By narrow definitions of escape. He was essentially under house arrest, unable to leave the Ecuador embassy for years.

I mean he was proven justified there, the grand jury having been in place secretly for ages.

Most of that time was spend escaping the Swedish arrest warrant.

Wasn&#x27;t there a tape accusation as well? I don&#x27;t see why it wouldn&#x27;t be both.

The Edward Snowden route more or less, with his own twists.

&gt; internet punditpublic intellectual*

Yeah I was gonna say, there&#x27;s all sorts of media opportunities on the right for him.  He will be fine.

oh how his fans are going to get an awful taste in their mouth when they realize which side he is on

Wikileaks had no &quot;gig&quot; with Russia Today. They produced the series tthemselves and it was picked up by various news channels - just not any mainstream Western ones (what a shock)

Get a gig with a Russian media outlet, again... See if Roger Stone has any work for him to do? See if GRU has any more deliveries it needs him to make?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;national-security&#x2F;how-the-russians-hacked-the-dnc-and-passed-its-emails-to-wikileaks&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;13&#x2F;af19a828-86c3-11e8-8553-a3ce89036c78_story.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;national-security&#x2F;how-t...</a>

If his brain still works he could take another tilt at the Senate.

Why would he have a prison term in Australia?

What could he possibly do next (if he avoids a prison term)?

Probably the best outcome that could be expected for all involved. What a bizarre story though. Even if it causes a chilling effect on future leakers it did not make the US government look better at all, from my view.

The Belmarsh thing wasn’t voluntary in the least

(That&#x27;s the NYT piece, for those keeping track. We merged <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40782258">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40782258</a> hither)

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;eYe4G" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;eYe4G</a>

Yes, let&#x27;s spend 6 trillion dollars replacing Taliban with Taliban, and destroy the life of one foreigner just to make an example.And who was punished for killing journalists in [0]? The whistleblower.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...</a>

&gt; Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally disseminating national security material

OK, so Snowden ann Assange deserve punishment.Where is the punishment for the people commiting the crimes and treason that Snowden and Assange exposed?

Yes and they are great for releasing all that extra information. Its a fantastic public service they have provided.

Much like Snowden, people attach to whatever the highest-profile thing they released was, and act like that&#x27;s the only thing they released. It&#x27;s not, it&#x27;s just what got the most attention. It&#x27;s maybe 0.5% of the portfolio if you&#x27;re being generous.Both Snowden and Assange went far beyond &quot;blowing the whistle&quot; in what they leaked and&#x2F;or solicited.

He released public interest information during an election.It has never been proven he had some killer stuff on trump and failed to leak it.Its not his job to selectively withhold information during an election to make demo voters happy.And trump is basically immune to bad press anyway. What more could you say about him that hasnt been said.This claim never held water and still fails to.

and stole classified documents.Wait, Assange or Trump?

Bad faith.He acted in the interests of everyone who doesn&#x27;t like the US, you could justifiably say the same thing about him acting in China&#x27;s best interest, or Iran.Absolute codswallop that you can&#x27;t hold a government to account else you are criticised for aiding their enemies. Does that mean we should just sit down and take it because it makes us look bad?I&#x27;m the first in line to criticise my government (UK) but that doesn&#x27;t mean I&#x27;m intentionally working in the interests of it&#x27;s enemies.Sod off with these bad faith attacks espousing an opinion that no reasonable person could possibly hold.

He worked as a conduit for Russian interests.

He was already effectively a political prisoner.  The US made enough of an example of him I guess.  Expose US war crimes and this will happen to you.

&quot;Generally&quot; is one of those somewhat troubling terms on a case that has severe First Amendment implications, but that&#x27;s good to know.&gt;Further: Assange wasn&#x27;t simply charged with &quot;receiving and publishing classified information&quot;; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.Those charges were (presumably) dropped as part of the plea, and his plea did not mention them. The plea is only about receiving and publishing.

Legally, no.Practically, yes.I&#x27;ve been in situations where there was no precedent, and in asking what would happen if this went to court, decisions were made based on how lower courts ruled. Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice, etc. all &#x2F;influence&#x2F; courts.

They don&#x27;t. Generally: lower court decisions don&#x27;t create binding precedent.Further: Assange wasn&#x27;t simply charged with &quot;receiving and publishing classified information&quot;; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.

The short answer: making a plea deal avoids establishing one.

&gt; I wonder if the USA will informally say &quot;we got Assange; we can get you&quot;I can&#x27;t imagine we haven&#x27;t been saying that since the day Assange set foot inside the Ecuadorian embassy.

&gt;belief is that (in the US) a journalist that passively receives classified information &amp; publishes it isn&#x27;t committing a crime due to the First Amendment. The actual crime itself was committed by the person leaking the information.Even if you think Assange did more than this, this plea deal is very clearly over passively receiving classified information.The precedent information is good to hear, thank you.

&gt;Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information.This phrasing makes it sound like Assange asked &quot;Do you have this?&quot; when the accusations have always been closer to &quot;Can you get me this? Here is how you could go about doing that.&quot; That takes it out of the realm of journalism in at least the legal sense.

There is a precedent from the Pentagon Papers:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstamendment.mtsu.edu&#x2F;article&#x2F;new-york-times-co-v-united-states&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstamendment.mtsu.edu&#x2F;article&#x2F;new-york-times-co-v-...</a>As the last paragraph points out, not a clear victory for the free press, but the Assange prosecutors know this case very well and you are absolutely right that they want to avoid another one.

Hopefully the next Wikileaks will have better OPSEC and will be completely out of reach from ALL governments

Journalists generally avoid asking for classified information. The belief is that (in the US) a journalist that passively receives classified information &amp; publishes it isn&#x27;t committing a crime due to the First Amendment. The actual crime itself was committed by the person leaking the information.Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information. That&#x27;s where the espionage claim comes from.There&#x27;s not much precedent on this though and making a plea deal avoids establishing one. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Generally, precedent is established when someone appeals their conviction, and a higher court determines that the conviction is lawful. Higher court decisions bind lower courts, so e.g. if a circuit appeals court says the law is &quot;X&quot;, every district court within it has to agree.Since generally, you wouldn&#x27;t appeal a plea deal, there probably won&#x27;t be legal precedent from this.That being said, I wonder if the USA will informally say &quot;we got Assange; we can get you&quot; the next time a similar situation comes up.

