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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

> And Assange appears to have committed the crime of conspiring to hack a Department of Defense system.

No, that is USG's argument - an argument which has yet to be proven or really even fleshed out. Given its reliance on a tenuous concept of nexus that USG stretches further and further, I think it's tough for it to "appear" to anyone that this spooky action at a distance is immediately criminal - USG's general ability to eventually justify extracting blood notwithstanding.

But back to the specific argument - What GP appears to be advocating is that while considering this possible crime, we should "simultaneously" be thinking of what a general twit Assange is, lest we forget that the real goal is to punish him somehow. That is directly contrary to the rule of law.

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> What GP appears to be advocating is that while considering this possible crime, we should "simultaneously" be thinking of what a general twit Assange is, lest we forget that the real goal is to punish him somehow.

Is that the real goal? That's the point I'm making, because both directions of reasoning matter. It could be that the charges against Assange are absurd and he should be freed. It could be that the charges are accurate but he should be granted clemency. It could be that he's guilty but not worth it. It could be that he's innocent of these crimes but guilty of things that, for various reasons, sit outside statutes. All of these positions imply stances one should take on the various particulars of the situation and so we should think about them.

> That is directly contrary to the rule of law.

This is exactly how the rule of law is practiced. It's one of the reasons why there are such dramatic racial disparities in the american legal system. It's why people regularly commit felonies without knowing it[1].

I am aware of the idea of law that you're invoking - that a crime is a crime is a crime and that we should speak to the issue at hand and not address the context around the issue. The problem, to me, is that the context around the crime is exactly the thing that produced the crime! The charge was doubtless chosen based on what the government thinks it can prove. If it couldn't prove this, it would have selected another charge.

To refuse to consider the context is to play the governments' game. If the charge is the charge, then go ahead and read the statute - I have no doubt Assange is technically guilty in some way. We are all guilty of felonies in some abstract technical sense.

But - if we do the sensible thing and consider the context, we have to consider both sides of the context - how did we arrive at this charge and what behavior (if any) does this charge ignore? This is what I mean by needing to do the two things simultaneously - you can't pretend Assange isn't arrested while you talk about his actions and you can't pretend his past actions don't exist while you talk about his arrest.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438...

> Is that the real goal?

Given that USians overwhelming reaction to Assange is negative thanks to our vibrant state run media, coupled with the tenuousness of the charge - yes I do think that most any attempt to pull wider "context" into the specific legal situation is essentially character assassination.

> The problem, to me, is that the context around the crime is exactly the thing that produced the crime! The charge was doubtless chosen based on what the government thinks it can prove. If it couldn't prove this, it would have selected another charge.

Except a major aspect that defines this situation is that the USG is claiming jurisdiction over a foreign national committing actions wholly on foreign soil. Even if Assange's actions were unquestionably hostile to the United States, and blatantly illegal if done on its soil, claiming jurisdiction over him still relies on purely technical legal reasoning!

So what USG really chose is a charge they can best hang some sort of nexus onto - and it's not really a surprise that the overbroad, overbearing, and draconian CFAA is what they ended up at. It mostly makes sense to use the CFAA to criminally prosecute a foreign actor breaking into US computers because they are still remotely committing actions on US soil, but Assange is essentially being charged in the US for talking to Manning about Manning committing a crime in the US!

Which is why the charge is chilling - because the same reasoning applies to any journalist receiving information from any source. Not because it's illegal for the journalist themselves to mishandle classified information, but because by talking to the source they're conspiring to further the source's own mishandling of classified (/tradesecret) information!

So your position is that the US government can't be trusted on anything so there's no point in justice or laws?

> So your position is that the US government can't be trusted on anything so there's no point in justice or laws?

That's one hell of a shoehorn.

When it comes to people exposing the war crimes that the US government has committed, Yes absolutely.

The US government cannot be trusted to prosecute people who have exposed their war crimes

> So your position is that the US government can't be trusted on anything so there's no point in justice or laws?

This is so comical I actually laughed out loud. How did you arrive at this conclusion based on their comment? Walk us through your reasoning.

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