> Two years after the events (entirely reasonable in the investigation of such a thing), there was indictments being issued.
No. According to this source [1], the Obama administration did not indict Assange, as his known actions did not differ from those of other journalists.
> It's legal and ethical for a journalist to report on crimes. It is not legal, for example, for a journalist to break into a building to steal information on crimes, however valid that information may be.
Even taking that as an assumption, it is still perfectly ethical to encourage privileged source to leak information about crimes or other information whose publication is of significant public interest.
To be very clear, I entirely agree that it is perfectly ethical for an investigative journalist to encourage a source to whistleblow crimes or information in the public interest.
I also believe that Assange went above and beyond "encouraging" to participating in, and committing of his own accord, crimes intended to either cover tracks or that gained unauthorized access to further information (whose criminality nor public interest was not known).
Cracking or attempting to crack passwords of uninvolved third parties in order to get access to or coverup your unauthorized access to information is unethical at least, illegal at worst, no more than it would be for me to clone your ID card to gain access to your employer.
No. According to this source [1], the Obama administration did not indict Assange, as his known actions did not differ from those of other journalists.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the-u-s-governments-indi...
> It's legal and ethical for a journalist to report on crimes. It is not legal, for example, for a journalist to break into a building to steal information on crimes, however valid that information may be.
Even taking that as an assumption, it is still perfectly ethical to encourage privileged source to leak information about crimes or other information whose publication is of significant public interest.