely outside the reach of UK law.

So by the dictionary definition of sovereignty -- "supreme power or authority" the sovereign inside the walls of the embassy is Ecuador, not the UK, since the UK has no de facto authority there. But by the definition of "sovereignty" applied to issues of land ownership, the interior space of the building is technically still British and would revert back to enforceable UK legal jurisdiction when the mission is over.

So really you could argue it either way.

No, the UK is sovereign inside the Ecuadorian embassy. The authorities are prevented from entering by international treaties that they've signed.

If international treaty obligations block sovereignty, then the UK isn't sovereign within the UK either (!), since there are certainly international treaties signed by the UK which prevent the UK authorities doing certain things within the UK. For example, the UK authorities cannot usually arrest diplomats, regardless of whether or not the diplomat is in an embassy.

Sovereignty isn't binary, and states and laws are one of many social constructs. Discussing the complexities is interesting. Purely semantic arguments is not.

I was responding to OP's claim that Assange was not "in the UK" when he was in the embassy. That's false on any reasonable understanding of those words. It would only be true if embassies were in fact foreign soil.

> If international treaty obligations block sovereignty, then the UK isn't sovereign within the UK either (!)

Yup. International treaties are an exchange of sovereignty for something else. The general public imagine that XIX-century-style nation states still exist, but they haven't for a long time. I suspect the USA's rhetoric of patriotism, especially post-9/11 exacerbates this view. Even the USA shares a lot of its sovereignty with external entities (gasp!).

The only XIX-century-style nation state left might be North Korea, FWIW.

Yeah it is pretty much De Jure vs. De Facto. they may have De Jure access, but De Facto they do not.

> Extraterritoriality of embassies is a myth...

Along with the myth of not being "in" country X when you're in airside transit on an international-international itinerary through an airport there.

Both are metaphors that hold in some cases, and break down in others.

He was before he ran to the embassy, skipping bail, on the pretext that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, Sweden would extradite him to the U.S.

That's an invalid pretext.

Why is that invalid?

He was in the UK for two years after leaving Sweden before he entered the embassy. Had he really been fearful of extradition to the US, why would he choose to run away to the country which (at least at the time) has the strongest ties to the US?

He did not run to the UK. The charges in Sweden had been dropped and he was allowed to leave the country. I'll give you that the UK is a bad choice to go, but at the time he was free and clear of any charges. Only after he was in the UK, Sweden reopened their investigation, and at first reported him as a "witness" they'd like to interview, and that's what they based their request for extradition on. He wasn't "accused" at the time Sweden filed.

His "pre-text" wasn't that he feared the UK would extradite him to the US, but that the UK would extradite him to Sweden, which would extradite him to the UK. So he was fearful of Sweden, not the UK. You can say that this is stupid or even claim he cannot genuinely believe that and is therefore disingenuous, but unless a true mindreader shows up, we cannot know what he thought and feared, really.

He was obviously free to leave the country, but his lawyer was advised the case had been reopened 5 days before he arrived in the UK

>He did not run to the UK. The charges in Sweden had been dropped and he was allowed to leave the country.

True - I'd forgotten that part.

In any case - the case was reopened in November 2010, and Assange didn't enter the embassy until June 2012. If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.

In addition to the above, EU law forbids extradition chains (Assange extradited from the UK -> Sweden, and then Sweden -> US) without explicit permissions from all involved countries.

> I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone

Probably, but there are likely extreme hurdles to such "disappearing" of well known persons (especially those who are not universally hated). Having the technical capability is one thing. Effectively acknowledging its use in a mostly friendly, sovereign country is a very different matter.

Yes, they do. It's called extraordinary rendition.

Extraditing from Sweden would probably require the permission of the UK government, who are generally more than willing to bend over backwards for the US on this kind of thing. What it avoids is getting the UK courts involved; how much that matters in practice is an interesting question. Also, I don't think the US was ready to extradite him yet back in 2010.

Edit: yep, arrest warrant supposedly issued in December 2017 over his work with Manning back in 2010.

It wouldn't avoid the UK courts getting involved; consent from the UK for onward extradition from Sweden is subject to judicial review, much like any other extradition request.

The CIA killing him would have created a huge us pr nightmare.

Correct. And would have been entirely unnecessary, because they could just wait him out.

If the goal is deterrence, he works just as well as a symbol rotting in the Ecuadorian embassy as either dead or rotting in jail.

> wasn't that he feared the UK would extradite him to the US, but that the UK would extradite him to Sweden, which would extradite him to the UK

I assume you mean "extradite him to the US"

Why would Sweden extradite him to the U.S. when the UK wouldn't?

Either way, he promised the UK courts he wouldn't flee. Then he fled. Now he's been arrested for skipping bail. Good. Everytime someone skips bail, it makes it harder for innocent people to get bail when they are charged with crimes they didn't commit.

Indeed, "to the US"

I don't know what he was thinking? Maybe he had memories of Pinochet not being extradited from the UK? Maybe he had memories of the Swedes doing the bidding of the US re:thepiratebay?

The Swedes have previously allowed the CIA to just straight up kidnap people, outside of the legal process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

Yeah, well... using CIA and SOF to abduct people is just US M.O. With or without permission from the "host" country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah_Krekar#CIA,_Pentagon,_a...

People might be interested in the case from 2018 where Assange tries, and fails, to get the arrest warrant for breaching bail to be dropped.

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/Misc/...

Scotland Yard just confirmed the validity of that invalid pretext.

I can’t think of a single country where running from a valid warrant claiming fear of extradition doesn’t make you guilty of resisting arrest. Legal systems do not typically respond well when the accused flee.

Umm, given that upon his arrest by the UK police the US government requested his extradition before the Swedish government did, I would say that invalid pretext was neither invalid or a pretext.

And his pretext was also that he'd face the death penalty in the US, which is a bit absurd. Chelsea Manning was his co-conspirator and look what she got. She didn't get a death sentence, she got government funded gender reassignment surgery, 35 years which Obama commuted down to 7 years, and contempt of court for refusing a direct court order to appear. Not great, but neither is leaking droves of classified information she was sworn to protect.

She was also tortured[1]. So there's that.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...

Tortured being defined as solitary confinement and terrible conditions, not like legitimate torture that happened in places like Abu Gharib.

If the UN has defined it as torture, then I feel reasonably confident saying it's "legitimate torture".

Yes, I'm sure many people have been "more tortured" by the US government (or other governments) than Chelsea Manning -- but it doesn't change the fact she was tortured.

More easily. The UK has extradited people to the US on questionable grounds before. I don't think Sweden has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

and as context, albeit very long ago, I might aswell mention the most known case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_extradition_of_Baltic_...

Sweden have also done this. Sorry for the swedish link but found no better: https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptenavvisningarna

Indeed. More easily because the US/UK extradition agreement only requires each country's courts to apply the same tests as they use domestically to allow an arrest. In the US that test is called probable cause, in the UK it's called reasonable suspicion.

(Some people at the time felt that this was not fair as the US test is arguably a tougher one but arguably that just reflects the country's domestic arrest policies being different. In any case, the UK refuses far more US extradition requests than vice versa. If you want to read 400 pages on this, the Baker Extradition review which also covers the European Arrest Warrant and the Prima Facie test is available online.)

> It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him.

Don't worry no such thing exists, it's all conspiracy theories as they said for years...

> Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

GP was probably sarcastic

They were conspiracy theories when they were first made. This indictment was issued six years after he entered the embassy. If the US had wanted to extradite him at the time, they could've tried at any point in the two years that he was in the UK before skipping bail.

I wish Australia would step up and actually defend one of their citizens.

Australia is part of 5 eyes. Very unlikely they will do anything.

'Straya would prosecute and send him to jail immediately. They are even more 1984 than USA.

Australia just released a statement that they will continue to offer general consul services, and that's it.

Too little too late there, Australia.

He is a dual national now, which only complicates any attempt, Australia's connection with Five-eyes and other military and political arrangements aside.

When has that complicated anything? Being a dual citizen is a huge benefit everywhere on Earth. For anyone with enough resources and time I'd encourage collecting citizenships like they were Pokemon.

Because usually you are treated as being a citizen of the country whose passport you are travelling on. If you flew to China and were arrested of a crime, you are much better off having used your US passport than the Malta passport you purchased, or worse, the Sudanese passport you bribed an official for.

But it's not much use if your other passport is Chinese.

> Because usually you are treated as being a citizen of the country whose passport you are travelling on.

By your host country maybe (though I don't agree it's as cut-and-dry as that), but your home country will still treat you as a citizen regardless of your other citizenship statuses (except in the case you are a citizen of your host country). So they should still give you the same aid they'd give any other citizen -- and in some cases the UK has actually helped UK citizens flee a country even though they are a citizen of said country (examples include forced marriages of dual Iran/UK citizens in Iran).

> For anyone with enough resources and time I'd encourage collecting citizenships like they were Pokemon.

Care to elaborate? What kind of benefits one could get out of it? There's tons of information on topic from biased sources like law firms, but very little otherwise.

Except in most countries you can't have more than 2 or 3 official nationalities

Well, technically any country that accepts a doubly nationality accepts a plurality - you simply don't inform all the other countries of your other nationalities.

Wrong.

In many countries you can't have two. But as long as "dual citizenship" is recognized, there is no upper limit.

Generally being able to customize the terms of your travel, being able to permanently leave your home country, somewhat being able to choose tax jurisdiction, consular support from multiple sources if things go pearshaped.

Older people probably value choosing favourable healthcare systems too. Nations aren't static entities, I'd doubt you'd find many people willing to bet on a single country's circumstance being exactly the same 30 years from now.

For the wealthy gaining dual/multi citizenship is common across the world and plenty of Western nations sell it off willingly.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...

Be careful about picking up a citizenship in a country with conscription.

Australia is run by a bunch of corrupt neoliberal oligarchs burning the place to the ground on the way out the door

They have "better" things to do than worry about some "peasant". Like their six figure pensions and lobbying deals

Is there a country who's citizens don't think their government is corrupt?

The Nordic countries, New Zealand, Switzerland and Singapore are perceived as least corrupt by experts and in opinion polls. Do the citizens agree?

Norway is doing pretty well for a country with such a large sovereign wealth fund; most places would have had it stolen by now. It seems they just have the ordinary run of scandals: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45173500

I love Norwegian political scandals. Compared to American scandals, they are just nothing but people are held accountable anyways. I would love to see some American politicians career ended because they took their phone to a country they should not have.

If a married US Democrat took their secret Iranian girlfriend to Iran with their government phone the scandal would last about a decade.

Only if he was Black.

Or democrat

It's worth noting that while the wealth fund is enormous, it is also being spent [1] to cover budget deficits. (More specifically, the returns are being spent.)

The government has historically tried to avoid doing so, but had to dip into the funds in 2016–2018. The rules around spending was formalized in 2001 [2], but the extent to which Norway was dipping into the funds has been controversial the last few years, with economists warning that it puts the country at risk in a future economic downturn.

Norway's wealth fund is actually codified as law, which makes it difficult for a future government to "steal" it.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-02/norway-st...

[2] https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

I'm Danish. Prime minister is a drunken buffoon with no apparent shred of personal integrity, and generally I hold all politicians to be only in it for the perks and the power and the sex, but no, I wouldn't call our government corrupt, just institutionally inept, because politicians are not in the business of reasoning, and the administrative apparatus is Pournelle's iron law run amok.

We simply don't do corrupt to any significant degree. Probably the niftiest social trick the Scandinavian societies ever evolved.

Come to think of it, I was offered a bribe today, just a few hours ago. Turned it down without even thinking.

The fact that you were offered a bribe today, and it does not seem like a big deal to you, makes your argument somewhat weaker.

I'm Swiss and agree.

I'm Finnish. Almost everyone I know has lost all confidence in the political system years ago.

Same, it's pretty jarring. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

What has caused that? What isn’t working?

This is anecdotal, but I think the common perception is that voting just doesn't matter - politicians make promises to get votes and don't follow through after the elections. And it's the same politicians cycling in and out, year after year. Clearly people are voting for them, but just as clearly there is a large portion of the population that feels like their concerns aren't being addressed. What's interesting is that the people I know personally who've more or less given up on politics can't be clearly identified as belonging to a specific demographic. Some of them are students, some are male knowledge workers in their 20's and 30's, some are female medical professionals and administrators in their 50's and 60's. My father, who is an academic, has the most faith in the political process among the people I know.

One of my Singaporean friends mentioned that the population is quite content with their government, they are enjoying the countries prosperity and the country is peaceful. He said, "Why change a working system?"

As a Canadian I think the government is corrupt, but not dysfunctionally so

As a former resident of BC, I think the former government was dysfunctionally corrupt, in the sense that the corruption was actively leading to dysfunction in the province.

It's one thing when politicians steal for themselves. It's another thing entirely when they steal for their friends.

Many North Koreans hold their leadership in high regard

If true this could be because all governments tend toward corruption.

Do you really need to put "neoliberal" in front of oligarch? It imparts on them a commitment to principles that they don't uphold. This is a government that undermines core liberal values like private property rights and privacy rights, with a multitude of financial regulations, surveillance state anti-money-laundering laws, and prohibitions on unrestricted use of encrypted communication.

But we have to know which team they're on!!

As I understand the term 'neo-liberal' it's kind of a hybrid ideology that strides the two US political parties. Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton are both neo-liberals, though ostensibly, opposed to each other. It's basically the worst of the political philosophies espoused by the two parties. Basically it means more authoritarian control and the prosecution of wars all over the planet for the sake of establishing a new world order.

>This is a government that undermines core liberal values like private property rights and privacy rights, with a multitude of financial regulations, surveillance state anti-money-laundering laws, and prohibitions on unrestricted use of encrypted communication.

That's the "neo" part of "neo-liberal".

But "neoliberalism" is frequently derided as a free-market fundamentalist ideology that was the driving force behind a period of alleged deregulation and government cut-backs extending from the early 1980s to the present. It's really an inaccurate characterization of both the last 40 years and the beliefs of the parties in charge.

Wikileaks has leaked 10 some-odd documents on Australia, so I don't expect them to go to bat for him.

The problem with being a uniform thorn in everybody's side is you run out of friends.

Assange is anything but a uniform thorn. He has continually supported and looked out for Russian interests.

If he wasn't biased there would be a lot more public support for him.

You're basing this on what? St. Mueller has finished his investigation, and precisely no one will be going to prison for "Russian election meddling". If they didn't do this horrible thing (that is entirely protected by 1A), then how could anyone have helped them do this horrible thing?

First Amendment protections are not extended to non-US citizens.

"Congress shall make no law..."

Simple people imagine that "freedom of speech" is primarily good for the speaker. In fact, it's good for everyone in USA to know true facts about their politicians, no matter who publicizes those facts.

Empirical evidence suggests this is not the case:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2017/01/30/does-th...

> Noncitizens undeniably have a wide range of rights under the Constitution. Indeed, within the borders of the United States, they have most of the same rights as citizens do, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent bans most state laws discriminating against noncitizens. There is little if any serious controversy among experts over this matter.

https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/t-he-constitutional-rights...

Ummmm Mueller indicted many Russian nationals.

Reading is fundamental. Said nationals will never see the inside of USA courtrooms. That being the case, standards for indictment were even lower than their usual ham-sandwich levels. FBI never saw the damn servers. They just believed Crowdstrike when he said "oh yeah those servers were just infested with Russkies. By the way we've melted down all the hard drives. We like to recycle!" Good grief, this wouldn't pass the laugh test even in the pathetic courts we have.

Why did Mueller put on such a goofy show, when he knew all along he would indict no American for "Russian collusion"? He was throwing his friends in the media a bone. They've pushed this long enough to guarantee Trump's reelection, which is all they ever wanted. Ratings gold!

Read the indictments not alt-right media.

Sorry to burst your stereotype, I'm getting this from such "alt-rightists" as Greenwald, Maté, Taibbi, Caitlin Johnstone, Jimmy Dore, etc. We don't want Trump reelected; we didn't want him elected in the first place. Unfortunately the self-interested news media have at this point made that inevitable.

I've already donated to Tulsi. Have you?

Tulsi is another Russia-supported candidate per social media trackers. Odd coincidence.

Your talking points don't stand up to reading the indictments.

What are talking points? I thought the claim was that I am "alt-right", except now I find you don't support the only authentically pacifist candidate? Did you know that our blood and our taxes are being wasted at war in eight nations, right now? Which leaves out the dozens of nations where we have troops or spooks lurking in support of God-knows-what evil CIA plots? With Venezuela scheduled as soon as CNN can stage a convincing attack on a soi-disant humanitarian aid convoy? Meanwhile you're cheering on your best buddy Trump in persecuting Manning and Assange? Meanwhile you cling without evidence to a facially risible conspiracy theory about the Russians changing an election with a couple thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, while most Trump voters aren't online but watch TV news for the entire 27 hours a day that Trump is on it? You're incoherent.

I am skeptical, and I've always been skeptical. You seem instead to be credulous. The topic of the day is bullshit, so skepticism is more appropriate than credulity.

Which means nada in terms of Assange and also none of them will see a courtroom.

OP said they won’t go to prison because Trump wasn’t found colluding. It’s nonsensical. As though, Trump not telling Russia what to do means it didn’t happen. We know beyond a doubt Russia interfered. We also know Assange was one of their stooges. Read the indictments.

> We also know Assange was one of their stooges

No we don't. Stop spreading propaganda. Even if they were the source, there's no evidence that Assange knew who the source was.

> Read the indictments.

Indictments != convictions.

Read the indictments. It’s not propaganda. It’s fact. Assange distributed emails stolen by the GRU.

Again, indictments != convictions. There's many things you can indict that you'll not win a case in court on.

> Assange distributed emails stolen by the GRU.

Let's say he did. That does not mean he knew where they came from, or even that he received them from the same/original source.

I never said they were convicted. I said the factual evidence is laid out in the indictments. I said he was their stooge. That doesn't mean he knew he was their stooge.

Indictments contain allegations, not facts. This is Civics 101. An informed commentator could not honestly post multiple attempts to blur this distinction. What does that say about you?

Yep, facts and allegations. Read the indictments.

We know, because we are informed citizens, that indictments contain allegations. Having read an indictment, how could it change that? Is there some special incantation that could have been included, which would have transformed it into some sort of super-indictment that also contains facts? No, there is no such incantation. If an indictment claims that the sun rises in the east, that's still just an allegation. Someone might believe an allegation for whatever idiosyncratic reason might personally obtain, but that's totally subjective. No one else cares.

Once an allegation has been defended against cross-examination in a court, it might make the transition to fact. (Or it might totally fall apart. I doubt the charlatans at Crowdstrike would fare well under cross. "You mean you never actually examined the servers, and just took your clients' word that they had properly imaged the hard drives before destroying them? These were the same clients who had placed similar servers that neither you nor FBI ever examined in a restroom next to a toilet?") You're probably ill-informed enough to think that court proceeding has happened already. To be better informed, you should read more reliable journalism.

They won't go to prison in USA because they'll never go to trial in USA. Hint: they're Russians who live in Russia. Even if they did show up to a USA courthouse, the trial would just be indefinitely postponed, like for instance the trial of Concord Management which was supposed to start a year ago. Mueller didn't give them a day in court, for a year, and now he has retired.

Don't waste too much effort defending Mueller. Just like with e.g. Comey who was praised before he was reviled before he was praised, alternate orders on Mueller will soon come through for you. The war pigs are not pleased with his performance.

So what? Netanyahu once gave a speech to Congress in the middle of elections. All countries interfere all the time. Some citizens have positive views of the countries those individuals represent some don’t. It doesn’t matter. Countries don’t have friend, they have interests that either align or don’t. Singling out Russia doesn’t in anyway lead to causation on the part of Assange.

Yes, but none of the charges are related to conspiracy with the Russian government.

There are only a handful of conspiracy against the US charges, and they are all related to Ukrainian interests long before the 2016 election (which were related to pro-US Ukrainian interests).

So yes, there are many Mueller indictments, but they do not fit the (now discredited) Russia-Gate narrative. Yes, Trump is surrounded by all kinds of criminals (and almost certainly is one himself) but this should be a shock to nobody -- he hired people directly related to mafias in several countries.

What? You need to read more. Read the indictments yourself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/us/politics/russians-indi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller-indic...

I was referencing indictments of Americans (which is what almost everyone thinks of when you refer to Russia-related conspiracies). None of those were in relation to Russia-related conspiracies and the Mueller Report (or rather the Barr summary) confirms as much.

The Barr summary has been disputed by some of Mueller's team but those disputes are in relation to the obstruction of justice questions.

As for the Russian indictments, I'm not sure if there's much to say. Quite a few of the indictments are related to sockpuppet accounts and Facebook ads (illegal but not to the degree suggested by the tone of the media coverage). The ones related to Russia hacking the DNC were disputed by some research done by Bill Binney and a bunch if other intelligence veterans[1] -- showing some evidence that the information must have been leaked by an insider because the transfer speeds were too fast for exfiltration over the internet. Unfortunately all the people indicted are Russian nationals and thus won't face prosecution in the US, so we won't ever know what the truth of the matter is.

[1]: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...

Wikileaks declining to publish this at a critical moment in time does seem telling. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...

The government is on your side.

Lookup the Queen of Australia.

Pretty sure he is from Austria not Australia which is only close in the dictionary.

There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released. He has been most certainly accused of breaking United States laws.

Edit: To indict someone, the government has to show the grand jury that there is sufficient evidence. It is very easy to indict someone (hence the phrase “A ham sandwich can be indicted by the grand jury”) but one has to acknowledge the fact that the federal government has very high win rate for the cases that do go to trial (93% in 2012)

Edit2: The above statistic is for the cases that go to trial and plea deals. Only 3% of the cases go to trial.

I'm not an expert, is this (93%) by conviction or plea deal? One would assume he doesn't plea guilty.

I just went thought the DOJ website. It included both trial and plea deals. So maybe not that impressive.

> There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released.

Details here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...

Grand Juries have a very high indict rate, especially federal ones, but there’s arguments about why that is.

One argument is obviously that grand juries are pushovers and indeed would literally indict a ham sandwich.

The other argument, hinted above, is that prosecutors only move to indict if they think they have a chance to win at trial. Since the evidentiary standards are much higher for conviction, that means they easily clear the requirements for the grand jury indictment the vast majority of the time.

I also read in the DOJ report that they dismiss not so significant number of cases for the lack of overwhelming evidence or for the lack of criminal intent.

Yes, that is also true. One must always keep in mind the opportunity cost of prosecution, where losing a case means that you might have one a different one with the same resources.

It's not just that they're pushovers, it's a completely one-sided affair. They only hear from the prosecution (the defendant is not present, let alone granted legal representation) and the prosecution is allowed extensive leeway in attempting to gain the indictment including offering evidence that would not be allowed in trial, such as hearsay [1]. And whether a case can be won or not at trial is a secondary consideration for prosecutors. The vast majority of cases end up finishing in plea deals out of court. Above somebody mentioned 3%. The exact number will vary by state, but is invariably well below 10%.

So more important than whether a case can be won at trial is whether or not a defendant can be pressured into conceding. And in many things it's generally not hard. Imagine you think you have an 80% chance of acquittal at court, which would see you set free immediately. Yet losing at court would see you serve up to 10 years. And the prosecutor offers you 2 years + time served, which with early release means you'll be spending about a month in jail. Even though you are innocent and think there's an overwhelmingly good chance of being able to prove as such, you'd be a fool to do anything except accept the plea.

In some ways I wish plea bargains were not a thing. It'd massively reduce our arrest and imprisonment rate simply because we could not fulfill the constitutional requirement of a speedy trial with millions of people in the system for mostly irrelevant crimes, and it would also avoid this sort of 'loophole' of allowing prosecutors to score convictions even when the defendant felt he would have a good chance of defending himself at trial but is unable to do so due to risk:reward considerations.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay_in_United_States_law#A...

Having been through the federal criminal system, I can vouch the sentence one can receive after loosing a trial can be ten times longer than one plea bargained for.

If you want to reduce the rate of arrests in the United States, we need to change the culture around the fetishization of punishment. The belief that those in jail "deserve" everything they get, including inhumane treatment, drives all that is ill with our criminal justice system. Adjusting how plea bargains work might help and might not, but we need to start changing culture first.

> There is a sealed indictment against him in EDVA which was accidentally released.

No, there was an inadvertent mention in a filing made in another case which strongly suggests that there is an indictment in EDVA, which would have to be sealed because no unsealed indictment exists. The indictment itself was not released.

US has formally requested his extradition so its probably no longer sealed.

Even if it were unsealed (and when it is, that's going to be a separate news storm [0], so I'm relatively certain it wasn't at the moment of the request or arrest), that wouldn't change the historical fact that it was not released, only indirectly referenced.

[0] EDIT: And now it has been and it is.

Unsealed: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

So they pushed manning to get her arrested again and breach her immunity so that they could get to assange. Clever.

They asked her to talk to them in a way that would in no way incriminate her. She refused, so they locked her up for contempt of court.

If anyone else did the same, they'd get the same result for contempt of court. While I respect her peaceful protest, what did she expect?

I'm certain that she fully expected what happened, given that she could at any time change her mind and talk to them. I have a great deal of respect for her standing up for her principles, even though I'm not so sure about Assange at this point.

I'm entirely with you on both. She thinks the concept of Grand Juries if wrong and should be eliminated. In reality, it would toss the existing US legal system on its head. I don't fault her one bit for sticking to her guns, but actions have consequences. She's super smart and obviously knew she'd get jailed for contempt of court. However, that does sort of play into her "they treat me awful" narrative.

