
US prepares charges to seek arrest of Julian Assange - enlightenedfool
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-us-charges/
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kyledrake
Absolutely ridiculous. What's the charge here? It's not illegal for third
parties to disclose factual information about the government. If it was, the
staff at almost every newspaper would be thrown in jail on a daily basis.

There is no concept of a journalist license. Wikileaks for better or worse is
as legally engaged in journalism as anyone else. Any attempt to deny this by
comparing them to large established news organizations is just an appeal to
authority.

I get that a lot of people don't like them now because of their garbage
politics, but are we seriously prepared to throw away protection of
journalists for this? Who's next, Glenn Greenwald?

~~~
Maxious
> The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges
> against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents
> because government lawyers said they could not do so without also
> prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S.
> officials. [2013]

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/julia...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/julian-assange-unlikely-to-face-us-charges-over-publishing-
classified-
documents/2013/11/25/dd27decc-55f1-11e3-8304-caf30787c0a9_story.html)

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brokenmachine
All this proves -once again- is that US authorities are quite prepared to
ignore their own laws and constitution.

~~~
squarefoot
This sadly applies to about every country, albeit to different degrees: laws
and constitutions should be there to protect everyone's rights from everyone
else wills, but in practice they are easily circumvented when they can limit
powerful people or governments. One could even say they're there along with
moral and religious value sets just to keep common people put.

------
salesguy222
Viva el Ecuador!

Julian Assange is a national hero and does not deserve, at the very least, to
rot in an American prison.

May Ecuador continue to provide him safe keeping.

And may all the UK citizens out there elect a government that won't extradite
him should he need to leave!!

