To Protect Secrets, US Won't Charge Assange Over Exposing CIA Tools, Reports Politico (politico.com) 87
Some interesting news from Politico. America's Justice Department will still prosecute Julian Assange for allegedly assisting Chelsea Manning, and for 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act -- but "has decided not to charge Julian Assange for his role in exposing some of the CIA's most secret spying tools, according to a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the case."
It's a move that has surprised national security experts and some former officials, given prosecutors' recent decision to aggressively go after the WikiLeaks founder on more controversial Espionage Act charges that some legal experts said would not hold up in court. The decision also means that Assange will not face punishment for publishing one of the CIA's most potent arsenals of digital code used to hack devices, dubbed Vault 7. The leak -- one of the most devastating in CIA history -- not only essentially rendered those tools useless for the CIA, it gave foreign spies and rogue hackers access to them...
[P]rosecutors were worried about the sensitivity of the Vault 7 materials, according to an official familiar with the deliberations over whether to charge Assange. Broaching such a classified subject in court risks exposing even more CIA secrets, legal experts said.
[P]rosecutors were worried about the sensitivity of the Vault 7 materials, according to an official familiar with the deliberations over whether to charge Assange. Broaching such a classified subject in court risks exposing even more CIA secrets, legal experts said.
Apps (Score:1)
In societies dominated by surveillance capitalism, computing presents itself as immense accumulation of apps.
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How do you explain the fact that it's the exact same thing in PRC but to a much greater degree?
This is odd as they did (Score:4, Interesting)
bust the guy who leaked them.... go figure. Truth be known they are probably respecting the journalist side of Wikileaks in this.
How does that work? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, a foreign national violated the U.S. Espionage Act. How many U.S. women have violated the laws of Saudi Arabia by driving and working? Are the laws of one country binding on the citizens of the world?
Re:How does that work? (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer to it is: If a U.S. woman were to violate a law in Saudi Arabia, or a place where its rules had jurisdiction, then she would be culpable (in their eyes) to the consequences. Most countries work this way.
Back to Assange- what has he done to violate U.S. law in a place where the U.S. has jurisdiction? I too was curious about this, so of course I tried to figure it out.
Initially, they were hitting him with Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion, under the accusation that he materially assisted Manning with intrusion into US government/military computers/networks. The jurisdiction here is quite obvious. If they can get their hands on him, they have good grounds to charge him with a crime, as the U.S. was the direct victim of his crime. I.e, if you stand in Mexico, and shoot an American across the border, you don't get to say "I'm not beholden to US Law, neener neener" when they attempt to indict you. Well, you can try of course, but you'll lose. And anyone who claims you should win that fight can go step into fucking traffic.
However, now there are Espionage Act charges, and those are pretty fucking questionable.
Charging a foreign national with receiving classified information is... scary. Frankly, charging anyone with receiving classified information is fucking scary.
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There have been the instance of woman being arrested in the UAE because she called her ex's new wife a "horse face". She posted to facebook while in England, and was then arrested when she travelled to the UAE.
Shooting over borders (Score:1, Interesting)
Didn't the border patrol do exactly that?
Kid throws rocks from Mexico into the USA, Border Patrolman in the USA pulls a gun and shoots him (dead). Patrolman not charged because the victim wasn't in the USA at the tim
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The problem is that Assange has been receiving information from the Russians via people such as Nigel Farage acting as couriers (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/19/trump-russia-inquiry-is-told-nigel-farage-may-have-given-julian-assange-data). It's no coincidence that both Farage and Assange keep receiving money from Russia, be it as "fees" for appearing on or hosting shows on RT, or be it via outright payouts through Russian proxies such as Arron Banks.
So Assange isn't simply a journalist, or
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And here I am jumping in the traffic. I don't agree. At all. For starters, you example
"if you stand in Mexico, and shoot an American across the border, you don't get to say "I'm not beholden to US Law, neener neener" when they attempt to indict you."
Would seem wrong to me. Shouldn't it be....
If you stand in Mexico and shout,"Passwords are often based on birthdays!" across the border and the other person figures out the password then you don't get to say "I'm not beholden to US Law, neener neener" when they
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The shooting example was made so that you could easily identify what the crime was in the analogy, and easily trace the criminal and victim (shooter, target)
So, following your vein of logic, it's more like:
If you stand in Mexico, and coordinate with a hitman across the border to kill someone, you're fucked, and the US will come after you.
Obviously, shouting "Passwords are often based on birthdays!" is not illegal.
So
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If they can get their hands on him, they have good grounds to charge him with a crime, as the U.S. was the direct victim of his crime. I.e, if you stand in Mexico, and shoot an American across the border, you don't get to say "I'm not beholden to US Law, neener neener" when they attempt to indict you. Well, you can try of course, but you'll lose. And anyone who claims you should win that fight can go step into fucking traffic.
Ironic you should use that as an example. A few years back, a Border Patrol agent on the US side of the border shot a teenager on the Mexican side. The family sued for violation of constitutional rights. The Supreme Court just agreed to examine the case. So in that example, is the crime (if there is one) committed on the side where the bullet is fired, or is it on the side where the bullet lands?
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It's well known that the US doesn't accept any jurisdiction other than its own over its service people, regardless of where the fuck they are.
Now, as I said, if a Mexican shot an American, we would tell the Mexican government we wanted this person, and they would give them to us.
We don't really have the rule of law. (Score:2, Interesting)
We have a political system that allows any abuse to the individual, as long as they're not republican.
It's pretty obvious by now that the Russians were involved in the Republican party back when Gingerich was in charge; look at what they did.