IMO, Julian deserves a lot harsher sentence than Manning, but what he's been indicted on thusfar, is pretty week with a max federal sentence of only 5 years. I fully expect the prosecution to use this to bargain with him for a plea (and info on Russian election tampering). Their dangle to him would be a whole slew of superceding indictments they'll almost certainly have him dead to rights on. Guccifer 2 has been proven by Mueller's indictments to be a GRU (Russian Military) intelligence operation. Stone, Julian, and Guccifer 2 were all pals. That's not a good place to be when you're in US custody.

2) is interesting because going down this path would involve investigating the motivation behind WikiLeaks communicating with the GRU and what WikiLeaks intended to do with the information they obtained once they did so (just a one-shot dump of everything versus strategically-times leaks). The timing of Assange’s arrest occurring a few weeks after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation seems opportune albeit coincidental. A more sinister and cynical interpretation of this timing would be an attempt to wrap up any perceived loose ends.

Edited a few times after proofreading.

If we're talking coincidences, I can't get over how this is happening right in the middle of Brexit, and immediately after the successful Cooper-Letwin bill to stave it off further.

Obviously Ecuador has no stake in Brexit directly, but of interest is the Farage connection: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/19/trump-russi...

I think every single one of US government's "espionage" charges over the past several decades ended in settlements.

Why would a government so keen on accusing people of espionage and no doubt wanting to set a precedent for various things being classified as espionage (such as leaks), settle so easily?

Well, because the charges have always been bogus and they know it. Daniel Ellsberg of the "Pentagon Papers" fame has made it extremely difficult if not downright impossible for the government to win in such cases.

If the US government will succeed in sentencing Assange, it won't be due to a espionage charge, but something else entirely, or at best, yet another plea bargain.

> Daniel Ellsberg of the "Pentagon Papers" fame has made it extremely difficult if not downright impossible for the government to win in such cases.

The Ellsberg case was resolved though when the case mistrialed because of prosecutorial misconduct so egregious it prevented the defendants from ever being able to have a fair trial. It was not resolved with any finding that any of the underlying charges were without merit, and therefore did not establish any legal precedent.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...

> Why would a government so keen on accusing people of espionage and no doubt wanting to set a precedent for various things being classified as espionage (such as leaks), settle so easily?

Because you've misunderstood the motive: it's not about setting precedent, it's about securing convictions for the people charged. Which plea bargain guilty pleas do.

> Daniel Ellsberg of the "Pentagon Papers" fame has made it extremely difficult if not downright impossible for the government to win in such cases.

For cases like the Ellsberg case , sure, but that's because of the gross prosecutorial misconduct in that case, not the substance of the charges.

I think the criminal argument is that he was acting as a cutout for Russian intelligence with the dnc leaks.

> I think the criminal argument is that he was acting as a cutout for Russian intelligence with the dnc leaks.

That may be a (relatively new) criminal argument, but there is also Manning plus 18 USC §2(a): “Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.” (emphasis added)

Plus probably all kinds of stuff in between.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg... looks like its related to manning.

You mean like, say, someone asking a foreign power to conduct a cyberattack on a US political party?

You are referring to what Hillary Clinton and Perkins Coie did via Fusion GPS? Yes, exactly.

There is no evidence that there are any charges related to Russia. In theory it is long standing legal theory that publishing "stolen" docs is legal. Now I suspect in people's hatred for Assange they will overlook the fact that if this new legal theory is allowed to stand that the first amendment is effectively destroyed. The government will be able to label something secret and getting access to the secret is now a crime. Free to publish but not free to receive information. Catch 22.

That was quick

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633234

Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as possible.

> It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him. It's actually not 100% clear that he's broken any US laws in any ways that they aren't also routinely broken by newspapers.

He has also been arrested on the extradition warrant to the US:

http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

>It will be interesting to see if the US tries to extradite him.

Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

Edit: Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

For those who prefer the original source: http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

The actual indictment:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...

Snowden: The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking. The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade: it is the count Obama's DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1116336550873317377

If Assange gets extradited on a charge that the previous administration wouldn't push but the administration his organization assisted in getting elected is willing to (because they don't care about such a paltry thing as "endangering the protections provided to freedom of the press by the US Constitution"), it will be the highest of ironies.

The US government is not a monolith, it consists of many competing factions.

It's not at all obvious which faction initiated the extradition request, or for what purpose.

It's possible this is to pressure Assange to provide evidence in the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election.

It's also possible this is an attempt to sequester him to prevent disclosure of information about those events.

A third possibility is that this is an attack on the press.

Even without a conviction, it will have a chilling effect on journalists publishing classified information, which is not currently a crime.

With a conviction, it will establish a dark new precedent that criminalizes much of the most consequential reporting.

And that would not be irony, it would be tragedy.

It's interesting that it may have been avoidable if he'd accepted rendition to Sweden to stand trial for the sexual assault accusation, given that the previous administration was apparently uninterested in extraditing him for this charge.

He likely made the situation worse by hiding out in the embassy---he became a symbol of something untouchable by American power, and this administration cares more about that sort of perception than the previous one.

Deport to Sweden then deport to the USA was the scheme Assange was afraid of IIRC. Something about Sweden having a stronger deportation treaty than the UK...

As evidenced by the "Cablegate" leak, it's more the fact that when the US government tells the Swedish government to jump, the latter asks "how high?" like a trained fucking poodle.

Regardless of which side is in power.

Link the leak? In this case, extraditing to Sweden on a wholly unrelated charge than to extradite to the US seems like a thing Sweden would not want because it would have hurt their credibility in future extraditions. All speculative now, ofc.

Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...

Sweden has pretty much zero credibility when it comes to extraditions requested by the US: https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-...

The fourth possibility - and this one never ceases to be true in all cases when it comes to the Feds - is that the people seeking his prosecution are spiteful as hell. They are not used to not getting their way. It's extremely fearsome to go up against the US Government when it wants your neck, because they have so many ways to destroy your life all around the world. They have infinite resources for all practical purposes and can just keep coming at you.

One of the few consistencies I've seen in my lifetime across all major US Government agencies is that they seem to hold grudges forever. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, DOJ, IRS or SEC. Assange, out there, is a persistent waving defiance of their perceived power and reach (and worse, right in the US sphere of influence).

Not sure why you're getting grayed down, but what you say is right on the money.

+1. When I was a Boy Scout, I had confirmation direct from an FBI agent that once somebody is wanted, the Agency has a long memory and a long reach.

The anecdote he shared was a fugitive fled to Saudi Arabia. Over a decade and a half, the fugitive grew a small business empire and was well-connected. In tandem with allies in Saudi Arabia, the FBI arranged a lavish party on a yacht to which their target was invited. The yacht sailed out to international waters and FBI agents apprehended him and put him on a Navy cruiser out at sea.

What I wonder is how those same people in the US would feel if countries like China or Russia did the same thing openly.

Does it matter if they do the same thing (or worse) openly or covertly?

Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Yingying_Zhan...

Uh, you sure you linked the right article for China?

I've been involved in enough government stuff to know that resources like that don't get spent unless the target is _really_ bad.

The FBI often refers cases with single digit millions in losses to state and local, because the SAs are busy with bigger cases.

Supporting your point are people like Poitras getting extra, random screening after publishing documentaries about US wars. They've often been vindictive given it's power-loving, egotistical, image-conscious politicians running them.

> The US government is not a monolith, it consists of many competing factions.

The original comment said "administration", not "government". The current administration IS largely a monolith, given that nearly every high-level cabinet appointee has either been unqualified for the role or are ideologues who appear to have been hired on the basis of their loyalty to the Pres.

- Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser

- Scott Pruit as head of the EPA

- Ben Carson as Sec of Housing

- Rex Tiller as Sec of State

- Herman Cain and Stephen Moore on the board of the Fed

The list goes on an on.

I chose to say "US government" instead of "administration" because it may or may not have been the "administration" that requested the UK to extradite Assange.

Other factions within the US government are attempting to hold the executive branch in check, and it's possible that one of these factions requested the arrest and extradition.

At this point we do not know.

> I chose to say "US government" instead of "administration" because it may or may not have been the "administration" that requested the UK to extradite Assange.

No one outside of the administration has the authority to request extradition.

Irony seems to be deprecated these days.

Interesting, as the current narrative (on thehill.com, a left-center bias news source no less) is that this is all caused by fears from the Obama administration personnel: https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/394036-How-Comey-int...

Though it is also the narrative on russia propaganda sites https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201806271065837436-comey-as...

It’s odd, I just heard Greenwald pinning it on the Trump admin. Not the legacy of of Obama’s DoJ. I guess he’d like to see Trump personally involved to rescind the prev DoJ indictment?

Also international left is still on his side defending him, but thd US left want to see him hung out to dry. Interesting split.

Odd, that's not my impression. Seems like the center (on both sides) and non-libertarian right want to see him in jail.

Wikileaks is reliably anti-institution, regardless of what that institution is. That implies that anyone seeking political power through control of institutions would be against him, which includes basically all non-libertarians in the U.S, as well as any major corporation, NGO, or nation-state large enough to be a target. His support would come from smaller nations (like Ecuador) or civil-rights organizations that themselves serve as watchdogs for institutionalized power.

"seeking political power through control of institutions" seems entirely subjective. Why is someone on the far left running for office doing this moreso than a libertarian?

Because they have fundamentally different ideas for how much control those institutions should have over individual people. The far left (assuming communism here, which is the historical far left, though "far left" in America today is somewhat more tame) believes that all citizens should have an equitable distribution of resources, and that it's justified to compel people to work to achieve this equality. The libertarian philosophy is that people should not be compelled to do anything. One of these necessarily involves the exercise of more power by institutions.

You could look at it through the lens of positive vs. negative rights. The far left believes in positive rights (eg. the right to health care, the right to education) which require action by another party. If no party is willing to provide those services, the only way to guarantee that right is to force someone. Libertarians believe in negative rights (eg. freedom from violence, freedom from compulsion, freedom from taxation), which just require inaction. If you simply get rid of the institution, you assure the rights that libertarians care about - at least until some other institution crops up that seeks to infringe upon them. (Many libertarians make exceptions to their general anti-institutional bent to assure that no other institution crops up. For example, most support the government's monopoly on physical force simply to prevent some warlord from generating a local monopoly on physical force and using it to take away the freedoms from compulsion or theft, as long as that's the only purpose that it's used for.)

> to compel people to work ...

I'm not aware of any "far-left" party or politician in the US or Europe who says it's justified to compel anyone to work.

Taxing income or redistributing wealth does not compel anyone to work.

Indeed, it's right-libertarian policies that tend to transfer wealth from those at the bottom of the pyramid who work to those at the top of the pyramid who do not work.

> it's right-libertarian policies that tend to transfer wealth from those at the bottom of the pyramid who work to those at the top of the pyramid who do not work

Historical experience suggests the opposite.

There are certain branches of communism that do believe in forced work for bad elements (criminals for example) of society. I don't believe any mainstream US or Europe politician approximates communism, even less that branches.

My take with GP is the question of where would the various left wing anarchists fit in his explanation. Also, I would argue that the classical critique against private property that right libertarians reivindicate is that the state is actually equivalent to the warlord on the example and is inevitable of the concept of private property.

> Taxing income or redistributing wealth does not compel anyone to work.

It does compel, as you are essentially taking wealth away from people, therefore they will have work more to compensate.

if you don't work, your income isn't taxed, so it does not compel you to work. You could not work and not be taxed

On the libertarian-authoritarian axis, "far left" could mean anything and is hence meaningless. If you're using that label to mean left-libertarian, then with respect to institutions they are simply libertarian.

But to the extent they're credibly running for office, they're likely tending towards left-flavored authoritarian because carrying the banner for policies that will benefit some entrenched interests is how elections are won in the US.

The "left" is too broad a stroke to paint with for this situation. The left in the US is quite split on these issues (and an increasing number of other issues).

The so-called "New Democrats" (think Clinton, Biden, Kamala Harris) are surely who you are referring to; they want him crucified. The "progressive" wing of the left (think Ralph Nader) do NOT fit that description. IMHO as a lifelong Southern California resident in Los Angeles, the progressive left has more support among common people, but the Clinton Democrats have more support from the donor class. Hence, the media narrative of the American left is dominated by the corporatist dems.

I don’t believe the progressive left have more support among common people. They have more support among a small minority of very vocal people on social media which makes their influence seem much larger than it is. I think we’ll see a huge backlash against progressives in the next election cycle.

I suppose we will see. The Republican establishment thought the same thing about Trump in 2016 -- a small but vocal minority.

By and large, people I spoke to during 2016 were not fans of Hillary Clinton, but had resigned to the fact the she would be the candidate by virtue of her wealthy donors.

Identity politics is still a big thing on the left, so the fact that Bernie Sanders, despite being an "old white man", has so much support from the common people speaks volumes about the shift away from the Clinton-era centrism

How come that didn't come to pass in the most recent election?

TheHill is right-center (although it's right-leaning in the old Bush/Romney sense, not the newer Trump sense):

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/product/media-bias-chart-4-0-d...

I think there is a problem in this Matrix as CNN appears very close to the center :) I'm proposing another classification system based on a simple binary checkbox named "Telegraphist of the state department" and I am putting the entirety of mainstream media in it.

In other words "they're all the same".

Sounds like a pretty useless classification system for the current situation, honestly

> Interesting, as the current narrative (on thehill.com, a left-center bias news source no less)

TheHill is solid right (or maybe center-right if one views the neoliberal faction of the Democratic Party as center-left instead of center-right.) It's not “left-center” in any case.

>Interesting, as the current narrative (on thehill.com, a left-center bias news source no less) is that this is all caused by fears from the Obama administration personnel

The author isn't left-center biased. It's the opposite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Solomon

>John F. Solomon is an American media executive and columnist. He is currently vice president of digital video and an opinion contributor for The Hill.[1] He is known primarily for his tenure as an executive and editor-in-chief at The Washington Times.[2] He has been accused of biased reporting in favor of conservatives, and of repeatedly manufacturing faux scandals

Looks like Snowden deleted the tweet is he next or url was bad?

> The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking. The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade: it is the count Obama's DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism.

That's an argument against the desirability of the charge because of knock on effects (or, rather, because of some other actors past perception of such effects), not an argument supporting the claim that the charge is weak. In fact, were it weak, it would pose little danger even if it was the kind of charge that, considerations of strength aside, would pose danger.

Surely if a previous DOJ refused to prosecute the case it is 'weak' in some sense. Perhaps in the sense that while a crime can be proven, it's not an appropriate use of public resources to prosecute. Or perhaps because there is prima facie evidence of a crime but First Amendment arguments could potentially prevent the government from securing a conviction. I haven't yet found a source for the claim that the DOJ previously declined to prosecute, which might shed some light on this.

> Surely if a previous DOJ refused to prosecute the case it is 'weak' in some sense.

No, prosecutorial decisions are not, even in theory, made based solely on the strength of cases; while that is a factor, evaluation of importance (including cost/benefit considerationa), which are ultimately policy decisions which different decision-makers (and even the same decision-maker at a different time, particularly if facts pertinent to the prioritization but not the strength the of the case change) are likely to see differently even with the same view of strength of the case, are also a factor.

Plus, available evidence and relevant case law can change over time; even if the case was weak during the previous Administration the same case might not be weak now.

> Surely if a previous DOJ refused to prosecute the case it is 'weak' in some sense

That's not a matter of the case being weak, that's a matter of policy on which actors with different policy preferences will differ even with perfect information and judgement regarding application of those preferences.

> Or perhaps because there is prima facie evidence of a crime but First Amendment arguments could potentially prevent the government from securing a conviction.

That would be weakness, but no one has made a coherent First Amendment argument that would bar prosecution for conspiracy to break into a government computer system manifest in an offer to help break a password and actual attempts at that. A lot of emotional appeals lacking a specific argument have been made in that direction, but that's not the same thing.

If your point was that Snowden shouldn't have described the case as 'weak' if what he meant was merely 'the prosecutors shouldn't have filed it,' because some people would insist that 'weak' is a term of art that specifically refers to the strength of the evidence and not the broader merits of the prosecution decision, then point proven.

"5 years."

Isn't he facing 10 years in UK for fleeing on bail?

Does US extradite him, trial him, (jail him?) and then ship him off to the UK to serve his time there?

Plus the 7 years of self-imprisonment in an embassy that he already served.

I'm not sure any judge will treat being on the lam as time served, but yes.

It would normally work in the opposite way: first he’s judged in UK, serves his sentence if any, and then he’s extradited.

> Isn't he facing 10 years in UK for fleeing on bail?

IIRC it's up to 12 months for basically contempt of court / failing to surrender.

This is why "breaking" news confuses as much as it informs.

Has he been arrested for skipping bail on a UK court warrant? Yes.

Has he been arrested on a US indictment for extradition? Also yes.

These are two separate arrests. It just happens that one was once he was already at a police station. http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

Edit: apparently the Swedish extradition is spinning up as well.

What confused me most is that he was arrested twice. It seems non-nonsensical to arrest him a second time (rather than simply charge him), given that he was already in police custody.

Does this signify something meaningful, such as a change of which legal basis the arrest is under, and thus a change to the rights he has?

Section 31 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act:

  Where—

    (a) a person—

      (i) has been arrested for an offence; and

      (ii) is at a police station in consequence of that arrest; and

    (b) it appears to a constable that, if he were released from that arrest, he would be liable to arrest for some other offence,

  he shall be arrested for that other offence.

That's because arresting someone isn't so much a matter of their physical custody as initiation of a legal process involving an assertion of custody. Think of it like process serving in civil cases, where it's easy to imagine multiple lawsuits proceeding in parallel.

It's also used as an unofficial form of punishment.

Or "official" form... see Japan's legal system, where prosecutors interrogate those arrested without legal council, and the right to post bail can be an award for a confession.

see: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/business/carlos-ghosn-nissan-...

> Eastern District of Virginia

As expected

Regarding #1, there is no law in the US criminal code against publishing classified information. It's certainly illegal for a journalist to actively steal classified information, or conspire with others to do so, but just publishing is fine.

Under some circumstances a journalist can be forced to appear in court and reveal his sources. And if he refuses to answer he can be held in contempt.

looks like they are trying to charge him with computer related offences.

He is being charged with "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer", not anything to do with publishing classified information. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

Thanks for the link to actual facts about his legal situation in the US.

> The Home Office has confirmed the US request for Assange’s extradition is for an alleged “computer-related offence”. (guardian)

Update

>The US justice department has confirmed that it issued an extradition request for Assange “in connection with a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer”.

once he sets foot in US soil he's screwed regardless of the laws specifics, just watch.

The accusation is that he aided Manning in breaking in to classified computers: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

It looks like the US is charging him with conspiracy to hack a government computer.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/worl...

Whenever the government Al Capones someone, which ought to be a verb, it's a reminder to me that due to a legislative and prosecutorial discretion excesses combined with politics that those of us who aren't 100% squeaky clean are unjustly vulnerable to judicial creativity run amuck. If you've got a Snowden or an Assange you want to lock up with all keys thrown away, stick to charges along the lines of espionage etc; and if you cannot prove those charges, too bad - don't attempt to railroad them for paying a nanny under the table. Not that there's anything forgiveable about nanny tax evasion, but I'm bothered by byproducts of affording too much discretion in the judicial system.

The alternative to prosecutorial discretion is 100% enforcement of all crimes big and small. In either situation, the government would go after these people for their small crimes so the outcome for the targets you're mentioning is the same. Also, Capone was convicted by a jury on evading (in 2019 dollars) millions in taxes, so 'small' is relative only to massive corruption scheme and murdering he wasn't convicted on.

Or, once a bunch of elites go to jail, the laws get changed so that only serious crimes are indeed 'crimes' and the rest get civil penalties in proportion to the means of the offender.

If US drug convictions against the rabble, versus the elite and well-connected (or even just black vs white) are any indication, you would get penalties inversely proportionate to the means of the offender.

If all crimes were enforced then we probably wouldn't have so many possible crimes, because even the politicians are committing them.

Things like "charges" and "due process" are a luxury for the thousands who were kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by past US administrations.

People like Assange are fortunate to have visibility and nationality that they do. He at least is getting charged for a crime he hasn't really even denied. Thousands of others have lost their freedom and their lives because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Assange is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.”

Looks like the indictment is conspiracy with Manning. Manning was pardoned[1] by the Obama admin. Does that have any bearing on Assange’s case?

[1] I’ve been corrected; her sentence was commuted.

Obama commuted the sentence. Pardon would have wiped the charges. Commuting just shortened the penalty.

Even had Manning been pardoned it would have no bearing whatsoever.

the real question is, will his sentence be less, equal, or more?

I had a friend once who did 18 months Federal time for just saying he could get 100 tabs of LSD at a forest rave in central Florida.

Not having it...not getting any...not even showing the undercover agent even one damn tab.

His charge ended up being "Conspiracy Against the United States" or something along those lines.

So I am pretty sure the US government will come up with some rather bogus charge against Assange, considering how he humiliated it.

It's very unlikely that the facts resemble anything like that. What's your friends name? I'll happily pay the Pacer fees to see what the charging document says.

Agreed, sounds like the friend agreed to sell 100 tabs. Whether or not you actually sell them doesn't matter, I think making the offer to an agent is probably illegal in the same way it's illegal to offer to murder someone for money.

I can't imagine that this is a true story. Which country is throwing someone into jail for 1,5 years for offering to sell someone lsd?

Especially Federal prison (most crime in the US is under state jurisdiction). It doesn't add up at all.

If the forest is a national park or otherwise federal property, it does.

Given a long enough criminal history, people go to jail for much longer for much less in the US

But with US incarceration figures it could be real.

At the end of 2016, the Prison Policy Initiative estimated that in the United States, about 2,298,300 people were incarcerated out of a population of 324.2 million. This means that 0.7% of the population was behind bars. About 1,316,000 people were in state prison, 615,000 in local jails, 225,000 in federal prisons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_...

DEAL...you know what...im tired of people here thinking im making things up...hmmm how do you want to start doing this.. I'm serious here...let's do this...how to best initiate what we need to get rolling?

Please...email me at lampdeveloperforhire@yahoo.com and I will HAPPILY let you see it all, because I've already researched it years ago when I didn't believe that was the whole story!

Although he made out of produce the LSD, I assume money changed hands. I may be mistaken, but I think this is the syna qua non of a drug charge.

Please...email me at lampdeveloperforhire@yahoo.com and I will HAPPILY let you see it all, because I've already researched it years ago when I didn't believe that was the whole story!

Not OP, but if it were my friend (and if I was any kind of friend at all) I wouldn't be dropping his name on a publicly accessible forum so a ton of people can violate his privacy.

Might be better to privately exchange the name and then update us with the results without revealing any identity.

Of course, happy to take it via DM and I'd be glad to report back without any identifying information.

HN doesn’t have a DM feature.

If OP was interested, I'd provide a twitter/reddit/signal/messenger or whatever for DMing. Or just an email address. I meant it as more of a euphemism for private communication.

Please...email me at lampdeveloperforhire@yahoo.com and I will HAPPILY let you see it all, because I've already researched it years ago when I didn't believe that was the whole story!

Why would OP have any reason to trust you with the information? And for the lowest of stakes, proving a point on a web forum.

What's there to trust? The names of everyone convicted of Federal crimes are public, as are the details of their crimes. If OP claims that someone was convicted of something incredibly implausible, he could prove it by telling everyone the name so they could look it up themselves. Alternatively, he could just tell a single person who could look it up and report back. Or not -- it's just the internet, who really cares?

But until he proves that something resembling his claim actually happened (which he could easily do by telling anyone the name of the convicted), nobody should believe for a second that someone was jailed in Federal prison for "claiming they could get 100 tabs of acid."

I am now ACTIVELY trying to get your attention to get this moving, as I feel you are challenging my integrity and this is very important to me.

DEAL...you know what...im tired of people here thinking im making things up...hmmm how do you want to start doing this..

I'm serious here...let's do this...how to best initiate what we need to get rolling?

Please...email me at lampdeveloperforhire@yahoo.com and I will HAPPILY let you see it all, because I've already researched it years ago when I didn't believe that was the whole story!

The deal was...the rave scene was really big in Central Florida in the mid 90's, and a Federal Task Force was sent to infiltrate the "scene" and start busting it up..my homeboy Mike was a hustler, pure and simple, and was always ready to make some money in the game.

There was a big outside event in the Ocala National Forest and Mikey was approached by someone who was asking about LSD (100 or 1000 hits I don't remember...probably 1000 now that I think about it)...Mike was like, as in character..."No not now, but I can tomorrow for sure.." and gave the agent his number.

The rest of the details for me are fuzzy at this point, but I do know he never got any drugs and he most DEFINITELY did 18 months cushy Fed Time with a "Conspiracy Against the United States of America" charge that you can STILL see with an inexpensive background check!!

Oh...i can't wait to see your reaction when you learn the facts of this case...in fact, how about a little side wager on it?

> Publishing classified information. Easy to show that he did this but a very difficult path to go down when American newspapers do this all the time.

A difficult path, maybe, but also an avenue for setting precedent to go after the press.

It really isn’t when you look at what he’s being charged with.

It's not directly about leaking or espionage though. The indictment [1] says that he conspired to help crack passwords from classified government databases.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...

They are in possession of some very specific irrefutable evidence, that's what it's about.

This is ambiguous... Who are "they"? "Evidence" of what?

It's a "done deal", he WILL be extradited.

https://www.exaronews.com/julian-assange-to-be-extradited-wi...

Was 7 years self-imprisonment in an embassy worth it? I'd like to know how.

Depends on the person, if they hold personal values higher than whatever the outcome may be.

Isn't that a very utilitaristic view of an extremely political and morally charged topic?

Breaking into government computers is a crime.

It sounds like the US will for sure extradite him.

