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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

> Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is?

I’ve been following the story since the Slashdot days. Why am I not outraged? Why am I not protesting? It’s certainly doesn’t have to do with some political party that I don’t belong to. I fundamentally feel that Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. They feel more like an anarchists organization than some sort of journalists organization to me. I certainly do not feel outraged nor inclined to protest.

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Unfortunately, most of the replies I got are stuck debating Assange and his character. But it's wholly irrelevant if Assange and Wikileaks went about things the wrong way. This story is about the behavior of the unelected officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI that are making things up out of thin air by trading leniency for false statements with known criminals.

If he's committed a crime, charge him with it and give him his day in court. If he hasn't -- like in the case of this story where he never asked anyone to commit any crimes against the Icelandic government, don't make charges up. I can't believe this even needs to be said.

That's what you should be outraged about, and you don't have to like Assange or Wikileaks to be outraged about that.

> If he's committed a crime, charge him with it and give him his day in court.

Isn’t this exactly what the government has done? https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/downl...

There are lots of unusual things about the Assange case, but the fact that the government tried to strengthen it by offering leniency to an informant isn’t one of them.

The biggest problem is that there are no reliable mechanisms to hold law enforcement accountable when they abuse their power or fabricate evidence. Even getting a conviction overturned is a slim chance, let alone any kind of consequences for the officials involved.

While I can understand this point of view, I have to ask. Do you think that how Assange went about things justifies the magnitude of the effort to punish and silence him?

This is it. It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government.

The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.

>It’s not journalism when you’re just a cutout for the Russian government

Why not?

>The irony of all ironies is that many of the same people who complain about editorializing in journalism and media are the same ones who back Assange.

I don't want what I view as the US backed media outlets in jail either. This isn't irony, disliking something and state prosecution are drastically different.

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