I knew nothing of this case until today but it seems like he breached an injunction against reporting the identity of complainants or information that could lead to their identification. From the little bit of reading I’ve done it seems pretty like an open and shut case (and I actually went into my reading expecting my be on Murray’s side).
Can anybody explain why there is an injustice here? Almost every comment I see here in his favour gives no reason why this is unjust.
It's a quite long and sordid affair, but I'll do my best to summarize:
Craig has been a thorn in the side of the government for some time, first for exposing corruption in the Scottish seats of power, the too-cozy relationships between the judicial and executive branches, and the biased and tainted prosecutions of anyone who gets in their way (including MPs).
The accusations against him hinge on the "jigsaw identification" theory, whereby people could piece together persons from the material he published. The problem is that it's so vague that it could be used against *anyone* who publishes *anything* about a case such as this (and in fact many publications DID publish information that could easily lead to the identification of the accuser, but they were given a pass). This is why he's calling it retribution.
Furthermore, he's been reporting on the Assange case, and that has angered the British government, which is why his appeal was rejected, and why he was not allowed to travel to Spain to give testimony in a case where the Americans were spying on Assange and his lawyer via UC Global.
At this point, Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.
>The accusations against him hinge on the "jigsaw identification" theory, whereby people could piece together persons from the material he published. The problem is that it's so vague that it could be used against anyone who publishes anything about a case such as this
Have you read the court ruling on the matter? I looked through it, and it sounds like that's not at all what's going on here. The court went through each individual accusation of jigsaw identification he was accused of, and in cases where jigsaw identification was unlikely, said so. On top of that, it seems Murray himself was trying to hint to his readers that he was indeed trying to give information out for the purpose of helping people figure out who the accusers were.
>Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.
Perhaps. Or perhaps he just doesn't have a very strong case.
I think the honest truth is that the government could not give less of a shit about coverage on Assange. It's such a hilariously marginal story, and doesn't play badly with their base. That's ignoring the fact that 99.9% of news is covid related anyway far outshining any really bad press.
You're responding with an argument that says "he pissed off the government so he was sent to prison" - but he actually was convicted of violating a court injunction (in India, that would be contempt of the court).
It's hard to connect contempt of the court proceedings with pissing off the government without also alleging that courts are in the pocket of the government... which is a very serious connection to draw here. This happened in UK!
The alleged means of the so called beach are the nub of the issue here. 'Jigsaw identification' was a contrivance to specifically target Mr Murray, and notably is not a mechanism that has been used against any other entities, though it could have been.
For me, it's far too loosely defined and requires supposition of Intenet (mind reading) , to be used as a means of conviction.
Jigsaw identification is a real thing, and real journalists are taught about it as part of defamation awareness.
Related story: when I was the deputy editor of a paper in a large UK city I was read in on the approximate locations of people known to be on our patch who were subjects of injunctions protecting their identities, just so that we didn’t accidentally reveal anything that could expose their whereabouts when reporting seemingly unconnected events such as house fires etc.
Indeed, it seems like the newspapers were already publishing things at the time with far more detail to point at Alex Salmond, but nothing happened to them.
Isn't the "jigsaw identification" essentially similar to the 'personally identifiable information' addressed by GDPR? It seems to me that both constructs stand and fall together.
PII is precisely defined, not pulled out of thin air, and nobody's going to jail because of it. Rich corporations like Amazon are fined for fucking with it though.
Well, that's not a hard connection to make, when you know about the role of the First Minister of Scotland in the prosecution of her predecessor, Alex Salmond. If you were also to know the identity of one of the accusers, which cannot be reported, but is well known in Scotland, you would find the connection even easier.
The idea is clearly that he pissed off the government in other matters, and so in this particular case, effort might have been made behind the scenes to throw the book at him.
Yes. I think the GP's point was that this shows how US usage also, still, to some extent reflects that of the rest of the world: Your State Department is called that because it is the organ that deals with other sovereign states.
Pointless word semantics aside, the point here is that they are branches of one thing; if you piss off one branch, strings can be pulled so that another branch treats you severely in court. This is plausible.
Golly. Of course the courts and the state are in collusion.
The interests of the state and those of the courts almost completely align. Class interests in the UK really matter and the rulers (not the members of parliament, the actual rulers) and the judges all went to the same schools, they are all cousins essentially.
There is no need for explicit corruption and collusion but there is plenty of that too.
> At this point, Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case
Does the EU Court of Human Rights care whar Americans think about him?
This is not in fact an EU court. It's the court that interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. It's part of the Council of Europe where the U.S has observer status and Russia as well as the UK are members.
The member states care about America's friendship and cooperation on many things. You have to follow the power to see what the results will be.
Personally, I think he's just doing it to have a record for posterity once it's rejected, to turn common knowledge about EU-USA corrupting power relationships into public knowledge (although I don't share his hope that this will ever become public knowledge - but then again it takes an idealist to fight these kinds of battles).
The courts deciding against his argument would only be probative on the question of corruption if you start from the presumption that his position is correct. Your post is entirely circular in its reasoning.
>I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
>How I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
How on earth is that open and shut?
Open and shut would be if he published the names, which nobody claims that he did.
Conveniently it is also impossible to verify if the crime was actually committed without naming the individuals. All that is required to convict is one judge's say so.
If you were to pick a convenient politically motivated prosecution this ranks up there with navalny skipping bail by dint of being in a coma.
>> I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
>> How I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
> How on earth is that open and shut?
I don't see how those statements have any bearing on whether the case is "open and shut" or not. You're quoting the defendant, who's almost certainly going to come up with some argument for their own innocence no matter how strong the case is.
If indeed the case were open and shut the argument would be trivially refutable.
