> I mean, I get that information wants to be free and all that, but publishing confidential information is a crime in most jurisdictions.
War crimes would always and forever be considered confidential information in the jurisdiction of the country that committed them, I bet. Well, better not reveal that the very moral US army is using dogs on prisoners in Guantanamo, or killing 10 civilians as "collateral damage" while bombing a single target mingling with them.
Maybe instead of crying how Assange broke the law, we can actually prosecute the people who did those atrocities and question how this is allowed to happen? Nah, let's put him in jail to rot, much like the Russians did with Navalny, an inconvenient politician, after they failed to poison him.
> Heck, even publishing your company’s trade secrets could get you imprisoned.
In civilized countries like Germany, for example, there are whistleblower laws that actually state you are liable if you DON'T report on your company's shady practices.
You should also realize that they he was detained on a made-up rape accusation, basically sending a message that whoever you are, whatever you do, they will find a way make you shut up if you are doing your job too well. Hence the toothless journalism in America.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, but one cant help but think that if he had been more methodological like Edward Snowden, and been more self-aware of his situation , it would have turned out so much better for him and freedom (because he would still be fighting for the cause).
You could have a fighter on the field vs a martyr in jail.
Unlike Snowden, Assange never leaked anything, he merely published leaks. A subtle but important difference. Someone like Glenn Greenwald is a more apt comparison, and he's still living his life in freedom.
Yet, and Unlike snowden or arrange, Greenwald has not violated the veil of perceived inviolability of the national security caste in USA.
Which is why Snowden & Assange have more in common with each other vs Greenwald.
For the US natsec caste, laws and facts do not apply, the only thing that matters is the perceived status as above-the-law, and who is openly attacking such status
I assure you as someone who was reading WikiLeaks from before the big ones, they were extensively methodological, working with journalists and actually contacting the government with notices of upcoming releases providing them the opportunity to request reasonable redactions. They were as good or better than the infosec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_vulnerability_disc... community.
Assange is a polarizing topic. I see two major issues:
1. What is a journalist? If you receive classified materials, filter out anything that might put lives in danger and release it (eg the Pentagon Papers) then that's journalism. If you provide material aid and instruction to someone to murder someone for information then that's no longer journalism, even though you may publish that information as a journalist.
The point is that journalism isn't an absolute defense. So where does Assange lie on this scale? This debatable because he provided material aid to Manning (allegedly).
2. Bias. This is more of a PR issue than a journalism issue because journalists and publications have bias but it's a question of degree and transparency. At some point you're lon longer a journalist,, you're an operative for a particular cause or political party. In 2016, for example, Assange timed the email release quite deliberately to hurt the HIlary campaign and also (allegedly) didn't publish information embarrassing to the Republican Party.
Importantly, this selective release of information and the deliberate timing of those releases for political or personal ends undermines Wikileaks' stated mission. It makes it easier to, for example, paint him as a Republican hack or a tool of Russian intelligence, whether that's true or not.
Also, at a certain point, what did you think was going to happen? Of course, the long arm of US law enforcement was going to smack you down.
> At some point you're lon longer a journalist,, you're an operative for a particular cause or political party. In 2016, for example, Assange timed the email release quite deliberately to hurt the HIlary campaign and also (allegedly) didn't publish information embarrassing to the Republican Party.
Don't you think a lot of professional media outlets do that too? Be eager to publish negative stories about people they dislike, sit on or suppress negative stories about people they do like? Imagine it is late October next year, and the New York Times or Washington Post uncover a new scandal about one of the presidential candidates - if it is about the Republican (probably Trump), they'll be eager to publish it; if it is about the Democrat (probably Biden), they'll likely get stuck into debating whether they should, double-checking and triple-checking it, and by the time that's all done the election is over. Whereas, I'd expect the Wall Street Journal or Fox News to do the exact same thing, just the other way around.
Of course they do. Bias is expected. Media should generally disclose any biases and conflicts of interest. Generally to be taken seriously as a media outlet, they should try to avoid bias as much as possible. The Economist, for example, is a pro-Europe, pro-NATO, neoliberal publication.
Bias can take many forms. The choice of what you cover, the choice of what you don't cover, the language you use (eg passive vs active voice), not questioning certain sources (eg being a steganopgrapher for a particular spokesperson), the timing of a story and so on.