Actually, no, US newspapers don't STEAL information, which is what he's being charged with. If you get it from another source and you weren't part of acquiring it, you cannot be legally responsible for it (it's not like receiving stolen property). But the governments case is that in statements to manning is that he was active in ACQUIRING the information. Therefore he can be held criminally liable. Now whether those statements are really enough to hold up in court are a huge issue, but it won't matter because one they get him here they can add on a ton of charges -- perjury, conspiracy, and whatever national security rules they want. But your point #1 is not valid in that if US newspapers did ever steal information they could be held criminally liable (they don't).

I’m no international law expert, but wouldn’t the UK demand that the US disclose in advance everything they plan to charge him with?

Otherwise, couldn’t he argue in the UK that his rights might be violated by the extradition, in the event that the US charges him with something that isn’t considered a crime in the UK?

Assange, and his lawyers, made all kinds of arguments and appealed his extradition to Sweden all the way to the High Court and lost. He hasn't actually had any court time related to the U.S. extradition because he fled. I would assume that if he had a decent chance of winning on the merits for the U.S. extradition, he wouldn't have spent 7 years hiding in a cupboard.

I was writing a long post but I deleted it. I don't know what to say, I don't like the guy, but I have an even stronger dislike for how international politics and intelligence services work.

I also feel the same way. He may have committed some heinous crimes outside of the actual hacking/leaking but to say we all didn't benefit from what we learned regarding how our government spies on us would just be flat out wrong..

What crimes did he commit? Honest question. I heard that someone accused him of being a rapist but then dropped the charges so I guess it was false. What else is there?

He skipped bail. That is a crime. He literally locked himself up for 7 years for something that in the UK would never have been as severe as 7 years of imprisonment.

Fleeing the arrest for fake rape-allegations staged by the CIA.

I can’t see why anyone would do that if they valued their own personal security. /s

Skipping bail; failing to surrender to the court after he was previously released on bail. The sexual assault case against him in Sweden has since been dropped, but the warrant for skipping bail is still active.

Though given his situation and the quite likely extradition to the US, who wouldn't have done the same? Technically something criminal but..

Why would he be extradited to the US instead of Sweden?

Because the he has already been indicted in the US on secret charges, but presumably something Patriot Act related due to Wikileaks involvement with the Iraq war.

Remember, the US government views Wikileaks the same as ISIS.

If I were a betting man, I would probably say this is not true. He most certainly got indicted for interfering in 2016 election and hacking Clinton/DNC emails.

I don’t have a horse in this race. Just follow this as I think it is very entertaining.

Edit: It could be both!

Looks like I lost. He is being charged for the dissemination of classified material.

If he was extradited to Sweden, he would shortly be extradited from Sweden to the US.

The Swedish government always folds like a wet paper towel as soon as the US asks for anything.

It is not up to the Swedish government if he gets extradited, it is up to the courts.

And nobody should want governments to have a say in who gets extradited, even though it may be a popular idea in a few politically charged cases. Best to leave criminal justice systems as far from politics as possible.

The Collateral Murder leaks that showed the United States guilty of war crimes.

I don't particularly classify that as a heinous crime.

It isn't heinous; it carries a maximum penalty of two years (which is actually one year, given automatic release) and normally much less than that.

The courts do, though, take a dim view of scofflaws. And especially those who successfully evade proceedings by doing so. And even more so those who put the authorities to trouble to bring them back to the court. So my guess is that there will be a trial on it, followed by a sentence in the upper end of that range.

In Assange's situation, I would have made the same gamble.

It's only logical to hedge a potentially decade-long sentence with a likely inescapable two year sentence.

When the charges are bogus and you know that they are being used to censor your work, which positively impacts the lives of millions of people, you may also consider it your civil duty to evade a wrongful arrest.

I'm incapable of providing a good reason why Assange should have just submitted to the bogus rape charges.

And the fact that sympathizing with him in this regard in an open forum has a high chance of impacting my civil freedoms at some point in the future just magnifies the impact of the work he was trying to achieve when all of this started.

So, in the initial phase, he gets to decide that charges against him are bogus, and that he doesn't need to submit?

I think this description is a little too martyring for my liking.

I'd love to know what civil freedoms of yours you believe are going to be impinged by virtue of this post.

> So, in the initial phase, he gets to decide that charges against him are bogus, and that he doesn't need to submit?

Are you supposed to let your accuser have 100% say in whether you are guilty, even if you believe the system is rigged against you and you are acting in good faith?

Such an attitude is subservient and enables totalitarian governments to operate under the guise of justice.

You have to understand that nothing gives any body of government legitimacy just because other governments recognize it. The only thing that gives your government power is your permission as a citizen. My country was founded on this sentiment.

When Martin Luther King said:[0] "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law,"

he was not thinking of whistleblowers and the fact that their greatest impact on society comes from maintaining their sovereignty in spite of globally coordinated efforts to censor and imprison them.

Assange was operating in good faith that his life's work might end the moment he stepped foot back in Sweden. He chose not to recognize the authority of a State he was actively politically engaged with. Countries do this every day.

Just because he doesn't have an army behind him to legitimize his claim to sovereignty, doesn't mean he doesn't have the right to that claim and the right to achieve his sovereignty by any means that can be ethically justified.

To claim that he does not get the right to decide for himself, as all men do, whether to recognize what a particular group of people with guns and land command of him, is to claim that he is not human, because that is a natural human right.

I have personally been the victim of an illegal charge despite overwhelming evidence in my favor, and received the maximum possible fines and jail sentence. Going to jail made sense because I wanted to just get my life back on track after my government destroyed it, as soon as possible. But it was not the morally responsible thing to do. I didn't even commit the crime I was convicted for. The morally responsible thing to do would have been to not submit myself to the illegitimate city government which prosecuted me.

> I'd love to know what civil freedoms of yours you believe are going to be impinged by virtue of this post.

Any number of things.

My country asks for social media accounts when applying for a passport, sure it's optional now, but give it time.

Automation and machine analysis will ensure my Hacker News account factors into my Social Credit score.

If you get out from under your rock you would see similar things happening in many countries across the globe.

[0] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

Or you could believe that your reputation is so important that you should defend your self responsibility for your crimes to preserve the credibility of your civil work.

Why would one believe such a silly thing? If I heard a doctor was accused (or even convicted) of shoplifting that wouldn't ruin the credibility of the lives they have saved. If Galileo was also a racist and a murderer that wouldn't reflect poorly on heliocentrism (although he probably wouldn't have a satellite navigation system named after him).

Even if Assange had violently raped and murdered multiple people (which would absolutely make him a terrible person) how would that affect the credibility of his civil work in any way? Does it make the truths that he helped expose any less true?

Judges and the justice system doesn't like it if you disrespect it. The worst thing you can do is question the legality of a judge to his face. It will end in "a sentence in the upper end of that range."

As someone who has gotten the maximum end of that upper range for the most bogus (and illegal) charge possible after trying to fight it in court instead of tucking my tail between my legs... Yes. You are correct. An overwhelming majority of judges take their jobs very personally and imagine themselves to be infallible embodiments of the law.

breaching bail is not actually a criminal offence

https://greenandblackcross.org/guides/should-i-ignore-police...

That article says, "Failure to surrender, ie. not turning up on the date given on your bail sheet (whether to a court or to return to a police station) is a crime."

What's not a crime is breaching the conditions of your bail, e.g. you can't go to political protests if you're released on bail.

People interested in bail in England and Wales might be interested in the CPS page, which sets out who can get bail and why, and what counts as surrendering for bail or not: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/bail

In particular, https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/bail#a19

This shows that breaching your bail conditions means you may be arrested and either re-bailed, or taken into custody.

That article is about police bail. Assange was bailed by the courts. The breach of court bail is an offence punishable by up to 12 months imprisonment.

At this point, his "crime" is simply evading arrest. It will be interesting to see what they charge him with to justify a seven year siege.

> It will be interesting to see what they charge him with to justify a seven year siege.

I think only Assange and Ecuador really had it in their power to alter the length of the "siege", I don't think the Met Police were going to simply say "whatevs" once he had skipped bail.

You think wrong. The police decides all the time to call off operations. There is a difference between dropping the charges (that one they probably wouldn't do) and stopping the 24/7 patrolling of the embassy.

They stopped the 24/7 patrols years ago.

Absolutely. So much for "heinous crimes", hey?

They will charge him with jumping bail. Someone contributor here says that carries max 2 years.

If you spent a decade hiding in the basement because you're afraid of the neighbour's cat...

...it's not the cat's fault, and the cat doesn't have to prove that it is a vicious killer one needs to hide from.

What you've heard is false. The investigation was dropped simply because there was no way to proceed with the investigation with him still hiding away in the embassy. The investigation will be reopened if he returns to Sweden before August 2020 when the statute of limitations expires for the minor rape allegation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39973864

You are misrepresenting the article or may not understand the finer details here. One example: Ny says they "Sweden did not expect Ecuador's co-operation in formally notifying Mr Assange of the allegations against him", yet that makes it clear that Sweden has not attempted to formally notifying Mr Assange.

No, they chose not to interview him at the embassy or via weblink, because had they done so, the case would have been closed. They rather keep it open.

Accused criminals don't get to set the rules. There are many jurisdictions where criminal trials in absentia are not possible, legally. That's mostly to the benefit of the accused.

>That's mostly to the benefit of the accused.

How? if they can get a conviction they should get the conviction. For eg, Vijay Mallya from india was convicted of a crime and india is now seeking his extradition. how does it make sense that you keep the case open?

Mostly it's due to the accused's right to confront the accusations and be heard. There is also a lot of ugly history of using trial in absentia to, for example, get rid of political enemies: quickly convene a trial and convict them while they are abroad, avoiding a long trial allowing them to make their case and forcing them into exile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_in_absentia

Note that Mallya has not been convicted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Mallya#Accusations

He is charged with different crimes and therefore there is a warrant out, and a request for extradition: "When he failed to appear, the Supreme Court said the contempt case would only proceed further after he is produced before the court".

There are also multiple court verdicts in favour of banks and business partners, but those are all civil law, not criminal.

ok thanks for the correction

He was a suspect, not a criminal.

"suspect" and "accused criminal" are synonyms.

Technically yes, but in reality, no.

Consider “he whom rape charges were brought against” and “the accused rapist”.

Or how about this? “The accused child-murderer Assange”

Words, put certain ways by bad actors towards bad ends because they are inflammatory, are a thing.

The police in Sweden and every other country would save so much money if they could just ask the suspected criminals to be interviewed over skype instead of having to fetch them and take them to a police station. Or why not ask the person to be interviewed where they want it to happen and the police can come to them, with the prosecutor.

We could also save so much money if the criminals would not need to go to prison for which we pay, but decide where they want to stay and inform the police.

That's what we do for billionaires like Martha Stewart and some millionaires. Anyway there is a huge difference between suspect, person of interest, and convict.

With we you surely mean the US, don't you? I only know about "Martha Stewart" from the famous "Don't talk to the police" video.

That's ridiculous reasoning, if there was evidence he could be convicted without ever being interviewed or being present.

They can’t convict without a trial, and they can’t get a trial until they have Assange in custody or if he agrees to a trial via an intermediary.

TIL: some European countries allow a trial in absentia, some don't.

Do you have a reference that they are not possible in Sweden?

I can't find anything either way.

Even if they're possible, the fact that they haven't chosen to do so doesn't mean they don't have evidence. What would the point be anyway? They have to get custody to actually enforce any possible sentence.

Sweden doesn't have trials in absentia? Judging by this document(https://rm.coe.int/168058f4b0), they do:

-------------------------------------------

Chapter 46 (proceedings in the district courts) Section 15 a If the matter can be satisfactorily investigated, the case may be adjudicated notwithstanding the fact that the defendant has appeared only by counsel or has failed to appear if:

1. there is no grounds to impose a criminal sanction other than fine, imprisonment for a maximum of three months, conditional sentence, or probation, or such sanctions jointly,

2. after service of the summons upon the defendant, he has fled or remains in hiding in such a manner that he cannot be brought to the main hearing, or

3. the defendant suffers from serious mental disturbance and his or her attendance as a result thereon is unnecessary.

Orders under the Penal Code, Chapter 34, Section 1, paragraph 1, clause 1, shall have the same standing as the sanctions stated in the first paragraph, clause 1.

However, this does not apply if, in connection with such an order, a conditional release from imprisonment shall be declared forfeited as to a term of imprisonment exceeding three months.

In the situations stated in first paragraph, clause 2, the case may be adjudicated even if the defendant has not been served the notice of the hearing.

Procedural issues may be decided even if the defendant has failed to appear in court. (SFS 2001:235)

-------------------------------------------

Looks like a perfect fit for Assange's case. Why didn't they try him this way?

I believe there were never any criminal charges filed against him, he was only ever investigated.

Okay, let's look at a hypothetical - you say the investigation was dropped because they couldn't interview him. What is the practical difference to the investigators if they interview him and he says "I refuse to comment on anything"? There must be some way to move forward without cooperation from the accused - Assange isn't the first person to flee a country pending an investigation. Why didn't they do so?

Looking at Swedish law, they have a rough equivalent of Miranda - https://open.karnovgroup.se/processratt/fuk Section 12(google translate):

- Do not have to comment on the suspicion and not otherwise have to contribute to the investigation of their own debt

It is unfortunately common for rape cases to go unreported/unsolved because of the lack of physical evidence. I certainly don't blame investigators for trying to interview the acused, but without evidence or a confession there's nothing for them to do.

This is correct according to the text of the law.

However, according to precedents the criteria “the matter can be satisfactorily investigated” is not easily satisfied in case of serious crime that is contested (see the court case RH 2011:4).

Since I was not very familiar with the Swedish case, I checked Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_...

It seems that the allegations were dropped after initial questioning and he was told he was free to go, then a special prosecutor reopened the case and asked to question Assange, who by then was out of the country.

The statute of limitations for most of the allegations seems to have expired primarily because of the indecisiveness or otherwise mishandling of the case by the special prosecutor who reopened it in the first place, who maintained she couldn't interview Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy- which seems to have been incorrect.

From the wikipedia article:

In 2010, the prosecutor said Swedish law prevented her from questioning anyone by video link or in the London embassy. In March 2015, after public criticism from other Swedish law practitioners, she changed her mind and agreed to interrogate Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with interviews finally beginning on 14 November 2016.[167] These interviews involved police, Swedish prosecutors and Ecuadorian officials and were eventually published online.[168] By this time, the statute of limitations had expired on all three of the less serious allegations.

The charges were dropped by the accuser long before the Swedish authorities dropped their own investigation.

> [..] but then dropped the charges so I guess it was false.

There are many reasons for dropping charges besides "she obviously lied". One of the reason might be that nobody wants to get all this attention and ensuing insults and death threats.

In this specific case, there wasn't even much debate over facts, only law. She refused to have sex without a condom, then woke up to him having sex with her, without a condom.

There has to be more than one accusation to prove guilt. Did police get any physical evidence?

That isn't "facts"! There was tons of evidence at the time that the women were lying, the charges were dropped because there was zero chance of any conviction given their behaviour. How quickly people forget!

Reasons the women were lying: the first had tweeted and texted about how happy she was to have slept with Assange. She later tried to destroy this evidence after deciding she'd been "raped", a decision that was triggered by meeting another woman he'd also slept with and getting mad she wasn't the one.

The reason Assange went to the embassy after the charges were resurrected is that it was obvious the case was a dud as it has already been dropped due to the hopeless case of the witnesses. So why did Sweden suddenly decide to try again? Assange was right to judge it as being politically motivated.

The charges were suspended under Swedish law, however they can be brought back, they haven't been outright dropped.

The state prosecutor accused him of being a rapist. The alleged victim didn't accuse him of anything and only went to the police in an attempt to contact him to tell him to be tested for STDs since the condom broke. The state prosecutor found a way to twist that into a rape charge under Sweden's laws, even though the purported victim disagreed. Those charges were later dropped.

The only "crime" he committed was refusing to cooperate and fleeing the country, since he saw this only as a pretext to get him in custody for US extradition, which objectively was the case (the US wasn't hiding its attempts to get him extradited).

He did not "flee" the country - he asked and was allowed to leave - the rape case was later reopened while he was in the UK and a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden.

That was extremely strange and suspicious so he resisted the extradition first legally then by fleeing into the embassy. And in there he deteriorated greatly - spiraled into conspiracy and paranoia.

Are you claiming that the police report is false or the Guardian is mistaken?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange...

The Guardian was mistaken, according to the alleged victim's own statements at the time.

> The alleged victim didn't accuse him of anything and only went to the police in an attempt to contact him to tell him to be tested for STDs since the condom broke.

Strange how her lawyer today told the press that the victim hopes that Sweden re-opens the rape case. Definitely no ill will towards Assange, only concern for his health.

It's nearly a decade later. Maybe she feels differently now?

I don't think OP is taking a position either way on whether Assange was guilty or not. It's that regardless of the outcome of the rape allegations against him in Sweden, we learned more about the shady goings on in our government due to the drops that were leaked to Wikileaks.

It was dropped due to technicalities.

I found the Swedish rape case fishy. Are there any facts (going both ways) to speak of at all?

Corroborating evidence: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/797188 - "Sweden’s Serial Negligence in Prosecuting Rape Further Highlights the Politics Behind Julian Assange’s Arrest"

> He may have committed some heinous crimes outside of the actual hacking/leaking

Pretty serious throwaway comment without stating what "heinous crimes" were apparently committed..

If they were heinous then a) they wouldn't have needed a sealed indictment, and b) the US couldn't possibly claim jurisdiction, surely the country he committed them in would have laws covering it. So we can dismiss the possibility.

Yeah, really interesting to see how there was some sort of slow-motion character assassination over the years. Put him under pressure, wait for him to lash out, portray him as a raging lunatic and generally bad person. He went from an unsympathetic yet credible figure to one that's hard to side with for virtually anyone.

It's weird that for the most part, all his "crazy talk" has pretty much held up so far. I hope he's wrong about the extradition that's supposed to follow now, but honestly I doubt it. This is gonna go down in history as one of the more random biographies, and a pretty damning one at that.

> He went from an unsympathetic yet credible figure to one that's hard to side with for virtually anyone.

The MO is shoot the messenger. As old as the hills.

We aren't discussing what Wikileaks leaked anymore. We are discussing Julian Assange's cats. See how they shifted our attention? That's the power of a propaganda - eventually, it will work. They just have to keep at it, and they did.

Nobody even disputed what was leaked. Officials confirmed the authenticity and so far, 0% is wrong of the leaks. Yet, we are still discussing how the condom slipped, the smell of the cat, and so on, and so on.

No consequences for anyone, almost. We should focus on whether the leaks are legitimate or fabricated and then deal with the perpetrator(s) in a court of law. We should not focus on the person that had the platform to leak them on.

It's so easy to see that this is orchestrated. This cannot be a coincidence. I can only imagine the kind of pressure Ecuador was under for the last few years. Finally, they conceded. Can't blame them - you can't go against military superiority of that kind.

> I can only imagine the kind of pressure Ecuador was under for the last few years. Finally, they conceded. Can't blame them - you can't go against military superiority of that kind.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but my guess is Ecuador only used him as a pawn to get something. Somebody else linked in this thread that they recently received like a 4 billion IMF loan. My guess is they immediately began angling to improve their own country in some fashion as soon as he stepped foot through their embassy doors.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but that's my guess. I feel like through this whole thing, they walked through shit and always intended to come out smelling like roses.

> We aren't discussing what Wikileaks leaked anymore. We are discussing Julian Assange's cats. See how they shifted our attention? That's the power of a propaganda - eventually, it will work. They just have to keep at it, and they did.

This is only true, if at all, today, on this forum. The mainstream press has been talking about Hillary's emails (and how they were obtained, and other fallout) for literally years now.

This is absolutely true since the minute they release the Helicopter video (aka. Collateral Murder). You haven't been paying attention.

Can't you see that we delve into insane details (cats, condoms, urine, smells), yet ignore prosecution for major things uncovered? By the way, the only one prosecuted for that whole accident was Bradley Manning. Even though the video clearly shows civilians being killed unprovoked and people laughing about it.

I mean, come on. This is just desperate attempt to control the narrative. It's pure old fashioned propaganda. That's it.

OK. But even if that's true of Collateral Murder. But what about the leaks I mentioned?

And did you read the military legal review of the collateral murder incident? You're free, of course, to disbelieve what it concludes, but I'm not sure what more process you could reasonably have hoped for on that topic since the military is (unfortunately) in control of all the relevant evidence.

(By the way, it is also not great for your theory that I don't even know what cat, urine, or smells you're even talking about.)

Look at my comment history for a recent example of a thread talking endlessly about cats and assange being an alleged rude house guest. it's constantly misdirected on reddit too.

Anecdotal, but I hadn't heard mention of cats until today where apparently some cat he had was a mini-celebrity or something to that effect. I have read that he has danced on Ecuador's last nerve for a while, but that's essentially it on the character/personality profile items. Oh, and his friendship with Pamela Anderson.

Prior to that there was the talk of he would turn himself in if Manning were released and then balked when Obama let Manning out shortly before leaving office. The Podesta emails, the exploits that the NSA or some US intelligence group who had in their warchest (and the brief fallout when some of those were exploited right after before a patch was pushed), and things of that nature.

Personally, I like the idea of Assange/Wikileaks more than the execution of it. The current example, both really, carries too much pretentiousness for my liking (the article/interview shortly after the initial leaks where he talks about releasing a massive archive for public downloading that is protected by password and his handlers have said password that they'll release if he is murdered read like a story out of Hollywood). More generally, I guess in some way I just wish those that were responsible for bringing to light the failings of governments and those in power were themselves mostly infallible.

Granted, if the max charge he's susceptible to is 5 years in prison, I'd almost consider his "asylum" in the embassy as time served and save taxpayers' money. His time in the embassy for all intents and purposes has neutered him as a figure.

Maybe so. But if that is indeed the product of a propaganda campaign, it appears to have been pretty unsuccessful since I've seen virtually no discussion of any of this in a mainstream news source. And even on HN and Reddit those topics, while discussed, don't seem to dominate the conversation the way you suggest.

True, to me he's not exactly an attractor of sympathy. It's neither clear whether he is guilty regarding the - dropped (!) - sexual assault case or not, but mere speculation. On the other hand one must say he acted quite self-less by publishing information on how governments act in a criminal manner. Intelligence services in particular, if they should have any right to exist they must do so in the most ethical manner as there is zero way for the public to see what's going on - them, in an ideal world helping us protect against the most evil parts of society. But if they can't manage to be ethical, it's cynical that people like Assange get locked away.

The sexual assault case is not dropped. They said they will resume it today.

I would like to locate all HN comments which said he never would get arrested on behalf of the US, and that Assange objections was all just pretense for trying to escape justice from the UK/Swedish legal system.

Yeah, moments before the arrest, many people in this thread were accusing him of paranoia/manipulative intents:

>He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, but Sweden wasn't allowed to extradite him without UK's permission first [0]. He could've gone to Sweden and face the charges, and avoided this whole thing. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.

>If this truly was some sort of grand conspiracy to get him extradited to the US, I'd imagine the CIA has more reliable and straightforward methods of arresting/disappearing someone.

>He was before he ran to the embassy, skipping bail, on the pretext that if the UK extradited him to Sweden, Sweden would extradite him to the U.S. That's an invalid pretext.

And beyond HN, journalists have some interesting articles too. The Guardian's James Ball in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/julian...

>The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US, charges in Sweden have been dropped – and for the embassy, he’s lost his value as an icon

>Assange does not want to be trapped in Ecuador’s embassy, and his hosts do not want him there. Their problem is that what’s keeping him trapped there is not so much the iniquitous actions of world powers, but pride. Perhaps it’s not Ecuador and the UK that need a mediator, but rather Ecuador and Assange.

Hmm? This just goes to show that the USA didn't need to manufacture rape allegations in Sweden just in order to get Assange extradited, since their best chance of doing so was to extradite him from the UK.

He was in Sweden at the time. The UK couldn't have extradited him from Sweden to the US.

Not saying that the Swedish charges were all manufactured, just following your hypothesis.

Ok, you'll have to explain the plan to me.

How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him?

Assange was traveling between lots of countries at the time. It's not as if he was permanently based in Sweden. And Assange being accused of a crime in Sweden does not in any way make it easier for the US to extradite him from Sweden on other charges.

edit: Also, the usual conspiracy story was that the CIA/the Illuminati/whoever had directed Sweden to reopen the rape case after Assange had arrived in the UK. (The case was dropped before he left Sweden, then reopened shortly after he arrived in the UK.)

Jailing him undermines him directly by restricting his freedom. A charge of sexual misconduct will discredit him particular in the mostly-left-at-the-time circles that supported him. Having him in jail in a "friendly" nation also gives you time to prepare your proper, "iron-clad" extradition warrant... because if he is free who knows where he will be once you get your stuff ready.

PS: the "timeline issue"... asked and answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633178

I think you might benefit from looking at the following timeline:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/11/julian-assange...

Note that Assange was in the UK, in full reach of the authorities, for over a year before he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The story you're cooking up simply makes no sense in that context.

What does "makes sense" have to do with a conspiracy theory?

> How does having Assange accused of rape in Sweden help the US to extradite him?

Simple, character assassination is a very effective tool to silence public outrage.

That's classic conspiracy theory reasoning. "I can think of a reason the CIA might have done it; therefore, the CIA did it."

There are far simpler ways of assassinating someone's character than manufacturing rape allegations in a foreign country.

Like? Genuinely curious.

Planting child pornography on a computer they own.

Code that would modify the browser history to do such a thing was posted on hackernews a couple years ago. I just thought you would find that interesting. I'm undecided on what to think when it comes to julian.

Well if it's just creating disapproval you want then you only need to plant the story in the press.

[Fake] "Wikileaks computer IPs associated with child porn ring: was Assange using Wikileaks as cover for child porn, CIA revealed they found evidence of several Wikileaks computers uploading to child porn sites"

That would probably be enough.