They prosecuted Clinton for a blowjob; Cheeto says "Grab 'em by the Pussy", and gets elected by the religious right.
Trump has Broken at least 3 commandments, but gay people are evil because of one line speaking about Sodom.
It all makes sense when you look at Mitch Mconn
No charges for torture... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and this why. This is the very situation that caused Obama to not choose to charge any Bush officials over the approval and actions of torture signed off by Woo and carried out by the CIA and the military. To do so would have had to connect all the dots between the senior Bush officials and the perpetrators of the waterboarding etc. EVERY dot.
That would have exposed multiple CIA agents and multiple CIA 'cover' companies throughout the world, and basically put a halt to the CIA's operations for years, possibly forever.
Now you can, of course, decide for yourself if that would be a good thing, but clearly to the US Government under Obama, it was considered a risk not worth taking.
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There was an ulterior motive (Score:1)
Trump just wanted to meet the guy, shake his hand and say “thank you”.
Re: Not a US citizen (Score:1)
Not even close. If they can extradite him they can charge him with it.
Re: US Law Applies EVERYWHERE To Citizens (Score:1)
Look Vlad, I know you Russkies aren't very well educated, but American Laws apply to Americans everywhere, which is how all those Republican Pedophiles that fly off to Boystown in Haiti get charged when they return. Right?
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>> but American Laws apply to Americans everywhere
Assange is Australian.
> I know you Russkies aren't very well educated,
you might want to look in the mirror first.
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Second example is wrong. No US citizen may ever bribe a government official *EVER* unless they are willing to spend time in jail on return to the USA or any country willing to extradite them (which is rather a lot).
Hey the USA will go after none US citizen's for bribery
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
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as an idealistic theory, you're right.
However in reality, the UK is the US's bitch and I say that as a Brit.
It's obvious that Assange's rights should have been protected but the UK bent the rules which ever way the Whitehouse wanted.
Imbeciles in charge. (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, this has been the most foolish endeavor. First, they oust Assange from his own self-imprisonment to extradite him and now that they can... they won't. Regardless of how your feel about Assange, I believe we can agree that the US government inadvertently went through a lot of effort to free Assange from his own indefinite detention. He'll do a brief stint in prison in the UK and the case in Sweden is likely to unravel. However, they just confirmed he has nothing to fear from the US government. What a fuck up.
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That's not what the article says, it says they will still prosecute him for 17 counts of spying (leaking various secret information) and assisting Manning in discovering the computer password but they simply won't proceed on the charges for the specific case of leaking the CIA/NSA tools that we all know and love (I'm being sarcastic here, given that they've been used in several cases of "public" malware/ransomware) and my guess is they're doing this to simply let that specific news die down (not that it has
Motive (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this means that when Assange is assassinated, the US will just say, "Of course we didn't do it! We weren't even going to charge him with anything all that serious, so we clearly didn't care that much!"
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Obama already gave himself this "right" to assassinate US citizens without due process. Not just that but Obama prosecuted 8 cases of this law, and up until his administration it had only been used 7 times. This is a grave travesty of judicial process - in fact you could call it judicial murder.
I would argue that, in cases such as people leaving and joining ISIS, which declared itself a sovereign state, that by joining them you have de facto relinquished your US citizenship from the fact that ISIS had declared war on the US.
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by joining them you have de facto relinquished your US citizenship
Tacitly acknowledging that they are in fact a sovereign state. Which seemed to be the administration's position. I remember when a few US officials were referring to them as Daesh. The State Department admonished people who did so. "Awww. It will hurt their widdle feelings." So what? These aren't people that we were planning on sitting down in a peace conference with. Unless that was the plan all along.
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by joining them you have de facto relinquished your US citizenship
Tacitly acknowledging that they are in fact a sovereign state. Which seemed to be the administration's position.
Not necessarily. Taiwan is essentially treated as an independent sovereign state without actually being recognized as such. To a lesser extent (and much lesser with the current administration) the Palestinian Authority is treated the same way.
I remember when a few US officials were referring to them as Daesh. The State Department admonished people who did so. "Awww. It will hurt their widdle feelings." So what? These aren't people that we were planning on sitting down in a peace conference with. Unless that was the plan all along.
Yeah, I am firmly in the "if it pisses them off, let's do it" camp. When the other side is literally willing to go kamikaze on you, you're allowed to take off the gloves of political niceties.
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Oh! So a drone attack on your house tonight will be fully justifiable if Trump can make an excuse that you somehow de facto relinquished your citizenship? Can he do that to Chancy for their opposition to protecting America's southern border, or to the people running "sanctuary cities"?
Wrong. (Score:1)
Assange assisted Bradley Manning. In 2013 there was no Chelsea Manning. Bradley Manning struggles with mental illness, indulging him does him no favors.
To protect secrets (Score:1)
I still do not see how we have rights to Assange (Score:2)
So, what right do we Americans have to prosecute him? I am not a fan of Assange (or any of the traitors such as Snowden), but Assange should NOT be prosecuted by America. Now, if Australia wants to prosecute him ( he is Australian) or better yet, UK ( it took place on UK soil ), then they sh
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He was off-shore, not on American soil.
So if I shoot you from Canada, you won't mind. You're government won't care either? I just don't come back to America, that's it?
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Look, to do a decent analogy, they have to be similar. You are way off in Timbuktu.
If somebody kills me while standing right next me, then calls you in Canada to tell you, is the correct analogy. Assange did NOT fucking crack the systems or steal anything. He was not in A
But those are the things he shouldn't have (Score:2)