General Politics Discussion (VI) [ARCHIVED] • Page 395

Holy shit.

 

Cool cool cool

 

....unless the source is a bad guy™, in which case, the reporter probably should just "not defend" them

 

gonna go ahead and say that anyone who cares about press freedom should be full throatedly denouncing this charge. David do you understand this case will weaken the whistleblower protections you say should be stronger?

 

I literally have the entire indictment open now and all that section is doing is describing the steps in which they carried out their conspiracy to hack US govt computers. It's not listed under either Count One or Count Two, but rather "Manners and Means of Conspiracy". In other words, "They tried to hack into govt computers and this is how they carried it out and tried to keep it from being discovered."

 

Manning was an Army Intelligence officer and had access to the documents she leaked, she did not do any "hacking" as we usually think of the word. The "hacking" was her accessing the documents - through the normal channels that the Army gave her access to as an intelligence officer - with the intention of giving them to Assange. The "conspiracy to hack US government computers" is just the conspiracy to leak the documents.

 

another cool and fun thing to read today!

Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready

 

Maybe there is more to come, but the current indictment alleges she asked for help from Assange to get a password for documents she did not have the clearance to access.

 

I'd also add that just based off what I'm reading, there is absolutely no 'new' precedent being set here. If there were a journo out there actively engaging in helping a source hack info from a govt harddrive, and encouraging them to do it more, I imagine they'd be getting charged as well if discovered. This isn't going to "weaken" current whistleblower protections, it's carrying them out in their current form. Which means the status quo doesn't change: we still need better whistleblower laws via Congress. Was there not a Dem bill in the house for this recently or am I just remembering something else? Not sure if any of the candidates have really even commented on whistleblower protections, sadly.

Though honestly I don't know how you get whistleblower protections strong enough to prevent arrest for hacking a govt computer/harddrive. I don't know how you write a law that's like "well if the crimes you expose are bad enough, then you won't get charged for the hacking" or something similar. But I don't think it's feasible to just not have that action be a crime.

 

Look, I can't really parse this indictment, but Chris Hayes RTing the Matt Pearce tweet about how "all journalists are engaged in a conspiracy to keep their confidential sources confidential" makes me think it poses a pretty serious risk and sets a bad precedent. If Hayes is wrong, I don't even really care, because hacking the US government is cool and good, but whatever, you are right, obviously the US government is never going to agree...which is why we should be fighting them on things like this.

 

It looks like Manning had clearance to see the material she provided to Assange, as in her clearance was Top Secret and the information was only Secret, but she did not have access to the computer file where the information was stored. She literally hacked the password with Assange’s help. Those actions at the end of the document were not actions taken to conceal a source, they were actions taken to cover up the hacking; the context is important here. If a reporter is given hacked documents by a whistleblower, and the reporter didn’t participate in the hacking, then nothing that happens here would apply to them. That’s the difference. That kind of thing happens literally all the time and the reporters don’t get prosecuted for it.

We have to remember that while whistleblowers like Manning are obviously a good thing and have been instrumental in exposing government crime and corruption since forever, they still often do so at their own legal risk. The most important whistleblowers throughout history have borne that risk willingly. But this is not the same situation as the Pentagon Papers or anything like that. Assange crossed the line and went from reporter to whistleblower/participant himself, and he knew the risks involved in doing so.

It’s one thing to criticize the law re: hacking as it pertains to whistleblowers, but the law as it is written now clearly prohibits what he did. The conversation should be about how we can rewrite those laws to provide protections to whistleblowers that don’t currently exist.

 

and in the meantime, we should "not defend" people from unjust laws if they're bad people

 

I don't know what this means

 

k

 

Sick

 

as it stands you and david and many others on twitter are refusing to defend assange because of how you feel about him as a person, knowing full well the law is completely unjust and needs to be changed. sorry, but thats not very principled if you truly believe in rewriting the laws to protect whisteblowers better.

 

I don't know what you mean by "defend Assange" here. The law says what he did is a crime. There are no exceptions for whistleblowers in place. I believe there should be. But advocating for a change in the law has nothing to do with who the defendant is. I just said I think the law should be changed. If that means I'm defending Assange then I guess I am, I just don't see it that way.

Also I don't think laws against computer hacking are unjust. We shouldn't scrap those laws, there should just be protections carved out for whistleblowers. Not the same thing.

 

Also TIL that Canada apparently has a much more strict definition of treason than the United States does. I don't remember hearing at the time the story of when they denied Chelsea Manning admission to the country because what she did is equivalent to treason there. That's pretty wild.

 

Not so much to do with how I feel about him as a person, but rather how I feel about him as it pertains to other really bad crimes he's committed and should definitely be charged for.

 

Just as a follow up to that tweet from Pearce...

 

Yeah I mean encouraging or inducing someone to commit any crime is a crime. That’s why whistleblowing should be protected.

 

lol

 

How it’s done

 

JFC. This is bad. This is going to end very badly.