It is a cynical and paranoid viewpoint admittedly but not all that irrational when it is in the playbook of spies willing to commit very dirty tricks. Their secrecy and known misconduct creates a void where speculation becomes disturbingly "reasonable". Note rational and right are two different things - Stalin's father was convinced near the end of his life that his son was evil and going to murder countless people - he was right in the end.

Even if not true it is rational to consider in the same way asking "Why would a mob boss choose to have an enemy killed?" is kind of a dumb question - the question is why not at this point.

Granted it is important to keep the speculations well ordered as there are crucial differences between levels like "proven to have done it", "proven to have done somthing like this before", and "are responsible for everything bad in the world".

Venezuela is a good example for a baseline. The regieme has proven themselves complete incompetents that have had to replace sections of civilian industry with untrained military and the CIA has toppled many South American governments. Thus while it is technically possible the CIA sabotage created a power outage maladministration is a more likely culprit especially since blaming foreign powers for internal problems to hold power is a time "honored" tradition.

For a counterfactual if the outage was followed by an invasion it would be hard to believe the CIA didn't cause if their plan was just "wait until it collapses for a peacekeeping causus beli".

>There are far simpler ways of assassinating someone's character than manufacturing rape allegations in a foreign country.

Actually, I don't think there are. Rape is met with near universal disapproval, and unless the accused can prove where they are at every single moment of their life, it is difficult for them disprove the claims.

"Conspiracy theory" is not a synonym for "crazy". And his comment was the answer to your question.

I don't know the truth of what happened either, but only 2 days after he applied for a residency two girls he slept with went to the police to try to "contact him to get him to get tested for STDs" and this turned into "rape and molestation" charges claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them. I can not tell if a condom falls off either unless I look, and I generally don't have sex with the light on. I'm not sure if I'm weird or not, but the investigation was closed.

This is months after some of the biggest wikileaks releases including "collateral murder" and heading into the release of the Iraq War Logs and State Department Cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_material_published_by_...

Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation. He ended up going into the Ecuadorian Embassy soon after the release of "Global Intelligence Files" because the USA and private intelligence agencies were after him.

None of this has anything to do with the rape charges though. He is being sent to the USA over the 2010 Manning releases because he was communicating with Manning while she was stealing the docs. If she wasn't such an attention whore, she wouldn't have even been arrested. She bragged about it on IRC...

How do you reconcile your "only to tell him to get tested for STDs" with today's announcement by one victim's layer that she wants the rape case re-opened?

I don't need to reconcile the two. It's fact what they went to the police for originally. What they want now, is very different.

> claiming his condom fell off and he didn't stop having sex with them.

One woman claims he intentionally tore a condom. That was a lesser charge whose statute of limitations expired a while ago.

The other claims that, after insisting reportedly they use a condom, he waited for her to fall asleep and then started having unprotected see with her -- something he knew she would not consent to. That's the rape charge.

> Then a couple months later, based on no additional information, they reopened the investigation.

The alleged rape victim was initially overwhelmed (not uncommon for a rape victim) and didn't want to press charges. A few days (not months) later, she hired an attorney to represent her who got the case reopened.

Almost all the information the public knows about the case has come directly from Assange (and thus supports his conspiracy theory explanation), since the Swedish protecting authority doesn't comment on pending cases.

Or could say USA tried all the dirty tricks

They tried the more complicated route before they tried the simple route? Assange was in the UK for approximately two years before he went into the embassy.

Perhaps at the time that was the simpler route. It's been reported that the US intelligence agencies have been working on the extradition process in 2018, so the fact that this was easily done today doesn't mean it could've been done as easily then.

Why would extraditing him from Sweden be simpler? Under international law, the US would still have needed the UK's (as well as Sweden's) permission to extradite him from Sweden if he'd first been extradited from the UK to Sweden to face rape charges.

Not simpler to extradite him then and there, but simpler to extradite him at some point in the future, assuming the investigation would've been successful

Edit: HN doesn't let me reply so deep in a thread unless I wait like 20 minutes. It'd have been simpler if he were detained as they'd have had a guarantee of his jurisdiction and plan accordingly. I imagine having him arrested in a country that had allowed CIA extraordinary rendition would've been better for them than having him protected in Ecuadorian embassy.

Why would it be simpler in the future?

He was in Britain for over a year before he entered the embassy. As you can see now, the UK authorities would have arrested him in response to an extradition request.

Given the politicized nature of the crimes he's charged with in the US, neither country was likely to extradite him unless they had a politically safe reason to arrest him in the first place.

So why is the US requesting extradition now? He has not been arrested in relation to the rape allegations.

It's for an alleged "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" with Chelsea Manning where the US claims he helped Manning get access to a passphrase so they could get some more documents[1]. We found out -- though it was criminally under-reported -- in 2018 that a case had been filed by the DOJ[2], but it's now public.

[1]: https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/wikileaks-founder-julian... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/16/julian-assange...

No, I mean that the US doesn't have any more of a "politically safe" reason for extraditing him than it ever did, so far as I can see.

Or an electoral campaign around the corner...

Months? Years! He left Sweden in September 2010; he surrendered himself to the police in December 2010 and was bailed; in May 2012 the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal; in June 2012 he entered the embassy.

Yes indeed, corrected.

The rape charges helped to chip away at his character, isolate him and erode popular support. It's not hard to believe that intelligence services could do something like that. That's their MO.

One point, for accuracy: There were no rape charges.

Or maybe he actually did it and deserves to go to prison for it. Hiding in a cupboard for seven years rather than going in and facing the charges is a good way to look guilty. Blaming "foreign spies" in an attempt to hide what you did so that you don't look as bad is the kind of thing an narcissistic toolbag might do.

It is possible for Assange to be a bad guy and also for the U.S. going after him after all this time to also be unjust and bad. Not everything is a conspiracy and you don't necessarily have any "good" people when you start messing with international espionage and related areas.

"Need" and "helps improve the PR image of the action" are not synonymous.

I am not saying it was the case or that the argument has merits. I am saying that the argument I've heard concerning this incident is not being fairly represented by the claim that the USA needed to manufacture crimes allegations in Sweden.

Without the rape allegations, what crime would have led to the UK arresting Assange, enabling him to be extradited? Even with the allegations, the process of extraditing him to Sweden took ages.

The computer misuse crimes which the US is currently using to try to have him extradited on?

He can be arrested directly as a result of an extradition request. (If this weren't possible, it would rarely be possible to extradite anyone.) I think you're perhaps unaware that an extradition request is required to present evidence that the person in question has done something that is a crime under both US and UK law. It is not merely a request to move someone from one country to another.

The one about the CIA arresting or disappearing a man living in an Ecuadorian embassy in the center of London is interesting. Seems to imply the US can basically do anything anywhere and will if they want to, and really ignores the huge international fiasco from incredibly recently in the Khashoggi case.

I like the think the people manning our intelligence agencies are a fair bit better than that personally.

Although having read “Legacy of Ashes”, there certainly are some very interesting moments in CIA history.

My comment was referring to the 1.5 years Assange lived openly in London, while Sweden was trying to get him extradited. I don't believe they'd storm an embassy to get him, but a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.

> a couple of men grabbing him from off the street wouldn't be too out of character.

It probably would be out of character for them to do that in one of their 5-eyes partner's countries. Keeping that relationship is high priority for the US because they get tons of intelligence in return.

Plus kidnapping a 'terrorist' and kidnapping a 'journalist' (air-quotes for both) are two different things in how the world will respond. The outcry over the Italian terrorist kidnapping was pretty small but taking Assange off the streets of London would be huge.

> The one about the CIA arresting or disappearing a man living in an Ecuadorian embassy in the center of London is interesting

Was arrested by local police and is currently sitting in UK Met Police jail.

*on request by and with permission of the Ecuadorian embassy itself

The second statement doesn't follow from the first. He was both wanted for questioning in a rape investigation _and_ wanted for extradition to the US.

You can both want him to face charges for rape, and also not want him to be extradited to the US.

The lack of regard for a rape case against him (mostly by male commenters, it has to be said) is very troubling.

I think what you are saying is he should have been extradited to Sweden not the US?

Apparently those charges were dropped?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...

> The investigation into the allegation of rape, as of 19 May 2017, has been dropped by Swedish authorities.

It wasn't dropped in the sense that the prosecutors dropped their charges. It was dropped in the sense that the case was put in a dormant state. It can be re-opened, until August 2020 I believe.

Not just that, but the original accuser dropped her charges long before the Swedish authorities gave up.

The ease by which the US can extradite him from the UK is precisely why I thought poorly of the claim that he felt his life was endangered by going to Sweden.

The UK makes the US go through the legal extradition process, whereas Sweden has been happy to just let the CIA fly in and kidnap people completely outside the legal process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_of_Ahmed_Agiza_an...

So why didn't they just do that while he was in Sweden? Having him under arrest in Sweden would make it more difficult, not easier.

Because as of leaving Sweden, they had only released the Collateral Murder video. The Iraq War documents and Cablegate happened while he was in the UK.

But then (according to the conspiracy theory) they could have engineered false rape accusations in any country that Assange had previously visited -- and that's a long list. It seems unlikely that Sweden would be at the top of the list. It seems far more likely that he just so happens to have raped a woman in Sweden while visiting.

On top of that, it would have been impossible to abduct him while he was in Police custody in Sweden without causing a major international incident.

Frankly, I'm losing track of all the different conspiracy theories. Some people are saying that the rape allegations were necessary to discredit him prior to extradition, because the US was super sensitive to public opinion. Others (like you) are saying that the US was so insensitive to public opinion that they planned to have him abducted and/or murdered extrajudicially. All of this crap is completely made up.

Other countries didn't have recently closed cases to reopen that also allow extraordinary rendition.

But the rape allegations were manufactured, right? There was no particular reason to manufacture them in Sweden just because that was the country Assange was in immediately before he went to the UK.

Extraordinary rendition would be pretty much impossible once he was in Police custody in Sweden anyway, so I don't know why you keep referring to it.

Like I said, it's hard to keep track of all the different conspiracy theories.

> But the rape allegations were manufactured, right?

Not likely. To keep it hypothetical, if an opportunity arises, you take it. Similarly, the CIA didn't start vaccination programs in the third world to later use them as a cover to look for Bin Laden, but they did take the opportunity of those program's known existence as cover for their intelligence operations in Pakistan.

> Extraordinary rendition would be pretty much impossible once he was in Police custody in Sweden anyway, so I don't know why you keep referring to it.

Not really. You can release him from custody so he's on the street again. Afterwards, just kidnap him, drive him to the airport, fly him out to the US. That's standard operating procedure for US intelligence services in Europe with multiple documented cases.

>Not likely.

I know that it’s not likely. But a lot of people do think that the allegations were manufactured by the CIA. As I said, it is really difficult, with so many people commenting, to figure out exactly which conspiracy theory is under discussion at any given point.

>Not really.

I don’t mean that it’s physically impossible. I mean that it would have created an enormous international incident if the CIA abducted Assange without the cooperation of the Swedish Police, or if the Swedish Police had collaborated with the CIA to disappear a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation. Take a look at the case of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery in 2006. The rendition of two Egyptians that no-one has heard of caused enough of a diplomatic incident that Sweden stopped CIA rendition flights.

> I don’t mean that it’s physically impossible. I mean that it would have created an enormous international incident if the CIA abducted Assange without the cooperation of the Swedish Police, or if the Swedish Police had collaborated with the CIA to disappear a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation. Take a look at the case of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery in 2006. The rendition of two Egyptians that no-one has heard of caused enough of a diplomatic incident that Sweden stopped CIA rendition flights.

I mean... it wasn't all that bad in the Agiza and al-Zery case for Sweden. No heads rolled in the Swedish government over the matter. And there were literally Swedish personnel assisting.

Do you have any evidence that Sweden has stopped allowing rendition flights?

http://web.archive.org/web/20110109124202/http://www.swedish...

That says that the Swedish military stopped _a_ rendition flight, because their rules weren't being followed.

Nowhere does it say that rendition flights are off the table in Sweden anymore.

>An acute diplomatic crisis broke out between the United States and Sweden in 2006 when Swedish authorities put a stop to CIA rendition flights [...]

> Steven V. Noble wrote in cables reveled by WkiLeaks that the Swedish government reacted strongly because rules had not been followed.

> A spokesperson from Säpo, Swedish police Intelligence Service, confirmed parts the newspaper report, adding that there have been no more extraordinary rendition flights landing in Sweden since.

I have not found any references to subsequent rendition flights involving Sweden, and it's been a good while since that article was published.

Apart from that, I don't really know what kind of confirmation you can be asking for. One cannot conclusively rule out the possibility that Sweden is still involved in extraordinary rendition, but one also cannot rule out that possibility for the UK, or for many other countries that Assange has spent time in.

Sweden has a history of bending over backwards for the US. Such as the illegal arrests monocasa references, the raids on the pirate bay, and changing their laws on US recommendation.

From my perspective, the UK also has such a history.

It’s a bit like avoiding jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but neglecting that the frying pan is full of oil until the oil catches fire and then being surprised that you’re on fire.

And then saying “see, I told you about the fire”.

The UK previously didn't allow extraditions with the death penalty as an option, or extraordinary renditions, whereas Sweden allowed extraordinary renditions.

However the UK has recently changed it's stance on allowing death penalty extraditions. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/23/uk-will-not-...

I might be mis-reading the article, but it doesn't indicate that the policy on requiring pre-extradition guarantees against the death penalty since the people in question were never extradited from the UK in the first place.

As they're no longer British citizens, were arrested in Syria, and are already in the US awaiting trial, it doesn't seem the UK would have much basis to argue against prosecutors seeking the death penalty.

The scenario was that he would get extradited to Sweden, the case finds him not guilty, and then get extradited to the US. Assange tried to get the Swedish government to openly declare that this would not occur, and the Government replied that they could not make such statement. The argument generally comes that once existing legal proceeding are done, the agreement between Sweden and the US allow for extradition.

This exact same chain of events will now likely happen with the UK case. Once the case of the bail jump is finished and eventual punishment served, he will be shipped to the US.

You're missing the point. Sweden would have been unable to protect him. Intelligence agencies do not just follow one plan, they have a whole bundle of contingencies ready for execution in case a politician wants to hear some options.

Of course, his life would have been endangered if he had been extradited to Sweden. People in the US administration were openly calling for his assassination in public TV interviews.

How does that differ from the current situation in the UK?

What people were saying is that his argument (If I go to Sweden the U.S. will extradite me) is baloney.

It was. The U.S. could easilly extradite him from the UK.

Exactly, note that he entered the embassy on 19th june 2012 and the warrant was at court on 29th just 10 days after.

> I would like to locate all HN comments which said he never would get arrested on behalf of the US

I've never seen anyone argue that.

I've seen people argue that the idea that extradition to Sweden exposed him to greater danger of that than merely being present in the UK, and that the Swedish extradition was part of convoluted plot that existed solely so he could be extradited from Sweden to the US, was a ridiculous notion that didn't really make any sense, since if the US wanted him they would just extradite him directly from the UK. Which remains true, and is, if anything, demonstrated by today's events.

Yeah 'never' is a long time.

He's used up. His masters don't need him anymore, except as an 'example' that 'law and order prevails.'

It's a joke.

Arest footage: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/media/ruptly-rt-julian-assang...

>Russia has long expressed support for Assange. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Facebook post after the arrest that "the hand of 'democracy' squeezes the throat of freedom."

Fair. Real time reportage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

>According to the Guardian, after it started to seem in recent weeks that an arrest might be imminent, big UK broadcasters had formed a "pool" arrangement to take turns staking out the building. If something happened, the footage would be shared among the pool members. >That effort appeared to have been abandoned when the arrest failed to materialize. The BBC, ITN and Sky News did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Are we not doing our ZaZen? Arest footage/story:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/uk/julian-assange-arrested-gb...

>It was a moment that global news organizations were desperate to show their audiences. Yet it wasn't captured by leading UK broadcasters like the BBC, Sky News or Independent Television News (ITN). >Instead, the only media organization with video of the controversial moment was an obscure outfit called Ruptly. Ruptly, which has carved out a niche for itself by recording events around the world and selling the footage to other broadcasters, is a subsidiary of Russian state-backed media outlet RT. >Founded in 2013, the operation is headquartered in Berlin

I can't make out what he's saying in the video, but maybe something about the "Trump administration?"

In the Afghan War Documents leak, Julian Assange refused to redact the names of Afghans who informed on the Taliban. He referred to them as “spies and traitors” in comments to the media. A reporter for the Guardian claims he said, “Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.”

Nasty way to diss on fellow leakers, in my opinion. I wonder if Mr. Assange feels he himself deserves what’s now coming to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak#Info...

People take real risks when telling on others. That it may be later revealed and their targets may try to take revenge is part of that.

There's no clear just way to view the entire situation. Though Assange was unreasonable to call them all "spies and traitors", if that's what he did.

> People take real risks when telling on others. That it may be later revealed and their targets may try to take revenge is part of that.

I'm not sure if you meant to defend him but that describes Julian Assange's own situation pretty well.

I only meant to point out that being an informant for occupying force is not some clear cut morally good situation from an outside POV on the informant, when the giving of information leads to:

- killing people by bombings

- locking people up without usual safety/legal process regards, and torturing them (either directly, or by having a pretty nasty jail)

Innocent people are often killed, and locked up. This is not some precise process.

Also being an informant druing war for one side is not the same thing as being an informant for police in the peaceful western country, or informing on curruption via leaks. These are wildly differing contexts.

You can't view informants with high regard, unviersally. People will falsely report on neigbours, to settle some past grudge, because they know trigger happy Americans will bomb/storm the place, if they can make the story plausible enough. Even if you assume good reports, bystanders get killed, or snatched up too. And through all this you have to still assume us-vs-them mentality, that all Taliban members are bad, and informing on them is good.

So there's a grain of truth in the view that was ascribed to Assange, above. But it's unreasonable, to go full way, and make all informants be traitors and whatnot.

There's this book, that makes good points about the complexity of the situation in Afghantistan, and the US intervention:

https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/125006926...

I'm sure there are lots of fascinating details, unexpected side-effects, and counterintuitive observations to be found in a moral accounting of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. I've watched (and read) "Generation Kill," which examines similar situations in the Iraq War. I have friends and relatives who fought in Afghanistan. I've also read a number of books on the subject. I can appreciate the twisty-turny nature of morality in war, and how not all informants may have good intentions.

On the other hand, the Taliban seeks to keep girls out of school, treat women as chattle, throw homosexuals from rooftops, eliminate the Hazara people, behead apostates, and stone adulterers in football stadiums. Lots of people in Afghanistan hate them, and would inform on them to protect themselves and their loved ones, at a level of personal risk which neither you nor I can likely comprehend. So there's that.

I aggree to all that.

>There's this book, that makes good points about the complexity of the situation in Afghantistan, and the US intervention:

Sorry, no. The US has terrible foreign policy, yes, but religious fanatics like the Taliban are a cancer on humanity. They seek to keep women as chattel and murder homosexuals and anyone else that doesn't conform to their insane ideology.

Anyone who informs on them is a hero, and people like Assange who go after them are villains. It's no coincidence that Assange is buddy-buddy with racists like Sean Hannity (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/julian-ass...). He just wants to be in the news, and doesn't care if he has to stand side-by-side with fascists, racists, and religious fundamentalists to get there.

No, to what? The book is not an advocacy for Taliban.

From your link:

Guardian journalist, David Leigh, claimed that Julian Assange initially refused to redact the names of informants.[62] In his book, co-authored with Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, Leigh claimed Assange to have said in relation to whether the names should be redacted, "Well, they're informants. So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."[63] In response to the book's publication, WikiLeaks posted on Twitter: "The Guardian book serialization contains malicious libels. We will be taking action."[64] When Douglas Murray relayed these comments in a debate, Assange interjected "We are in the process of suing The Guardian in relation to that comment."[65] The Guardian claimed the following day that they had 'not received any notification of such action from WikiLeaks or its lawyers', two months after the publication of the book.[66]

So what you report is a claim that Assang himself has strongly denied.

Worth also noting that Luke Harding has been involved in some rather extraordinary claims, seemingly without corroborative evidence.

The most startling is the allegation that Paul Manafort personally visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy – probably the most surveilled building in the UK – secretly, more than once, "according to sources."

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20181127143814/https://www.thegu...

He hasn't strongly denied it. He said in 2011 that he would sue them for reporting the quote. He hasn't. Anyone can say "it's not true" on twitter. I don't call that a strong denial.

In any case, the names of informants were published. He did it. That's all you need to know about the man.

Just bear in mind that libel is a seriously expensive game in the UK (£100,000+), and perhaps might not be your highest priority when you're fighting an extradition attempt.

The link you provided refers to a New Statesman article about a debate held to discuss the effect of whistleblowing. I quote the relevant passage from the New Statesman article:

Murray didn't back down, moving on to make reference to the Guardian's claim that Assange "didn't care" about Afghan informants who were identified as a result of the release of the war logs.

Assange hit back: "Point of order! We are in the process of suing the Guardian . . ." After a bit of back and forth about libel laws – Assange said he has campaigned for their reform, but that people should have recourse when allegations are made against them – Murray drawled: "I think I'll take from that that Mr Assange thinks libel law is good when he's using it."

I cannot see where Assange said '"it's not true" on twitter', as you report, but in any case it seems clear that he didn't just make some off-hand remark on a social medium, as you seem to suggest.

In any case, I don't see why using twitter as a platform would reduce the validity of such a statement. There's a difference between tweeting to your followers you're going vegan and claiming you're suing the Guardian for libel.

>> In any case, the names of informants were published. He did it. That's all you need to know about the man.

To be frank, I don't much care about statements that start with "that's all you need to know". I usually prefer to chose for myself how much I need to know of anything.

And yet no such lawsuit ever occurred, nor was a retraction ever made...

In 2011 the UK still had our old defamation laws - they were changed in 2013. So it would have been really easy for him to both sue and win a defamation case. The Guardian would have had to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that he had said those things.

Why didn't he bring that case?

The Guardian journalist may have fabricated that quote.

Except he denies it and it may not be a truth. Have you even considered the among his enemies are the most powerful governments in the world, with a track record of not only corruption and lying but also collateral murder and enabling torture of women and children?

> URGENT: Ecuador has illegally terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law. He was arrested by the British police inside the Ecuadorian embassy minutes ago.

Source: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1116273826621480960

Holy moly, this will be interesting!

EDIT:

If you're interested, here's a video of him being escorted out of the embassy --

https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1116281098747568128

EDIT2:

Comments from Snowden advising journalists to cover the story with authentic facts:

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1116285397284290560

“illegally terminated”

That’s not how that works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-refoulement

> to a country in which they would be in likely danger of persecution based on "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion"

Which, precisely, of these categories do you think he fits under here?

membership of a particular social group or political opinion

I'm relatively neutral on Wikileaks/Assange, but this is a stretch. I don't think "illegally leaking documents" counts as a political opinion any more than I should be entitled to asylum because I have a "political opinion" that MDMA synthesis should be legal and got caught for engaging in it.

That's intended to cover things like persecution solely for being a member of a political party.

it's not so much a stretch to say "transparency" is a political opinion..

i'm not even so much agreeing with what he did and full transparency, but to me all of this is clearly political.

Everything is political opinion, but the legal standards are much narrower. The idea that I can hold a political opinion that "I should not be arrested for breaking laws", break a law, and then expect not to be arrested because of my political opinion is ridiculous.

I'm firmly against his potential extradition to any other country, but let's be honest -- he's not exactly in trouble with British authorities due to his "political opinions", is he?

why is he in trouble for then ?

Skipping bail.

Skipping bail. For refusing to surrender to the court after he was released on bail, following his arrest for questioning over sexual assault allegations.

From charges that were dropped.

A central tenet of the UK legal system is that people on bail don't get to unilaterally decide they should just be able to skip it.

Also, the victims of crime don't get to "press charges" ro "drop charges", that's for the CPS.

The charges were dropped because the warrants could not be served.

He was never charged with a crime. There were no charges.

If he was anyone else the british authorities would’ve quickly forgotten about him jumping bail.

They wouldn’t have spent this much money and resources on just anyone.

Yes, the fact that Assange is prominent is obviously a factor. But that doesn't mean that there's some kind of sinister motive for enforcing the law in this case. Consider that the UK police spent £11m looking for a single missing child (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-madel...). Would they spend that much on a child who wasn't in the news? No. But I'm sure the people looking for her genuinely wanted to find her.

> If he was anyone else

If he was someone else who had a European Arrest Warrant outstanding for rape, the authorities would take it seriously. Our press are going to have a dim view of a foreign (alleged) rapist running around because the police couldn't be arsed.

Jumping bail to an embassy in Knightsbridge and talking to the media from the balcony isn't going to help them look the other way either.

> If he was anyone else the british authorities would’ve quickly forgotten about him jumping bail.

Ignoring the specifics in this case, I'm assuming you know absolutely nothing about our legal system? Jumping bail is not taken lightly in most of the world.

I know quite a bit about your legal system thank you. It is extraordinarily unusual to spend this much money to pursue any arrest warrant, much less one for such a minor offense.

Of course, now we know that there's been an US warrant on JA since at least Dec 2017

If it was for skipping bail, why is he getting extradited to the US where he did not skip bail?

He's not being extradicted, he was arrested in connection with an extradition request. He now has the opportunity to fight his extradition in court.

There is no obvious threat of persecution. Facing rape charges certainly doesn't qualify.

Assange is in danger of "persecution" based on his avoidance of the judicial process. That's not a protected class.

> > membership of a particular social group or political opinion

You missed the key point.

It's up to the Ecuadorian government to decide whether the threat of danger is legitimate or not.

