dagblog - Comments for "Report of Secret Grand Jury for Assange"

No, David. No, the US

quinn esq — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:39:18 +0000

No, David. No, the US Government is not "legitimately and democratically constituted to define the interests of its citizens."

That is, it possesses no such SOLE capability. There are many other players in life - you know, we use terms like spheres, realms, rights, etc. There are the individuals themselves. And their families. And churches and ethnic groups. There are belief systems and all sorts of social organizations. Take scientists for instance. And if multiple players get to "define" the interests of citizens, then.... ummmm.... no single group is defining.

The way you present things here - which you've repeated about 18 times now - isn't really what I would regard as a democratic country. It's like you're talking some weird totalism that you've really gotten jacked on since this Assange thing started.

Once your brain fog clears and you remember that the world has all sorts of actors in it - and not just some dim-wit states with flags and lobbyists and anthems and little army-men - then you'll feel better. Governments are NOT the world, they do not define truth, they have sole deep eternal ownership and custody over nothing, and they certainly do NOT "define" my interests.

Now, there are labels for the line of thought you're pursuing. I'm surprised that you've so vigorously outed yourself on this issue, but you really should reconsider. Because lately your opinions on this have sounded... thuggish. You want this guy punished, you can't wait, you're aching for it, and when he is, "stability" will return and all will be well.

In passing, whether Assange

acanuck — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:23:48 +0000

In reply to "For me the whole idea of the

In passing, whether Assange sounds "insufferably pretentious" and "messianic" to you, or looks "creepy" and "sinister," or turns out to be the sexual deviant he has been painted as -- all that is totally irrelevant to the rightness or wrongness, legality or illegality of what WikiLeaks has done. Personally, I'm with Daniel Ellsberg on this: the man's a hero, and he's being targeted because of it. But even if you despise him, it doesn't in any way reflect on the moral question of whether the leaks were and are justified.

Brilliant extrapolative

we are stardust — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:20:31 +0000

In reply to kgb had me at "Well."

Brilliant extrapolative analysis, canuck. ;oP

kgb had me at "Well."

acanuck — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:09:42 +0000

In reply to Thanks, kgb; that was clear

kgb had me at "Well."

"For me the whole idea of the

acanuck — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 04:05:00 +0000

In reply to At the risk of being

"For me the whole idea of the existence of a republic hangs on the answer to this."

Totally over the top, David. There are laws requiring certain people (not including Assange) to swear not to divulge confidential state information. Someone may have violated their oath, but even that crime has not been proved in a court of law. Meanwhile, the leaks have exposed real crimes committed by government agents (some involving the killing of innocent civilians) and their concealment from the public and other levels of government.

Yet your chief concern is over the government losing its ability to choose which sensitive information to make public? Do you recall, in the wake of the Plame scandal, the president and vice-president asserting their right (unsanctioned by any law) to arbitrarily and secretly declassify any top-secret document -- long enough to leak its contents to anyone they chose -- then to again secretly reclassify it? No need for any paper documents, just their assertion that that's in fact what they did.

That's the degree of respect the Bush White House had for classified-secrets legislation: it was a club to bash dissent, nothing more. They'd have rolled on the floor laughing at your idea that the existence of the republic hung in the balance. Get some sleep, man.

While publication may not be

kgb999 — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:18:43 +0000

In reply to That's not the issue, as I

While publication may not be automatically protected, the point of determination would be totally different. It renders the whole "Is what he does journalism" question moot. From an American point of view, the constitution doesn't protect journalism. It protects the press in all it's forms. So it really was moot anyhow ... but a journalist can't report unless someone publishes the work. In the Wikileaks model providing non-interpretive dissemination of information for the use of the public, it seems like the leaker would be the journalist and Wikileaks the publisher. It certainly ties up some of the logical loose ends in the discussion, no?

I assume that I cannot willingly receive stolen property. But if someone copies information from stolen property and delivers it to me, I'm in the clear in publishing it, right?

Correct. You aren't framing it exactly right, but that's pretty much how it really works in the instance of of "making copies of information from stolen property". We have seen more than one case of information leaked from a "stolen hard drive" published in the past with no repercussion. But the way you are morphing the physical theft conceptualizations into it is a little off base in this case. Information is not physical property. The laws aren't the same - so all the "bank robbery" analogies do the discussion a bit of a disservice. The DMCA was passed to paper that fact over somewhat and help content companies deal with piracy ... but it is kind of a mess and to whatever extent that comes into play seems to be from the leaker's side of it depending on how they acquire the data. (That said ... my bet is that the "angle" Holder is looking at this from is going to be under the DMCA; I don't think they want to play the game Marcy predicts unless they absolutely have to - we're in enough diplomatic trouble already without trying to use the Patriot Act abroad.).

It seems Woodward and Bernstein were more actively engaged in encouraging their source to acquire and deliver more information. In that case they did legitimately conspire with the person doing the clandestine collection and delivery of secret inside government information. Why don't we view those two negatively? In contrast all Wikileaks does is provide a neutral platform that allows the public to get otherwise censored information of public interest into the public domain. They are not interactively involved at all.

If someone is going to support Deep Throat, Ellsberg, etc. than the only complaint I can see here against Wikileaks is that they aren't operating as an adjunct to the American government and suppressing what they are told like all the other publishers do these days. Mostly the reaction seems to be a defense of the social norm sort of thing more than logic or self-interest.

Assange indisputably received

Hey Wally — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:49:13 +0000

In reply to "And whether WikiLeaks was

Assange indisputably received stolen goods, a felony regardless of whether the items were paid for.

“Doug Cameron joins Labor

we are stardust — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:46:10 +0000

In reply to Here's the Electronic

“Doug Cameron joins Labor Left rally to support Julian Assange” (by Andrew Crook for Crikey, Monday, Dec. 13, 2010, link: http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/13/doug-cameron-joins-labor-left-rally-to-support-julian-assange )

“The political problem of WikiLeaks” (by Bernard Keane, Dec. 14, 2010, link: http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/14/wikileaks-the-governments-problem-is-getting-the-basics-right via FDL commenter

Cool.

Here's the Electronic

we are stardust — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:15:29 +0000

In reply to Report of Secret Grand Jury for Assange

Here's the Electronic Frontier page about the law and Wikileaks soomeone left at this diary at MyFDL:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/information-antidote-fear-wikileak...

don't think they'll give him

artappraiser — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:04:03 +0000

In reply to He's a naive idealistI like

don't think they'll give him the lethal injection, but life imprisonment is a probability.

You're really losing it this time, no sense of reality, off the deep end, convincing yourself of all kinds of stuff you're just making up not even related to the actual story.

If he's going to jail for life, his partners, the editors of the NYT, are going with him.

David, no one claims he hacked into the State Dept. and stole their info. He got the stuff from leakers and published them. The leakers are the ones that can be criminally charged,. Surely, they want to figure out how to pressure him into divulging all the leakers, and make sure everyone that considers leaking to him or someone similar thinks twice. But there is no "life sentence" crime that they can charge him with unless he stole the dump or they know he bribed the leakers to do it or some such. Don't you think The Guardian et. al. would have checked that out before they agreed to be involved with him? To even try to touch him, to even try to pressure him to talk, the Feds have to tiptoe into First Amendment territory, a very tough thing for them to do--once again, think Judith Miller, not Scooter Libby.