The plea deal is for “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information”. Having documents dropped in your lap and then publishing them is different than conspiring with someone to illegally obtain them in the first place.

How do plea deals work for precedent? As despite the constant claim that he was only being charged for assisting in hacking US computers, the plea deal is over violations of the Espionage Act specifically about receiving and publishing classified documents. Or basically his acts as a journalist.Can this be used to indict other journalists who receive and publish classified information? As if so, this feels like a huge loss, though I can hardly blame Assange for not continuing the fight.

That is the text of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;wikileaks&#x2F;status&#x2F;1805388007475732646" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;wikileaks&#x2F;status&#x2F;1805388007475732646</a>, for those keeping track. (We merged that thread hither from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40782571">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40782571</a>.)Other URLs from threads we merged:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abc.net.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;2024-06-25&#x2F;julian-assange-released-from-prison-&#x2F;104017664" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abc.net.au&#x2F;news&#x2F;2024-06-25&#x2F;julian-assange-releas...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;06&#x2F;24&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;assange-plea.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;06&#x2F;24&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;assange-plea....</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;crgggyvp0j9o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;crgggyvp0j9o</a>

He was in isolation in a high security prison without having been convicted of any crimes since 22 September 2019. He was only released after &#x27;admitting&#x27; that he was guilty...I think the UK and US should abstain from criticising any countries&#x27; courts and justice system after that...

1901 days in prison, after all that time since 2012 holed up in a room in the Ecuadorian embassy first.

&gt; Why, though?Because he fucked with the powerful.

Why? To punish and deter.He exposed terrible things done by large powers, therefore he was persecuted absolutely.

23 hour bang up isn&#x27;t uncommon in the UK, mostly just because the prisons are overcrowded and underfunded and it&#x27;s easier to keep things under control with everyone locked in their cells most of the time.There are legal minimums for how much time prisoners have to be allowed out of their cells but they&#x27;re pretty low and not always followed

&gt; 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a dayWhy, though? I didn&#x27;t even think that was a thing in Britain, at least if you&#x27;re not some very high risk criminal convicted of violent crimes, which I don&#x27;t think he is? Regardless of what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other prisoners...

If it has been leaked, then show me the name of one of the hundreds of names of Afghan informants that has been leaked.You can&#x27;t because no Afghan informant names were leaked.

&gt; In his book, co-authored with Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange&#x27;s War on Secrecy, Leigh claimed Assange to have said in relation to whether the names should be redacted, &quot;Well, they&#x27;re informants. So, if they get killed, they&#x27;ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.&quot;[63] In response to the book&#x27;s publication, WikiLeaks posted on Twitter: &quot;The Guardian book serialization contains malicious libels. We will be taking action.&quot;

That (alleged) quote is disputed and unproven, and came from writers openly hostile to Assange.

Julian Assange, on his leaking of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants into the hands of the Taliban:&quot;Well, they&#x27;re informants. So, if they get killed, they&#x27;ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.&quot;that&#x27;s rich coming from an informant.

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREEJulian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles,and for the people&#x27;s right to know.As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.Julian&#x27;s freedom is our freedom.[More details to follow]

Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say.What a waste of a life over a pointless and vindictive prosecution. Here’s hoping all prosecutors involved go the way of Stevens’<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.umich.edu&#x2F;special&#x2F;exoneration&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;casedetail.aspx?caseid=3663" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.law.umich.edu&#x2F;special&#x2F;exoneration&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;casedeta...</a>

I&#x27;m curious if there are any Australia &lt;-&gt; USA deals here too, in terms of restrictions he may have upon arriving to AU

They think their harrasment of him is going to deter future whistleblowers but the only thing they&#x27;ve done is encourage future leakers to &quot;go all the way, leak everything no matter how damaging, and then kill yourself to be a martyr. They should have just pardoned him and let him go.

WebMD &gt; &quot;The average guinea pig lifespan is between five to eight years&quot;

still no word of what happened to  his beloved pet guinea pigs during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy.

Assange freed, didn&#x27;t have that on my bingo card.

he has spent a long time resisting, what makes you think he&#x27;s admitting to what &quot;they&quot; want him to admit to?

The article states what&#x27;s going to happen. He&#x27;ll be charged and immediately released, because he made a deal.

I wonder what legal repercussions could follow from him &quot;admitting&quot; to have commited whatever they want him to admit

I suppose this concludes the dark-comedic odyssey that began when he flew to Stockholm on 8&#x2F;11&#x2F;10 [1], just shy of 14 years later. In its totality it reads like something Kafka might have written as a teenager.Whether or not his work had any worth to it, it&#x27;s hard not to conclude that he was a de-facto Russian agent, IMO. The most pungent data point is probably that Rohrabacher [2] was mediating a pardon deal between him and Trump. [3][1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msnbc.com&#x2F;rachel-maddow-show&#x2F;maddowblog&#x2F;kevin-mccarthys-joke-trump-putin-six-years-later-rcna33680" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.msnbc.com&#x2F;rachel-maddow-show&#x2F;maddowblog&#x2F;kevin-mc...</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;2020&#x2F;feb&#x2F;19&#x2F;donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;2020&#x2F;feb&#x2F;19&#x2F;donald-trump-o...</a>

&gt;What, by picking and choosing what content to release to push a political agenda?I think you&#x27;ve confused wikileaks with the new york times there. The times definitely pick and choose. I have seen no evidence that wikileaks suppressed anything ever. Link if you have it as that would make them more like the times.

I think Wikileaks stopped being reliable long before this occurred. I can&#x27;t find and exact date, but their canary died more than a decade ago.

What, by picking and choosing what content to release to push a political agenda?Like getting leaked data from the DNC and RNC and coordinating with the Trump campaign to time DNC leaks for maximum effect (I have no love for the DNC) while not releasing RNC content sent to you?

Well, it would be depressing if we have to rely on The Shadow Brokers-style &quot;whistleblowers&quot; in the future.

&gt; should inspire future whistleblowersI&#x27;d think his treatment might dissuade future whistle blowers.

The world changed a lot, now our computers are surveilance tools.

I&#x27;m glad Assange is free, but he really pushes the definition. He wasn&#x27;t a whistleblower, he actively pushed whistleblowers to deliver information that he wanted to publish. He frequently revealed sources in active warzones, and redacted a bunch of Russian financial information from their leaks on Syria.

He is a legend and should inspire future whistleblowers. Both his leaks and trials exposed how corrupt the justice system is.