It says it applies to the generic repatriation of refugees, not the specific repatriation of a political asylum seeker like Assange. There's also no evidence that Assange faces political persecution in the UK. His stated concern is about extradition to the USA, in which case he should apply for political asylum in the UK.

> His stated concern is about extradition to the USA, in which case he should apply for political asylum in the UK.

If I faced extradition to the USA, I am not sure if I would trust the UK to protect me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

Revoking his asylum could be in violation of Ecuadorian law.

(But IANAL specialized in Ecuadorian asylum law)

He's an Ecuadorian citizen. Does the Ecuadorian law allow for the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens? It's quite common for this to be illegal.

Of course this wouldn't be your typical extradition as he was already on UK ground, but I think it would not be unreasonable for a court to view this as an extradition.

> He's an Ecuadorian citizen

Your information is a few hours out of date

> Does the Ecuadorian law allow for the extradition of Ecuadorian citizens

Yes, and also specifically to America, for what it's worth

> this wouldn't be your typical extradition

That's because it wouldn't be an extradition. Embassies are not extra-territorial. British police didn't storm the embassy largely out of politeness and convention.

>That's because it wouldn't be an extradition. Embassies are not extra-territorial. British police didn't storm the embassy largely out of politeness and convention.

My comment specifically acknowledged this, however I see a very real chance that a court might view this as an extradition. It is the .ec government handing him over to a foreign country after all.

Of course Ecuador can revoke asylum.

It's very common practice around the world if a person's circumstances change and their original country is now safe. Likewise if Ecuador believes that there is no longer a threat to Assange they can revoke it.

> Likewise if Ecuador believes that there is no threat to Assange that can revoke it.

Thats a stretch considering they invited the police to arrest him.

The police were arresting him for skipping bail - that's not a political asylum issue.

No, but politically persecuting Assange under pretexts is. Since (I assume) Ecuador protected him not because they oppose persecution for sexual assault, but because they believed that was a pretext for political persecution, I do not see how the circumstances have changed. Except for the Ecuadorian embassy staff reportedly getting fed up with Assange, of course.

One of the ways that things have changed is the continued illegal political campaigning whilst in the embassy that Assange is accused of. Asylum doesn't give protection against breaking the law in the host country.

The police were arresting him to extradite him to the US.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

> Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition.

That was a further arrest, after he was in custody. This is relatively common in the UK.

They may have assurances from the US that they won't extradite for all we know.

Or that US prosecutors won't seek an extended jail term or death penalty. Not that those were likely on the table anyway.

He has been a citizen of Ecuador since 2017. That's quite different to only having asylum status.

International law isn't enforcable, really. It would be great if it were, but why would sovereigns give up absolute control of their legal systems?

There isn’t really such thing as international law. Only treaties between states that are sovereign, and as such can tear them up if they do not wish to abide to them anymore.

"International rules and customs" would be a better term. International Law is real but it is not "law" in remotely the same way that domestic laws are and using the same word for them is confusing.

Rules, customs and precedent. Which is pretty much the basis for law anywhere.

What does Julian say in the video?

"UK has no sovereignty!"

"UK must resist"

"Resist this attempt by the Trump administration"

and something else when he's in the van which I can't make out with people talking over it.

> "Resist this attempt by the Trump administration"

Funny. Trump has said he loves WikiLeaks, and likely has no interest in Assange getting extradited to the US.

Problem is, Trump says a lot of things that he doesn't mean. Or he forgets, it's a little unclear.

But the American intelligence community appears very interested in the guy and is known to have been working on extradition process in 2018.

If the American intelligence community wants to extradite Assange, I don't doubt somebody high-ranking in the CIA will sit down with the president and by the end of the meeting, have him thoroughly convinced that he's wanted Assange's extradition all along. They have agents trained in psychological operations and negotiation, and Trump is demonstrably an easy mark.

> Problem is, Trump says a lot of things that he doesn't mean. Or he forgets, it's a little unclear.

Unlikely, as it could play a big role in the whole ongoing public debate about the Trump-Russia connection.

> But the American intelligence community appears very interested in the guy and is known to have been working on extradition process in 2018.

Yep, but "Trump administration" seems to suggest that Trump is directing this, which seems comical to me.

I'm not clear why the U.S. president should be in the loop here anyway. Who makes the decision to prosecute in such cases?

Federal attorneys are appointed by the President, and can also be fired by the President at his discretion.

funny? probably not.

And as for no interest in extraditing him, he was arrested in response to a US extradition request.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

The US, and the MET police, have already confirmed that Assange has been re-arrested for an extradition warrant to the US.

I have found very little correlation between the things Trump says and the things he does, or even the things he says later.

I think in the USA is exactly where Trump wants Assange.

I'm reminded of Bush Sr keeping Panama's President Manuel Noriega in cold storage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Noriega#Prosecution_in_...

Here's a video that shows two guys that were present during his arrest: https://twitter.com/CassandraRules/status/111512606296137318...

>Snowden advising journalists to cover the story with authentic facts

>retweets Russia Today and Cassandra Fairbanks

I can't believe people still defend this guy.

Any possible relation to the arrest of Assange? IMF board approves $4.2 bln financing deal with Ecuador March 11 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved the $4.2 billion financing deal with Ecuador https://www.reuters.com/article/ecuador-imf/imf-board-approv...

Good question: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/extarr2.aspx?memberK...

That article is a month old——so, unlikely.

I don't see how that makes it unlikely. This has probably been months in the making.

You know real life politics doesn't move as fast as you see on TV right?

IMF has last granted a loan to Ecuador in Mar 21, 2003, that is 16 years. Now Ecuador is a client.

Call me a patsy, but it seems more likely that Ecuador kicked him out of the embassy because it asked him not to do certain things as a condition of his living there, and he did those things.

Naive patsy then.

Ecuador's governments have always been blackmailed by the US via the CIA. Moreno was just an intermediate for them, like Chavez, Allende or Lua, to get over with eventually. In the end there's always either a fascist putsch or electorial takeover. Philip Agee's book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" explains all the gory details.

Ecuador has been reeling with weak economic growth and increased debt for a while now. Although there were still other options to finance their problems for the time being, it is likely that Ecuador has requested IMF financing and it has been blocked at the executive level for a few years on the condition that they played ball. Coupled that with the fact that Assange lost almost all his political capital and 'friendly points' in the past few years, it became a matter of when, not if, Ecuador would trade in.

Is there any actual evidence for this at all?

A good question is, how could we accumulate such evidence? If only someone would, say, publish caches of diplomatic cables so we can know how our governments operate.

Trump is famous for requesting things to "make the deal easier" and then proceeding to ask for even more. So quite possibly Ecuador is going to be finding out fairly soon about additional things they need to do to get those loans.

Are you saying Trump directs the terms of IMF funding?

No, he's saying Trump and the IMF could be employing similar tactics.

Not directly, but yes the U.S. has quite a bit of leverage over the IMF.

I just want to know, from the people who seemed to have turned against Assange, how do you know it's not a concerted disinformation / propaganda campaign to remove all his credibility and reduce public support?

By my reckoning It's really hard to know what to even believe about a guy who might credibly be targeted by that.

If it was, WikiLeaks would have leaked the details by now.

I doubt anybody involved in targeting and suppressing Wikileaks post-2016 is leaking their plans to Wikileaks itself.

Why? Every organization has whistleblowers. By the same token that Chelsea Manning leaked the state department cables, one can imagine a middle-tier operative with differing political ideology dropping a hint.

Sure, it's definitely a possibility - but not a likely one. The people in charge of any such operation against Wikileaks would be particularly mindful of their own operatives leaking to WL itself.

There's no reason whatsoever to assume WL has any information about anything at any given time, unless they've publicly suggested that they have.

>Every organization has whistleblowers.

this is not clear. A sufficiently small organization needn't have whistleblowers. The extreme level of confidentially practiced in the relevant organizations ensures that the number of people privy to the knowledge and capable of leaking is very small.

- By everything I've read of his behaviour, even before he became famous, the accusations seemed to be very much his style

- The specifics, i. e. secretly removing the condom, seem to invite all sorts of "that's not rape" opinions, making them a rather bad choice compared to stereotypical violent rape.

- The supposed CIA connection of the accuser is a laughable 10-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection involving her attending a two-day seminar by a Cuban feminist organisation whose leader supposedly was connected to the CIA in the 1970.

- Does anybody believe the CIA has covered secret agents stationed at Swedish feminist literature departments for eight years, just in case some target comes along that needs her couch to crush on?

- Assange was travelling all over Europe and other parts of the world in those times. Why not just wait until he is in a country with the perfect extradition treaty and have him arrested at the airport?

- Indeed: what exact purpose is the rape accusation, which would have come with probably a few months in jail max, in this scheme?

- If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him? Just look at the prevalence of "obviously fake"/"not rape" and various other character assassination in this thread.

- At the time of the supposed rape incident, the most prominent leak was the "Collateral Murder" video. The war cables and Snowden leaks came later. That video was somewhat embarrassing, but in no way important enough to warrant such adventures in diplomatic subterfuge as alleged.

- All subsequent leaks, i. e. Snowden, Diplomatic Cables, were published in partnership with media organisations such as the New York Times, Guardian, or Spiegel. Why invest so much ressources and potential risk into going after Assange, and not those organisations that were arguably more important going forward? The Times may be immune because they are domestic. But the Spiegel or Guardian could certainly suffer an embarrassing loss of, say, all their subscriber data?

- Assange's credibility isn't actually that important. There is nothing Wikileaks published that I consider fake. The Clinton leak was just... underwhelming? There was nothing even remotely illegal in there, and not even much that made her look bad. The Snowden leaks were important. The earlier, lesser-known stuff from Africa etc. was fantastic. The diplomatic cables were already borderline.

- Why would the Obama administration go through the risk and difficulty of organising a breathtaking conspiracy to get at him, yet commute Chelsea Manning's sentence?

- Why would the Trump "I love Wikileaks" administration continue that adventure, instead of exposing it, damaging Obama's reputation, and helping their friend?

- Removing Assange, or even Wikileaks, doesn't actually help: leaks have become a well-known tactic now, and traditional media has actually done a better job than WL to publish them, c. f. Panama Papers.

- Hiding in that embassy for seven years is almost definitely worse than whatever may await him in the US. It's just an extraordinarily stupid move. Especially considering the endgame was always that he would face those charges someday. It's just not the decision-making process of a sound mind.

The diplomatic cables were borderline? Really?

I tried to remain skeptical about this, but this piece from 2014 in the LRB is what tipped me over into feeling that, as you put it, it's "very much like his style" on the balance of probabilities, particularly given the LRB's disenchantment with establishment power: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

This is incredibly ill-informed, or very carefully constructed disinformation, and I'm uncomfortable that I can't tel the difference.

For example: there were many illegal, suggestions of illegal, and offensive things in those, and related, email leaks, for supporters and detractors of HRC.

> If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him?

That was not the intent. More likely for discrediting him to the social-progressives (potential new fanbase) who are outspoken and active enough to make a huge uptick in the even larger viral explosion that Wikileaks deserves/ed.

> many illegal, suggestions of illegal, and offensive things in those, and related, email leaks, for supporters and detractors of HRC.

Such as? Have there been any prosecutions? Wasn't she vindicated by an investigation?

There weren’t any, but it was incredible fodder for conspiracy theorists (spirit cooking).

Among other things, the leaks kicked off a series of events leading to the revelation that the Clinton campaign had been financially propping up the DNC, in exchange for control of the DNC, including during the primary.

Powerful/important democrats run the DNC?!

I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/12/563606290/donna-braziles-post...

> In her new book, former party chairwoman Donna Brazile calls out the Clinton camp for the "unethical" arrangement it had with the Democratic National Committee

An arrangement that directly lead to DWS stepping down in the first place.

24 seperate investigations, actually. Spending over $300 million taxpayer dollars. Zero indictments.

The fact that you can't seem to name one of those "many illegal things" is quite uncomfortable as well. Is your comment carefully constructed disinformation?

>here were many illegal, suggestions of illegal, and offensive things in those, and related, email leaks, for supporters and detractors of HRC.

Can you provide some examples? I went out of my way to find the source of the fervor surrounding the leaks, but I personally couldn't find anything worth getting up in arms about.

If there are "many illegal and offensive things" in the emails, why did Trump supporters have to make up a hare-brained conspiracy theory about pedophiles in a pizza parlor to justify their belief that the emails were incriminating?

If there was even a hint of true illegality don’t you think there would have been charges by now? Especially in Trump’s government?

Please do not break the site guidelines by making insinuations about astroturfing in comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634403

> If you're intent to discredit Assange among his fanbase, which is largely young, male, and online: isn't rape actually the worst possible crime to smear him? Just look at the prevalence of "obviously fake"/"not rape" and various other character assassination in this thread.

So the existence of doubt is proof of invalidity of the said doubt. That is some Olympic level mental gymnastics.

Would you care to address any of the other points made or does this detail suffice to dismantle the entire argument?

> existence of doubt is proof of invalidity of the said doubt

That's not what was written at all, and you've made an extremely uncharitable interpretation of their statement to come to the response you did.

Ultimately, the parent poster wasn't saying this is proof of invalidity, they were saying it was one potential piece of evidence. Your conflation of a small point of evidence as "total proof" is where I think you've been relatively uncharitable to the parent poster.

Also, their point wasn't that any doubt existed. Their point was that the level of doubt for this type of crime is often relatively higher than for some other types of crimes. This would make it slightly less effective at the alleged purpose, therefore it should slightly lower our confidence in the hypothesis that this was done as a character assassination.

Neither of the parent posters points were absolutes, but you took them to be. It's about the relative level of doubt being slightly larger, and that results in a small lowering of our confidence.

Right, especially considering the HBGary conspiracy that got revealed years ago against Wikileaks.

The problem is that it works both ways.

wikileaks/Assange during the recent US presidential elections. that’s what did it for me. even now, knowing what we now about Russian interference, they still have the “Hillary Clinton email archive” proudly displayed on their homepage. also, there are those rape cases for which he ran away. shady stuff.

Knowing what we know? What do we know now. The Russian narrative worked so well. I can't believe it was so easy to fool Americans.

I was born in Eastern Europe. Russian subversion is rife in the region. and they've been at it for decades, no impunity.

it's so common that people from my region have a special affinity for detecting Russian propaganda. we see it from a mile away. even so, the Russians know which buttons to press and where. see Ukraine.

Those rape cases are exactly part of what the comment you're responding to is talking about.

The important part is running away from them. Wasn’t that in 2010 already? Dodging the court is shady.

When you Leak classified international documents, you tend to distrust the courts.

Even if Russia leaked the emails (not certain as the media would have you believe at all, not saying it’s conspiracy but It’s not conclusive), the information regarding massive corruption in the DNC was true, and that information being public is 1) good and 2) important.

Isn't it confirmed that the Russians hacked the DNC e-mails on the day that Trump famously said: 'Russia, if you're listening...". Wasn't that in the indictment for the 12 members of the GRU?

No, it's not, nor is it related.

It is related, if only possibly by coincidence

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/13/russians-hil...

It's not, the Mueller investigation debunked that as a conspiracy theory.

You've seen the Mueller report?

Where/when?

When did you get a copy of the report?

I never said it was related. It's just confirmed that the hacks happened on that day. It's in the indictments.

I still cannot believe that rational people believe that Trump said that literally. Even if you weren't watching and only got the media-spun version of events, the idea that the FSB is going to be watching live TV waiting for a literal order from a US candidate strikes me as so comically outlandish.

Email? Nope, it might go to the spam folder.

Phone call? What of the time zone difference?

Blinking morse code? Too obvious!

Secret gesture? The FSB may miss it!

Literally giving out the order on international TV during debates? Sounds like a plan!

I never once implied that the GRU hacked the e-mails because Trump said this. All I said was that in the indictments, it was confirmed that the e-mail hack happened on that day. It could be a coincidence, I have no idea.

Wikileaks coordinated the release of the DNC emails with the Trump campaign. Is that also "good" and "important?"

If it revealed the truth, then yes.

But that is revealed to be the truth. We know that Trump had information about the upcoming releases by way of Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi (who claims he successfully predicted the releases by revelation from God [1]).

We also know that the release was politically motivated, because it was the only time ever that Wikileaks has drip-fed a release over the course of a month, and it just so happened to be the 30 days prior to the 2016 election, and each release came with the promise that juicier and more scandalous things were coming later (which, btw, never came: the emails were totally benign). If that isn't politically motivated, what is?

1. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/29/18117777/...

This isn’t just the media saying it, it’s the entire crux of the Mueller investigation and their indictment of the GRU agents that attacked Americans.

It’s international Watergate.

massive corruption hah

what "massive corruption" are you referring to?

The DNC clearly favoring Clinton in an undemocratic fashion, as shown by the emails involving Debbie Wasserman Schultz

"massive corruption" would be things like sharing campaign data with Russian agents and promising them access to the President. Some grumbly emails that they didn't like Bernie, who is not even a Democrat, is strictly embarrassing and incompetent, and nothing more.

I think undermining the most popular candidate for Hillary is quite corrupt and important, it’s got a bearing on who will be president!

I don't like Hillary, but surely it's within the rights of a political party to select candidates however they please?

Isn't it a _bit_ disingenuous to call yourself a "democratic" party and then attempt to subvert (and eventually throw out) your democratic process for selecting a candidate?

Also I found it quite funny how the emails clearly show that Clinton ordered the media to focus on certain people from the Republican side as "credible" leaders and they included (but were not limited to): Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

I don't understand what the name of the Democrat political party has to do with their process for selecting a candidate.

If the Republican party has the word Republic in it, why don't they use representative electors?

See, doesn't really make sense.

Ok, then don't make the pretence of democracy then?

Just select your candidate if that's what you're going to do anyway.

When did the Democrat party make "a pretense of democracy?"

Then what exactly was the superdelegate system?

Exactly as you have described by naming it - a superdelegate system.

Do you believe that the unelected bureaucrats, not accountable to voters, holding 15% of the voting power is just something that is in line with the way one would imagine an ideal democracy in a primary?

Certainly not a perfect one, no, but that is exactly how the process works, so I don't see any pretense.

I voted for Bernie Sanders but pop over to the Wikipedia page and you'll see that he lost the popular vote by 3 million and change in an election 30 million people participated in. Not the narrowest of margins. In a perfect democracy, he'd have also lost. The superdelegate system was irrelevant in this case.

Ok, but this doesn't fit within my definition of corruption because the DNC is a political party, not the government.

Do you have an argument as to why this should fit within my definition of corruption?

So guilty until proven innocent. Got it.

i didn't say anything about guilt. i was replying to the post above me asking about why some have turned against him.

let's not forget about this gem: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...

The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks The transparency organization asked the president’s son for his cooperation—in sharing its work, in contesting the results of the election, and in arranging for Julian Assange to be Australia’s ambassador to the United States.

Coordinating the releases of DNC emails with the Trump campaign is what did it for me. Wikileaks as a neutral outlet for leaking evidence of corruption is fine and in the past the worst anyone could say is that they were in way over their heads (remember the "insurance file"?). In 2016 Assange allowed politics to slip into the decision-making process, and gave up what credibility he and Wikileaks had.

Wikileaks even sold anti-Hillary merchandise on their website.

Hillary had "joked" about droning Assange before.

There is no evidence that this happened except an article from Wikileaks itself citing "sources at the State Department".

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-strik...

Clinton's 'I didn't say that, but if I did, it would have been a joke' is exactly what politicians say when they said something they don't want attributed to them but aren't sure if there's any evidence of them saying it.

Occam's razor applies here. Your theory is that she had 1. intended to assassinate Assange, 2. attempted to cover it as a joke and then 3. further covering it up by implying she doesn't remember this statement.

Let me offer you another theory: she's almost certain that she didn't say it, but she couldn't remember every word she's said.

Which theory do you think is more likely?

Now I am not saying you are wrong, but you'd need external evidence to support your theory, until then, Occam's rule apply. If you agree that my theory is more probable but do not like it, then it's possible your current belief is skewed by your prior belief.

Using Occam's razor like that is essentially a logical fallacy.

Elaborate? We are discussing event probability, not logical inference, so how can there be fallacy in the first place.

Yes and you are assigning event probability arbitrarily. This is why it is hard to use occams razor correctly in a non-subjective way. I can just as easily say that there is a very high probability that she said it, and doesn't want it on the record. There is nothing backing this as being more or less probable than what you said, it is all arbitrarily subjective prob assignments since we are both going on nearly no information.

That argument is exactly what slanderers say when they know their target didn't say something that the slanderer wants to attribute to them, to distract from the complete lack of any evidence of their target having said it.

Pretty much every major Republican figure and many non-Hillary Democrats openly, publicly called for him to be treated as an unlawful enemy combatant and either killed or detained in the same manner as Taliban/al-Qaeda fighters seized on the battlefield. Even if the supposed comment whose only source seems to be Wikipedia itself actually occurred, Hillary would still be one of the more moderate American public figures on the issue of WikiLeaks and Assange outside of Trump's open praise during the 2016 campaign.

Those people weren't secretary of state at the time, ie. one of the people that can in fact authorize drone strikes.

Are you merely upset about the timing of the releases?

If so, when would have been a good time for them to release the evidence of DNC corruption?

WikiLeaks released the personal information of my colleagues and myself.

So much for sticking it to the man, when we have to live the rest of our lives with the risk of identity fraud just because they're dicks.

When and why did they release your personal information?

Without knowing OP, it could have been a large number of things. Wikileaks publishes whatever it gets its hands on and has no scruples for safety or decency of what they post. The only "why" is to make headlines and stir people up.

He worked with Sony at the time of the leak, which Wikileaks published.

It was disturbingly easy to find tbh

> It's really hard to know what to even believe

You might check out this[0] extremely detailed write-up from Andrew O'Hagan, the author who was hired to ghost-write Assange's autobiography, and wound up hanging around his inner circle for some months. It's a pretty sympathetic account, but it's hard to come away from it sympathetic to the man. While O'Hagan praises Assange's ideals and seems to like him personally, he doesn't gloss over his flaws, and the portrait he paints is ultimately of a supremely self-interested guy who spends much of his time scheming against his closest allies and lying to pretty much everyone.

One exchange that stuck in my mind:

> There are few subjects on which Julian would be reluctant to take what you might call a paternalistic position, but over Snowden, whom he’s never met but has chatted with and feels largely responsible for, he expressed a kind of irritable admiration. ‘Just how good is he?’ I asked.

> ‘He’s number nine,’ he said.

> ‘In the world? Among computer hackers? And where are you?’

> ‘I’m number three.’

[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Correspondence_betwe...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Allegations_of_Russi...

He did a pretty good job of removing credibility from himself: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/6/14179240/wikileaks-russia...

The guy is a paid actor for a murderous totalitarian regime. Literally:

"Assange became a star on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s state-funded English-language propaganda outlet."

"Assange used the WikiLeaks Twitter account to attack the 2016 Panama Papers leaks, which disclosed a $2 billion overseas account of Vladimir Putin’s. Assange labeled the leak a US-sponsored plot to undermine Putin and Russia."

If that doesn't scream "I have no ethics" to you, I'm not sure what will.

My introduction to bitcoin was due to this https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m...

2010, about November, when Wikileaks was loved by everyone here on HackerNews. When donations were piling up by PayPal, Visa, Mastercard. When Assange was the postgresql security hacker turned whistlblower-enabler and journalist.

Then suddenly all donations, globaly, halted to Wikileaks. Bitcoin was the only way, and its only real use still possible - censorship resistant transfer of value.

> censorship resistant transfer of value

But how do you get actual value out of it, i.e. currency? AFAIK most exchanges have pretty strict money laundering rules these days, it's not like Wikileaks could just open an account to liquidate those BTC donations...

It is possible to exchange for cash and it isn't money laundering to just change BTC to cash.

An exchange may face political pressure to stop facilitating wikileaks converting BTC to USD/GBP/EUR but thats about the extent of it.

There are several ways to bypass exchanges. LocalBitcoins and Bisq are two ways. There are more though.

Despite Julian's character or the surrounding controversies, let's not forget the positive impact Wikileaks made with contributions like Collateral murder [0].

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airst...

Or the release of the Vatican letters.

Or Vault 7.

> Extradition request from US confirmed

> Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition.

> In a statement it said:

> Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as possible.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

From the same Guardian article:

Sweden’s chief Prosecutor Ingrid Isgren, has issued this statement: “This is news to us too, so we have not been able to take a position on the information that is now available. We also do not know why he is under arrest. We are following the developments.”

So, yes, he was arrested on behalf of the US and not Sweden.

We already knew Sweden had dropped the warrant, the claim now was that they were trying to arrest him for violating UK law (skipping bail).

Unsurprisingly, there's more than that, although I didn't expect to see confirmation so soon.

RIP. It's only a matter of time before he's extradited, and I would think the current US government would definitely push for the death penalty under the Espionage Act. I suppose it's little solace that he'll join a long list of illustrious names prosecuted under that infamous act. (Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Victor Berger, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden)

Reading the rest of the comments, it's surprising that so many people seem to have reduced WikiLeaks & Assange to 'co-conspirators with the President'. They've been around before the 2016 election.

But on the biggest issue of american politics of the last 50 years, he has found himself (chosen?) on the wrong side of history

<edit> If you hear trump talk for two minutes and you don't immediately realize the danger and what he represents, you might be too cynical

The majority of people I know don't remember or care what Chelsea Manning's leaks actually contained. Or that she exists.

Honestly, in flyover country, the only time folks talk about Chelsea Manning is as a thinly veiled attack on trans individuals. Nothing about what was leaked or that she even leaked anything important.

It's sad.

Neither the UK nor Sweden is legally able to extradite to countries where there is a risk of the death penalty being applied.

It applies only to cases where death penalty is possible. Even in those cases extradition is possible after prosecutor agrees not to seek death penalty.