I haven't even seen a coherent rebuttal yet. I'm not sure it's even possible, given that the evidence in this trial would, conveniently, have to be kept secret - automatically ensuring by default it couldnt be open and shut.
Far from being open and shut it actually stinks to high heaven.
> I haven't even seen a coherent rebuttal yet. I'm not sure it's even possible, given that the evidence in this trial would, conveniently, have to be kept secret.
This guy claims he read the original posts and was able to identify one of the complainants from the information there:
But my point was mainly the Murray is so obviously biased that his statements need to be read with that in mind. Plus denials like "I do not know" and "I don't recall" are some of the vaguest and least credible (since they're almost impossible to prove or disprove).
I clicked through the link and I think that the commenter felt that there was enough information to identify someone, not that they had identified someone.
Well, maybe the actual argument, about whether he did it or not, is "open and shut". What he's presenting here, though, is irrefutable -- in the sense of "not falsifiable" -- so should also be inadmissible: His "[How] I genuinely do not know..." goes to his own state of mind, which nobody else can know or be responsible for.
I mean, it could for instance be the case that he obviously and incontrovertibly did it, but is just too utterly stupid to realise it -- then "I genuinely do not know" would still be true. But just as ignorance of the law is no defense, I don't think stupidity is either. "But your Honour, I didn't know she'd die if I cut off her head, so I can't be guilty of murder!" Too fucking bad, you should have known that.
>it could for instance be the case that he obviously and incontrovertibly did it
No, coz in that case we would know the identities of all these women. The only ones named didnt come from his blog they came from a guy who actually tweeted them and was sentenced, IIRC, to 6 months rather than Craig's 8.
Supposedly their claims were also without basis, so he was sentenced to prison for maybe possibly according to one judge maybe revealing the identities of somebody making a false claim of rape in a case that was itself likely politically motivated.
> If you were to pick a convenient politically motivated prosecution this ranks up there with navalny skipping bail by dint of being in a coma.
I would agree with you, except his prison sentence is only 8 months. If this was some corrupt hit job, they could have easily put him in prison for decades.
"Only 8 months" tells you nothing of the conditions or prison population within which he will be placed. 8 months in solitary or in a maximum-security prison (where hard-core, repeat-offender murderers and rapists are) is much harsher than years in a minimum-security prison.
Julian Assange, who hasn't even been convicted AFAIK, has been kept in solitary in a maximum-security prison while only being accused, falsely it turns out, of non-violent crimes. The reasonableness of the entire punishment must be taken into account, not just the duration.
> The reasonableness of the entire punishment must be taken into account, not just the duration.
I agree, and I am not arguing that the treatment of Craig Murray has been reasonable. I am arguing that, if this was a larger conspiracy against him, his prison sentence would be much longer.
I’m the same. Everyone was told not to reveal identities of the victims, he was blogging about the case and was deemed to have published info that could’ve doxed them. The news is understandably vague on the subject (lest they repeat the offence) and the posts are down. So it’s hard to know what to think. Just remember that there’s a lot of very strong feelings about Scottish independence (which is kinda wrapped up in this) and the
SNP (the dominant party in Scotland) so anyone speaking definitively for/against him who was not directly involved in the case are likely drawing more from personal feelings and other grievances than the actual case itself
The judgement is available[0]. It doesn't read to me like the judges were out to get him: they specifically reject the majority of the allegations of contempt made by the crown. Paragraphs 70-90 contain the interesting bit, and 70 is absolutely damning in my view. It basically reports Murray as openly writing an 'encoded' version of some of the claimants names in the form of some Yes Minister fanfic, in the knowledge of the anonymity order and with the intention that the code would be broken by close reading 'between the lines' (which he expressly encouraged).
That's an open and shut contempt, and courts do not play silly buggers with people who think that if they're very clever orders don't apply to them. Even given that the crown (the Scottish government, who were prosecuting Salmon and made the contempt of court complaint) are out to get Murray, that doesn't make him a martyr, it makes him an idiot.
I read his articles as they came out, and did not figure out who the protected parties were. OTOH I am pretty sure I can figure at least two of them out after reading the judgement. It's possible that you could have figured out at the time if you were more familiar with the Dramatis Personae. But I do think it's plausible that he didn't think anyone would from his articles.
"[70] He wrote the “Yes, Minister” article after a health scare because “there were things I would not wish to die without having told”. There was thus clearly an intention to convey to the public information and opinion about the criminal proceedings and the background thereto. It is clear that he understood the risk inherent in the action he was taking, since he states that it was “a challenge” to work out how to convey the information “without being in contempt of court” (paragraph 54 of the affidavit). He used certain strategies seeking to avoid being in contempt, the main one of which was “to leave information that people would not understand the ramifications of but would after the trial or once further evidence emerged”. It is a reasonable inference that by using coded language he anticipated that if not at the time of the article, at least by the conclusion of the trial, the material would be understood beyond its ex-facie terms.In a tweet of 19 January, in direct reference to this article, he wrote:“I implore everybody who supports Independence –and indeed everybody with an interest in justice -to read this article very, very carefully indeed.Between the lines.”A comment was made by him in the 12 March article is to similar effect: “I am dependent on you reading this whole article with intelligence, and thinking “I wonder why he just told me that bit? Where was that relevant?""
The 'fan fiction' was written, and published before the court case, and hence before the anonymity order. As it was, I wasn't able to figure out any encoded messages at the time.
Now one could argue that it was inadvisable to leave it up after the order, but that is a different matter.
Thanks for that link! I had no idea what sort of information was available so I had no idea how or where to find these things or even that they were available. I will dig through it tomorrow.
The laws have been in place for decades and have at no point not been in full effect. The reason nobody's been prosecuted and convicted for 70 years is that nobody with half a brain commits the offence.
He didn't directly disclose any name the accusation is he wrote multiple clues from which witness could be identified . I haven't seen a clear explanation of how it was identifiable.