The people downvoting your comment are ignorant on reality. It is common knowledge that Sweden has been used by the CIA as a black site. Sweden has been a satellite state to the US for a long time, just as other countries are or have been satellites of Russia.Edit: Your down votes do not change reality. More important countries than Sweden have been satellites, such as East and West Germany.

One example which comes to mind:&quot;Swedish papers illuminate CIA renditions&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;wbna7915747" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;wbna7915747</a>&quot;Sweden Violated Torture Ban in CIA Rendition&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hrw.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2006&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;sweden-violated-torture-ban-cia-rendition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hrw.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;2006&#x2F;11&#x2F;09&#x2F;sweden-violated-torture-...</a>

Politically shrewd for each of the 3 primary governments involved, removes the issue from the agenda. I&#x27;d say its zero-sum outcome for any player: as many people will be angry as happy he&#x27;s freed. the point being it can&#x27;t be weaponised as easily as having him in the cell.Sweden may differ of course. I don&#x27;t think either of the 3 primaries care what Sweden thinks.

Interesting. So he&#x27;ll have to physically be present in the CNMI?  Presumably he&#x27;ll fly London-Tokyo-Saipan, since this is just about the only way to get there without transiting the US (including Hawaii).

&gt; proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, AustraliaThis is a little disingenuous, and made me chuckle. It&#x27;s faster and cheaper to get to Australia from the US mainland than it is from Saipan. Yes, it&#x27;s physically closer as stated, but does not confer the claimed benefits.

The case is federal, it&#x27;s not confined in jurisdiction. But the plea deal is being entered there because of &quot;defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceeding&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;storage.courtlistener.com&#x2F;recap&#x2F;gov.uscourts.nmid.6473&#x2F;gov.uscourts.nmid.6473.3.0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;storage.courtlistener.com&#x2F;recap&#x2F;gov.uscourts.nmid.64...</a>

Because it&#x27;s about as far away from the US mainland as you can get and relatively close to Australia where he&#x27;s going. Also it&#x27;s conveniently very far away from any journalists. At least, I can&#x27;t imagine those shipping out in large numbers on short notice.So, they get to rubber stamp this and get it over with without too much scrutiny in the media before the man starts giving non-stop interviews in Sydney or wherever he is going in Australia.

Why is this case located with the United States District Court For The Northern Mariana Islands?

Diffusion of responsibility is definitely a defense in these cases, but the system should recognize this shortcoming and assign accountability (at least in an ideal world).Although I&#x27;m willing to bet that the true actors here weren&#x27;t necessarily presidents (even though they would ultimately be accountable like you say). Would be interesting to see who demanded what and when.

A lot of Assange supporters are going to feel weird about giving Biden credit for his release, especially since Biden was part of the administration that initially decided to pursue Assange.

Responsibility has to be pretty defuse, right? You can at least begin with all the presidents in office since he was prosecuted, until N-1 since presumably the Nth just released him.

This article from the Intercept covers it pretty well. The prosecutor in question is Gordon Kromberg.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;E5KbI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;E5KbI</a>Here&#x27;s another: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newagebd.net&#x2F;article&#x2F;226187&#x2F;julian-assanges-grand-inquisitor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newagebd.net&#x2F;article&#x2F;226187&#x2F;julian-assanges-gran...</a>

It&#x27;s interesting, if you believe that one person can take down the system - as a whistleblower must - well surely, one person can buck the system&#x27;s instincts and try to take down you.

Don’t forget Hillary was fixated on Assange for a long time, and was even quoted with “Can’t we just drone the guy?”.The direct spat lead to Assange helping Trump and the Russians publish Hillary’s email server spool.I don’t like that Assange ended up helping Trump and Russia, but you can’t blame him for helping the one person who can kick the person out of office who wants to Tomahawk you

This doesn’t make sense because the Assange case has been a diplomatic issue between the US and Australia ever since Albanese came to power.Ultimately the responsibility falls to the President since the DOJ isn’t responsible for international relations. Biden must have thought the case was important otherwise there’s no reason to harm relations with an ally over something like that.

There has been reporting on this. Apparently there was one zealous person in DOJ pushing the Assange case and everybody else thinks it&#x27;s too weak to be worth it.

There is a big overlap between political organizations and organized crime.

The real life version is a company sues you for a stupid reason and after spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on your defense the company loses and says &quot;our bad lol&quot;, and then the matter is settled.Or, in this case, after prosecutors hold someone in prison for a decade or two they offer a plea deal.

That&#x27;s like playing &quot;who can punch the softest&quot; with my dad

I was reminded of this joke:&gt; A city slicker shoots a duck out in the country. As he&#x27;s retrieving it, a farmer walks up and stops him, claiming that since the duck is on his farm, it technically belongs to him. After minutes of arguing, the farmer proposes they settle the matter &quot;country style.&quot;&gt; &quot;What&#x27;s country style?&quot; asks the city boy.&gt; &quot;Out here in the country,&quot; the farmer says: &quot;when two fellers have a dispute, one feller kicks the other one in the balls as hard as he can. Then that feller, why, he kicks the first one as hard as he can. And so forth. Last man standin&#x27; wins the dispute.&quot;&gt; Warily the city boy agrees and prepares himself. The farmer hauls off and kicks him in the groin with all his might. The city boy falls to the ground in the most intense pain he&#x27;s ever felt, crying like a baby and rolling around on the ground. Finally he staggers to his feet and says: &quot;All right, n-now it&#x27;s–it&#x27;s m-my turn.&quot;&gt; The farmer grins: &quot;Forget it, you win. Keep the duck.&quot;

&gt; action would be taken upon those individuals to ensure accountabilityOut of genuine curiosity: what &quot;actions&quot; do you want taken and what accountability are you interested in? I mean, to be blunt: you think this is a crime, right? You want someone charged and prosecuted in a court, with due process, in front of a jury of peers, yada yada.So... what if your imaginary prosecutor jumps ship to somewhere else where they get arrested and detained, and then refuse to come back to the US to face trial. Are they not then a political prisoner? Why not?The point being: Assange wasn&#x27;t thrown in jail without trial, he was thrown in jail because he refused trial. And there&#x27;s an important difference.

Oh boy, very far, unfortunately.What you say we need badly as it keeps every government employee accountable for what they did.

Corrupting legal processes with a combination of weasel talk and bureaucracy is always the first step towards a Navalnyj situation. When that happens to political dissidents how ever bad they are we should all feel great concern.But I might missunderstand you.