If he’s likely to face the death penalty, then he has an excellent legal defence against extradition.

If he’d left earlier, he’d have had a chance to appeal to the ECJ too. Ooops

Brexit has been extended to October and it's very likely it won't happen at all.

Or that UK would be subject to ECJ anyway.

> it's very likely it won't happen at all

I mean I really hope you're right, but betting markets have odds on that at about 30%, which for me doesn't count as "very likely"

> Brexit has been extended to October

The English legal system moves sloooooooowly. I mean not third-world slowly, but the McKinnon case had what, a decade in it?

> Or that UK would be subject to ECJ anyway.

As a sibling comment noted, I was wrong to talk about the ECJ, when the ECHR is what's important. Interesting to see how that thrashes out post-Brexit.

The UK hasn’t left the EU yet and just negotiated the extension to Brexit to October 31 of this year at the latest. I don’t see why Assange wouldn’t be able to appeal now unless his case never gets there before Brexit.

This is not about the ECJ but he could instead appeal to the ECHR, which the UK is still a party to even if there was a Brexit.

The UK does not permit extradition where there is a risk of the death penalty being applied. It would require an assurance against the death penalty as a condition of extradition.

Yes, if he were to be extradited facing the death penalty this would actually violate the European Convention on Human Rights as decided in Soering v UK.

Does European law apply after Oct 31? #brexit

ECHR has nothing to do with the EU.

With the only exception being Belarus, every other European country (including Russia, Turkey, Switzerland etc.) signed that same convention.

It's not quite as clear-cut as that any more: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/23/uk-will-not-...

That's an old article (July 2018), but I couldn't find anything more recent about that specific aspect of the case.

What about life sentence instead of death penalty?

It's very clear: It only applies to death penalty. Life sentence would have him extradited.

Are you referring to Assange's connection with the Snowden leak? Why would they seek the death penalty? Even Snowden wouldn't get the death penalty were he to return and be prosecuted.

The UK is unlikely to extradite without assurances that the death penalty will not be applied, which is doubtful in any case.

The us is not going to execute him are you mad?

Why on earth would the US govt want to punish him? He helped getting Trump elected and is on friendly terms with Trump Jr.

It's not like that bunch is known for their loyalty, but even sheer self preservation would suggest that they not meddle with somebody who doubtlessly has ample receipts of their interactions.

He cant be extradited without there being a guarantee that he will not face the death penalty.

He’s more likely to be executed by whichever information sources he has a risk of ratting out in a trial than by the US. Maybe he won’t even make it to US land.

That is highly unlikely due to precedent of the '60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_Unit...

The comments here disgust me. People here used to have some principles, now there's so many people just repeating establishment talking points.

And I can't understand how so many people stay loyal to a guy who just wasted seven years of his life in a self-imposed prison with absolutely no upside except delaying whatever awaits him now.

Or how many will, when given a choice between:

(a) a wild conspiracies theories about a totally-average Swedish woman being paid by the CIA to make up some not even that damning rape charges, then asks him for an $20/5min STD test in exchange for dropping the charges, knowing too well that Assange will be stupid enough to refuse, so as to enable execution of a convoluted three-country extradition plan when they could just as well wait for Assange to travel to whatever country has the extradition treaty they liked best

or (b): guy with a history of being egotistical, who rarely managed to work with anybody, and who has a history of ignoring the house rules on hygiene (cf cat) thought nothing of discreetly trying again without a condom

...choose the former for no reason but political or personal sympathy.

You are delusional. You talk about him like he's your creepy neighbor from the street. This guy messed with dangerous people for the sake of truth. He is being prosecuted by the most powerful country in the world with by far the most reach outside its own borders. All his trouble began after he leaked US butchery in Iraq.

You think his self-imposed exile is an egotistical act instead of what it really is: Step outside and you're gone. I would really like to see what your actions would be in this situation. But you don't seem the type to risk your own life for the sake of others knowing the truth.

But if you think your option (b) of him being creepy is the one that makes more sense even after the fact that the woman has proven ties with the CIA than I feel sorry for you and our society because that represents the death of what I think is one of the most important pillars of modern civilization: freedom of press.

The woman doesn't have "proven ties with the CIA".

According to a now-deleted article by some third-rate conspiracy theorist, she at some point during a foreign exchange in Cuba worked with (not for) a feminist organisation there, the leader of which was alleged to have ties to the CIA.

I'll reply here because I can't edit the comment anymore. You are correct and I retract the "proven" part, it was poor investigating on my part. On the other hand, he isn't proven guilty either and your "he is creepy" comment is still a dumb argument to make by an adult.

All his trouble began after he leaked US butchery in Iraq

Yes, except for the troubles he brought on his own head, which don't relate to Iraq but do relate to his extremely asocial narcissistic behaviours.

His original hacking was done because he believed NASA was hiding war work (he hacked the Australian academic network seeking a path into NASA via DECnet) and predates the war in Iraq by a decade or more.

The first thing is request from someone leaking information for public interest, is perfect social behavior. Makes sense.

edit: Any yes, Iraq was a crime.

The perfect is the enemy of the good enough, or J PowerPoint Morgan's epithet: i dont want it perfect I want it by Thursday.

Assange didn't have to be perfect but the trail of wreckage behind him of past collaborators and friends speaks volumes.

Ah, the figurative wreckage. Almost as real as the wreckage in the middle east.

I don't like Assanges personality and I think it has many, many flaws. But that isn't of interest. The documents are actually public now, I would suggest to give them a read.

Can you demonstrate those "proven ties with the CIA"?

> You are delusional

>...the woman has proven ties with the CIA...

Pot, meet kettle.

>This guy messed with dangerous people for the sake of truth.

This guy colluded with racist sleeze-bags like Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. to bring fascism back to the mainstream. Whatever fate awaits him is more than he deserves.

Can you explain what you mean? Sounds like hot air.

Sorry, "creepy" is a damming accusation now? That's either a poor euphemism, or a really poor accusation.

No, it's ad hom. The fact he's creepy is strictly speaking irrelevant, except some of us think non consensual sex without a condom with a sleeping woman is bad. Sufficient enough to be decidedly mixed about his subsequent behaviours. And many ex Wikileaks participants say he is a narcissistic ass. Which makes it very hard to feel entirely sad his self imposed state in the embassy is all the USA's fault. Because it he'd kept his dick under control none of this would have happened.

What happens now is very sad. He is facing a pretty dire state of affairs.

That's a false choice. There's, for example,

(c) he did actually sexually abuse women, and that's being used to get him into custody and facilitate his illegal extradition to the US.

> just wasted seven years of his life in a self-imposed prison with absolutely no upside except delaying whatever awaits him now.

Well, makes one wonder what kind of thing he was trying to delay.

You should assume by now that agenda pushers are covering most places on the internet that have some influence over the public. I truly hope somewhere in the future people will look on these people as heroes of journalism and protectors of public knowledge.

"He skipped bail so he should be arrested". No one can seriously be this dead in the brain... Staying in the UK which is a bitch state of the US who wants him gone was equal to life in prison or worse which he of course knew.

Actually we should all know by what happens when the US has a target, laws no longer apply and the media will make it look like some heroic action, as you can see by some reactions on this site...

Assange is what actual journalist looks like. Mass media are there just to repeat the "intelligence community consensus", not to tell people the truth.

After Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin, babies out of incubators, WMDs, Russiagate, they still wonder why no one takes them seriously, and why are people looking for alternatives.

Assange is a corrupt paid agent of Russian propaganda network. The fact that you are a fan casts more shadow over your own character than anything else.

Yeah, keep repeating those neocon talking points. The war machine is proud of you.

Yeah, war machine like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/08/world/middleeast/syria-ch...

Pieces of shit like you responsible for this.

I don't know to what you're referring, but the facts of the matter are:

1. He was wanted for questioning for rape and sexual misconduct in Sweden. According to police records, he had sex with a woman who demanded that he wore a condom, which he did at first. Then next morning she wakes up by him penetrating her without consent. She then asks "are you wearing anything", to which he replies "I'm wearing you". The sexual misconduct charges are dropped due to statutes of limitations, and the rape case is dormant due to low probablility of resolving it. Maybe they will open it up again.

2. Assange fought the extraditions through several UK courts. He had multiple chances do defend himself, and lost every one. He lost a high court appeal, then when the supreme court upheld that decision he fled to Ecuador.

3. He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, but Sweden wasn't allowed to extradite him without UK's permission first [0]. He could've gone to Sweden and face the charges, and avoided this whole thing. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.

He's been in self imposed custody because he refused to accept the lawful rulings of two democracies, and Wikileaks has promoted conspiracies like Pizza gate and Qanon, they are not a poor organization to fight for freedom of speech.

[0] https://www.aklagare.se/en/nyheter--press/media/the-assange-...

Pizzagate and Qanon are not conspiracies, they are theories about conspiracies. A conspiracy theory is just a non-mainstream body of information describing a system of political entities.

They haven't promoted conspiracies like Pizzagate or Qanon, they just leaked Podesta's emails etc.

What conclusions people draw from those leaks is on them, not wikileaks.

>> Are those of us investigating the Comet Pizza/Human Trafficking scandal on the right track? And if not, where should we be looking? >> EDIT: This is very real and we need to SAVE these kids. If the Wikileaks staff is uncomfortable posting this here, please give us a bat signal somewhere else. > It is curious. So far we dont know what to make of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5c8u9l/we_are_the_wik...

> CBS Reality Check covers Pizzagate. https://www.facebook.com/BenSwannRealityCheck/videos/1330641...

> More: https://file.wikileaks.org/file/FBI-pedophile-symbols.pdf

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821595404500430848

Also: https://our.wikileaks.org/Pizzagate https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1000795757983780865

That’s debatable: https://twitter.com/natsecgeek/status/1012399750220599301

re: 3 - He was just arrested on a US extraditon request and nothing to do with the Swedish charges. In fact the swedes are a little upset as they want him extradited there.

So not really the victim of a conspiracy, he feared it and he was right to fear it.

> He claimed that his reason to do so was to avoid extradition to the US, [...]. But he had to make himself look like a victim of a conspiracy instead, and his followers eats it up.

"Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities" http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

Sounds like Assange wasn't that wrong?

First of all, that's unrelated to the extradition to Sweden. He said that he didn't want to go to Sweden because then he would be more likely to get extradited, but the opposite was true. He fought to stay in the UK, but fled when all legal options to avoid going to Sweden was exhausted.

Second, the US has had seven more years to build a case now, and a new Republican government.

> First of all, that's unrelated to the extradition to Sweden.

It's not "unrelated". It shows the US wants him, as he claimed.

You write that the UK would have had to authorize a further extradition from Sweden to the US, but does that authorization depend on the same level of judicial review?

Well, that's some nice arguments about the Sweden case you are bringing up. We will see very soon if Sweden will want to extradite him validating your theory or if we will end up extradited in the US instead (spoiler: it will be the second option).

>1. He was wanted for questioning for rape and sexual misconduct in Sweden. According to police records, he had sex with a woman who demanded that he wore a condom, which he did at first. Then next morning she wakes up by him penetrating her without consent. She then asks "are you wearing anything", to which he replies "I'm wearing you". The sexual misconduct charges are dropped due to statutes of limitations, and the rape case is dormant due to low probablility of resolving it. Maybe they will open it up again.

That's typical CIA character assassination 101. Pay a prostitute to sleep with the perpetrator and bring up false charges.

Do you think it's a coincidence this happened right after the leaks?!

>2. Assange fought the extraditions through several UK courts. He had multiple chances do defend himself, and lost every one. He lost a high court appeal, then when the supreme court upheld that decision he fled to Ecuador.

UK is a pseudo puppet state of the US at this point. Fun fact - the UK government paid $300 million to the US government to spy on its own citizens.

HN seems to be pretty good, actually, they seem to understand that Assange has been the target of a propaganda campaign. On reddit or anywhere else I'd agree with you.

As a parent I will always remember that WikiLeaks (Assange) helped to stop the torture of children in Iraq. The war cables revealed that the US government knew about the routine torture of prisoners and opponents including women and children by the Iraqi authorities, a de facto puppet regime of the US. The US government knew about this from the alarmed reports of its own personnel and decided to turn a blind eye because... I have no idea why.

If not for Assange and Manning, more parent's would have to watch while their child is brutally tortured and mutilated by the psychopathic enforcers of the US puppet regime.

This is where every rational discussion about WikiLeaks and Assange should always start. Now we can talk about Assange's abrasive personality and dumb political views.

I think Obama and Bush really badly mishandled both Snowden and Assange. Heavy handed responses to both of them drove them into the arms of Russia. I don’t think either of them were Russian assets when they started.

And also Julia Gillard, she was very unsympathetic, even hostile to him.

Julia Gillard [then PM of Australia, 0]. The Australian governments mild condemnation of Assange as the situation unfolded was as disappointing as it was predictable. US lap-dogs and all that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Gillard

How should it have been "handled" in your opinion? 'Protect the whistleblower' or take out the 'threat to national interests'?

In both cases, it would be in US' national interests to put the long term consequences before the short term gains.

Long term consequences as 'preventing other secrets from being leaked' or 'maintaining an image as a trustworthy and ethical actor' on the world stage?

Will not 'maintaining an image as a trustworthy and ethical actor' be the most efficient way of 'preventing other secrets from being leaked'?

Leakers are insiders, they know what's happening regardless of the image perceived by the public. I am skeptical of this consequentiality, but I recognize that it's an argument someone in the government could believe in.

I mean, if you don't let your government gas civilians, it's not like there's anything there worth leaking.

> How should it have been "handled" in your opinion? 'Protect the whistleblower' or take out the 'threat to national interests'?

Congratulating them for their great work towards human rights and publicly expelling and denouncing the perpetrators of atrocities. You know, leading by example.

> or take out the 'threat to national interests'?

Isn't that what we did in Iraq, blindly listen to the IC? Ha, that was an A++ operation. All those lives lost - for absolutely nothing. I mean sure there was "Iraqi democracy" but where did the WMD's go? The solution being proposed is to literally kill the messenger. It's a two-party induced cognitive dissonance where you would rather be lied to than have your political affiliation be embarrassed.

There is a lot of appeal to emotion in your post.

Can we both agree that war is bad and things are always more complex than they seem? In the grand scheme of things these events rank pretty low on the list of priorities when you are fighting a war.

Torture is and stays torture. What is there to agreed upon?

The fact that some regime decided to invade a foreign country out of self-interested changes nothing at all.

That statement is true. Torture is and stays torture but would you agree that there is more than one variable in war?

Your second point is a red herring.

Torture is and stays torture but

No. You can stop there. Stop trying to defend the undefensible.

Where do I defend torture?

Not only does my post appeal to emotion, it openly appeals to emotion. On the other hand, your post uses the appeal to middle ground fallacy. If your list of priorities starts with anything other than stopping the routine torture of children, then your grand scheme of things is probably evil.

This is hardly the rational discussion you claimed to be starting.

Any "speaking as a parent" argument is hardly likely to be rational.

Why? What the parent post is saying makes sense to me, personally. Sometimes important and relevant factors in topic discussion are intrinsically emotional. That's not automatically a fallacy.

What if a child torturer is helping you save other lives and end the war sooner thus saving innumerable lives? Do you see how torture is bad but there are other variables?

You sound like those US TV dramas where the main character is a kind cop put before a dilemma to either pouch an ugly terrorist once or twice on the nose or a school bus full of cute little children will be blown up by a bomb.

Yeah, in theory, there are other variables. In practice, the chances are that if you turn a blind eye to the routine torture children you are simply an evil person.

Fighting evil with evil simply makes two monsters instead of one.

Read up on the Geneva Conventions. War is brutal, yes, but at the end it's a conflict between state powers & while violence is necessary to force the issue, a line must be drawn. See the use of economic sanctions as a method to compel without direct violence. There's enough power between parties which agree to the Geneva Conventions so that if one party is not agreeing to those terms, additional resources can be tapped from allies

Unfortunately it feels the US is powerful enough that the international community isn't stepping in with sanctions against the US

The US is simply out of control.

Look into our history of military and economic 'interventions' post WW2.

This is not a new development. We have been the least bad of the bad actors for years, or at least had the least bad intentions for our allies.

I never claimed that I agreed with the Iraq war and I never claimed that I think that it was justified.

Yes, at war there are always these ideological explanations that try to justify atrocities, and people tend to accept them when they are from their side of the war (but not when they are from the other side).

> "The US government knew about this from the alarmed reports of its own personnel and decided to turn a blind eye because... I don't know why."

During the Iran-Iraq War the CIA knowingly and deliberately helped Iraq launch poison gas attacks against the Iranians, resulting in more than 100,000 casualties, most of them civilian. So, par for the course isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Iraq's_u...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against...

Being reported in The Guardian:

> Elisabeth Massi Fritz, lawyer for the Swedish woman whose case against Assange remains outstanding, has given the Guardian a longer statement:

> "My client and I have today received the news that Assange has been arrested in London. It did understandably come as a shock to my client that what we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012 has now finally happened. We are going to do everything we possibly can to get the Swedish police investigation re-opened so that Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape. No rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served.

> I have requested an urgent procedure [from the prosecutor to extradite Assange]."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks...

Rape? The charges against him were Sexual Assault for allegedly not using a condom. It's been escalated to rape now?

I saw someone mention rape on Reddit so that's probably where they got the info.

No, there were no charges against him. He has not been charged with a crime in any country.

I wonder if the WikiLeaks "Dead Man's Switch" will be triggered this time?

I know there were some news articles in the last couple of years of this being the case...

It is just a bluff for attention.

I believe it was when he was sentenced?

As soon as he drops the promised Russia documents, I'm sure!

It did, it's a video of an NSA official murdering a congressman at a park then making it look like a drug overdose. I have to say, NSA operatives have really bad haircuts.

Wow. Do you have a link?

Okay maybe I should't be joking on this, it's the plot of the movie called "Enemy of the State". Nice movie.

That scene was likely somewhat inspired by the conspiracy theories about Vince Foster.

Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, a federal park in Virginia.

The entire concept of a dead man's switch doesn't even make sense when you think about it.

Say you have some embarrassing docs about the CIA/military and you threaten to release them automatically if you're killed. Have you considered that there are plenty of people in the world who would want that to happen? People with lots of money and their own highly trained murderers?

Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, possibly Mexico or Columbia (considering the shit the CIA's pulled there). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some US government agency, rich dude, or corporation murders you for some weird internal power struggle.

Who's going to protect you? The CIA/military? The very organization that couldn't prevent its documents from getting stolen? How can you be certain they haven't shifted damage-control planning?

The idea of a "dead man's switch" plays into the conspiratorial black-and-white view of the world where there's a single, unified cabal. Reality is more complex.

But what if the "insurance" files contained some dirt on every organization that might get close enough to Assange to kill him?

That way it would make sense for everyone to see to it that the files stay hidden.

Like Mutually Assured Destruction.

Well, this certainly makes some of us look a bit stupid after criticizing him for crying wolf a few days ago.

Where was that?

It was certainly all over social media, plus several major outlets were quite open about not stationing reporters outside the embassy because clearly he was just crying wolf. That's probably why this BBC article just has a stock image.

You know how that story ends right?

He was wanted by British police for jumping bail, why wouldn't they arrest him?

Reload the page for the news of his extradition

breaching bail is not a crime, he either has to be released on the same bail conditions or charged with a crime. However the US have now requested his extradition now that he is in custody.

It's not that the police wouldn't arrest him if they could. It's just that he repeatedly claimed he was getting kicked out of the embassy and it didn't happen... until now.

It would if he's actually extradited to US.

What odds are you willing to bet and for what maximum amount?

He looked very ill on the Daily Mail photos, I hope he'll survive the next couple of weeks...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6911187/Wikileaks-f...

I agreed. He does not look good.

Is he being carried out? Yelling "UK must resist".

Being stuck in an embassy for 7 years cannot be healthy.

He certainly has some mental health issues, that's for sure.

He looked fine just two years ago[1], right before the Ecuadorian presidency changed hands.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/19/julian-assange...

I agree. There are good reasons why prisons have exercise yards. 7 years in a room is very brutal on a human body.

I think he is in disguise! The difference the beard makes, he used to have stature on the balcony with his hairdo of a year ago, now he physically looks little.

Interesting how the UK laid siege to the embassy at vast expense. Had they not done that and just snitched silently with someone watching the normal CCTV that the UK is famous for then they would have had him getting used to nipping outdoors. But no, they made an example of him, and at considerable taxpayer expense.

It would only be a matter of time before the government of Ecuador would change to an American rather than a Bolivarian one, so even if they could not coax him out by having the absence of police then he would get himself having 'new landlords'.

Regarding Sweden, women are not 'mere chattel' in Sweden. To claim that the original allegations were just trumped up US bullshit is nonsense and a failing to understand that Swedish law is serious about equality. I don't think that the English speaking nations are anywhere near Sweden when it comes to treating everyone equally in law.

The law is a double edged sword, Assange could have understood Swedish law a bit better and respected it. That would have served him better than British law.

The future for westerners that aid chekists never is good.

Very sad day. Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy. It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed.

Later on he made very influential enemies by exposing corruption in the democratic political party. Instead of any follow up on that front, the pressure on Assange increased and the whole Russian scaremongering narrative was pushed. Probably to distract from own potential repercussions.

For me that looks a lot like government oppression. Something like that wouldn't fly in Germany for example. We had recently had an popular elected political removed from office for something quite insignificant - it was found out, he copy & pasted a few paragraphs in his decade old (and unrelated) doctoral work.

It doesn't look much different then the cases where Chinese or Russian governments going after journalists

Video in question: https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

> Remember this all started with the leak of the "Collateral murder" video. That's when the Interpol notice went out, and he had to seek asylum at the embassy.

Collateral Murder was published in April, 2010. The warrant came in November of that year, seven months later.

Yes, sure, it possibly takes that long to organise a conspiracy, especially if you have to recruit a Swedish feminist student into the CIA and also get at multiple prosecutors in one of the least corrupt countries in the world. But the connection still seems tenuous.

>> It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed.

The sexual charges really don't look fabricated or to have had any political motive at all. The wikipedia article on the allegations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_...) makes it clear that the charges were dropped after Assange was initially questioned by the police, then a special prosecutor reopened the case.

It's not unlikely that the special prosecutor had a political motivation for reopening the case, but it's not at all clear that the women who made the original allegations did.

From my reading anyway, Assange crossed a line, perhaps not realising that what he was doing was sexual assault, molestation and "lesser rape" under Swedish law, and he would have gotten away with it if he wasn't Assange, which makes the special prosecutor's reopening the case suspicious. But I can't see any fabrication here. Nobody forced Assange to do what he did (which, as I remember it, was to initiate sex with a sleeping woman who therefore could not give consent). The women who accused him were well within their rights to do so.

He just screwed up bad and that made him vulnerable to political persecution.

Wait, I know about the top-down reopening of the case, but do we know for a fact that the original accusations were kosher, or is this just presumption of innocence for the girls?

(I mean, presumption of innocence is important and too often [the word escapes me... only imperfectly/partially given to] would-be sex offenders. On the grounds that we are judging some random girls it should apply; OTOH on the grounds that we are forming an overall character judgment of Assange... this matters if it gets to a jury trial, for example.)

[Edit: I plead guilty on the count of using a casual-conversation "girls" in a more serious discussion where it can be legitimately challenged as being implicitly dismissive. Elsewhere I stand my ground, although it's better developed/explained downthread.]

These were grown women, not girls. Presumption of innocence is granted to the accused, not the accuser, who is not him or herself accused.

Is there any reason to assume that the original allegations were somehow "not kosher"?

Yes, presumption of innocence of the accused.

It's a weird line between accusing the... humans who accused him of false testimony and accusing Assange of serious (however "lesser") sex crimes. But since the integrity of the whole Swedish judicial process (which was too eager to deport him rather throwing the letter of the law at him) is being questioned -- in this thread in particular -- we need to be careful about the character judgement of Assange we're building up to.

There's a new lingo on reddit that I find useful -- "to cosign". I can't, with the information I have (which is not "all the information" neither "all the information well-informed folks have") cosign on the idea that the original accusations were true. It has real implications on the outcome of a trial by jury. I couldn't sleep with that.

Of course, there's a lot I don't know, and my "cosigning" is irrelevant in practice. (But I like the idea of mock-cosigning as an epistemic constraint on these online debates which are also irrelevant for the most part.)

[Edit: I've forgotten how punctuation works.]

I need some help unrolling your position.

If someone raped a non-random woman that you were close to and respectful of, would it be reasonable for you to draw a character inference of her rapist?

Would the accused rapist fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid prosecution make you asses his character more positively?

Would you suggest to or feel that a non-random woman that she take one for the team because her rapist is a counter-culture celebrity?

There’s a line between taking the version of the accused and the version of the accuser. In any crime situation. Many factors, including evidence, determine where this line lies.

In sex crimes where the victims are women, current mores bias it toward “believing the victims”. Whether this is not appropriate is a digression I don’t want to entertain here. Everywhere there are baseline scenarios and sex crimes with female victims have that element. For the effects of this discussion I’m willing to take that as a given.

That said, there are other variables at play. Parent comment was questioning the legitimacy of the entire process, including the reopening by top-down orders of a case that had been already dismissed.

We’re either willing or unwilling to lend credence to the narrative that something about this whole situation is manipulated toward getting Assange, a notorious fly in the soup of major powers with the capacity to pull a bogus extradition off. Skepticism of this narrative is not unwarranted; it has certain elements typical of conspiracy theories.

But: if we do co-sign this narrative, then as of this very moment Assange is about to face unjust trial in the US. In the face of that, we have to consider the character judgments his accusers will be able to sell to the courts.

