
The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism - headalgorithm
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-indictment-of-julian-assange-is-a-threat-to-journalism
======
Aqueous
Is it legal for a journalist to assist another person in invading someone's
home, for the purpose of obtaining information that could be published?

It is not. It's very illegal, for good reason.

It's also illegal to do the same thing with a computer system.

People need to start thinking about information systems as property, in the
same way that your house is your property, and your car is your property. In
this case, the information system is government property, which for some
reason many people believe gives us special license to take whatever we want
from it. But the same principle applies to the property of private
individuals, including you.

So do you really want to live in a world where the governing maxim is that
information wants to be free, and that justifies any and all means of getting
to it, including breaking into secure information systems?

That sword cuts both ways.

~~~
Wintamute
What specific "principle" are you referring to where you conflate private
property with public property? That they are both just types of "property" and
therefore the invasion of either is an identical ethical misdemeanour? This
seems a rather crummy "principle" to me. There is a world of difference
between the two types of property, and it's fundamental to the very definition
of a nation - especially the US. Government property is publicly/collectively
owned by the citizens of the nation, while private property, while coming with
certain collectively agreed responsibilities (tax, licenses, codes etc), is
controlled entirely privately by individuals. Invasion of private property as
you say is unambiguously morally wrong, but I don't think the same can be said
about collectively owned public property. I'm not saying everyone should have
a "license" to ransack public property, but if there is an invasion then the
morality of the act has to be gauged on case by case basis - if the public
property of a non-corrupt state is breached for private gain then of course
that's wrong. But what if property of an evil/corrupt regime is breached for
the public good - surely the same can't said?

~~~
Aqueous
Just the principle that the laws that dictate what is and isn't government
property and who is and isn't entitled to access it are decided by legislators
that were chosen by the people of the United States in an election, and not by
Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning or any other single individual

~~~
Wintamute
If taken at face value (i.e. putting aside other theories) Assange, Manning,
WikiLeaks et al aren't attempting to decide or write new laws, but rather
commit acts in the public good, as they see it. Such acts are capable of
transcending mere legality - by that I don't mean that they shouldn't be
punished based on the laws of the political moment, rather the state's
response to such acts may lay bare either the intrinsic good or evil of the
state, as judged by the citizenry of the time. In this way a nation's course
can be adjusted, and legislators with different values may come to power. I'm
not sure what you're trying to say. Because invasion of public property is
currently illegal, it should ethically never be attempted, even when one may
feel there is an overwhelming case to, let's say, air dirty laundry in the
public interest?

~~~
Aloha
I have my own (unpopular) opinions on Manning, though while a clear Patriot in
my mind (acting in the interests of the greater good), they did indeed commit
a crime, and that the sheer volume of the leak from Manning was capricious,
harmful, and beyond what was needed to serve the greater good - do I think 30
years in jail was a reasonable response? Frankly, no - but I think they needed
at least a slap on the wrist or worst case 2-5 years - I think justice (the
interested in the greater good) was served by pardoning Manning.

In short, sometimes you need to act in the spirit of, rather than the letter
of the law to act in the interest of the greater good - but if you overreach,
expect the long arm of the law to catch you and punish you for that overreach.

~~~
jamiek88
Her sentence was commuted she was not pardoned, which is an important
distinction.

But still, yes I broadly agree with your position.

Civil disobedience comes with consequence and that consequence shows the
states true colors IMO.

~~~
Aloha
I'd argue that some consequence was _reasonable_ in this case, as she went far
beyond what was needed to achieve clarity for the greater good.

~~~
jamiek88
Yep. Agreed.

Egged on by Assange as well it seems.

Even when she said that’s all I have she was encouraged to go digging for
more.

------
kstenerud
It's important to look at the actual indictment [1] rather than all the
commentary about it, because everyone involved seems to have an axe to grind
thanks to Assange's colorful character.

The indictment charges Assange with conspiring with Manning to unlawfully gain
new access to a protected government computer system. Specifically:

* Assange gave Manning a CD to boot from on the target computer, containing tools to copy the protected password data.

* Assange received a copy of the password hashes from Manning, and attempted to crack them.

Regardless of what reasons the Obama administration had to proceed or not
proceed with the indictment at the time (which we are not privy to), these are
very clearly defined criminal offenses in the USA, with much precedent behind
them. Had Assange not provided the hacking tools, and had he not attempted to
crack the passwords, this indictment would never have happened.

Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here; it's about
conspiring to hack a government computer.

[1] [https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-
indictme...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment)

~~~
colllectorof
_> Had Assange not provided the hacking tools, and had he not attempted to
crack the passwords, this indictment would never have happened._

He has not been under trial yet, so how do you know with such certainty he
actually did that?