I don&#x27;t know a lot about it, on the face of it I think its terrible. Why do you ask?

Most reasonable people would denounce BOTH. You seem to be pushing toward the idea that &quot;if they do something evil, my evil is no longer evil&quot;.

Cheers. what say you to Navalny’s torture, detainment, and death?

In an ideal world we would get to do a reverse investigation to understand which government officials were complicit in his very obviously politically motivated detention, action would be taken upon those individuals to ensure accountability, and the system itself would be updated so powerful interests can&#x27;t abuse the law like this. How far are we from this world?

You&#x27;ve got it exactly right, many people in the US care far more about compliance with and respect for authority than they do about rule of law.

I am not aware of anything he has leaked being problematic. In fact, the US couldnt demonstrate that he had lead to the death of any soldiers or spies. And in a lot of cases, the spying was certainly unjustified.I find it troubling that people dont have the nuance to identify that hes a bit of a smelly housemate and problematic manager but ultimately a clear net benefit to mankind.

First, Assange isn&#x27;t a whistleblower, nor a leaker. He was a publisher. Wikileaks received leaked documents from whistleblowers and published them. Or at least received documents from somewhere and published them.In the beginning Assange tried to vet the leaks he published. He contacted the US over the Manning leaks to go over them so he could publish without risk, the US refused.So Assange set up a huge team of journalists to comb through the documents to see what was safe to publish. One of those journalists working for The Guardian proceeded to publish the key to the entire database, ensuring everything was leakedShortly after, he ends up in embassy and was unable or unwilling to do similar things.

Julian Assange published evidence of war crimes committed by the US Army. Both the leaker&#x2F;whistleblower (Manning) and Julian Assange got their lives ruined over it. What is the lesson here? That if you value your life you should look the other way when you come across evidence of serious malfeasance? That killing innocent people is not a real crime but embarrassing those in power is the worst crime imaginable?This is much bigger than Assange.

&gt;It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of whistleblowing...This is true in both directions and Assange is the perfect example of that. Someone being a whistleblower is not a get out of jail free card and there are still laws regarding how whistleblowing should be handled and what qualifies. Assange leaked a lot of important stuff that qualifies, but that wasn&#x27;t all he leaked or did. A shockingly few number of people seem willing to engage this issue with the nuance that is requires and either label Assange a hero or a villain when he clearly is somewhere in between.

Plea deals aren&#x27;t a solution. No matter how reasonable.This agreement itself is a plea deal, but involves the agreement in principle that Assange has committed a crime by publishing this information. That in itself is an enormous problem for people seeking out government wrongdoing.

I wish the US had offered whistleblowers reasonable plea deals and they had taken them. Unfortunately that&#x27;s not the world we live(d) in. The US pursued a policy of vindictive and extralegal punishment against &quot;enemy combatants&quot; that made a lot of people doubt whether they could get fair treatment.

The Wikileaks affair opened my eyes. I used to think an informed public was a good thing. Turns out it just means they vote for Morton Downey Jr.

I think people like the idea of whistleblowing because we have a lack of trust in Governments and corporations. Whistleblowing &quot;lifts the lid&quot; so to speak on potential large breaches of trust and breaches of the law to a greater degree of perceived damage than whistleblowing.Essentially uncovering hypocrisy in the way our Governments and corporations works.People can both care about the act of whistleblowing and the illegal actions incurred as a result.But it&#x27;s all nuanced, there&#x27;s whistleblowing and then there&#x27;s whistleblowing in a way that puts other innocent people at risk.

He&#x27;s also not a journalist by traditional definitions i.e. no formal training, no accreditation, no redaction to protect innocent parties, no protection of sources.He&#x27;s more akin to an activist.

And only sometimes. Other times he was a political campaigner. &quot;Hey Don Jr, let&#x27;s talk and coordinate the release of a bunch of DNC material when it can most benefit your dad&#x27;s campaign. And don&#x27;t worry, I&#x27;m sitting on the RNC material, it&#x27;s safe.&quot;

Julian&#x27;s not a whistleblower, he&#x27;s a journalist. Whistleblowers are people within the organization.

I remember that footage.&quot;Deemed illegal&quot;, sounds rubber-stamped.The fact that you put &quot;collateral damage&quot; in quotes, has the same value as me putting &quot;Murdered by COD players, just for carrying a camera&quot; in quotes.I stand to be corrected regarding the video in question.

“On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks.[6] The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder,[7][8] showed the crew firing on a group of people and killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians.[15] An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage,[16] which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.”From: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike</a>3 attacks. Two 30mm cannons and one hellfire.There is tons of video out there and sometimes leaked of the drone strike recordings. The hostage video section of high side is creepily advertised also for inspiration or idk.

Yeah &quot;collateral&quot; and &quot;isolated&quot; incident.They hate you because of your &quot;freedom&quot; anyway.

Which illegal government activities did the Manning&#x2F;Assange leaks uncover? The only thing I can recall is that &quot;collateral damage&quot; helicopter footage but it was an isolated incident and was deemed legal following investigation.

No, this is actually extremely simple to square up: In order for the rule of law to be protected, and to allow the public to hold government accountable for what it does in their names, it is necessary that the actions of the government are held to a much higher standard of legal scrutiny than individual citizens or the public.This means that whistleblower immunity should be extremely strong and anything the government wants to do to prosecute whistleblower should have to pass many hurdles.This doesn&#x27;t conflict with the concept of checks and balances, rather it has to be an integral part of the checks and balances.In fact, this rationale is so simple and self-evident to anyone who asks themselves how the rule of law can be upheld in the face of the potential for unlawful conduct by government actors that one should ask themselves if coming to the opposite conclusion does not require a strong dose of motivated reasoning.

