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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK he's earned his own money by doing talks and receiving donations from supporters, etc not from the Russian government.

And Snowden has never mislead anyone about why he's in Russia. He's said that he would love to come home. And if U.S. whistleblower protections was stronger he could.

Snowden was openly revealing violations of the U.S. constitution.

Assange was covertly acting as an agent of a hostile foreign government with the intention of interfering in U.S. domestic politics.

There is no comparison between these two, at all.

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> Assange was covertly acting as an agent of a hostile foreign government with the intention of interfering in U.S. domestic politics.

You're gonna need proof for that, staunch.

Lawyers prosecuting cases need proof.

The rest of us can, with some basic level of objectivity, just look at the preponderance of the evidence and come to a conclusion. I believe that any reasonable person that looks into the publicly available evidence would come to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, if you're one of the rubes that bought the Seth Rich story from Assange you can be 100% sure that you're terrible at objective analysis.

That isn't how "innocent until proven guilty" works, staunch. You cannot claim Assange is guilty without irrefutable evidence, which you still have not provided.

This isn't a courtroom, soulofmischief. My conclusion is based on the preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

And I do assert that anyone with an objective point of view would come to the same conclusion.

Innocent until proven guilty is a thing for a reason.

We should presume innocence until more qualified people beholded to a strict investigative and judicial process make their ruling, which will hopefully not be tainted by outside interests.

Innocent until proven guilty does not mean that we get to make premature assumptions and pass them off as fact because "this isn't a courtroom". It is not something just lawyers and judges are beholden to, it's something we as a society are beholden to. Everyone has to play along.

You can have your own thoughts, but you cannot just pass them off as objective fact without hard proof.

So I ask one more time, what evidence have you prepondered to ascertain Assange's guilty status? You're speaking in vague nothings instead of providing real data.

"Assange was covertly acting as an agent of a hostile foreign government with the intention of interfering in U.S. domestic politics." That is quite an accusation, is there any proof of that?

What violations of the Constitution did Snowden reveal?

depending on your interpretation, the routine use of unwarranted searching of United States Citizens, among other things

PRISM requires a FISA warrant on domestic targets.

Snowden’s existence is currently at the pleasure of the Russian government. If he did anything to displease them, we would quickly hear that he has committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the back of the head.

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