Even if that was true, jailing for media contempt is very very rare in U.K. and the timing given his involvement with Wikileaks case is suspect.
He was warned that his blog posts and his hinting at identifying people was considered contempt...
... and then he wrote a Yes Minister-esque fanfic which fairly bluntly painted very direct "clues" to those identities, and then told his readers "read this carefully and you'll get those identities", and then acted shocked when the court didn't say "Damn you, Craig, you foiled and outsmarted us!", but instead "Posting 'nudge nudge wink wink' hints to people is effectively the same thing. You know it, because you told people that's what it was, and we know it. So we're treating it the same".
From the decision on the application for permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court [0]:
> The applicant describes himself as a “journalist in new media”. Whatever that may involve, it is relevant to distinguish his position from that of the mainstream press, which is regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the applicant does are not. To the extent that the submissions for the applicant make comparisons with other press contempts, and the role of mainstream journalists, this is a factor which should be recognised.
This is almost certainly the case. The judge in this case most likely is influenced by those who this guy revealed as corrupt. The powers that be do not like for their friends to have a hard time. This judge is most likely in on it.
In fact, that's how collusion and correction happens in the West. In other words, "discretion" is for sale for the powerful. Prosecution uses discretion to not prosecute the powerful; Judges use discretion to suppress evidence; etc.
It's quite understandable that he could have done this by accident. People avoid directly identifying someone they're not supposed to identify but do not realize that they leaked enough details to uniquely identify them.
If he's guilty of it we of course do not see the evidence--posting the evidence would amount to the same crime that he was convicted of.
It seems awfully convenient for the government that evidence cannot be discussed.
Either he has already leaked and the name is out there and his 8 month sentence is justified then it shouldn't matter that we can discuss or he has kind of "leaked" but no one really knows anything so we shouldn't have access to the evidence in which case this ruling and sentence is not warranted it cannot be both right ?
The supreme court refused to hear his appeal on the basis that new media is different from traditional media, that doesn't seem right. Supreme courts are there to take novel new cases and set precedence on how the laws are to be interpreted. Drawing that distinction and not taking the case to define how such media for contempt has to be handled does not add up.
The impact is beyond just this sentence, it affects lot of journalism on how contempt laws work. In U.K. media freedom (when it comes to courts) is already not great with stuff like super injunctions. This kind of vague ruling without clearly defining what is the kind of mistake me made that is illegal does not help.
The judgment isn't vague at all. It sets out, in 90 paragraphs, the legal and factual basis for the case, ruling much of it against the crown (mainly on the basis of delay) and some against Murray. And it goes through each criticised post and sets out on what basis it was (or was not) found to be a contempt.
Now. You and I don't have the posts, because I assume they've been deleted. That makes it hard if we want to second guess the judges. But Murray has them, and the court also does. And frankly the import of the ruling is straightforward for journalists to follow, too: don't publish information that could identify rape complainants in breach of a court order. Which is routine for court reporters, frankly.
And FWIW a superinjunction is particularly easy to follow - don't publish anything about the injunction or the underlying matter. Is that reasonable? In my view no. I think they should never have been created. But they aren't unclear, just Draconian. And they don't apply in the criminal jurisdiction, or in Scotland, so I'm not sure they're very relevant here.
I was talking about the appeal to supreme court which is only 9 pages long [1] and yes I read it.
I am specifically talking about page 3 point 4
> [4] The applicant describes himself as a “journalist in new media”. Whatever that may
> involve, it is relevant to distinguish his position from that of the mainstream press, which is
> regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the
> applicant does are not.
Specifically how being new media is different is one aspect. The traditional media in U.K. following code of ethics is quite laughable with the history of tabloids abuses and news of the world kind of incidents
The other point is so called "jigsawing clause" is very vague because it is not explicit on how much lee way there is for interpretation. Think about it, depending on how much you already know, any information or reporting about some event can be used to glean who the person behind is it. There has to be well defined rules for something like this as it can otherwise be used prosecute any reporter/journalist at a whim .
As compared to say "Not naming someone" is clear unambiguous rule to follow
'Traditional' journalists are often mendacious bastards, but also, as a general rule, not stupid enough to flout court orders. And looking at paragraph 70 of the original judgment it doesn't look like this case was anywhere close to raising issues of principle about whether other journalists could comply with similar anonymity orders. Which are routine in Scotland and statutory in England and Wales, and have been for years. And journalists are not, in fact, prosecuted on a whim for contempt of court.
The issue of principle is on how the jigsawing clause would be applied. It does seem similarly has ambiguous test like "I Know it when I see it" Justice Steward wrote for threshold obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio [1]
Yes, U.K. courts are not in general prosecuting for media contempt ( first case in 50 years?). Relying on the discretion of the court not to prosecute is not the same as having precedence on what extent a report can be interpreted as jigsawing a injunction. "Journalists" (the appeal seems to regard him as second class one at best) shouldn't depend on that fact that courts generally will not prosecute them, Shouldn't they know with some certainty when they are in the clear ?
[1] The problem is this is a subjective interpretation, I should also know it the same as the justice would do to make sure I am on the right side of the law ? This was later replaced by Miller test and that established some guidelines to go by.
He literally wrote a (not so) cryptic piece of prose after being warned, that spelled out how to identify these people - and then told his readers if they read it carefully, they could do exactly that.
In summary: "not an accident, in any way shape or form".
The article has been deleted. But it wasn't "here's some generic tips on how to figure things out", it was more along the lines of "take the second character of the first word of each of the first four lines, and then the last word on each line will tell you a Google search - first result will have an article author, take that author's family name".
It wasn't general "how to figure things out", but more "if I write these three riddles I'm not specifically saying person A and person B's names, and therefore I'm not in contempt".