It&#x27;s safe to assume that &#x27;so many people&#x27; includes a whole lot of covert actors trying to peddle the government&#x27;s point of view on Assange and Wikileaks.Regardless, the exposures are exactly what journalists and publishers should be doing - government agencies went out of control under the umbrella of the Patriot Act, and the results, from fabricated claims of WMDs in Iraq to who knows what, have been disastrous.Also, Wikileaks did pretty responsible journalism for example on the explosive Vault 7 leaks:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;ciav7p1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;ciav7p1&#x2F;</a>&gt; &quot;Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in &quot;Year Zero&quot; for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in &quot;Vault 7&quot; part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.&quot;

The motivations of a person who disproportionately helps western governments is troubling to you?  Or is it that you don&#x27;t consider exposing criminal conduct helpful?

when your whistle blowing only reveals secrets of one side, then i am very skeptical of motivations.where are the dumps from north korea. where is kim jong un&#x27;s private communications with Xi Jinping. Where is Putin&#x27;s communications with Lukashenko. 
Where are internal memos from the people&#x27;s liberation army. Where are the leaks from the Ayatollahs.Also yes the targets were western governments. What about western corporations? Where are leaks from Boeing about their issues? Where are leaks from Facebook about PTSD of their moderators? Where are the leaks about Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or whatever?The targets WL chose were basically the &quot;evil west&quot;, you know, the only reason Ukraine has not been reduced to a prison complex.

It amazes me that so many people care more about the act of whistleblowing, which informs us, the citizens, about what our governments are doing that&#x27;s illegal, than about the illegal activities themselves.What does that say about those people? Are they easily led by emotion? They certainly don&#x27;t care about the rule of law, if breaking the law by others can so easily be ignored. They aren&#x27;t particularly patriotic, if they think that subverting the checks and balances in their preferred kind of government is fine.I&#x27;m glad this partiular episode will be finished soon.

Absolutely. Did you hear Trump recently saying he’d get Dread Pirate Roberts guy released or something like that? The silk road guy?

Trump was never going to release him.Assange was just a soundbite for him to dogwhistle.

Trump has caused more damage to U.S. intelligence interests than Assange ever did.  Trump&#x27;s unpunished actions make the prosecution of other violators look like pantomime.

Hilarious that he was counting in Trump to get him released, but it wound up being under Biden.You can tell it’s election year for the USA. Probably hoping for a little extra PR from it all for being the Good Guys (tm)

Does this qualify as some sort of variation of Godwin&#x27;s law?Keeping war crimes classified until everyone responsible is dead is not the same as keeping plans secret during a war.Hard to mix those two up to the point I&#x27;d say it was done in bad faith.

I&#x27;m personally glad that the Allies were able to keep the information about their plans to land on the beaches in Normandy from &quot;being free&quot;, in order to catalyze their victory in WWII.But I think, charitably, what people mean when they say things like this is that more information should be free. And I think agree with that. But I&#x27;m not entirely convinced it applies to everything Assange is responsible for releasing.

calling a war a war shouldn&#x27;t be illegal, but it is illegal in russia.

information should be free, exposing US war crimes shouldn&#x27;t be illegal

&gt; coincided with Biden polling so terriblyDo you think this helps Biden? Assange is a right winger, helping him out isn&#x27;t likely to convince moderates to go for Biden.

Good on Biden? It was only Assange good fortunes that his bail hearing coincided with Biden polling so terribly that they were probably forced for release him. I’m sure they believe themselves to be hemorrhaging votes and unable to risk any more negative publicity with the left. So they decided they don’t want to receive him any more.Is that too cynical of a view? I mean this is an administration that is supplying the most destructive weapons to Israel so they can kill and dismember Palestinian women and children — what’s the freedom of one innocent man to such people?

Hopefully he will not have a mysterious accident not too long after returning home.

I never thought they had it in them. Never thought in a million years they&#x27;d let this go. It gives me some faith that the US govt. was able to move on from this. When democracy itself is at stake, this wins important favorability. Good on the biden administration.Less persecution of those that benefit society, more persecution of those that seek to undermine it, please.

If you&#x27;re referring the prison, no one will take most the people there, that&#x27;s probably why it &quot;can&#x27;t&quot; be closed.  They should be released if they haven&#x27;t been convicted by now... The question is to where?

Kudos to the Biden administration for putting an end to yet another long running US boondoggle.

In the animal farm, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

If only government secrets were just their grandma&#x27;s recipes.Why do governments are given special treatment when some of their secrets are crimes that are disclosed too late to get anyone involved in a trial, and happened too long ago to do anything about it.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_involvement_in_regime_change" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_involvement_in_r...</a>

If we consider other forms of journalism, it seems quite normal that a newspaper or TV station offers a specific political perspective, the news it publishes being selectively curated by its editor. Perhaps the issue is not that Assange had an editorial slant, but that his publication stood alone; we had no whistleblower&#x27;s equivalent of CNN or the New York Times to consult for contrast as Wikileaks began playing the part of Fox News.

I agree with you and I&#x27;m a bit surprised that more people don&#x27;t see the difference between what Manning and Snowden did and what Assange was up to (including apparently Snowden himself).At the time, I was initially a person who thought that what Wikileaks was doing was a net good for the rule of law, but changed my mind when I learned about the selective nature of what they publish. The fact that they were playing politics, pushing conspiracy theories, and actively coordinating with the Trump campaign completely discredits any moral high-ground they had. You can say that what happened to him is unfair and that may even be true but Assange is no hero.

i have a very, very hard time feeling sympathetic to the elements put in danger here.

I would add to what you wrote that I personally have reservations about revealing the identities of confidential sources, activists, etc. He willfully published not only the sources in active warzones who were feeding information to the US, risking their deaths, but also the secret identities and conversations of activists in Belarus who were summarily imprisoned or killed.And it&#x27;s not that they&#x27;re committed to always releasing everything, they painstakingly withheld information about Russia&#x27;s financial backing of Syria during one of their releases.

I think you are both right.Snowden and Manning broke the oaths they took.Assange is guilty of espionage.&gt; but Assange isn&#x27;t American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.That&#x27;s besides the point, for example if a CIA agent is in China gathering intelligence on classified things, he is clearly guilty of espionage. You don&#x27;t have to be a citizen or a permanent resident or have a duty to be loyal to a country to be spy.edit: typo

I think framing the ethical considerations of this based on geographical borders is unnecessarily limiting.Political borders should not be relevant to evaluate the ethics of what each person did.Manning &amp; Snowden ultimately to me acted ethically (And subjectively history has not been kind to the things that Snowden has had to do or chose to do since he got asylum in Russia)Assange ultimately acted UN-ethically by being selective in some cases (leaking DNC data but not RNC), and &quot;non partisan&quot; in others (Leaking data that contained info on US war crimes; while also risking the lives of unrelated US intelligence agents and informants NOT complicit in war crimes)

I&#x27;m the precise other way around.Snowden and Manning had a duty to the US. They were US citizens, they even worked for the military or spying apparatus.For them to release information, no matter how justified, is obviously a crime, but Assange isn&#x27;t American, not US permanent resident, and he has no duty to be loyal to the US.This is why I feel that the prosecution is so insane. Assange getting extradited to the US is like Russia getting somebody extradited to Russia. Now of course, you can&#x27;t expect better from the UK, which participated in the same war he is most famous for publishing stuff from, and him going to the UK was incredibly stupid.But acquiring material actively is something you should obviously do. If you&#x27;re a citizen of a third country and have a chance to obtain material of public interest, of course you should, and it shouldn&#x27;t concern you whether the country whose material you obtain regards that as a crime.

