I get the feeling people in this thread are getting mixed up between the difference of what people think is right or should be right and what the courts and laws say.
I think Assange was a hero. At the same time, the claim that he tried to help crack a US military hash to assist with extracting files does sound pretty illegal on the face of it, despite its good intentions and positive outcomes for truth and journalism.
Just because you did good by breaking the law, or that you broke the law in the name of journalism, doesn't provide you protection from the courts in the eyes of the law (And particularly not at a magistrates court!).
The statement is factually false, the reason we have judges is to consider individual circumstances and to make the tradeoffs between conflicting rights and laws. Cutting a person open without their consent could be murder or a lifesaving surgery depending on context. Breaking and entering is justified if you did it to save a child out of a burning building, breaking someone's bones is OK if it happens during CPR (varies by country).
Your right to privacy conflicts with the State's desire for surveillance, your right for self-defence can clear your of charges of manslaughter, and depending on exact circumstances the judge will decide if your actions were justified or if you belong in jail.
> The statement is factually false, the reason we have judges is to consider individual circumstances and to make the tradeoffs between conflicting rights and laws.
Not really, we have judges at the level of the magistrates to apply laws based on the precedents set in higher courts, not based on their own feelings of what the law should be.
There are legal tests that need to be applied - in your example about murder and surgery the definition of murder requires intent. As we know from cases like Shipman, a surgery can be murder, but it’s not for the judge to decide that arbitrarily, it’s for a judge to apply case law.
seems like a function of their role in the 4th estate as the watchdogs of government.
In practical terms, a journalist covering a protest should not be treated the same by security forces as a protestor. I am sure other, similar scenarios can be imagined.
I would say that they should, both the protestor and the journalists should be treated with respect. Even then though, a non-journalist that is not a protestor should be able to cover a protest just as well as professional journalists can.
> as the watchdogs of government.
More like dogs of the government. The ones willing to go against it in any meaningful manner are few and sidelined.
re: protestors vs journalists, one is an active participant in the story and the other is an observer. While I do think protestors deserve respect, I feel journalists should be given wider protection (for example, assembly is cited as unlawful, protestors must disperse. Journalists should be allowed to stay and document what happens).
I get the feeling people in this thread are getting mixed up between the difference of what people think is right or should be right and what the courts and laws say.
I think Assange was a hero. At the same time, the claim that he tried to help crack a US military hash to assist with extracting files does sound pretty illegal on the face of it, despite its good intentions and positive outcomes for truth and journalism.
Just because you did good by breaking the law, or that you broke the law in the name of journalism, doesn't provide you protection from the courts in the eyes of the law (And particularly not at a magistrates court!).