Exactly. UK is a democracy with a pretty good justice system that follows the law, so I was very surprised to read so negative comments about the outcome of the case.
Do I feel sorry for the person - yes, but breaking any injunction from court has extremely predictable outcome! I'm thinking it could have gone way worse than the 8 months in prison for him, especially if he were in any other country (including USA).
Sad to see this unfold, but extremely predictable outcome of breaking a court injection... courts take very dim view of it!
Craig Murray is basically a decent guy. He fell out with the British government when he was ambassador to Uzbekistam and broke protocol by protesting about the treatement of Uzbeks by their government - being boiled to death etc. He was subsequently bullied, disciplined and dismissed from his post for acting with humanity and integrity. I think he was traumatised and experienced something akin to a psychotic break, after which he saw conspiracies everywhere in officaldom. I used to follow his blog and it was a mixture of reasonable analysis and unsubstantiated consipiracy theories. In this case, he was clearly in the wrong - he is a blogger with a big following, and he posted material in breach of the injunction. This is why the authorities went for him: (1) breaking a court order, and (2) potentially identifying a sexual assault plaintive. In the UK the authorities don't muck around if you behave like that. This is why he is in prison.
> He fell out with the British government when he was ambassador to Uzbekistam and broke protocol by protesting about the treatement of Uzbeks by their government
Sovereign nation states have no morals or ethics, they have interests. To represent these interests to other sovereign nation states, they have ambassadors. So, for ambassadors, "acting with humanity and integrity" when that is not conducive to their nation's interests is a grave dereliction of duty. (Not saying this is a nice state of affairs, but if even I know that's how the world works, how could he not know? Also not saying acceding to Uzbek human rights abuses actually is in Britain's best interests; only that apparently the establishment in Britain thought so.)
> I used to follow his blog and it was a mixture of reasonable analysis and unsubstantiated consipiracy theories.
If he's "a decent guy", he should have known he wasn't cut out to be an ambassador and should never have taken the job. The more I read about him, the more it seems his problem is that he's just simply pretty damn stupid. Weird, one wouldn't have thought jobs like ambassador routinely get offered to stupid people.
> [O]ne wouldn't have thought jobs like ambassador routinely get offered to stupid people.
One would be wrong, then. Ambassadorial appointments to countries of little geopolitical significance are often used as favors for political supporters, particularly the "more money than sense" sort.
In other cases, where the country only presents diplomatic downsides (IOW, the best-case scenario is "nothing newsworthy going on"), it can be difficult to get anyone to accept what amounts to a hot-potato appointment, especially if they are smart.
> Exactly. UK is a democracy with a pretty good justice system that follows the law
The UK is a 500-year-old monarchy which somehow absorbed democratic representation. Which is the reason the Queen, to this day, still has privileges like being able to oversee draft legislation and ensure her possession are exempted from it - something that was confirmed this week, coincidentally, in Scottish matters.
This also means the UK system is absolutely ridden with obsolete and fundamentally anti-democratic devices, that occasionally rear their ugly head. Like when the Snowden revelations first emerged, and some GCHQ goons showed up at the offices of a newspaper (the Guardian), ensuring all computers that had touched related info were smashed to pieces. Or the fact that there are multiple parties in the Parliament, but only two of them are admitted to the Privy Council and receive security briefs. Or, well, the cesspool of corruption and wealth that is the House of Lords (want a seat? Just pay the party in power, you'll be in by next Christmas). And of course, the City of London - a constitutional abomination by any reasonable standard, in the third millennium, but still firmly at the very heart of the capital.
Knowing all this, you'd be less surprised that people might think the system is corrupt. Because, well, it fundamentally is.
Can anybody explain why there is an injustice here? Almost every comment I see here in his favour gives no reason why this is unjust.
I am far from an unbiased source on this – I'm personally aghast that anybody would take Craig Murray seriously.
But trying to be a little objective, I expect that this effect is primarily because of an instinct we all have to ignore the flaws in people who are saying things we think are important.
Murray is popular here for his commentary on the Assange trial. He is virtually certain to be correct in some of his accusations about Assange's treatment, and in a community that values freedom of speech and the rights of whistleblowers that is a stance that attracts attention and support. Given this, it could be tempting for some to assume that his imprisonment was a deliberate action to silence a troublemaker – particularly when the defendant himself makes that argument.
On the other hand, it's also totally feasible that someone with views you support is also entirely seperately capable of doing dumb things and getting themselves arrested.
I paid quite a bit of attention to the case in question. His level of obfuscation was a bawhair away from 'cartoon rat Ricky Raus', and he requested everyone read "very, very carefully indeed. Between the lines." It seemed quite obvious to me what he was trying to do, and a subsequent conviction isn't really surprising – nor does it require thinking about it in terms of a conspiracy theory. It just seems strange to me to assume a state-motivated conspiracy when there's a much simpler answer right there – regardless of whether or not you agree with the particular details of the case, or his views in general!
I guess maybe it's sometimes hard to separate out the views that we agree with from the harsh realities of flawed individuals.
He claims to have revealed too little information in his reporting for it to be possible to identify the complainants. The court disagrees. Really I just see his word against theirs.
I'd like to see some more specific details so I could form my own view, or at least hear the view of a disinterested third party that's seen the relevant posts.
He didn't name anyone, but at the time I thought he provided more than enough information to identify one one of the complainants. Although I'm not au fait with the SNP there were details about situations, people, and roles that seemed more than specific enough for people to work out.
I don't think it was deliberate, and he is probably ignorant about how easy it can be to de-anonymise people. However he should have been more sensitive to these issues.
Perhaps so, however selective exercising of media contempt laws when it is not clear cut case ( i.e. naming some one directly) is suspicious and looks a lot like overreach .