 _> Press freedom and protecting your sources is not the issue here;_

A lot of very prominent people who deal with politics, activism and journalism
disagree with this assessment. On top of that list would be: Glenn Greenwald,
Edward Snowden and Noam Chomsky. Their reasoning seems pretty solid. And
unlike some media people, they didn't suddenly flip-flop in their positions on
such issues.

~~~
threeseed
Allegedly then. It doesn't change the nature of the charges.

And who cares what prominent people think ? They aren't the ones who will be
judging whether Assange committed a crime or not. Lots of prominent people
have defended guilty people before.

~~~
colllectorof
_> And who cares what prominent people think?_

Well, I happen to value Glenn Greenwald's analysis of the impact this
prosecution will have on journalism a tad more than unsubstantiated comments
from random people on Hacker News.

~~~
village-idiot
I for one will wait for a trial rather than speculating on the internet.

------
doomrobo
So it appears that the author of this piece and the authors of the nearly
identical Intercept piece [0] are skeptical of the "conspiracy to hack"
charges brought against Assange. From what I understand, the action conspired
towards was gaining access to an account on a government network that neither
Assange nor Manning had access to ordinarily, with the goal of better covering
Mannong's tracks (the other account had just as much file access rights as
Manning).

I understand the claim that this was an effort by Assange to protect his
information source, but should it really not be considered Bad to login to
someone else's account on a government network and spoof your actions with
their name attached? Is it so unreasonable to believe that that's somehow too
far?

[0] [https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-
indi...](https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indictment-
of-julian-assange-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedoms/)

------
wapoamspomw
No journalist would help their sources hack their employer for more documents.
Journalists can take documents their source already has; but helping their
source illegally access more documents is against the law.

Imagine if these were physical documents in a safe. A journalist helping the
source crack that safe would be very illegal.

~~~
doomrobo
I thought Manning already had access to the documents in question. The goal of
getting into another account was to cover their tracks, not to gain
unauthorized access.

~~~
wapoamspomw
Breaking into another account is unauthorized access. Doesn't matter if that
account had more, the same, or even less access than Manning's account.

------
Aloha
Assange is in my opinion a slimeball, and not a neutral player, but I don't
think he committed a crime - at least not anymore than Daniel Ellsberg did
when they published the Pentagon Papers, or for that matter Bob Woodward did
when publishing the Watergate Leaks from the FBI - but, like I said, not a
Neutral Player - he has his own agenda, which while from time to time may
align with the interests of the greater good, is neither benign or uniformly
positive. I dont consider the charges against Assange to be any more of a risk
to journalism than the charges leveled against Ellsberg in the wake of the
publication of the Pentagon Papers - and will likely not survive a trial. The
assertion that he helped Manning beyond acting as a publisher/dissemination
method is absurd and more or less baseless.

~~~
erentz
There is an important difference between Assange and Ellsberg so your
comparison of the two isn’t a good one:

Assange did not steal and leak the materials, he was the outside party
publishing them.

On the other hand Ellsberg _was_ the person working for the government who
copied and leaked all the materials _and knew_ he might face charges for that
reason.

In this comparison Manning would be compared to Ellsberg. And Assange would be
the reporter at The NY Times or WaPo (I’m brain farting here) who published
them.

~~~
belltaco
He wasn't just publishing them. He is accused of trying to crack the NTLM hash
of a DoD admin login.

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-
indictme...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-julian-assange-indictment)

------
cedivad
I have to say, this makes me sad. I visit HN daily, mostly look at the
headlines and rarely engage in the discussion, but seeing what are supposed to
be smart, thinking people commenting in here just saddens me. Same goes for
the other 1k+ comments on the previous thread.

It seems you people think it's ok to have someone end up like this guy for
helping a source get us information we all benefited from. You can say trying
to protect this source's identity is conspiracy to commit computer hacking,
but your head needs to be buried very deep into the sand to pretend this is
anything but the excuse used to get him.

The actual crime here is holding governments accountable. Trying, at least.

I understand most of you didn't love him for exposing problems inside a
political party otherwise set to win the election. I really do. I understand
he didn't do much to be loved by the public. I understand 10 years of
propaganda could make most people change their mind about a saint. But here,
too?

I listened to his most recent interview today and I really enjoyed his views.
I half expect people to point out this is Russian state media, and yes, the
reds are out to get you but can listen to it in the background, that way the
watermark can't bother you.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98ed6oML2A)

I lost one fifth of my karma yesterday defending the guy, let's see if this
comment goes the same way.

Edit: funny enough my comment went to -3 in no time before slowing crawling
its way back to +1. Almost like if... Nah.

