What happens to Julian Assange now?

by philg

The UK is not so busy with its non-Brexit Brexit that it couldn’t arrest and plan to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. Back in 2017, Newsweek ran an article explaining why the First Amendment would be unlikely to protect Mr. Assange from a charge of espionage. The NYT says that these freedom of speech issues may not be relevant:

The single charge, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, stems from what prosecutors said was his agreement to break a password to a classified United States government computer. It is not an espionage charge, a significant detail that will come as a relief to press freedom advocates.

Is there any chance he can beat the rap at this point?

(Also, what has been the ultimate impact of WikiLeaks? They generated some headlines that helped the media sell ads, plainly, but did governments learn anything new from WikiLeaks? Did any policies change?)

Related:

  • WIRED article explaining that the charge is an attempt to go from hashed to cleartext on a password. There is a potential issue with statute of limitations: Ekeland also points out that to expand the statute of limitations for the CFAA from the normal five years to the necessary eight in this case, given the indictment’s date of March 2018, the Justice Department is charging Assange under a statute that labels his alleged hacking an “act of terrorism.” He sees that as another suspect element of the case, if not one that would necessarily hinder prosecution. “To get the benefit of the eight years, they’re trying to call this a terrorist act,” Ekeland says. “That seems a little weird.”

6 thoughts on “What happens to Julian Assange now?”

  2. The article does not support your contention — the article says that the conviction rate following trial in a federal court is about 92% — which sounds about right since contrary to what is on TV the federal government does not typically go to the effort and expense of trying innocent people. The Assange trial will be a circus. He will be convicted and sent to prison for a long time as he should be since in a democracy it is the job of elected officials to decide whether we want to share classified information with the Ruskies — no one elected Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange to make these decisions.

    • I mean whistleblowers certainly have their role in a functional democracy, but Assange’s agenda is not at all clear. Sunlight provider or partisan hack?

    • How can an independent Australian living in Europe be a partisan hack in the US? His material was damaging 360 degrees and sometimes exonerated parties he did not like and damaged parties he had belonged to. My understanding that charges against him are not for whistleblowing per se but for breaking into classified DoD systems as he was an external party. It is wrong to break into DoD systems. Agree with Federico, he would be better off in a medium security US jail with gym and basketball court access than in Ecuadorian embassy for 7 years. US court should take his self-punishment into account when sentencing him.

  3. Trump supporters love Assange. Trump has no reason to alienate his base.

    Seth Rich died for Hillary Clinton’s sins.

  4. It is not exactly obvious Julian can be tried for espionage — one of the facts being he shared what he had with *everyone*, hardly the work of a spy. The stuff about Hillary looks and sounds pure bovine fertiliser. In any case, the whole extradition will take years, Julian will be behind bars during that period, and by the time he goes to the US he will discover all he gets is 3 years in a minimum security, with possibility of release after 1.5 — the moron will have spent 15 or more years in prison (one way or another) to avoid that.

    More interestingly is the question: how come a conman that sets up a second rate ‘leaks website’ for the sole purposes of looking like a ‘hero’ while actually just trying to bed as many dumb gullible groupies as possible becomes a hero of free journalism? a hero so unimpeachable that the fact two women allege he sexually assaulted them is not enough to have him thrown off his pedestal?

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