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Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

> The case is then clearly about 170 years worth of charges, not about hacking (the rest 5 years). And these charges are all the "Espionage Act" charges for a non-US person doing obviously a journalistic work outside of the US.

Why can't it also be about the 5 years?

I'm sympathetic to Assange publishing leaks. If wikileaks was just an organization that published, fine. But the government's argument is that Assange was not a "journalist" in that he was actively involved in convincing people to leak, directing hackers to steal secrets, and providing direct assistance to Manning.

Those charges sound plausible to me, though not open-and-shut. It should go to trial. 175 years is absurd, but 5-10 seems fine.

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> But the government's argument is that Assange was not a "journalist" in that he was actively involved in convincing people to leak

Prosecution did try early on to paint Assange's work as something other than journalism. They've given up on that line now as it was very weak. Did you see this, for example, from the testimony of investigative journalist Nicky Hager.

'[Prosecutor] Lewis: You have as a journalist merely been the passive recipient of official information. Presumably you have never done anything criminal to obtain government information?

'Hager: You said “passive”. That is not the way we work. Journalists not only actively work our sources. We go out and find our sources. The information might come in documents. It might come on a memory stick. In most cases our sources are breaking the law. Our duty is to help protect them from being caught. We actively help them cover their backs sometimes.'

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-...

It seems "very weak" to you but not to me.

There's a line between being a journalist and engaging in a conspiracy. The quote you provided is an attempt to blur that line. But, as far as the law is concerned, that line exists...and it exists to protect journalists. There's a reason journalists have lawyers in the room when they make these kinds of decisions. It wouldn't be surprising if Julian Assange -- not known for his carefulness -- crossed that line.

No charges brought under the US espionage act will ever see anything like a free trial. That is a part of how the espionage act works.

"Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, 'basically any information the whistleblower or source would want to bring up at trial to show that they are not guilty of violating the Espionage Act the jury would never hear. It’s almost a certainty that because the law is so broadly written that they would be convicted no matter what.'"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917

>No charges brought under the US espionage act will ever see anything like a free trial. That is a part of how the espionage act works.

Given that no journalist has ever been convicted under the Espionage Act[0] in the US, it seems unlikely that Assange will be.

That's not a defense of the US or Assange/Wikileaks. Rather it's a statement of fact. While the US government is, and has been, leery of journalistic freedom for quite some time, the courts/juries have repeatedly smacked down attempts to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act.

As such, it seems to me that Assange's future (whether or not in a US Federal prison) rests on the ability of US prosecutors to prove that Assange violated the CFAA[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#Brandenb...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

> Why can't it also be about the 5 years?

Because the political forces, as documented in the very fine article, started what appears to be a purely political trial. The kind of which “everybody” would be outraged if it would be done somewhere without the support of the US, and for a common human more imaginable via works of art like Orwell’s and Kafka‘s than when trying to comprehend what is happening right now.

These political forces decided to make it be about 175 years.

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