~~~
erentz
I agree with your sentiment of disappointment in the general response on HN to
this. And I also have the same disappointment in the general media's response.
I thought Tulsi Gabbard's defense of Assange to Tapper on CNN was spot on, and
can't believe it's up to a few politicians to defend journalism _on a news
network_ instead of the news network itself.

The previous Obama administration went very hard against whistle blowers, but
even they ultimately decided that prosecuting Assange for this would be a step
too far.

What's happening seems to be people don't like him for various reasons (fair
enough), are blind to the larger issues and chilling effects caused by this
prosecution, and so with motivated reasoning decide this is not about politics
and is about hacking, he's a bad hacker who tried to crack a Government
password, and they're just standing up for some principal of not trying to
hack Govt passwords or some such.

~~~
viivaux
Would you mind telling me the gist of his comment? Was there a good reason for
flagging it?

I could have sworn that you used to be able to still read [flagged] comments
here. When did that change, or am I misremembering?

------
tareqak
Does anyone have the specifics of what was the _exact_ nature of Julian
Assange’s help in cracking the password? Specifically,

1\. Did Assange send Manning the name of utility that would crack the
password?

Or

2\. Did Assange send Manning a link to the utility in order to download it?

Or

3\. Did Assange send Manning a page of Google search results, and/or a
Wikipedia page, a technical article or blog post with the computer science
fundamentals behind password-cracking?

Or

4\. Did Assange send Manning a technical article or blog post with step by
step instructions to crack the password?

Or

5\. Did Assange crack the password himself?

I apologize if this information has been released somewhere and I haven’t seen
it. In addition, apologize if the questions that I asked sound painfully
fundamental or demeaning towards Assange or Manning.

What I am trying to get at is how easy it seems to get in trouble with the law
in this case. Suppose someone comes up to me and says they want to know how to
hotwire a car (or whatever the term is) in order to steal it, I happen to
blurt out that this someone can “just Google that”, and then this person goes
out and does just that without me being totally sure about their intent to do
so. Am I now an accomplice to the crime?

~~~
r721
Here's the chat excerpt:

[https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336](https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1116341065416462336)

~~~
tareqak
Thanks a lot 'r721 ! That’s even more worrying where there might be mismatch
between the recorded intent and the actual intent.

~~~
r721
This subthread is quite interesting, apparently "In a conspiracy charge, the
outcome doesn’t need to be achieved, only there was a “meeting of minds” and
steps taken to achieve that end goal":

[https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166](https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1116417498168156166)

------
iblaine
IANAL but he’s awaiting trial for hacking, not being a journalist. Whether or
not the charges are true will be one for the courts to figure out.

~~~
travisoneill1
The article goes to great length to show that the supposed crimes (except for
the one password, maybe) are things that journalists do. It's even more shady
because his co-conspirator, and the one who was charged with and convicted of
the crimes that are unambiguously illegal, has been pardoned.

edit: I don't really care about the difference between pardon an commuted
sentence because they both are a get out of jail free card.

~~~
wapoamspomw
>except for the one password

If he did attempt to break the password hash, he conspired to hack military
systems. I don't see why someone who attempted to break a password hash for
access to classified documents shouldn't be prosecuted, journalist or not.

~~~
megous
Don't mil guys have DoD cards or some such? Why would hacking a password help
anything? You still need to have a card for you account, no?

~~~
SargeZT
At least back then SIPRNet had a password login for normal users. I've been
out for nearly a decade, so I don't know if the situation has changed.

------
Simulacra
Perhaps I’m cynical, but the outrage from the media over the arrest of Assange
smacks of duplicity for me. After all, it was Asaange who helped leak
documents which then the media could write about. He was almost doing their
job for them. Distant echoes of when Gizmodo found an iPhone 4, and some tech
journalist ( Who would have loved the scoop) scolded them.

~~~
13415
I don't understand where the duplicity would be in that. "The media" (your
term) used documents from Wikileaks in their reporting and now are outraged
about the arrest of Assange? There is nothing incongruent about that.

Did I misunderstand you?