The timing (he cannot now testify in the Spanish case on spying on Wikileaks) and quantum of sentence combined with supreme court refusing to hear his appeal all does not indicate the system had the best interests for protecting the witness but more like they wanted to silence him/ media and send a message .
It's unusual, but not the only recent case in the UK. A notorious right wing campaigner called Tommy Robinson was jailed a few years ago (but released), and there was a very unusual case with a juror.
These were both in England, which may explain the 50 year thing.
Edit: actually I'm wrong, the article says:
"Murray is the first person in the U.K. to be incarcerated for media contempt in over a half century."
If we restrict it to what 'media' might mean I suppose Tommy Robinson was freed on appeal. And a Mail journalist got away with a suspended sentence.
The court could ask an independent without inside knowledge of the case to read his reports and check whether or not they can identify a protected person as a result.
It's true that the judge can't publicly state "Look, the third sentence in paragraph four at this URL gives the victim's initials, a week later in paragraph seven he said the complainant worked in such-and-such government agency, and here he tweeted that it was the individual's 47th birthday. There is only one person who fits these fingerprints, and their identity is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity of that individual." That would invite everyone else to go read paragraph four, paragraph seven, and the tweet, and to search out this secret. Or more likely, that the individual is named directly and repeatedly in the post, and Craig named them because their name and their involvement is on public documents, but that they've decided that he's not allowed to name them.
But you'd expect them to explain that reasoning behind closed doors, and then to more publicly deny his rebuttal, unless there is no such individual.
I'm just learning about this now and don't know enough to have an an opinion, but "his word against theirs" (the court's) should not be the basis for a conviction.
> Can you just not? The whinging is a serious distraction.
It's also against the rules. That said, the discussion and comments here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27982672 - one of the only times downvoting could be openly discussed because it's directly within the scope of the article) definitely sheds light on frustrations people have with downvotes on HN.
Anyway, my comment is offtopic enough. For more downvote discussion, head to that link instead; at least it'll be on topic.
I could but the HN, and worse Reddit, mob has down voted certain opinions without even commenting. Especially as it relates to whistle blowers and the US military/government.
I’ve even seen legitimate conservative view points be flagged instantly.
If any USA soldier or Afghan collaborator had ever been harmed as a result of Wikileaks' journalism, the war media would have been wall-to-wall on the story for years. That has never been reported. Ergo, it never happened.
This article suggests that certain people have at least been threatened. You may deem that to be worth the value of the information being leaked, but it has been reported on.
This seems to be the most damning phrase from that link, and it was uttered by a federal government spokesperson in 2010:
"No doubt some of those people were harmed when their identities were compromised."
That's so weak. "I'm sure it will probably happen at some point!" NPR on Friday afternoon is the sockpupppet the lizards prefer for their most pathetic, half-assed spin attempts. No one is listening, no one will challenge the narrative, they can say whatever they want, and that was all they dared to say? Yikes.
> The uncensored cables are contained in a 1.73-GB password-protected file named "cables.csv," which is reportedly circulating somewhere on the internet, according to Steffen Kraft, editor of the German paper Der Freitag. Kraft announced last week that his paper had found the file, and easily obtained the password to unlock it.
It sounds like Wikileaks was, at the bare minimum, extremely sloppy.
There's also this:
> After nine months of slow, steady publication, WikiLeaks abruptly opened the spigot last week on its cable publications, spewing out over 130,000 by Monday afternoon – more than half the total database.
Wikileaks is one man with a few cult followers. Any feel-good standard they put in place can be overridden at his whim. There are enough ex-cultist testimonies to that effect.
Do you mean the emails that were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request and that wikileaks made searchable? That is a different case: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/?q=&mfrom=Hillary+Clint...
Take the situation the other way around. If your country had been colonized ("liberated" they would say) by say Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Daech, would you not consider it crucial information to know what persons and institutions collaborated with them?
Do you believe Assange lied about Daniel Domscheit-Berg being the source for the unredacted cables and his conversation with Cliff Johnson was all for show? Why did he break his own protocol and release so many documents en mass?
Craig Murray is a gem! I knew him for his reporting on the Assange trial [0]. The fact that they convicted him is absolute lunacy. I happen to agree with his interpretation of the conviction, because I don't see how anyone could reasonably convict him. Godspeed Mr. Murray.
Calling him is a gem is a bit odd given his intellectual gymnastics about the Skripal poisoning (he said they could've been a gay couple and honestly expects people to either believe him or at least not think he's taking the piss).
He stridently accused Bellingcat of photoshopping a picture which showed one of the assassins on a wall of honour at a Russian military base (under his real name). Bellingcat subsequently released several more photos from different angles, IIRC some of which were still online. Crickets from Murray...
If anyone is interested, I found the relevant posts - Murray calling the photo released by Bellingcat ”a very obvious fake" [0], and a Russian website, still online, to which Bellingcat timed travelled and retroactively uploaded the same Photoshop from another angle [1]
Bellingcat? Really? You know they're a cutout for the western spy agencies and can't be trusted ever. They get debunked on the regular. The guy that supposedly runs it says he got his training playing video games!
He is citing Bellingcat - an outfit that has been thoroughly discredited and who's only use is as a cutout for spy agencies to spread their lies. Not ad hominem. Just facts. Here is the definition in case you were wondering:
ad hominem:
adj. Attacking a person's character or motivations rather than a position or argument.
adj. Appealing to the emotions rather than to logic or reason.
n. To the man; to the interests or passions of the person.
He's a conspiracy theorist sure but the rest of the UK media is in bed with the government, perhaps more concerned about maintaining their connections so they can keep cranking out stories. You take what you can get.
His reporting on the Assange trial has been fantastic. Considering this trial is one of the most important in recent times, the lack of reporting from the conventional media has been very telling about the actual independence of media in uk.
