
If Assange Burgled Some Computers, He Stopped Being a Journalist - smacktoward
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-11/assange-can-t-be-both-a-criminal-and-a-journalist
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injb
The central point of this article is that there's a fundamental difference in
a person's culpability if they help someone to procure secrets, vs if they
just receive and publish those secrets. Therefore (the idea goes) he's not
entitled to be seen as a "journalist" any longer. Besides the fact that
there's no such legal status as "journalist" in criminal law anyway, it's
clearly a pretty shallow and disingenuous attempt to try establish an
arbitrary line between Assange and other journalists.

By analogy, there's no real difference in knowingly receiving stolen property,
vs assisting in stealing it yourself. They're both crimes that you can be put
on trial for.

Journalists could have been accused of helping Snowden get away with it too,
but the media closed ranks around them for some reason. What's the real reason
Assange is being thrown under the bus?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Journalists could have been accused of helping Snowden get away with it too,
> but the media closed ranks around them for some reason. What's the real
> reason Assange is being thrown under the bus?

Because, under US law, there is a legal difference between receiving whistle-
blower information, even if it was stolen, and assisting in the stealing. That
distinction actually _matters_ legally - it's not just people "throwing
Assange under the bus".

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MaupitiBlue
No he didn’t stop becoming a journalist. Journalists don’t get a pass to break
the law.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
That’s true. I guess the problem for me is that Obama pardoned Manning who did
the actual law breaking, some and supporters cheered. Now those same people
are eager to see Assange pay for the crime of telling Manning how to log on as
a different user.

Seems, selective.

~~~
MaupitiBlue
Manning was not pardoned, his sentence was commuted. People gave it a pass
because Manning was clearly mentally ill and therefore the Army was partly
responsible by putting him in a position to do what he did.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Slightly pedantic, but you are right. Sentence communicated by the Obama
Admin; effectively pardoned considering the life in jail possibility.

Oh, but now there is an issue. Are trans people mentally ill according to you
- or just Manning? Because he committed a crime, then became a she - they no
longer are responsible for their actions? Not bad enough to lock up, but bad
enough to punish associates for.

By that reasoning, Assange allegedly helped someone that doesn’t exist
anymore, commit a crime that no one pays for. Seems like my original point.

 _Edit: Remembering that not only would Assange not now how ill Manning was
(to head off any claims of exploitation) but the info Wikileaks has published
has all been true and most users here celebrated its release. That if you
agree with the US Gov here you are arguing that supplying information like
that on encryption cracking or hacking or any topic that someone could abuse
should leave you vulnerable to their misuses, that sure seems like a bad
policy._

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't think MaupitiBlue was claiming that all trans people are mentally ill.

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monocasa
Looking at the transcripts behind the indictment, Assange gave assistance to
Manning to log in as a different user to protect his identity as a source.

It's standard for journalists to give material support to their sources in
whistleblower circumstances in order to help protect their identity.

~~~
ardy42
> It's standard for journalists to give material support to their sources in
> whistleblower circumstances in order to help protect their identity.

I don't think it's standard for journalists to give material support for the
criminal acts of their sources. For instance: what if Assange had assisted
Manning by giving him a gun so he could kill someone who'd discovered that he
had blown the whistle, in order to help protect his identity?

I think the key question is, did Assange help Manning commit any crimes, or
did he merely report the information resulted from Manning's un-assisted
crimes?

~~~
dictum
While your metaphor is merely intended as a comparison of _aiding a crime_ ,
it's made hazier by the introduction of a crime of a grisly nature (murder)
committed directly (the source pulls the trigger; it is not a murder caused by
a third party without the knowledge of the source and the journalist)

A better comparison would be a journalist buying a wrench that can pry open a
certain box, or conversely, a lock that makes it very hard to open a certain
box.