OTOH the “random girls” have much less to lose in this whole situation if we bias our understanding of the original sex accusations in favor of Assange, considering that the case had already been dismissed and they’ve been kept anonymous enough that they’re unlikely to experience any ongoing life disruption.

The whole matter is made of uncertainties. To bias one’s subjective assessment in one direction is not to believe it wholesale. But overall the shades of gray matter dramatically.

It is a fact that for years they refused to interview him at the embassy. They also refused to guarantee not to give him up to U.S. authorities if he were to go to Sweden, which makes me a little suspicious of the charges, given that the UK just confirmed they arrested him on behalf of the U.S.

The original allegations and the decision of the special prosecutor to reopen the case are two distinct incidents.

Basically, it is not necessary for the original allegations to have been fabricated or politically motivated for the reopening of the case to be so. It can very well be that the reopening of the case was just an opportunistic act, with a political motive.

> From my reading anyway, Assange crossed a line, perhaps not realising that what he was doing

To me, this points to the fact that there are likely many transgressions of all kinds that each person in the civilized world commits. Those are unlikely to lead to anything beyond an occasional minor fine, but the government prosecutors can use those as ammunition for future cases totally unrelated to original offense. This is not how we want the law to work. My 2c.

Promising to use a condom and then not using a condom is not a "minor transgression"; it's a form of sexual assault.

Minor vs major is not my point. The problem is that prosecutors did not care about this for a LONG time but suddenly went into overdrive when someone could not convict a person of interest for an unrelated offense.

Sexually assaulting people is not typically one of the “transgressions of all kinds that each person in the civilized world commits”. Sexually violating a human being is not the equivalent of a fucking speeding ticket.

It is and I find it very concerning that you are being downvoted.

Agreed. Essentially, someone in Assange's situation should be extremely careful, to the point of paranoia, to not get into any sort of trouble with the law because even a minor transgression (though the sexual assault allegations were not minor) could become an opportunity for a much more severe treatment than usual.

> The sexual charges really don't look fabricated or to have had any political motive at all.

They are, quite plainly, fabricated, as there are no charges. He has not been charged with a crime. You speak of these nonexistent charges as if they are fact.

You say that the wikipedia article “makes it clear that the charges were dropped” - I just read it and it does no such thing - because it does not say he was charged in the first place - because he was not.

You are propagating a false claim.

Interesting take on cheating on old doctoral work. However, this case had no 'national security' concern, nothing worth covering up. Instead it is a chance to maybe take out a political rival.

It's true that the german military is under constant scrutiny, but a lot of bad stuff has been covered up in Germany as well, especially in the world of sexual abuse by churches and institutions that is being uncovered in slow-motion these days.

As suspected, it was "on behalf of U.S. authorities"[1], exactly as WikiLeaks suspected would be the case. This sets a terrible precedent even for mainstream journalists, so if they have any sense they'd defend him.

1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?destination=%2f...

> It was already quite disgusting how powerful entities were able to seemingly fabricate sexual charges as needed.

Personally I find it disgusting that you'd dismiss these charges so quickly out of hand because they don't fit your existing bias surrounding this guy. But hey, rape isn't a big deal, right?

> Something like that wouldn't fly in Germany for example.

I'd not want to rely on that if it touches something "important"/secretive. Minor issues that can be clearly blamed on a single person are easier to admit and follow up on than things that would have widespread impact.

This is patently false.

The collateral damage video was published on April 5, 2010. Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy on 19th June 2012. The Interpol warrant for his arrest is dated 30 November, 2010.

Give me a break. This guy was a useful idiot who if he didn’t start as a tool of the FSB, became one.

The idolization of this guy on web forums is like the college kids of the 90s wearing Che Guevara T-shirt’s.

It’s very interesting how different parts of the web are reacting to this news. HN seems to overwhelmingly be on his side since he leaked some seriously damning stuff about the US government in the past. Reddit’s view overwhelmingly is that WL was a force for transparency and accountability that later devolved into a right wing propaganda machine. I guess a lot of people are pissed as Assange for WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 election.

Well, they _did_ warn him about the cat litter issue.

All jest aside, I wonder what he could have done differently (not taking sides here, just speculating).

One option would have been to live among the public in the UK, and let himself be extradited to Sweden, then the US. This act alone would have drawn attention to the fact that people in the EU can - under some circumstances - be extradited to the US, which would have been alarming to the general populace in Europe since the US still has the death penalty. The possibility that he would have been imprisoned in Sweden instead would have been weighed against indefinite house arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy - for 7 years in this case.

In any event, I think we'll learn quite a bit about international relations work in practice.

Today my friends, I think we can all agree is a sad day, I know JA has been accused of some bad things and it would seem they may be true, but it's what he stands for, this is a loss for liberty all around the world.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481...

So basically the allegations are primarily that Manning provided Assange with a hashed password, and Assange tried, and failed, to determine the corresponding plain text password. This somehow involved Manning using a Linux OS (off a CD). I'm not clear how a fresh Linux OS would help bypass admin privileges and access a hashed password.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Manning did not have administrative-level privileges and used special software, namely a Linux operating system, to access the computer file and obtain the portion of the password provided to Assange.

...

ACTS IN FURTHERANCE OF THE CONSPIRACY

23. ... Manning copied a Linux operating system to a CD...

I feel conflicted over this. I was a strong believer in the original mission of transparency and showing us what the world's elite and powerful were doing. But once they started playing favorites with information disclosure during the 2016 election their entire existence became tainted in my mind. Obviously I don't want to see the man burn for showing the world some of the terrible things that happen behind closed doors but I also don't trust him or his organization anymore to be impartial arbiters of transparency.

Chelsea Manning, who actually leaked things, is still in prison because of it. Apparently nobody cares.

In a solitary confinement non the less, for contempt of court, for refusing to testify in Assange case.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/23/chelsea-mann...

Is this common in US?

I'm not deeply familiar with grand jury process in the US but yeah I think it's unusual to place someone in solitary (which, btw, is torture according to the UN) for refusing to testify to a grand jury.

By the way, she has a defense fund if you want to help her out: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/chelsea-manning-needs-... (I've donated.)

Punishing people for refusing to testify is, yeah. There is no right to non-friend-incrimination.

You can stay silent in your own defense, but if the government can prove that you have information on somebody else, they can compel you to give it up.

Actually, she's not in prison - the sentence was commuted. Unfortunately it looks like she might be jailed indefinitely for not testifying for a grand jury :/

Sorry, yes, I was sloppy in my phrasing and in use of "prison" vs. "jail." She did indeed leave her military imprisonment a while ago when Obama commuted her sentence and was out and in public and trying to put her life back together, but as of about a month ago she's been jailed again. I didn't mean to imply she'd been in prison continuously.

This thread is all over the map with speculation. There is a press release from the Department of Justice that lays out what Assange is being extradited for, and it may help to read it first.

Apparently Assange helped Manning try to get into a classified computer system with a password that was not hers, and that is the basis of the extradition case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

Related HN thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634137

Looks like he was arrested on two counts: skipping bail in the UK, and an extradition request to the US soon after [0][1].

[0] http://news.met.police.uk/news/arrest-update-sw1-365526

[1] http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

About time. It will be good see his case brought before the courts whatever they will be in the US, UK, Sweden ... staying in the embassy for so many years is just absurd.

And what case would that be? The case in Sweden was dropped for example.

The immediate one is breaking bail conditions.

Possibly extradition to the US over Wikileaks stuff, but no pubic application for that yet. But if he could be extradited from the UK to the US over Wikileaks, why would the US do the convoluted "extradite him to Sweden then on to the US from there" scheme that he claims was in progress? (ducks)

Reload the page, extradition confirmed.

It can be re oppened https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2017/...

Better link https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/19/swedish-prosec...

I don't know if the rape case in Sweden can be reopened. But I suppose the US wants him in relation to the Russian election meddling investigation plus other cases and I suppose for him to be extradited he will first appear before a UK court.

There are obviously open cases as he has been arrested.

The statute of limitations expires in August 2020 so it can be reopened.

It wasn't dropped, the statute of limitations ran out because JA refused to be interviewed by the prosecutor and hid in an embassy.

No. He refused to leave the embassy for fear of extradition, but he invited prosecutors to interview him within the embassy.

What case? The sexual assault charge in Sweden was dropped. Or are you talking about the USA wanting their day in court with him?

Trump will just pardon him.

Exactly what I thought.

Jumping bail when in the UK is an offence.

They weren't fully dropped. The investigation will continue if he enters Sweden before August 2020 when the statute of limitations expires for the last remaining allegation (minor rape).

The offense he is being charged with is absconding on the bail.

The maximum punishment for that is complicated, but as far I can see it is either max 3 months or it can be sent to the Crown Court where it is max 2 years.

Finally some reason. Can't believe all the comments here supporting Assange. I guess they have drunk the wikileaks cool-aid.

> Ecuadorian embassy withdrew his asylum and UK police were invited in to arrest him.

According to a journalist at Sky news https://twitter.com/NewsTMac/status/1116274082922803200

Hard to imagine how that would have ended any other way really. No benefit for the Ecuadorians in man-handling him, he wasn’t going to leave of his own accord, and the Brits (proooobably) weren’t going to storm the place.

Pity whomever has to fumigate the room.

Fumigate? Does he smoke or something?

Reference to his cat

They might be referring to the fact he had a cat, but then I doubt people fumigate all apartments where the previous owner has a cat. If that had been the case then cat ownership would carry a bit higher rent.

I have heard that Assange let his cat shit everywhere and didn't clean up after it, FWIW. Perhaps that's what the comment was referencing.

There were stories that he wasn't a very good house guest. Didn't clean up after himself or his pet, wasn't very hygienic himself too. Don't know if they are true but wouldn't surprise me to be honest.

Being a guest to a somewhat sympathetic host, then getting thrown out for failing the house rules on hygiene (cats, condoms,...) seems to be his thing.

If he was such a terrible guest why is the old consul going out holding press conferences in his defence?

"Stories" is a good descriptor for unsubstantiated claims made by the Ecuadorian government, which were denied by the former president.

The Equadorian president Moreno didn't like Wikileaks publishing the INA papers that have lead to accusations of corruption against him. Assange could prbably have forseen that would endanger his asylum but published anyway, kudos to him.

WikiLeaks didn't publish the INA papers.

no doubt he will be extradited to the US. This has been the game plan all along.

Free press my ass. The UK and US are fucking banana republics. The problem is that thanks to them controlling the biggest propaganda machine which has ever existed, their stinky ideas constantly rub off on other Western countries.

Anyone from the US still pointing the finger at China or Russia for being non democratic, not free, backward or whatever, deserves exactly what is coming.

He jumped bail while accused of a serious crime. Not sure what you are looking for here.

And the crime was dropped.

This reminds me of being arrested for resisting arrest.

Jumping bail is a crime in itself. Your situation is simply an oxymoron

Oh ye who haft not felt the truncheon or the tear gas.

Reload the page extradition to US has been requested, as expected all along

Free press does not mean it's free from any agenda. Rather, it means that anyone with an agenda has the freedom to express their point of view.

The main idea that the only agenda accepted publicly are not those presented by the government, hence making the intellectual atmosphere a bit more robust and less sterile.

The point why "western press is better than russias" is not about truth but rather inviting an atmosphere where many voices can be heard.

> no doubt he will be extradited to the US.

Some doubt, I think. We'll see.

The request is already in and he's been attested for that too

>no doubt he will be extradited to the US. This has been the game plan all along.

I thought the game plan was to extradite him from Sweden via false rape allegations because it was too difficult to extradite him from the UK?

Assange apologists are remarkably facile at respinning their conspiracy theories to adapt to the circumstances.

He has been a citizen of Ecuador since 2017. This was an extradition.

Being a citizen is not relevant to whether it's an extradition. "Extradition is an act where one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction". The Ecuadorian embassy doesn't have its own jurisdiction.

They framed it as merely revoking his asylum at which point the UK arrested him. You cannot revoke asylum of your own citizens. Foreign nationals seek asylum.

There are quite a few legal differences between extraditing somebody and just letting an arrest happen.

So basically he's been arrested for not complying with UK court orders, right? And the question now is whether the U.S. will seek extradition. Or did they already?

Yes. The whole episode looks very ill-judged.

Question has been answered.

What would someone that lives in London and believes that what it's happening to Assange is criminal and would like to help somehow or help it not happening with the next 'Assange' or 'Snowden' do? I have tried to reach out to Sarah Harrison in the past but got nowhere, I'm not an activist or know anyone, just a normal bloke that would like to get involved.

What would be my options? Volunteer at Amnesty International? Doesn't seem like they did anything to help.

I'm a member of this forum, hence asking it here, I don't even know which other online communities I should be asking this, but I feel like doing something is the right thing to do and feel frustrated I haven't been able to find a way to get involved with the people helping out.

Amnesty International is a fine but frankly quite conservative organization. Getting involved in political activity. Read Noam Chomsky. Do what you can to make the world a better place and make people aware of the truth.

Considering Assange is not a US citizen, how could their be ground for an extradition to the US? This doesn't sound right

Various international legal frameworks and agreements.

The U.S. often extradites non-US nationals [0], even ones that have never been to the U.S. in their entire lives [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon

Citizenship has no relationship to extradition.

I want to know too, specifically.

It depends on the extradition treaty and the delivering country's law. Technically the US doesn't extradite people to the US, other states extradite people to the US upon their request in accordance to an extradition treaty.

The UK courts are still yet to decide whether there is a legal basis to extradite Assange. For example, the extradition of Lauri Love was denied by the court, which was also for computer related crimes allegedly carried out outside of US territory.

I still don't understand how he is subject to U.S. rule of law if he:

a) Isn't a U.S. citizen

b) Not residing in the U.S.

Last time I pointed that out on an unrelated article around here all I got were downvotes. Let's say you and I have the same mislead views on what is right. And all of this makes me sad.

They say "federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer"

http://news.met.police.uk/news/update-arrest-of-julian-assan...

"Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court as soon as possible."

So now we're waiting for encryption keys to be released to 100s Gbs of archives that we host on torrents?

This mean that the single most expensive police case in the history of UK will have an end. It will be interesting to see the final price tag in respect to the final verdict.

Which is strange as the UK had little skin in the game to begin with

I think trying to maintain the 'special relationship' is their skin in the game.

the word lapdog or poodle comes to mind.

The state can't be seen to wink at skipping bail, or everyone would be doing it. I don't think you need to look for any deeper explanation than that.

Agreed. But it is ironic.

That is a nice sentiment but I would like see the police budget if they start to spend the same amount of resources on all bail skips. Everyone being equal within the eyes of the law.

The police budget for the Assange case was about £3.5m per year. That is a lot of money which could be used in order to address other areas which the police is accused of turning a blind eye to.

Yes, because the Assange case was in the public eye. It's particularly important to uphold the law when everyone is looking.

If spending more resources for that reason conflicts with your ideals, then that's not a point I'm looking to argue here. My point is just that it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to explain why the UK was willing to spend this much money.

Consider for example all the money that the police spent looking for Madeline Mcann (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-madel...). Was she any more important than any other missing child? Not really. Was there a geopolitical motive? Obviously not. But hey, she was in the news.

Apparently (according to other comment), all for the crime of jumping bail, with a maximum sentence of 2 years.

All that just to charge him with skipping bail. It's not even a question on whether he will be extradited to the US.

I wonder if the expense was solely borne by the UK taxpayer or if foreign interests helped finance it.

Obviously the tax payer. If there was any payments from foreign interests, they're more likely to end up in a Cayman Island bank account than HMRC's coffers.

Let's just say the UK taxpayer is paying to keep a "special relationship". Whatever the real value of that is to citizens will remain a mystery.

Meanwhile the reported Brexit will cost 6 billions euros in additional membership fees.

For anyone interested in understanding Assange, check out this excellent article by Andrew O'Hagan from a few years ago:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting

O'Hagan was hired to ghost-write Assange's autobiography and wound up spending some months in his inner circle, and his account is very detailed and balanced.

He literally just called him an autist and writes him off. Its frankly depressig no matter the truth.

That sentence is just the author giving his impression of Assange before meeting him and spending years with him. The full article doesn't write off Assange at all, if anything it's quite sympathetic to him.

It is mind blowing to see commenters here that claim Assange is a Russian asset.

I didn't think of that till you mentioned it but he does seem to have been hanging out with the Russians https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/julian-assange...

I wonder if this has to do with the upcoming DECLAS. Seems that would be coming up soon given what Barr has just testified.

This was my first thought as well, think there are 2 possibilities:

1. The Mueller report presents uncomfortable yet legal, coordination with WikiLeaks, in which case extraditing and prosecuting Assange would allow administration to distance itself and present any coordination as incidental.

2. Assange releases were cited in FISA requests. If intelligence agencies had an established assessment on Assange's ties to Russia, and requests were authorized with elements contradicting those assessments, it could raise eyebrows. It seems firmly establishing presence or lack of Russian backing, along with sources would bring clarity to several matters.

Maybe they want to get him to the U.S and get his testimony into evidence. Extradition from the U.K might be difficult after DECLAS.

Regarding the allegations against Assange:

Assange visited Sweden in August 2010. During his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations from two women with whom he had sex. He was questioned, the case was initially closed, and he was told he could leave the country. In November 2010, however, the case was re-opened by a special prosecutor who said that she wanted to question Assange over two counts of sexual molestation, one count of unlawful coercion and one count of "lesser-degree rape" (mindre grov våldtäkt). Assange denied the allegations and said he was happy to face questions in Britain.[7][166]

On 19 May 2017, the Swedish authorities dropped their investigation against Assange, claiming they could not expect the Ecuadorian Embassy to communicate reliably with Assange with respect to the case. Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny officially revoked his arrest warrant, but said the investigation could still be resumed if Assange visited Sweden before August 2020. "We are not making any pronouncement about guilt", she said.[173][174][17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Swedish_sexual_...

Im sure this is unrelated, but I wonder how the Julian Assange "nuclear" insurance file plays into all of this? will it be released?

> Finding him guilty, District Judge Michael Snow said Mr Assange's behaviour was "the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest".

Seems a bit personal for a ruling on a breach of bail conditions.

Watch the video of the arrest and look at the cop smirking as assange is dragged out. It seems there's plenty of personal feelings around him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...

"Apache pilots watched people run into a building and engaged that building with several AGM-114 Hellfire missiles."

"controversy following the release of 39 minutes of gunsight footage by leaks website WikiLeaks."

"Press reports of the number killed vary from 12[1][2] to "over 18".[3][4] 2 journalists were killed, and 2 children were wounded."

The murderers of those 2 journalists and wounding 2 children are free, they had been laughing while killing them.

Here we see whom the state hunts for "justice", Assange, for letting us know above.

Oh come on. The fact that he has done some good doesn't mean that he is above the law.

What law, exactly?

I will refer you to reading TFA. Also: rape.

The rape charges were dropped and incredibly suspicious as well.

Because he ran away.

Failing to surrender to court (ie breaching terms of bail). This is to avoid facing the allegations in Sweden.

Feigning ignorance of the obvious doesn't help anyone

failing to surrender to the court.

Bit like how in the US resisting arrest is a crime itself even if there was no legal grounds for the attempted arrest.

"Seeking asylum" is not tbe same as "above the law" as the BBC would have you think. Lets see if he ends up in the states.

He hasn't been arrested for seeking asylum.

He's been arrested for jumping bail. He was on bail facing extradition for rape and sexual molestation charges. He sought asylum the moment he knew he would have to face those charges.

So you're correct. Seeking asylum isn't the same as being above the law. It's the same as avoiding being subject to the law. I can't say I see the distinction as being especially material.

> He was on bail facing extradition for rape and sexual molestation charges

Just to be precise the actual charge is that he was accused of having sex without a condom without telling his partner.

From Wikipedia.

> On 18 November 2010, Marianne Ny ordered the detention of Julian Assange on suspicion of rape, three cases of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

Are you saying that that's not true? I don't speak Swedish so I can't go back to the actual documentation to check myself.

This is correct, it's just that Swedish law considers "having sex without a condom without telling his partner" as rape.

So rape.

No shit.

He wasn't arrested for that specific video.

Nobody would be that stupid to try to arrest him for this.

Of course, he was arrested on completely unrelated bogus charges, so that we never have to have the conversation about whether or not he deserves prison for whistle-blowing.

Looks like Assange was attempting to destabilize Ecuador's govt while in the embassy (at least that's what they claim).

“Ecuador’s Interior Minister María Paula Romo says Julian Assange's asylum was revoked because there was sufficient evidence that he was meddling in Ecuador's internal affairs in an effort to destabilize the government.

Romo also reiterated President Lenin Moreno's remarks that Assange was consistently violating embassy residency rules, and specifically called out how he would put feces on the walls.”

The supposed meddling in the internal affairs of a government is these INA papers which are embarrassing for Ecuador’s govt. But there’s no evidence that he or Wikileaks have anything to do with these INA leaks. https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/04/03/ecuador-twists-embar...

> The supposed meddling in the internal affairs of a government is these INA papers which are embarrassing for Ecuador’s govt.

No, it's not. The INA leaks, AFAICT, are part of (but not the whole of) the basis separate accusation that Assange and his supporters have been attempting to destabilize Ecuador.

The biggest deal with regard to foreign governments was actually over his intervention, which had public aspects, over Catalonia.

It also, most critically because it targeted the embassy's host country, included overt interventions in British politics, including his accusations that the British government fabricated the link to Russia in the Skripal poisoning.

There are a number of things connecting Assange to Russia.

https://www.salon.com/2017/01/07/donald-trump-julian-assange... this lists six such things.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pus... is particularly damaging because one of the arguments of the "Wikileaks is not a Russian org" is that it sympathetizes and works with Pussy Riot...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks-inside-the-farage-as...

https://gizmodo.com/assange-turned-down-dirt-on-russia-stron...

> There are a number of things connecting Assange to Russia.

His own OkCupid listed that he loved everything Russian (except the food) long before the 2016 election:

https://mashable.com/2010/12/13/julian-assange-okcupid/

That being said, while he's a piece of shit we need to be careful we don't erode press freedoms we've had for a very long time just because we really don't like one jerk.

And what if a Russian agent disrupting USA elections masquerades as a journalist?

If you’re releasing factual information about the DNC that’s doing the US a service and what a journalist should do.

And what if a journalist who uncovers malfeasance by a candidate is maligned as an agent of a foreign power?

Part of living in a democracy is dealing with the consequences of free speech as an accepted cost of living in a free society.

My understanding, which may be inaccurate, was that manning was tortured via not letting him/her sleep for more than a few minutes at a time for several months on the grounds of suicide prevention. I'm quite worried about assange: BBC suggested a 6 month jail sentence, but I don't think anyone believes that is how he will get off if the USA gets him.

Please correct my story about manning if I am misinformed.

it's going to be interesting to see what is in all those insurance files https://legalinsurrection.com/2013/08/whats-behind-wikileaks...

I honestly don't know what assange or wikileaks thought was going to happen when they leaked information that was politically embarrassing to an Ecuadorian ally.

On the plus side, I'm now far more convinced of WikiLeaks' non-partisanship (or naivete), since they threw their own founder under the bus.

They say they had nothing to do with the INA leaks. https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/04/03/ecuador-twists-embar...

Julian didn’t have internet access so I don’t see how he could have done it.

This was inevitable as soon as Ecuador started making uncomfortable noises about Assange camping out in the embassy.

He's made too many enemies. If there's any truth to the charges, that just made things easier for the authorities.

I can’t imagine the mix of emotions you must feel when simultaneously emerging from seven years of house arrest and being arrested and facing more time of arrest elsewhere. Must be a mix of “wow I’m outside” and awful dread.

Hey look we have democracy, freedom, free speech but if you actually try to use any of these seriously beyond ranting about some politician to actually exposing the rot we will demonize and come after you.

This is a nice arrangement, the vast majority will never offer organized dissent and can keep on posturing about 'freedom' and 'democracy' while those who put their head above are swiftly cut down to size.

Isn't it curious that the bare basic actions of whistle blowing and dissent are not able to operate freely in the west?

"Mr Assange, 47, [appeared] at Westminster Magistrates' Court. He pleaded "not guilty" to the 2012 charge of failing to surrender to the court. [...] Finding him guilty, District Judge Michael Snow said Mr Assange's behaviour was "the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest"."

How does the English justice system work? He was arrested, and almost immediately taken to court and convicted?

I have no idea, but the charge was failure to surrender. It's pretty obvious, 7 years later, that he is guilty of that.

Maybe.

My understanding is that failing to surrender to an illegal warrant would not itself be a crime. Unless Assange has accepted that the surrender order was valid or he has been previously convicted in absentia, he would seem to need a court proceeding to argue that.

Unless seeking asylum from a country is automatically illegal. Imagine the international hijinks if an Australian went to the British consul in Moscow for asylum at the height of the cold war, and the Soviets charged him for that itself....

"on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition". Déjà Vu on what Canada just recently did for the US as well. Despicable.

Was his so called dead man switch ever confirmed, or was it just a rumour?

Assuming he has no internet access in jail, I suspect we will find out soon...

FYI: "WikiLeaks Founder Charged in Computer Hacking Conspiracy"

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

Perhaps this is the beginning of the investigation into Hillary Clinton et al. Assange has a lot of bargaining chips if he does get extradited to the US. Maybe he'll get immunity like the raft of Obama cronies, in exchange for producing 33,000 mis-placed emails.

I love the idea of WikiLeaks exposing corruption, however I think Assange got mad with a power lust and released things that put innocent people in danger unnecesaarily, and then become overly-biased by releasing only anti-DNC/Hillary stuff while sitting on RNC/Trump dirt that they were also rumored to have.

I wonder if we'll finally get so see what's in the "insurance" archive he put on torrent sites all those years ago, if anyone still has a copy...

Democracy dies right in front of our eyes. I say we protest

Bastards! If they do anything to this global hero, many unpredictable today things will happen and none good for those who don't like the Truth!