I think the phrase conspiracy theorist needs to be put to rest. Maybe something like "he believes some wild conspiracy theories like X" would be more meaningful. One would have to be pretty ill informed to not be able to list off a dozen recent events where world governments conspired against the public for profit or power.
Title is misleading. He wasn't jailed for whistleblowing. He was jailed for apparently revealing identities of victims. Not sure about the specifics, I haven't been following the case and I'm not familiar with it. Sounds like its pretty contentious. All I know is many places including the UK have a far more restricted concept of freedom of speech than the US does. So its probably a lot easier for them to jail journalists over what they publish
What part of the title is misleading exactly? The title doesn't say he is going to jail because whistleblowing is illegal. But he is indeed going to jail for things about how his whistle blowing was done. I think it's misleading to call the OP's title misleading
The title implies he was jailed for being a whistleblower. If you read it without having any prior knowledge of who this guy is or why he was being prosecuted that's how it sounds.
It seems pretty clear that he is being jailed for being a whistleblowers. The case brought against him seems incredibly flimsy. Its retaliation, plain and simple.
"revealing the identity of the victims"... Yeah, such identities were "revealed" by jigsawing documents which are part of the whistleblow, not because he gave their names or anything alike but by inference of the readers, who just happen to be extremely biased against the whistleblower. So yeah, it couldn't be clearer that he is being jailed for being a whistleblower.
Craig's "Yes Minister" article used pseudonyms and a comic style to lay out his opinion that the accusations against Salmond were false and the result of a politically motivated conspiracy using the anonymity convention to protect the conspirators from facing repercussion.
Although this accusation seems to have sufficient merit, given the verdicts, to justify further investigation it does not take away from the fact the the Yes Minister article can easily be used to deduce the identities of two of the accusers.
It was not this article but a mainstream one by Dani Garavelli that allowed me to jigsaw identify one of the accusers and the fact that her article remains visible and Garavelli has faced no similar consequences does speak volumes about the selectivity used.
However Garavelli's article required one Google search to cross check names from a different source, Murray's Yes Minister article allows for immediate identification from common knowledge (if you follow Scottish Politics).
Craig's article was published before the anonymity order was issued and he should have taken it down when that order was made and certainly shouldn't have directed attention to the fact this article could be used for jigsaw identification.
Although his courthouse reporting of what the defence said is invaluable and though the conspiracy he points to merits further investigation, be was an idiot to publish the Yes Minister article and acted with foolish hubris not to take it down sooner.
It's like when someone gets in the eye of local cops, and they will "make their life difficult", come at them with trumped-up charges, etc....
States and their organizations work the same way, and prosecutors and judges friendly to their cause (and furthering their career) after a friendly chat with some official, are a dime a dozen. Add some diplomatic pressure (or offer) from a bigger power, and third countries are just as accomondating. E.g.
And good luck proving any of that collision (proof which the politically naive will demand, because they think no such thing can happen in the best of all possible worlds...)
I've often been surprised to see enthusiastic admiration for Craig Murray in this forum in particular. He's an outright raving conspiracy theorist, in this case painfully obviously sneaking out information about witnesses in a rape trial in part because of his belief that the trial was part of a massive state conspiracy.
His commentary on the Assange trial was so overwhelmingly and obviously biased that it was impossible to derive any useful objective information, so it was very strange to see him so heavily promoted.
It just seems like it would be possible you might object to the treatment of Assange—or be concerned about the trial's effect on free speech—without weirdly uncritical promotion of such an unreliable and unsympathetic narrator. At least it would be wise to treat anything he says with extreme skepticism.
> His commentary on the Assange trial was so overwhelmingly and obviously biased that it was impossible to derive any useful objective information
I don't know anything about his other works, but AFAIK he was the only one reporting what was going on in detail during Assange's trial. I respect him for that.
I read criticism similar to yours before, but I can't shake a simple question: if there are better reporters out there, where were they during the trial?
The simple answer is that what Craig Murray was reporting about Assange was massively overblown conspiracies about every single element of the trial. The reason other reporters weren't covering to the same level of detail because "Trial continues as expected" isn't news-and there are plenty of examples of this. In the mainstream news the big revelation that someone just tangentially related to the Assange extradition hearing had come out as a liar was covered, but in the context of it not really being core to the case. In Murray's coverage you would be mislead to believe that that person was some star witness.
All these things may be true, but even then, at least he was there at the Assange trial. No other source was a as diligent or up to date with their reporting, even if it was biased.
Even if you believe all these bad things about him, I don't believe someone should be jailed for reporting in general. In specific, I don't see how the facts support a conviction - the way the argument for "jigsaw" identification of witnesses was used could apply to any and all reporting about a court case. No reasonable standard was used (in my opinion).
Do you think it's alright to put someone in jail because you don't like them?
Well, it seemed implied to me. The original post was about Craig Murray being sent to jail. There are other comments in this thread coming out in support of (or at least against the imprisonment of) Murray.
Then, the parent comment comes out, listing a whole bunch of reasons not to like Murray, or at least not to support him. So the implication, as I see it, is that the parent commenter is alright with Murray going to jail.
Maybe you're right and that I read too much into it. However, I'd like to resolve this part that's unclear - does the parent commenter support putting Murray in jail? Is it because they don't like him?
I ignored this because I considered it a disingenuous question, but maybe I should tackle it instead because this sort of misrepresentation is poisonous.
No, I obviously do not think "it's alright to put someone in jail because you don't like them". There's no reasonable way to construe that from what I said.
I think the intent of my comment was clearly to express surprise that people take him seriously as a commentator; as someone who has been unfortunately very aware of his views for a long time, it seems obvious to me that he is an unreliable narrator and any information he presents is something we should be extremely skeptical of.