~~~
mc32
Some in the press are alleging he’s an “activist”, not a real journalist[1],
which seems self serving.

The reason, they hope to “define” what s true journalist is, so that they can
remain gatekeepers of who journalists are and what is news. Baffling.

[1][https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-
activ...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/opinions/julian-assange-activist-not-
journalist-ghitis/index.html)

------
duxup
>Assange offered to try to crack a computer password for Manning

>“Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers
using a username that did not belong to her,” the indictment says. “Such a
measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to identify
Manning as the source of disclosures of classified information.”

It's up for a trial to determine how much / if any of that happened, but if it
did it seems well outside the boundaries of what a journalist should do.

I don't expect a journalist to be assisting someone in accessing information
illegally. If the journalist is just given it fine they should be protected,
but this seems a good step beyond that.

The article talks about how it would have helped protect that source but it's
clear it also would have provided more information / assisted in that process.

Let alone a concern I would have if I were a journalist (I'm not) that
providing my source with some cover of another real world person could
seriously harm that other person.

------
monochromatic
Reporting on leaked documents is one thing. Helping your source crack
passwords on government computers is another.

~~~
ALittleLight
Yeah, I guess it's a little bad to help crack a password but it also doesn't
seem like a huge deal. Part of the stuff that Assange leaked included footage
of American helicopters murdering people - which seems like a much bigger
deal. If I crack your password and read your email and discover you're a
serial killer, then yes, I've done wrong and should be punished for the minor
crime I've committed, but you should be punished for the serial killing too.

In my view Assange should be sentenced to a hundred hours of community service
immediately after the people responsible for planning and executing the vastly
more consequential crimes Assange revealed are sentenced to lengthy prison
sentences.

~~~
isostatic
It doesn't feel like a crime serious enough for extradition to me.

He is guilty of skipping bail, which is a serious crime. It's possible that
there's merit for what Sweden wanted to extradite him for, and the courts
should look at the merits of extraditing him to Sweden

~~~
monochromatic
Sweden has dropped those charges though.

------
rukuu001
Yeah, the Assange case is going to tie everyone up in knots, because he's
practically the definition of 'complicated'.

Everyone's going to take a different side, based on:

\- He helped make available information genuinely in the public interest about
US technically-not-quite war crimes.

\- He's alleged to have committed sex crimes in Sweden

\- He arguably delivered the presidency to Trump

Edit: it's kind of an ethical version of rock-paper-scissors - no matter what
position you take, Assange himself has provided a reason not to take that
position.

------
lurchpop
What if Rachel Maddow had a source inside the IRS who's trying to get at a
folder that has trump tax returns and other financial details but doesn't have
access. Source says they can deliver everything if Maddow can get some
passwords on a thumb drive cracked. Maddow says she can't but to keep trying.

------
chx
> The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Journalism

The Indictment of Julian Assange Is a Threat to Russian Agents.

FTFY. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19635988)

------
baby
So. Mind you I haven't really followed what Assange did or didn't do. But it
seems like a lot of people are angry at him because they think he is
responsible for having Trump becoming president. Before that, the same people
seemed pretty supportive of him.

~~~
belltaco
I mean it came out that he/wikileaks were communicating and coordinating with
the Trump campaign and Assange requested that Trump ask the Aus govt to
appoint him as Aussie ambassador to the US as payment for helping him win.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-
sec...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-
correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/)

So many that supported him earlier don't support him anymore because he was
delaying and timing leaks and selectively leaking things to help get Trump
elected. I personally felt he lost the moral high ground after that.

~~~
int_19h
The charges in question are still regarding those earlier leaks, though. One
can reasonably argue whether they were morally right or not, or even that it's
too complicated to simplify like that - but it has to be argued in that
original context.

------
viivaux
Seems everything I want to say here is likely to end up as [flagged].

If only I wanted to cast vague and unsubstantiated aspersions; then I'd be
fine.

------
IronWolve
The material support claim is he helped direct how to hack passwords, but I've
only seen claims of that, and the Obama administration didnt think it was true
at the time.

But now, that claim is back and the same week Ecuador receives 4.2 billion...
Great Timing.

