Didn’t see this coming. Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
He did more than acquire. He participated in the illegal acquisition. The superseding indictment. Marcy is the invaluable source, following this closely from the beginning.
Thats a very nebulous way of saying he published raw information obtained from a whistleblower doing a public service
He did that but he did more than that. Read Marcy's summary of the superseding indictment. He actually directed how to do the hacking. Yours is a common misconception but it is a misconception
In terms of factors behind the decision, besides the domestic (DT would pardon; JA would try to leverage classified disclosures at trial - common defense tactic), there are the international. Intelligent commenter at Marcy’s site had this, commenting on observation about UK elections also resulting in informal requests to US to resolve No need to charge him here (Aust.) following his plea deal. Not sure there would be any reasonable basis for charges for the later egregious conduct since it occurred outside of Australia. Australia’s parliament passed a resolution in February seeking an end to his extradition/prosecution. This is not without some weight. Prime minister backs motion urging US and UK to allow Julian Assange's return to Australia The plea deal avoids a further appeal hearing against his extradition in the UK’s Supreme Court that was scheduled for July. Julian Assange freed from UK prison under plea deal with US Justice Department
Ok, but I'm guessing the reason there is a plea deal is because that charge is extremely dubious and also unprecedented. In other words, it was a weak case.
She has likely written the equivalent of a book on Assange in the last decade, but here are some interesting points from this Spring after the UK extradition ruling that likely also factored in Whereas in Europe, you have to act like a journalist to get protections as one (which Baraitser said Assange did not, especially not with respect to the three counts of publishing the identities of US and Coalition sources, which had little public interest value to counterweigh the harm he did to those whose names he published), in the US one does not have to adhere to journalistic principles to be protected by the First Amendment. The US may have real concerns about giving assurances sufficient to meet this particular concern. If they do, Assange would be able to argue that the US was unfairly applying prior restraint to him in a way it doesn’t others — including Cryptome’s John Young, who has repeatedly tried to intervene in Assange’s case in various ways, each time on the basis that he published the State cables without punishment. All that may be for the best. Faced with such a choice, the US might choose to drop the case entirely (or drop the three most damaging charges, if they are able to do that). I doubt they would drop it entirely, but they could. Or they could limit the kinds of evidence they use on these charges. One thing that distinguishes Assange from journalists — and from Young — for example, is that prior to publishing all the cables without adequate redaction, he first shared a subset of them with Israel Shamir, who then gave them to (at least) Belarus. At least for the state cables, prosecutors could prove the dissemination charge without relying on publication altogether. Doing so would not only mitigate the damage this precedent would cause, but would get to the real damage that releasing those identities did, willfully giving dictators advance notice to retaliate against US sources before the US could take mitigating measures. High Court Decision May Pose New Challenges to Julian Assange Prosecution - emptywheel
From 2021. To have a coherent defensible take, you have to get into the granular facts 17 of the 18 charges against Assange criminalize things that journalists also do: soliciting and publishing classified information. The 18th charge is a hacking conspiracy, one that extends from efforts to hack multiple targets in 2010, including a WikiLeaks dissident, through the Stratfor hack, includes WikiLeaks’ efforts to exploit their role in helping Edward Snowden flee to Russia, right up to WikiLeaks’ efforts to recruit CIA SysAdmins like Joshua Schulte to hack the CIA, though the indictment stops short of WikiLeaks’ publication of those hacked files. There is nothing controversial about the CFAA charge — and, indeed, people who support privacy should be outraged about some of this (and this is not the only surveillance of private citizens I’ve heard about). A lot of people have been duped to cheerlead really invasive hacking and spying, if done by WikiLeaks, in the name of journalism. The hacking charge parallels the Espionage charges, which is central to underlying extradition ruling. Judge Baraitser used the way these efforts worked in parallel to distinguish Assange from journalists. Liar's Poker: The Complexity of Julian Assange's Extradition - emptywheel
As I said, she has years of detailed analysis on Assange if you search her site. She is not a talented podcaster, and gets sucked into Twitter battles and loses her cool. But no public commenter has 10% of the command of the facts she does, including the ability to recall and correlate facts from multiple cases and analyze them
Neither is Russia or it’s domestic dupes. That said, not a fan of generalities in lieu of actual analysis