I do think that it can be acceptable to imprison people for contempt of court. I am pretty familiar with the case in question, and I have no reason to think that any conspiracy was required in order to convict him. I watched him do the things he's been convicted for as they happened, and his intent seemed reasonably clear.
So yes, to answer your direct question – I do "support" putting Murray in jail, in the sense that he appears to have received a fair trial for committing a crime, and I don't see any evidence that his conviction was unexpected or unreasonable.
Spinning this as me saying "it's alright to put someone in jail because you don't like them" is obviously a bad-faith representation.
Do you like criminals? Say, armed robbers, murderers? If someone is on trial for stuff like that, and the evidence seems to support their guilt, wouldn't most people take a dislike to them?
You reasoning feels like having "equal rights under the law" mean that then you'd have to let them go free, because convicting them would be "just because you don't like them".
Couldn't this argument basically be used against any court case short of there being footage of the defendant holding a gun next to a body? You can nearly always construe some kind of narrative like this in a "political" case, I'm not sure it's specific enough.
That's pretty clearly not true - there have always been politically motivated prosecutions, witchhunts, and shady dealings of various flavors in every government I've been able to find decent records for.
Recently here in the US, it's been everything from 'The Red Scare' and McCarthyism to Hoover era FBI attacking and undermining every 'revolutionary' group that wasn't upholding the status quo in the 60's-70's - and many more. That includes everything from attempted blackmail on Martin Luther King to COINTELPRO (documented, not a conspiracy theory). And that's what has leaked - there is almost certainly more that never had a solid paper trail.
But you're kind of doing it now. You could be right, but currently the reference point of our comments is the political aspect to the case rather than whether he committed a crime or not.
> obviously biased that it was impossible to derive any useful objective information
You mean to tell me He was obvious on His position? He didn’t pretend to be objective, an impossible effort for any human?
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
My friend, that’s a feature, not a bug. Journalistic objectivity is a meme.
> Who better than a conspiracy theorist to report on actual conspiracies?
Conspiracy theorists don't typically report on real conspiracies, they report on imagined ones.
So having a conspiracy theorist report on a real conspiracy can actually have the effect of making the real conspiracy less believable (e.g. a stopped clock may be right twice a day, but you'll disbelieve it even then).
He claimed that he received the DNC and Podesta e-mails from a disgruntled DNC source in a park and forwarded them to WikiLeaks on Assange's behalf. He lacks any credibility. Even Assange had to tell people that "Craig Murray is not authorized to talk on behalf of WikiLeaks," afterwards.
Anyone reading this is free to make of Murray what they want but I genuinely think he is a textbook useful idiot. He obviously has a grudge against the west, sometimes he's a useful counterpoint but other times he's literally just spreading FUD in favour of whoever is not the west (i.e. they weren't GRU agents, they were a gay couple, honest!)
Conspiracy theorists are absolutely awful at reporting facts. When talking about things that are actually true, they often still manage to mix in so many untrue and misleading things that the actual truth gets clouded.
The UK's tabloid media are even worse at reporting facts. They're also notorious for hacking phones and spying on people.
Murray may or may not have done something stupid, he may or may not have said things that were inaccurate.
But he's still basically a blogger with a relatively insignificant profile. Not a national figure with a huge reach.
When an ancient law gets dusted off and thrown at someone like him, while much more obvious media transgressions are ignored, it becomes very hard to conclude that this has anything to do with a disinterested thirst for fairness and justice.
>> sneaking out information about witnesses in a rape trial
Citation needed. Did he "sneak" out any more information than was in newspapers?
And given how Nicola Sturgeon lied to parliament etc, there is decent evidence it was an SNP (not the state even though the SNP thinks they are the state) conspiracy.
> Citation needed. Did he "sneak" out any more information than was in newspapers?
Yes. Feel free to read the court's judgment for more information.
> And given how Nicola Sturgeon lied to parliament etc, there is decent evidence it was an SNP (not the state even though the SNP thinks they are the state) conspiracy.
I think it's safe to say that this statement demonstrates you are not interested in any good-faith discussion on this matter.
Is there some succinct explanation for why Murray's reporting facilitated 'jigsaw identification' while other reports did not?
I don't want a link to a 50 page court ruling, I want someone to explain it in a couple of sentences. Something like:
Murray did not name Victim X but he specified the occupation of their spouse, the department they worked in, and their level of seniority. Given this information, a simple query of public records would be sufficient to identify this individual.
lesson to whistleblowers of all kinds and agendas: if you want to keep blowing the whistle, do everything you can to stay undercover. live to fight another day.
Craig Murray has some strange theories, and is pretty far from me politically, but him being sent to jail for this ridiculous allegation re: "identifying" "victims" of Alex Salmond is appalling.
It just shows how corrupt Scottish politics and the SNP is.
He didn't give any name. The people that are supposedly "exposed" apparently are all fake witnesses, anyway, as Alex Salmond was cleared in court. This is really disgusting.
as performed by who? By Sherlock Holmes? or by a regular Shmoe lacking any logic skills and thus believing every bit of propaganda coming through TV and Internet.
Royal pardon or more formally "Royal prerogative of mercy" exists in the U.K. Formally it is power of the crown, however in practice it is delegated to Lord Chancellor in England. Scotland has a different structure for this AFAIK.
Craig Murray is a former ambassador and supports Scottish independence so it would be lot more complicated even if the government wanted to do something about it. Also it is only 8 month sentence, so it won't make any practical difference if some future government post-facto does pardon him.
Side note: U.S. tooks its legal system largely from England and made modifications as they thought fit, presidential pardons were specifically designed to mirror the royal pardon without the monarchy part of it.
> And people wonder why Snowden didn't turn himself in
Because he literally confessed to breaking a number of very serious laws?