Here in France, as an individual, you can provide proof in a justice case, regardless of how you got them (that is, they are valid even if acquired through illegals means).I believe illegal acquisition of proof shall be punished only if the underlying case is denied.

&gt;Are you still a journalist?
If he were an american citizen then the answer is yes as nothing much would stop him from being a journalist. You can speak and journal from prison there.What your asking implies is was he more an agitator or conspirator. Well he is about to admit to as much out of necessity, more to the point, will the next round of international journalists feel so much grey area hunting is necessary to bring us the truth about governments acting in the red area? I suspect many a journalist would go back in time and spill coffee on Hitler if it helped unearth those state secrets.

The law on this is not at all that people can publish &quot;whatever they&#x27;d like&quot;. It&#x27;s a complex mishmash of written laws and legal precedents that have accrued over a long period of time. The end result is somewhere in the middle. There are legal ways to publish more information than the government or others would like, but there are also things that are arguably &quot;press&quot; that are not legal to do.

In the US, the Right to Freedom of the Press has NOTHING to do with &quot;journalists&quot; and everything to do with the freedom for ANYONE to write, publish, and distribute whatever they&#x27;d like.If I as a US citizen didn&#x27;t sign a contract agreeing not to publish something and if that something isn&#x27;t libelous, I should be free to publish it.

So I have a couple of thoughts on this. For context, I&#x27;m a big fan of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Julian Assange is... more interesting.Imagine you&#x27;re a journalist and someone hands you a shoebox full of SD cards with classified materials including video evidence of war crimes. Most of us would agree it is the ethical thing to do to publish that and you&#x27;re definitely a journalist.Now imagine you had a contact in the military with acccess to classified data. What if instead of simply receiving that information, you tell that person what you&#x27;re interested in. Are you still a journalist?What if you procure tools for that person to bypass security procedures? What if you instruct them on methods they can smuggle out that information from a secure facility? Are you still a journalist?What if you run someone off the road so they have a car accident and they miss their shift and that person is in charge of facility security, making it easier for your contact to smuggle out classified materials? Are you still a journalist?This can go on and at some point you&#x27;re no longer a journalist.My point is that Assange was allegedly more of an active participant in acquiring these materials so there&#x27;s an argument to be made that he wasn&#x27;t a journalist, legally speaking.But here&#x27;s where I think Assange really hurt himself: by playing politics in selectively releasing the Podesta and DNC emails to try and sway the 2016 election. This demonstrated that Wikileaks is not, as it portrays itself, a vessel for unfiltered publication. This mattered in the court of public opinion because that&#x27;s what would ultimately have to come to Assange&#x27;s aid.Now make no mistake: the US government did what it set out to do, which was to create a chilling effect on journalism that exposed US government secrets. Assange has essentially spent 12 yaers in confinement between the Ecuadorian embassy and Belmarsh awaiting extradition.

Never thought I&#x27;d live to see the day. After looking after his health and family, I hope he resumes interviews and podcasting.Today was a good day.

if everything written here actually happens, i suppose this is as satisfying an ending that everyone can geti really hope this man will be free. there&#x27;s still a really bad precedent set that they will imprison you first, make you serve your term, then get your day in court to go free.. its a bit crooked and i really dont like thispart of me thinks this is happening now because the presiding dominant western political establishment is losing power everywhere and they don&#x27;t want the growing adversarial camp to hold freeing him as a victory while being able to set the precedent of his guilt to someday have in their back pocket the ability to do this again without the perceived unfairness

I don’t know, did he really change really anything? It doesn’t feel like it at least.Outside of the tech community, he’s not really known except for being that guy who leaked things.

What if I respect what Snowden did and believe he should be pardoned and at the same time believe Assange should have been prosecuted.

literally nobody gives a fuck about the prostitution of their agency , I myself am grateful to be aware of it , but cant help feeling it only becomes worse by the day ... tldr not sure of the sum effect of having awareness raised here

Yes, he is a true hero of NSA. The secrets were too big to allow just anybody to leak them.

Yes the world is clearly a worse place because of Snowden, without him just imagine the true power the national security state could have achieved and how much safer we’d all feel.

&gt; Julian&#x27;s freedom is our freedom.A little too heavy handed. Yeah it seems like from the outside he was potentially overly punished, pending further details that may never materialize, but “his freedom is our freedom” is pretty extreme given what he did. He’s not relatable.

Everybody keeps repeating this without actually knowing specifically what his &quot;crime&quot; was.Here it is: He was sent a Windows NT password hash, he ran hashcat over it, couldn&#x27;t successfully reverse it, and gave up.That&#x27;s it.Prosecuting him for this &quot;heinous crime against the state&quot; has cost US and UK taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.At the time of this &quot;crime&quot; occurring he was not physically in the USA, not a citizen of the USA, and hence not subject to its laws.Unless you think the USA is the world government and can police anyone, anywhere, for anything?A link to the &quot;tools of the crime&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hashcat&#x2F;hashcat">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;hashcat&#x2F;hashcat</a>

Turns out taking an active role in breaking into government systems is a bad idea. The whole situation is funny because he would have been out years ago had he not done everything in his power to avoid a trial haha.

Your chronology is a little off. He went to the embassy after losing his appeal against extradition. He had already turned himself in and been on house arrest for two years at that point.

The first years of his persecution, according to the legal system of various countries, was for a sex crime.He had sex in Sweden with a woman who consented to having sex, but not without a condom, and at some point he took off the condom.As I remember, that led to England seeking his arrest to be extradited to Sweden for this sex crime. Since he was stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Britain stationed officers outside it for years in case he stepped out. Ostensibly, for justice in this sex crime.Everyone knew the real reasons were to extradite him to the US, but the US was totally silent on him, until minutes before the statue of limitations would have run out.The US&#x27; charge was that Assange offered to run John the Ripper on a hash Bradley Manning gave him. Which, I mean, who among us have never run a hash in john the ripper?It&#x27;s been astounding to see such incongruity between the heft with which the US can use its muscle against a target, and the thin veil of weak crimes the legal systems would admit to investigating.If Sweden, the UK, and the US would have been transparent that they were colluding to imprison him for publishing, I wouldn&#x27;t have become so cynical.