Wikileaks described itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". So choosing what to publish and when to publish it undermines that claim. What then distinguishes Julian Assange from Alex Jones?
So Assange as a journalist isn't doing anything fundamentally different from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc
> Wikileaks described itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". So choosing what to publish and when to publish it undermines that claim.
I think Wikileaks was always going to exercise some discretion about what leaks it published. For example, suppose someone sent it a hospital's medical records database. I expect they would have looked at that and said "we aren't publishing this" - because it would have been a massive invasion of privacy of random private individuals with no public interest to justify it.
Just like "real journalists" - there is some responsibility to determine what should be published and what should not be. And, just like "real journalists", sometimes that responsibility gets clouded by political bias.
> What then distinguishes Julian Assange from Alex Jones?
Assange published real secret government documents. Alex Jones just completely made stuff up, e.g. "School shootings are faked by the government". That's a massive difference.
The way in which it was treated internationally, politically and in the media, is a fairly good indicator of the control the USA has over NATO countries.
But it is in France that it is the most blatant and disturbing, many people do not yet realize to what extent France is now a colony. Fifty, or maybe even Thirty years ago, France would have defended and sheltered Julian Assange, as it did with others before.
Instead most people pretend not to know, they almost claim the right not to know.
I used to have alternating wallpapers of him and Navalny to remind me that doing the right thing can ruin your life, but it's still the right thing to do.
"The Kenya leak led to corruption being a major issue in the election that followed, which was marred by violence. According to Assange, "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak. On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased". "
How did this benefit Russia exactly? Please explain.
I'm not American so I don't really follow what Assange did for American elections - but I very much object to OP's claim that Assange "only" leaked things that benefited russia - it can be disproven with a 5 second google.
This kind of false equivalence and denial of nuance just makes no sense, unless you somehow want to argue that the US is EXACTLY the same as Russia or North-Korea?
Why does it have to be EXACTLY the same as Russia and North Korea to still be repression of journalism?
It's a fact that there is a repression, albeit of a different kind. Yes, instead of outright telling them what to write, the American way is to first buy up the media, put a pro-them editor in charge, and operate from there. And yes, they allow fringe journalism to exist, but stifle it so much with their money pumped own networks to make it not relevant.
So yes, Russia/China/North Korea deal differently with the free press than America. However, the results are pretty much the same: crippled journalism which doesn't have the bite to bring those in power to justice or even to scrutiny.
Assange's imprisonment and made up charges show us that, while Americans try to play nice and let money talk most of the time, if you step over the line, they are not beyond on going all KGB on you, much like their Cyrillic speaking counterparts.
I never said, nor implied it was. But a spade is a spade. Mr. Assange is being persecuted solely for an act of journalism. Even if the west is "nicer" about how they maintain authority and control, it is still authoritarian. Though, I wouldn't call solitary confinement for five years in Britain's harshest prison "nice".
Besides, once you are arguing shades of grey you've at least admitted something is at least starting to rot at the core. I prefer my government to be pure of any authoritarianism. I will not tolerate authoritarianism lite any more than I would tolerate something like North Korea.
Persecuting journalism is morally deplorable regardless whether the hand of the enforcer is wearing white gloves. Btw, in Assange's case, he got a really really harsh treatment, so I am not sure if I can even use the white gloves term.
The US govt did him really bad, he spent a tremendous amount of time in prison already, his punishment for bringing their war crimes and total disregard for civilian populations during warfare to the public.
Yes, arguably there is a bit more press freedom in the US and it's not repressed as hard and brutally as in Russia/China. In the US, soft repression mostly does the job: lobby-ism, buying up media or ruining journalists' careers for doing their job.
And when it doesn't, they can make up a false case and then become as brutal as their Russian/Chinese counterparts.
it was not even a "leak". they just set up a search, like most major newspapers.
from wikipedia:
> A March 2, 2015 New York Times article broke the story that the Benghazi panel had discovered that Clinton exclusively used her own private email server rather than a government-issued one throughout her time as Secretary of State, and that her aides took no action to preserve emails sent or received from her personal accounts as required by law.[42][43][44] At that point, Clinton announced that she had asked the State Department to release her emails.[45] Some in the media labeled the controversy "emailgate."[46][47][48]
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