Literally his only hopes of escaping a conviction are 1) a prosecutor refusing to charge him (snowball's chance in hell), 2) a pardon, 3) some kind jury nullification. Whatever you think about the morality of his actions, what he did was indisputably illegal. "I thought I was doing the right thing, and many people agree," is not an actual legal defense.
And honestly, I think if Snowden had turned himself in, it would have made him more admirable and brave, and place his actions clearly in the "civil disobedience" category.
What Snowden did was herioc and needed to happen. The fact that he had to break awful oppressive laws to do it is an indictment of the laws, not Snowden.
> What Snowden did was herioc and needed to happen. The fact that he had to break awful oppressive laws to do it is an indictment of the laws, not Snowden.
The laws he broke weren't awful and oppressive, it's just that "legal" and "moral" are categories that will never completely align.
Ah, for the days of /., when you would know why you were being downvoted (or upvoted), because there was a drop-down menu to choose from (plus meta-moderation).
> He described how the judges found Murray guilty of “jigsaw identification,” which refers to the “possibility that a person may piece together information from various sources to arrive at the identification of a protected witness.”
Why isn't every advertising/marketing data broker in jail for "jigsaw identification"?
In Scottish law -- and in English/Welsh law in parallel (the legal systems are different) -- there is no absolute right of free speech, like the US first amendment. Consequently, exposing the identity of witnesses (and in some cases the accused and the victim) in a criminal trial is itself a criminal offense.
Note the important bit here is in a criminal trial. Murray is going to prison because he was found guilty of actions which threatened to cause a mistrial in a criminal case, not because he was deanonymizing advertising/marketing data.
I'm pretty sure journalists have actually, non-hypothetically caused mistrials in criminal cases through their reporting in the UK and not been jailed for it. In fact as far as I can tell none of the journalists who did this in the UK have been jailed, at least not in the last few decades.
There is a reason why the 1st amendment is the 1st of the amendments - this has happened for a long time not just in England but elsewhere.
It's VERY convenient for those in power to selectively apply laws like this, and overall bad for society. But like most cases, as long as it isn't too blatant, it doesn't rise to the level of common outrage.
It got bad enough in the past to make the top of the stack of 'stuff to fix in v2' here.
The constitution though is just words on paper if people don't follow it day to day, and you can see examples of steady erosion from it (gag orders, national security orders, etc.)
Quoted from the article: “I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.”
This sounds really bad, until you see that the court did point to specific blog posts. His position apparently hinges on the fact that specific phrases were not picked out from a handful of blog posts. It seems to me that the relevant facts that were revealed could be enumerated quite easily from that list of blog posts.
Victims are protected for a reason. This guy seems like a bit of a bastard.
Do you have some examples to share? My first thought reading this was, similar to what you say, "this sounds really bad," and my inclination here is to side with Craig Murray. At the same time, the article linked by OP doesn't point to any sort of court ruling or proceedings where the reader might be able to check against the claims being made that the trial was, indeed, Kafkaesque. This obviously raises some suspicions.
The judgement is here, page 36 onwards lays out all the articles the petitioner claims had contempt of court, and the courts interpretation of whether they did or didn't
I guess we're unlikely to see the forbidden phrases Murray dared to utter, since after all they're forbidden and few HN commentators want to go to prison.
> I guess we're unlikely to see the forbidden phrases Murray dared to utter, since after all they're forbidden and few HN commentators want to go to prison.
As far as I know, most HN commentators are 1) American, 2) pseudonymous, 3) and unlikely to be extradited because I doubt these kinds of laws would be constitutional in the US.
Aren't they though? It's just one of the requirements is the conduct would have to be a crime in both countries? It's not like extradition is "you give us everyone we want, and we'll give you everyone you want."
This is handwaving snark and dismissiveness. It's not a very helpful reply. Indeed, another posted linked to the actual court ruling, which does indeed point to the offending articles. It makes the claims of a Kafkaesque trial sound dramatically overblown.
So... the court claims for itself the right to "harm" these people in the same way for which it chose to imprison Murray? I'm sure I'll never understand this.
If he publishes an article telling their job, age, etc, and the court publishes a judgement saying that "he published an article telling their job, age, etc", then you can figure out who they are from his article, but not from the court's judgement.
I'm sure I'll never understand how this is "the court claim[ing] for itself the right to "harm" these people in the same way for which it chose to imprison Murray."
Of course that's not what happened. All these vague details were matters for a trial in criminal court, which trial was described by a higher court as "unlawful", "procedurally unfair", and "tainted by apparent bias". Reporting such matters to the public is not a crime in a civilized jurisdiction.
Specifically, innocent in the eyes of the law. The legal status is very different from the factual question of whether he actually did it, which is why different legal processes have different standards of proof. And also why procedural problems, which obviously don't change whether or not the event happened, can still result in the accused being found innocent in the eyes of the law.
I'd also point out that "his behaviour was not bad enough for him to be convicted of a crime" isn't exactly a ringing character endorsement. Especially when the Scottish Government messed up the prosecution, something they really shouldn't have been involved in.
In Common Law countries defendants in criminal proceedings are afforded a presumption of innocent. Therefore if they are found not guilty they stay innocent as originally presumed.
(FYI, Scots law is not solely common law. Scots law is a hybrid civil and common law.)
> Therefore if they are found not guilty they stay innocent as originally presumed.
The point the other poster was making is: being found Not Guilty or Not Proven, beyond reasonable doubt, in a criminal trial does not imply the accused was morally innocent.
Often juries may suspect the accused is morally guilty but feel there is insufficient evidence.
Jurors in the UK however are never allowed to talk about their deliberations. So we can't know their reasoning.
Can anybody explain why there is an injustice here? Almost every comment I see here in his favour gives no reason why this is unjust.