For those who don’t know the obvious reason behind his persecution is Wikileaks revealing embarrassing US secrets (re: embassy cables and Bradley&#x2F;Chelsea Manning) and publishing IS war crimes in Iraq (re: collateral murder).

The UK have already heavily bent (broken) the extradition rules in the favor of the US. I don&#x27;t think the UK will mind as long as it doesn&#x27;t cause public uproar.Most notably, the UK-US extradition treaty, which has exemptions for political offenses (e.g. espionage), has been found not to apply.This article is decent <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;julian-assange-how-british-extradition-law-works-224703" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;julian-assange-how-british-extra...</a>, but from the middle of the trial. Craig Murray&#x27;s blog is also a good source of info.

This isn&#x27;t really between the US and Assange; it&#x27;s between the US and UK. If the US doesn&#x27;t honor the rules for extradition then the UK may decide not to extradite people in the future.

In addition to the UK, it&#x27;s almost certain that this had high level political influence between Australia&#x27;s prime minister and the US president. I don&#x27;t think the perspective that the US would be willing to damage their relations with Australia and the UK over this especially while the US isConsidering the lengths Assange has gone to to avoid entering US custody, I think he&#x27;s weighed up the ability to trust the US on this one with probably more information than we have.

Am I the only one who feels suspicious about this and would hesitate to trust the persecuters? Maybe that&#x27;s not a entirely a reasonable reaction (I just woke up about 10 minutes ago) but it&#x27;s how I feel currently and I&#x27;m wondering if anyone else would feel the same.The U.S. as a national entity certainly isn&#x27;t above lying, as leaks regarding them have shown.

and the closure is likely a timed gesture to reinforce the point that those values are indeed still there and worth defending

This entire case was a catastrophic show of hand in how the justice systems across the west have been weaponized and used against the values it proclaims to protect.

I think that qualifies. 12 years of no freedom. Happy he finally gets to move on with his life. A real brave journalist who actually spoke truth to power.

&gt; Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything.He didn&#x27;t serve 12 years. He locked himself in his room for 7, then he actually served 5.

Considering he served 12 or so years I’m not sure he won anything. But it’s great he’s free, or it sounds like.

He must be enemy number one for a lot of states who want to make the US look sub human and engage in conspiracies.

Yeah it&#x27;s absolutely insane how the American left depicted him. Admittedly controversial in discretion of disclosure and some election related effects--but to view your own political agenda above morality and their ostensible caring of human rights and war crimes just shows the depth of the hypocrisy. (Obviously American right wing is no better...)

You’re confusing Liberals for the left. Virtually the entire left that I’m aware of has championed his cause around the world, including in America. Think Chomsky and Democracy Now, not Jake Tapper and the NYT.

&gt; a big chunk of his “years of torment” were a legal tactic on his partOne man (and a bunch of supporters) against several governments with limitless resources. If something didn&#x27;t stick, there would be another. Let&#x27;s not judge his legal tactics looking back.

I don’t have a strong opinion on Assange’s initial actions but a big chunk of his “years of torment” were a legal tactic on his part. A legal tactic that appears to have worked!He could have engaged with the various legal processes being held against him, but he chose extra-legal protests instead. None of us know if that approach is better or worse than what he did, but this wasn’t torment without agency. It was a direct outcome of his own choices.

Yes torture. Among many others here&#x27;s the UN Human Rights Commissioner&#x27;s office on the Assange situation: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;un-expert-torture-sounds-alarm-again-julian-assanges-lifemay-be-risk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ohchr.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;2019&#x2F;11&#x2F;un-expert-to...</a>His mental health deteriorated a while back.

&gt;who were collaborating in a decade of torture; that he had to be protected by Ecuador is an utter shame.Oh come on. No matter your opinion on the whole situation you can&#x27;t say sitting in an Ecuadorian embassy is torture lol. Dude had his girlfriend, internet, and pets. Calling the self imposed stay torture is beyond absurd. BFFR

Julian Assange&#x27;s years of torment (14 years, which in many countries exceeds the length of parole eligibility for a life sentence) affected how I viewed the world and my political leaning. It wasn&#x27;t clear how what he did wasn&#x27;t journalism. Daniel Ellsberg who was bound by US laws didn&#x27;t suffer like this; and Assange is not even a US citizen.Remember the people who didn&#x27;t stand by him: The entire left. Most European Governments, who were collaborating in a decade of torture; that he had to be protected by Ecuador is an utter shame. Of course WaPo, NYT, et al. Now every time I hear a high pitched social justice squeal from these folks, I realize that it&#x27;s selective and merely self-serving.Sorry, political rant because this is a political topic.

I hope he takes his future security seriously. They are always around the corner.

The wikileaks subreddit was never official, and it was a train wreck. Two very dodgy Trump supporters &quot;volunteered to help with the increased traffic&quot; around the time of the Podesta releases and basically took over.

I remember at the time that it expired, all of the moderators on their official subreddit also got replaced.The insurance file also got changed out at some point as the hash changed.

The main problem with canaries is that it&#x27;s dead easy for a government to remove them from existence, simply issue subpoenas to every website that has one.The users could then decide to jump ship but realistically they won&#x27;t.

Palmer... Lucky? A stand? As in starting a company to sell AI and Robots to the DoD? Huh?

I remember when canaries were useful as a deterrent: even with an apathetic public on balance the tech community was pretty vigilant.These days Snowden is screaming into the void even as concerns HN readers, never mind that he was completely right at great personal cost the first time.I still trust Moxie, and Carmack&#x2F;Palmer&#x2F;etc. seem to be taking a stand, there are others, but it’s getting thin.

The typical canary contains a signed timestamp. Generally, the US does differentiate between forbidding an action (“do not remove your canary”) and compelling an action (“update your canary with a new timestamp” or “disclose the pass phrase for the signing key”).I’m no expert, and I’m sure there are nuances, but the broad strokes behind the design of these canaries are that it’s harder for the government to compel an action than to forbid one.