Assange is a flawed personality. That said, over the years there was a transformation. People defended him despite his issues when his whistleblower endeavors aligned. Once they no longer aligned, many many of his supporters turned around and called out his peccadilloes and transgressions.

People still defend Snowden but if he ever releases information seen as politically damaging to one side, all that adulation is out the window.

That’s to say all this support isn’t actually principled support but rather political.

On the flip side over the years Assange has very much moved from a proponent of openness and protection for leakers to being a political campaigner. His choice to deliberately release material during the US election campaign in a way that was designed to politically damage the candidate he opposed goes way beyond the mission statement of wikileaks and also brings into question whether wikileaks is operating independent of Russian influence.

The fact that material existed in the first place is solely the fault of the candidate.

Firstly, there is not one campaign that's existed since 2000 that won't have had atleast a few campaign staffers with embarrassing emails. Secondly, the issue isn't only about the clear co-ordination with a hostile foreign state, it's that rather than abiding by Assange's own claimed values, he kept the data private and then leaked it over a political campaign to try and cause political damage. That's nothing to do with data being free, that's a political campaign by a foreign power.

Although somewhat tangential the conspiracy charges prove his suspicion they were trying to get him extradited (contrary the coy responses from the admin). Given that as well as the half joking “drone him” joke, it’s not hard to imagine why he might have a bias.

My point is that he had something to leak in the first place. Blaming Assange is shooting the messenger. Also, we don't know for sure a foreign power was involved - that partisan conjecture.

im curious to see how this plays out in the context of the julian assange "insurance" file? will it be released?

I'm surprised it took them this long to kick him out of the Embassy. Talk about overstaying your welcome.

WikiLeaks help trasparancy. Hence, why has no privacy groups made any protests regarding the arrests.

Love it. So we finally get to see if assange is really working with Russian government.

Snowden is the real hero.

That's a rather sanitized picture that the British establishment mouthpiece (that's BBC News to you) has on its article.

Doesn't BBC news have reporters on scene in London to give us the pretty picture to go with the articles?

The UK press didn't bother stationing reporters outside because they thought his imminent arrest was just something he was making up for attention. It looks like they've now replaced the stock image with a video from Ruptly, which is part of Russia Today.

3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19599699

(sorry for this shameless promotion of my HN submission)

This article tiptoes around it carefully, but let’s be clear here: he was never charged in Sweden. There were no charges brought against him for sexual assault.

Assange was arrested just 1 day after Russian president Putin met with Swedish PM Löfven.

https://www.thelocal.se/20190410/heres-what-stefan-lfven-and...

Few if anyone on Sweden care about this. It's a normal rape case albeit with a celebrity in it. It should go through the normal process. Hardly something Putin would discuss with Löfven.

No one is above the law!

Wikileak Plugged.

Assange is not just a hero but he will go down in history as a Legend. So called liberals who turned on him are hypocrites. I hope they realize their mistake soon.

Play espionage games, win espionage prizes.

The word in media now is that if Obama was the president still Assange would have a better chance of getting fair treatment. This seems wrong to me. Julian served Trumps purpose by releasing the Clinton emails, making me think that Trump might actually swing on his harsh words (like he does with many other things) and grant amnesty to Julian? Takers?

Free Julian Assange

Wouldn't the Trump administration be kind with Assange as it was showed that wikileaks helped hurting the Clinton campaign?

Do you guys remember when the airplane of president Morales, was forced down in Vienna when he was on a flight home? Breaking diplomatic immunity, hospitality etc.

Just because CIA believed Assange was in that flight, that Morales would help him escape.

EDIT: My mistake, that was for Snowden, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

It was Snowden, and it was a terrible situation. The fact it landed in Vienna is even more ironic.

Just another example of the US bullying other countries, and Americans get all pissy with the GDPR.

There is a big difference between preventing a single plane from landing at its preferred destination, and attempting to dictate how businesses worldwide must operate.

Like the DMCA?

Yeah, I remember. A disgrace on several levels. I really wish a European country would have had the spine to give Snowden asylum.

Not the same issue as Assange of course, unless, as Assange claims, this too is the long arm of the US secretly trying to get whistleblowers extradited. I'm not sure that's the case here, though; I think the Swedish rape allegations have merit, and unlike Snowden, I don't think Assange has broken any US laws for which he can be extradited; he's just doing journalist work. Sloppily and with grandstanding megalomania, perhaps, but that's not illegal and thus no basis for extradition.

> I think the Swedish rape allegations have merit

I'm no expert in Swedish law, I trust their legal system, and the legal system in the UK to respond to the demands of the EAW

> and unlike Snowden, I don't think Assange has broken any US laws for which he can be extradited;

If he could, the U.S. could have just as easily extradited him from the UK

If i recall correctly Assange's troubles with US started after this leak "Collateral murder" :

https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org

The Swedish rape allegations were an obvious sham and have already been dropped years ago. Usually when this happens the case is just dropped, yet the UK really pressed in arresting Assange for "failing to appear in court", which is most countries is a minor thing (the accused is not punished for lying in court or missing court dates). I think it's obvious that any excuse will do for extraditing him to the US, to make an example of him. But so much time has passed and the case is so public now that I at least hope the UK will save face and free him instead of extraditing him.

It's extra interesting now because the US is now led by a government that is alleged to have illegal foreign help during the election campaign, notably through Wikileaks. I don't think the current president would want Assange extradited.

Weren’t the rape allegations dropped because the statute of limitations finally expired?

Sorry if I didn’t use the right terminology.

The statute of limitations has run out on some of the minor charges, but not the more serious one. While Sweden has closed the case and dropped the international arrest warrant, if he returns to Sweden before August 2020 he can still be questioned and charged on the remaining allegation.

have already been dropped years ago

They dropped the investigation and the arrest warrant, not the charges. The investigation can still be reopened and he can still be questioned and charged if he returns to Sweden before the statutes of limitations run out.

> I don't think Assange has broken any US laws for which he can be extradited

There is a sealed indictment of Assange in US district court that was inadvertently leaked when some documents were improperly redacted. [1]

There were later reports based on chat logs that Assange solicited or participated in hacking attempts to obtain email documents during the 2016 political campaign.[2]

Active solicitation of or participation in illegal hacking is a crime in US law and there is no exception for 'journalists'.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assang...

[2] https://emma.best/2018/11/15/sealed-files-show-assange-and-w...

Agreed. Its just more proof, (as if we needed it) that the UK is just a little puppet for the US. The police standing outside that embassy were justified on the Swedish extradition request, which has since been withdrawn. All of a sudden now a US extradition request has appeared. We should all take responsibility for this frankly, in my opinion, atrocity this man is a part of our community, the hacker community, this is not only an attack on press freedoms, but the hacker community too.

We need to be more vigilent, more aware, stronger and never forget.

They believed Snowden was on-board, and to make the plane go to Wien, the Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian governments were pressured to deny Morales right of passage and pressured him to allow the plane to be searched. The governments of half of Europe fold like a cheap suit to the interests of the US intelligence services.

> The governments of half of Europe fold like a cheap suit to the interests of the US intelligence services

The governments of most of Western Europe have geopolitical interests strongly allied to the US.

> Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian

So, all members of SIGINT Seniors Europe except Portugal.

Is it in the interests of European governments for the US government to spy on European governments and citizens? Cool-cool-cool.

I mean, I don't want to go all _Tu quoque_ here, but if you think that's a one-way street then I think you're being a little naive. Examples (in English) from two German news sources:

https://www.dw.com/en/austria-angry-at-germany-over-enormous... https://www.thelocal.de/20170622/germany-spied-on-the-white-...

Yeah, just one is a superpower, with the budget for this of 10 western states combined, and the others are not. Also one side has bases in all of the others, the others do not have their bases at that side, and so on...

It's in the interests of European governments to continue a good relationship with the US government, obviously. That's what "allied" means.

In the same way it's in the interests of shop-owners to continue a good relationship with the mafia. During the cold war, if an "ally" didn't have a good relationship, they could see their government undermined, pressured in all kinds of ways, or even toppled with their support. Not much different today, though it's less in the open.

"Allied" can mean a lot of things, but it can also be forced upon populations, have them dragged into wars for your side's interests, and so on. Not everything is what it writes on the tin.

AFAIR, the idea is that they all spy on each other so that they cannot be accused of spying on their own citizen. So when Germany needs to know more about one of their citizens they can ask the USA.

>The governments of most of Western Europe have geopolitical interests strongly allied to the US

The governments of most of Western Europe have a long history of selling out their national interests (especially the weak bureaucrats and career politicians put in place past the 80s, not someone like De Gaulle). In exchange they get US support for their campaigns, handouts, and some trinkets for their peoples. In lesser countries, e.g. Balkans, periphery, etc, stability guarantees are also given ("you wouldn't want something bad to happen between you and your neighbors now, would you?", or "You'd like to have those investments keep coming in, right?").

And when some larger countries try to get out of this stronghold, e.g. trying to buy the cheapest oil from where they want (even if the US doesn't like it), or pay in Euros as opposed to dollars, they are quickly shown their place...

Which is why the US hates on Russia and China so much. They're their biggest competitors.

The bigger guns always win. They can talk about the UN and international law all they want but in the end people notice the gun on your belt, not the paper on the table. It's been that way since the dawn of times.

They can do that to Bolivia but just try to force Air Force One to land...

US and UK military power has always dwarfed Ecuador's.

For seven years, Assange was protected by nothing but paper, so it does seem to have some heft.

I guess Assange obnoxiousness is more powerful than a US carrier group. The former finally got it done when the latter couldn't.

The UK wasn't going to launch an assault on a foreign embassy in the middle of London, was it? Power is not the same as recklessness.

Now, a covert operation in a third country when there are no cameras around, on the other hands...

He should not have agreed to forced landing and plane search. That was a weak move.

and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media, chances are pretty high that he will rot in a US prison for life or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden. The US is a terror state that uses torture and secret prisons. I hope that EU countries will stop extradition asap.

> or have his ashes thrown into the sea the same way as they did with Osama bin Laden.

The UK won't extradite if the death penality is on the cards. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/41/section/94

This is ridiculous. No one is talking about death penalty except people trying to inflame the situation.

Tell that to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. We've executed for sharing secret documents before, and may again.

The Rosenbergs weren't extradited from a country which would require a formal guarantee that the death penalty would not be used, so are not a relevant precedent.

I bet the formal guarantee will be negotiable, especially when on the other end is the US. That's why UK has a special relationship after all. Assange would have been safer in Russia than UK for sure.

It's not an unprecedented thing. Mexico forced the US to agree not to seek the death penalty for Joaquín Guzmán ("El Chapo") before extraditing him, and the US has kept to that agreement.

If the US executed someone extradited from the UK, that would be the last person extradited from the UK to the US.

No, it isn't negotiable, by both the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Rosenbergs were executed almost 70 years ago.

The Rosenbergs were executed for treason, not just sharing some secret documents. They actively spied for an adversary of the United States, recruited other spies, and stole some of the United States' most powerful secrets.

The gravity of what Assange and Manning did doesn't compare to what the Rosenbergs did, which is why Manning didn't get a life sentence or death penalty, and why Assange won't either. Only way Assange ends up on the precipice of capital punishment is if he did far, far worse things than what has been revealed so far.

Rosenburgs were not convicted for treason, but espionage.

The judge convicting them worked along with the prosecutor on the bar to make sure that they got a clean cut, and more easily prosecutable charge of _espionage_ instead of original treason. But yes, his ultimate reason was his personal insecurity about seeing his fellow Jewish American giving the public even more reason to doubt the loyalty of Jewish Americans (given how all things were at the time...)

Excerpt from wiki.

> Kaufman is best remembered as the judge who presided over the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and imposed their controversial death sentences. Roy Cohn, one of the prosecutors in the case, claimed in his autobiography that his influence led to Kaufman's being appointed to the case, and that Kaufman had imposed the death penalty on Cohn's personal advice. This claim has not been verified, although it has been shown that after Kaufman learned that the FBI and Justice Department opposed death penalties in the case, he asked the prosecution to withhold its recommendation before issuing his death sentence. In his summing up Judge Irving Kaufman was considered by many to have been highly subjective: "Judge Kaufman tied the crimes the Rosenbergs were being accused of to their ideas and the fact that they were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. He stated that they had given the atomic bomb to the Russians, which had triggered Communist aggression in Korea resulting in over 50,000 American casualties. He added that, because of their treason, the Soviet Union was threatening America with an atomic attack and this made it necessary for the United States to spend enormous amounts of money to build underground bomb shelters." [5] Kaufman said that he had gone to synagogue to pray before issuing his death sentence; this enraged Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who later wrote to judge Learned Hand, "I despise a judge who feels God told him to impose a death sentence," and also told Hand that he was "mean enough" to stay on the court long enough to prevent Kaufman from having a chance to take Frankfurter's place in the so-called "Jewish seat" on the Court.[4][6]

You're right, the actual charges they were convicted of were espionage. Still, the point I'm making is that Assange's actions are nowhere near what the Rosenbergs did. Unless we see some superseding indictments of worse stuff.

Interesting historical perspective on how/why the death sentence was sent down, I didn't know that part about the judge.

No one was talking about extradition until an hour ago either. Yet here we are.

Eh, how can you know that?

The US government has two contradictory personalities. A justice personality that is procedural and fair, and a military/spy personality that executes via drone and sets up Guantanamo.

Since the latter seems to think it owes no explanation to anyone of whatever it does (and moreover tries to use courts to hide its mistakes after the fact), who are you to say that it's above executing?

The latter group would have no qualms about assassinating anywhere, but they want it known that the U.S. punished Assange, not simply throw him under a bus.

The fact that Assange is being extradited not snatched via rendition means he is going to face the US justice system. He is being charged in Eastern District Virginia with conspiracy to commit computer hacking.

If Assange just disappeared one day, then maybe worries that he is going to receive extrajudicial punishment or indefinite detention would be warranted.

In the US they don't need to use the death penalty, they can just put him in certain prison situations where he will be killed. The US has a massively corrupt prison system.

There are many well known US members of congress and senate who promised to bring him to death. That was one of Assange lawyers arguments, until they all started dying suddenly.

The relevant US law with the death penalty is the Espionage Act from 1917, Section 704. It prohibits anyone from obtaining national defense–related information and making national defense–related information available to a foreign government.

Due to this the UK is disallow to extradite him, because that are the exact allegations prominent US politicians and lawmakers accuse him of.

Trump has called for the death penalty for people working with/on Wikileaks. It's definitely a possibility.

is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements[1] between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)?

I think if he does a little bit of time for jumping UK bail then the second he walks out from a UK prison the CIA will be all over abducting his ass. And he'll never be heard off again. I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone the guy?"* She and her ilk was considered a lot more moderate compared to the criminals in DC right now.

[1] edit: never mind I found it: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-wont-send-ter... - seems that prosecutors would have to play their cards right and just promise to give him life in prison instead. Spending the rest of his life in solitary isn't really much of a consolation.

> is this the case also for foreign nationals (e.g. Australians)? and in combination with terror laws and agreements between UK/US (not just civil/criminal law)?

Extradition is based on criminal law, even if the offense is terrorism; and, yes, it's a matter of human rights law without exception. (That is not to say they might not do a covert rendition rather than an extradition with death on the table, but the fact that the formal process of extradition is being used means, with a high degree of certainty, that it will not go forward absent a formal guarantee that capital punishment is off the table.)

> I recall Hillary Clinton wasn't ashamed of suggesting "Can't we drone the guy?"* She and her ilk was considered a lot more moderate compared to the criminals in DC right now.

Perhaps in some general sense, but certainly not on the specific issue of WikiLeaks and Assange.

thanks for clarifying this

She almost certainly did say "can't we just drone this guy?" as a joke about assange. She later issued a non-denial denial about the rumor.

The UK recently changed their stance wrt requiring no death penalties on extradition cases. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/23/uk-will-not-...

But that wasn't a extradition from the UK case. They were captured in Syria and not the UK. What the home secretary said to the US was (paraphrased) "We will not seek that they get extradited to be trialled in the UK for their crimes". Basically, "you caught them, they are yours".

The part about extraditing someone from the UK (and the rest of the EU iirc) must come with written assurances that the person will not be given the death penality is written into UK Law. To go against that would need either a change in the law or have the Home Secretary face legal repercussions of breaking the law whist acting as Home Secretary.

They would have to be 100% sure that the other country would abide by the terms. But lets say the US promised but then broke that promise once they were on US soil, then it would have wider effects on the extradition treaty with that country let alone any other relationship with that country. Would it be worth it to the US to burn the ability to extradite other people in the future for just one case?

And that is even if they are seeking such a punishment. As it stands right now, Assange is "only" charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion which carries a max of 5 years in prison.

Assange's legal team will make sure that other charges that may be added to the case in the future can not be given the death penality if his extradition does go though (Just because he has been arrested doesn't mean Assange doesn't have any rights to fight the extradition request.) see the case of Gary McKinnon who was facing 70 years but didn't get extradited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon (Though in that case, it basically came down to he was seeing so much time in the US prison, he has ASD and depression that it was highly likely that he would of ended his own life then spend it in a US jail that it was deemed it would be against his human rights and the extradition dropped.).

They might just let him rot in Guantanamo instead of executting. I don't know which one is worse.

They almost certainly can't send him to Gitmo, if he's been extradited on formal charges. That puts him in the hands of the regular legal system. What makes Gitmo a special case is that it's an end-run around both American and international law... prisoners there aren't in the American legal system and subject to awkward rights like habeus corpus and fair trial, but likewise aren't prisoners of war and subject to the Geneva Convention (which calls for freeing enemy soldiers as quickly as possible unless they are being charged with war crimes for an international tribunal, which is highly unusual).

This is why Gitmo is a shame on our national honor, but it also means Assange won't be going there.

>"and considering the public mood after a several year campaign to demonize Wikileaks and Assange by the US media"

The "public mood"? Seriously? That's a pretty ridiculous phrase. There is no "public mood" in the US about Julian Assange. In fact outside of today's news cycle he's barely been mentioned. Wikileaks itself has been mentioned mostly as part of Mueller investigation stories but there's not been much about Assange personally in years.

Why would EU support Russian asset?

First, Assange is certainly not a Russian asset. If, the Russian's would not had to face their publishing disasters they had with MacronGate and Gulliver 2. With Assange as their asset it would have been actually successful.

Second, Russia is an european nation. With a corrupt and criminal leadership, yes, but not as frightening as the corrupt and criminal leadership in the US with actual offensive strategies and media dominance. Russia only interferes with its direct neighbors for centuries. The US interferes everywhere else. With aircraft carriers. Russia has no aircraft carriers. For selfdefense submarines are enough. Europe always tries to be friends with both, esp. since they rely on them for their exports (us) and gas (russia). Many russian assets happily live either in Vienna, Monaco or London.

The russian narrative "workers rules" was quite successful over the fascist narrative "industry rules". There are legitimate friends of both factions.

> Russia has no aircraft carriers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers#Russ...

Would you stop taking HN threads further into political flamewar? This is not helpful. If you can't make your points without going over the top with fiery hyperbole, please don't post here.

I appreciate your positive contributions to this site, but we've had to warn you about breaking the guidelines so often that if you keep doing it we're going to ban you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632957 and marked it off-topic.

A comment by Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador:

> The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1116295734712766464

So now Trump has both assange and manning in prison?

Funny how the entire media has been soft on Trump on this matter. You would think "journalists" at CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WaPo, etc would be going crazy over Trump's attack on free press, leakers and people holding power to account. Who has done more to try and hold power to account than assange and manning?

Wonder what the economist is going to write? After all he won their "New Media Award" in 2008 along with Amnesty International UK Media Awards and a few Free Speech awards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Honours_and_awa...

Let me guess what's going to happen next. The media is going to start pushing "sweden sex abuse" and anti-assange and anti-manning stories.

"The media" has been pretty anti-assange for quite some time, increasingly so since the 2016 election, so those awards are forgotten, I'd wager.

It's going to be interesting. On the one hand it's a great opportunity to shit on Trump, on the other hand he's doing their bidding. My guess is that it's going to be a variation of "we hope the cruel man-child in charge isn't going to overstep the lines of due process, we will pay close attention #DemocracyDiesInDarkness", which he won't, and that will be it and everybody is happy, because "he did get his chance in court", like Manning.

It shouldn't matter if you think Assange is good or bad with respect to arresting a publisher for publishing when news media has been doing the same thing... Because freedom of the press is our constitutional right in America.

And be prepared for the 180 degree turn in the liberal circles when the Republicans try to get him executed.

With friends like the Democrats do progressives really need enemies?

According to the article, the crime for which he'd be extradited has a maximum penalty of five years in prison, not death.

If it did attract a death penalty he would be ineligible for extradition.

1 hours ago it was 1 year for skipping bail.

At the rate at which the maximum sentence is growing we should be seeing him hung and quartered by mid day tomorrow.

The extradition request arrived in 2012, but they managed to keep it secret until this arrest. Now that official press releases have come out from both countries, we know the charge underlying the extradition. The fact sheet linked from the UK press release explains that the rules for UK->US extradition would require consent from the UK, including consideration by the UK courts, of any additional offenses that the US may want to add while they have him in connection with this extradition.

https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/04/11/extradition-f...

They may very well approve some additional offenses, but probably not ones with the death penalty.

That beard deserves the death penalty, though.

About time.

Did the people who stood bail for him get their money back when he went awol?

Isn't the point of bail precisely that you don't get the money back if you don't show up?

Ken Loach and John Pilger probably didn't plan on him skipping bail. I think you can plead, but yea. It's probably gone.

Is it just me or each day the more it seems the western world is viciously cycling on a downward spiral?

2 downvotes why? I made my point and I stand to it. The signs are fucking everywhere.

Is there any manual on how to behave in a totalitarian society, how to "blend" with "normal" people not questioning authorities and "looking the other way", "doing the right thing"; what are efficient ways to dissent etc.?

Leave.

The "moral" course of events would be for him to receive a fair trial in the UK or Sweden concerning the rape and possibly the contempt of court charges.

The "immoral" course of evens would be if he was extradited to the US or some other country, receive an unfair trial, or having to defend against other charges.

>The "moral" course of events would be for him to receive a fair trial in the UK or Sweden concerning the rape and possibly the contempt of court charges.

Charges (which were ridiculous to begin with) were dropped.

>The "immoral" course of evens would be if he was extradited to the US or some other country, receive an unfair trial, or having to defend against other charges.

That's horrible, but what I expect. Extradition to a country that has the death penalty from a country that doesn't shouldn't be a thing.

Why were the charges ridiculous?

And apparently they selected the immoral option.

Civil disobedience means accepting the consequences of one’s actions. Mr Assange is a narcissist, probably a pasty, and deserves to be prosecuted for his crimes. For it is in the state’s treatment of him can the public find the truth, if any, in his claims. Stop being such a pussy, Jules, and own up to your actions.

What if the trail is in secret?

rip. at least he's already used to being confined to a small space.. don't expect any judge to feel sorry for him. no lawyer will get him out of this one.

I think Wikileaks affiliated/sponsored from Russia 'cause Assange rejected documents about russian corruption: https://www.businessinsider.com/assange-turned-down-document...

Anyway, "democracy dies in darkness", so every dirty shit must be highlighted sooner or later.

More proofs.

Assange refused to disclose info on Russia's aggression in Ukraine - FP

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-other_news/2288391-assange-...

Wikileaks: A new angle on MH17: Rebels fired at Ukraine fighter jet which was using MH17 as decoy http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/07/weeks-ago-they-wanted-to-pr... … and

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/492033939142619136?lang...

Thanks for the links, man. More info about MH17 fake photo: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2014/11/14/russian-state-tel...

Julian Assange used to be hailed as a hero for exposing American hypocrisy, but with the secretive way wikileaks operated and the track record of anti-US releases, perhaps it was only a matter of time before Assange and wikileaks were used as pawns for geopolitics. Still, I'm curious when did Assange willingly start working for Russia --- was it from the very beginning, or was it after his legal troubles?

I wonder what Snowden thinks of the whole situation, as Assange did help him get to Russia. Has Snowden been actively involved in US politics (the way Assange and wikileaks substantially affected the last US presidential election)?

> I wonder what Snowden thinks

Guess all Snowden posts is curated by KGB.

You'd think that after the stupid Russian collusion story was dismantled by the recent Mueller report, people would be a little more careful with such paranoid allegations, but here we go...

>You'd think that after the stupid Russian collusion story was dismantled by the recent Mueller report

Not true at all. No one except the DoJ and probably white house have seen the Mueller report. They do all they can to prevent people from seeing this supposedly exonerating report.

You mean the Mueller report that hasn't been released yet?

The story was hardly dismantled. A number of people have actually pled guilty and been jailed for crimes as a result. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/m...

None have plead guilty or sentenced for collusion or collaboration with Russia. They have been convicted for lying to federal officials or some such offense.

> after the stupid Russian collusion story was dismantled by the recent Mueller report

Hardly anyone has actually read the full 400 page report. And "collusion" has a specific legal meaning which can easily be skirted by a whole raft of plausible deniability methods - Mueller is a stickler; he's almost certainly not going to say "collusion" happened unless he has definitive proof that would hold up in court.

Yes, but this twitter convo between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr. is pretty damning. https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/930228239494209536

What's so damning about that convo? Try reading that conversation with the assumption that WL is a neutral party that wants to advance its own interests:

- leak more documents(Trump tax returns)

- get more publicity(asking Trump Jr to retweet/push their stories and lead viewers to their site)

- fight allegations of partisanship(publish anti-Trump documents)

How else would you approach Donald Trump Jr in this conversation? You need to give him some reason to help you.

> Has Snowden been actively involved in US politics

Uh, the snowden leaks?

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