The whole point of a canary is that it&#x27;s passive, and for exactly that reason. All you do is stop updating the date.

&gt; This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove material.Never understood why gag orders don&#x27;t just say &quot;You can&#x27;t say you received this order. Oh and by the way if we find you removed a canary, we&#x27;ll just write that up as you having said you received this order&quot;.Because the point of a canary is for it to be known beforehand. So the government surely knows about any canary too.There must be some backwards definition of &quot;speech&quot; here which doesn&#x27;t include all conveying of information (such as by removing previously published information), which makes it work, at least in the US (?)

Can someone who has an accurate source post when Wikileaks cryptographic canary expired? I&#x27;m unable to find a source and it&#x27;s important to know they shouldn&#x27;t be trusted.Here&#x27;s when their key expired in 2007:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikileaks.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;WikiLeaks_talk:PGP_Keys</a>From another below:vikingerikA canary goes something like &quot;This website has not received or acted on any government orders to disclose or modify or remove material.&quot; When they ever do, then they remove that notice. The government enforcement usually includes a gag order prohibiting the target from saying that they&#x27;re under orders, so the intent is that you can infer government gag pressure by the canary having been removed. Wikileaks used to have such a notice and no longer does, so we assume government enforcement is why.

The history of Assange is the history of diplomatic incidents, in that sense rejecting the plea deal would not be out of the ordinary

&gt; Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident.Why would it be a diplomatic incident? When you are a fugitive from justice taking a plea deal is always a gamble because you have to show up in court. Should the judge reject your deal, you are handed over to US Marshals pending a new court date.Edit: downvote all you want, it doesn&#x27;t change facts. There is a separation of powers between the prosecutor who is negotiating the extradition&#x2F;plea and the judge who independently evaluates the agreement.

The judge can&#x27;t sentence him, but if the judge refuses the plea deal he can order him to be taken into immediate pre-trial detention and schedule a bail hearing in the near future; and then refuse bail due to him being a flight risk (previously ran from authorities).He would then spend potentially several more years in jail preparing for trial, obtaining discovery, going through discovery, filing pretrial motions, subpoenaing witnesses, etc etc.

&gt; Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident.Australian Politicians: collective silenceWe let dodgy Uncle Sam do whatever he wants to us.

I don&#x27;t think law, justice or even diplomacy are very relevant for most of this case.1900 days in isolation (human rights violation), falsly accused of rape with the goal to extradite to the US, jailed outside of the US on behalf of the US (but not officially), and just the simple fact that a journalist gets jail time for exposing war crimes.Yeah, this has nothing to do with law or justice. This is about a handful of people above the law trying to save their *sses. Anything could happen at this point.Reminds me of when a foreign diplomatic aircraft (Equador) was forced to land in a foreign country (France), because the US thought Snowden might be on board. Remind me of the relevant law that allows for this please? lol

The US is a country with a history of outright kidnapping people from foreign soil - including that of friendly nations.There&#x27;s every chance here that this deal represents a way out for the US as well, and that it will be kept for that reason, but if the US government still wants him to stand trial, a plea deal and the risk of a minor diplomatic scuffle at a point in time where the UK parliamentary election will overshadow the case in UK media isn&#x27;t going to stop them.Keep in mind he doesn&#x27;t have any support from the UK government - they&#x27;d rather be rid of him -, and the current UK government is almost certain to be out of government shortly. It&#x27;s unlikely there&#x27;d be more of a diplomatic incident than a slightly stern letter.I think he has reasonable odds - this case is likely at this point mostly just a nuisance for everyone involved except Assange himself. There&#x27;s nothing to be gained, other than perhaps for some overzealous prosecutor. But I also would not be one bit surprised if something was to happen.

IANAL but the judge can&#x27;t both reject the plea deal and sentence him, since rejecting the plea deal invalidates the guilty plea. Rejecting it and remanding him to custody would cause a diplomatic incident.He&#x27;s not out of the woods yet by any means, but if they reached a deal his lawyers are confident in, I wouldn&#x27;t be worried about the judge. They are supposed to deffer to international law if US is a party to the treaties involved (which in the case of extradition, it is).

What would the actual consequence be? Almost certainly nothing. That said, if the Americans wanted to drag this out further, they&#x27;d simply drag it out further, so it seems highly unlikely this is some ploy, however it&#x27;s not impossible. Assange is more easily &quot;forgotten&quot; if they actually managed to imprison him in The States. But we&#x27;ll see. I&#x27;ll only completely believe it once he touches down in Australia.

I think it would be quite the diplomatic travesty for them to switch to arresting him after choosing to trial him in the closest court of Australia and credit him for time in prison already. 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MarioNawfal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1805385141239660627?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;MarioNawfal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1805385141239660627?ref_src...</a>

&gt; Court documents revealing Assange&#x27;s plea deal were filed Monday evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born.I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. He is appearing in US territory before a US judge who is actually under any obligation to honor the plea deal. The judge could reject the plea deal and remand him to custody or sentence him to US prison.

&gt; Despite all his defenders, he went beyond journalism and actively engaged in process to obtain and disclose national defense information.&quot;National Defence Information&quot; ... is that what we&#x27;re calling &quot;War Crimes&quot; these days?

True according to Assange himself.  Keep up with the events.

False. What they are charging him with is a brief speculative chat discussion about potentially having Manning provide the hash of a password to Assange to help crack it. But this discussed behavior never actually happened and was never referenced by them again.That&#x27;s the conspiracy charge they indicted Assange for. If you don&#x27;t believe me then read <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;pr&#x2F;wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-charged-18-count-superseding-indictment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;pr&#x2F;wikileaks-founder-julian-assa...</a> . If you say that&#x27;s too long to read then just read the last 4 paragraphs.They&#x27;ve bent over backwards to charge him here over something that literally did not happen and was only discussed as an option in passing. If they had anything else to charge him with they would. But they don&#x27;t and rely on people like you propagating falsehoods.

Spying on foreign countries, especially when they are engaged in war crimes and torture, is not illegal.Assange is not and has never been a US citizen or permanent resident. What he did is perfectly permissible.He made a huge mistake in traveling to the UK though.

Despite what  his defenders claim, he went beyond journalism and actively engaged in process to obtain and disclose national defense information. Now he will pledge guilty for that.

It’s wild that Julian Assange is going to do five years in prison and Bush Jr and Dick Cheney are walking around free.

Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free